Real people--by request

by Carola

I had an interesting meeting at Art and the Vineyard (a local outdoor art & wine show) yesterday.

Several years ago, I was asked to give a character in my next book the name of the person who bid highest at an auction in aid of the Eugene Opera (disclosure: I'm a classical music fan but don't care for opera). The winning bid was $800, a woman who want her husband's name used. Turned out his name was Polish, which made for complications, but I got him into Valley of the Shadow, my 3rd Cornish mystery, as a WWII Polish refugee-- If you've read the book, you may have wondered where Skipper Tom Kulick came from! (I had asked about him and learned he was in the US Coast Guard).
 

Yesterday, the Kulicks came to the Oregon Authors booth to see me, They were very happy with the way I wrote Tom in, brought copies to be signed, and asked if I'd be willing to attend a lunch for 12 opera supporters for this year's fund-raising. I'm still not keen on opera, but what could I say? I'll do anything for a free lunch (well, almost anything...)
 
Hope they can find 12 people willing to pay to have lunch with me!

Similarly, someone once paid $500 at a library supporters auction to have me put her sister (deceased) in a book. I asked for information about her and discovered that she had played a brass instrument and loved brass band music. Her name seemed to me more American than English, so I wrote her character as an American visiting England on her honeymoon, in A Colourful Death, the second Cornish mystery.

Nick Gresham, the artist neighbour of my protagonist, Eleanor Trewynn, meets the young couple while listening to and sketching a band playing "Land of Hope and Glory," at Horse Guards' Parade in London. They commission him to paint a picture of the band. Returning to Cornwall, and finding himself chief suspect in a murder case, he keeps humming snatches of the tune as he works out ideas for his painting.


The sister of the bride--so to speak--was thrilled that I'd woven the love of brass music into the story.

 

The only other time I've done something like this was a whole family, whom I put for free into A Mourning Wedding, one of the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries.  It turned out their last name, Walsdorf, is from Luxembourg. It was an interesting challenge to fit them into a book set in England in 1923.

I made them a family of poor relations, a refugee from World War I, when the Germans invaded Luxembourg, who had married an Englishwoman. Given the xenophobic feelings of many of the English at that period, they made a great addition to the cast of suspects!

Knit one, kill one...

by Julie Turjoman

posted by Carola

Julie Turjoman is a widely published knitwear designer, who is so enamored of 
1920s fashion and period mysteries that she suspects she must have been a flapper in a 
former life.

'It was inspired by Carola Dunn’s lady detective character, Daisy Dalrymple, who never left home without her “emerald green cloche” in the first few books of the series.'

 

It’s a quirky theme, I admit. But the opportunity to combine my profession as a knitwear designer with my twin passions for Roaring Twenties fashion and period mystery novels was simply too tempting to resist.

A Head For Trouble: What To Knit While Catching Crooks, Chasing Clues, and Solving Murders is my latest knitting book.

http://www.amazon.com/Head-Trouble-Catching-Adornments-Detectives/

 It draws on fictional 1920s lady detectives for inspiration, and the result is a collection of 20 hand knits that combine vintage glamor with a modern sensibility. And throughout its pages, murder and mayhem lend a dangerous edge to the traditionally gentle image of knitters with the quiet clicking of their needles and their skeins of soft and colorful yarn. Ten fashionable crime busters from popular period mystery novels swan through the book’s pages, wielding binoculars (the better to spot a villain from a distance), tipping back flasks of Prohibition-era gin, inspecting poison bottles, and of course, wearing the knitted designs with great panache.

Let’s consider these lady detectives, and examine their place in the world of traditional mysteries. Agatha Christie’s deceptively sweet little old lady, Miss Jane Marple – a knitter herself - is among the early female detectives to achieve lasting fame in the genre. In several modern mystery series that look back to the 1920s and ‘30s for inspiration, their authors capitalize on both the skills that women bring to the art of detection, and the societal shifts and contradictions of the “between-the-wars” era that made it a viable career option. Detective work became possible for women only once they had achieved the independence brought about by WWI, when many served as volunteers, munitions factory workers, nurses and ambulance drivers. After the war, women lived independently in greater numbers than ever before, owned and drove their own cars, and continued to work in professions previously open only to men. 

Like these fictional lady detectives, whose sleuthing skills are usually undermined or dismissed outright by their male counterparts in the local police force or Scotland Yard, the knitting needle itself has been given short shrift. Its potential as a murder weapon should not be underestimated. While its true that knitting needles are traditionally employed in the creation of baby blankets, tea cozies, and tweedy cardigans, few realize that sharp-tipped metal needles are in almost every knitter’s project bag, and that they’re positively lethal. And then there are circular needles: two sharp points joined by a length of strong plastic cable. Perfect for garroting one’s intended victim, wouldn’t you say? 

 

And let’s not diminish the role of yarn as an accessory to murder. A ball of yarn makes an ideal gag when stuffed into the victim’s mouth. An unwound skein, with its tremendous tensile strength, is just the right length to loop around a victim’s throat for quick, neat, and fail-proof strangulation. And yet whenever I travel by plane with several of these potential weapons in my carry-on bag, not once has a TSA agent either confiscated them or even pulled them out of my bag for inspection. As a knitter, I appreciate their trust – but if I had murder in mind, it would be another story!

In fact, I’m hoping someone will write that story. Already I can imagine the opening scene; a demure-seeming woman sits quietly knitting under the warm glow of a lamp in her living room. Her needles click softly, yarn spooling out of the ball at her feet into the beginnings of a new sweater for her husband.

But wait; downstairs, her husband lies crumpled in his ‘man cave,’ light from the televised football game playing over his frozen, startled features. A small, circular wound in his chest glistens with blood, but that’s the only sign of what transpired.

Who will take it from here?

http://www.julieturjoman.com