Downton Abbey, Barnes & Noble, and Me

by Carola Dunn

A few weeks ago, my editor told me Barnes and Noble had picked my 19th Daisy Dalrymple mystery, Anthem for Doomed Youth, to be part of a nationwide promotion for Downton Abbey. Yes, I was excited!

The third season of the popular series is set in England between the wars--WWI and WWII, that is. Besides books about the period, B&N were looking for novels set at that time. They planned to have 5 or so copies of each chosen book on display near the checkout counter, in every store in the US. St. Martin's was to do a special reprint of the paperback edition for them.

My editor said the four-week promotion was to begin on January 8th. So on the day, I trotted along to the local store. I must have circled the store 3 times before I decided I just wasn't going to find the display. All the booksellers were busy, so I came home disappointed and tried to call them. Impossible to speak to a Real Person, or to leave a message, or even to stay on hold. At last, later that evening I got through.

The person I spoke to had never heard of a Downton Abbey promotion. He looked it up on his computer, and couldn't find anything that mentioned it. :-( 

I emailed my editor. I also asked my Facebook friends to pop into the nearest B&N if they happened to be passing and see what they could see. My editor contacted Macmillan's "B&N person," who promised to get onto it.

The responses I had from FB friends were not encouraging:

"There is a Downton Abbey display here in Naples, FL, but no Anthem for Doomed Youth."

"Checked the store in Fort Gratiot, MI. No Downton display but Anthem is on display in the new Mystery section."

"This was unfortunately the case last night at the W. 82nd location in Manhattan as well. I had called ahead and put Anthem on hold, but before I retrieved it, I sought out the Downton display to check out what else they had out. I found it on the endcap of the aisle that contained Mystery. So when I didn't see Anthem on display, I found it only a few feet away. I feigned ignorance tho just so I could ask an employee to find it for me and then mention I thought it was part of the Downton promo. I doubt it did any good, but I did want to mention it to them. Still glad to have a brand new copy of Anthem, which I hadn't read yet, but it was disappointing."

"I found the Downton Abbey display at the Ithaca Barnes & Noble - it was about 7 books on an endcap (no "Anthem"!). I caught a fellow and asked where the "Anthem" books were. He pulled out a paper with the particulars about the display, and it didn't include yours. He checked the computer and they had 5 new "Anthem"s, it said they were supposed to be in a "Cash Wrap" (?) "up front". We found them stacked on a desk; so I don't know where they are going to end up. But I did impress upon him that all your "Facebook friends" would be looking for the "Anthem"s." 

And have to laugh at this one, I guess: "Went to B&N in Woodland Hills yesterday and they were gone. Had been there just before Christmas. The sign said they closed 12/31/12."

I forwarded all these and more to my editor, at his request. Whether they helped or not I don't know, but I'm very grateful to all those who took the time to check. Three cheers for Facebook friends!

On Sunday, I returned to the local (Eugene) store. There was Anthem, right by the cash registers, with a selection of other books set in the time period! I asked if they'd like me to sign them, which they did, and even dug out some of my other titles for me to sign.

When I got home and turned on the computer, there was an email from my editor--he had found the same in his local B&N.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Be patient and they'll get around to it? Or persistence pays--keep bugging till they act?

One way or another, I'm happy to announce that if you go into a Barnes and Noble store in the next few weeks, you may--or may not--find a Downton Abbey promotion that includes Anthem for Doomed Youth!

Read about the book here: 
http://caroladunn.weebly.com/1/category/anthem%20for%20doomed%20youth/1.html
  (scroll down a bit)

Or read an excerpt here:
http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2013/01/anthem-for-doomed-youth-ii.html 

It's also available as an ebook.

The flowers that bloom in the spring...

 by Carola Dunn

I love flowers, and growing things in general, and I always use plants as part of the setting in my books. Whether it's hedges wreathed with sweet-scented honeysuckle or scarlet poppies in a field, a meadow abandoned to stinging nettles or a wood carpeted with bluebells, using specific names adds life and colour.


Sometimes, plants can be used as more than part of the setting. In Anthem for Doomed Youth, for instance, a garden suggests the character of one of the victims--and that his widow isn't exactly heartbroken by his death:

UK cover

Colonel Pelham had lived in a stuccoed post-war bungalow, painted a bilious shade of mustard yellow with a dreary olive-green front door. The contrast with the typical Kentish red-tile roof was particularly distressing.

The front garden was laid out with military precision. A rectangular patch of lawn on each side of the brick path had rectangular flowerbeds centred in each lawn, edged with low, rectangular box hedges, as was the path. The beds were planted with rigid rows of magenta rose-campion and sternly staked red-hot pokers....

...their ears were assailed by a well-bred but determined female voice floating out through an open window.

"Everything," it insisted. "The lawn, the box, the campion—hideous colour!—the lot. I'm putting in a forsythia, and rambler roses, and... What else sprawls all over the place?"

"But madam—"

"What else?"

"Well, buddleia, madam, an'... But they be mortal untidy, madam!"

"Just what I want, a bit of untidiness in my life. Nasturtiums! Trailing geraniums! You can start digging everything up, Johnson, and I'll get a book to help me decide what to plant." 

 

Even the most beautiful garden can harbour a threat. Dead in the Water begins with Daisy's arrival at her aunt's riverside house where she goes outside:

Looking down, Daisy saw a spotted brown-linen rear end backing cautiously out of the rosebed, followed by a broad-brimmed straw hat.

"Hullo, Aunt Cynthia."

"I keep telling him chopping off their heads won't kill them." Lady Cheringham, straightening, brandished a muddy-gloved and clutching a dandelion with a twelve-inch root. Her lean face, weathered by decades of tropic climes, broke into a smile. "Hullo, Daisy. Oh dear, is it past four already?"

Daisy started down. "Only quarter past. The train was dead on time and your man was waiting at the station." On the bottom step, she nearly fell over a garden syringe.

"Careful, dear! I was spraying the roses, dealing death to those dratted greenfly, when I noticed the dandelion."

"Not deadly poison, I hope? It seems to have dripped on your

blouse."

"Only tobacco-water, but perhaps I'd better go and wash it off. It does stain horribly." Lady Cheringham dropped the dandelion's corpse by the sprayer. "Bister simply won't admit that hoes are useless against these brutes, but that's what comes of having a chauffeur cum gardener cum handyman."

"I rather like dandelions," Daisy confessed.

"Never fear, however many we gardeners slaughter, there will always be more." She stooped to pick up a trug, loaded with pink and yellow cut roses, which lay on the grass at her feet. "As a matter of fact, I really just came out to deadhead and cut some roses for your room--"

 

Nicotine is, of course, a deadly poison...

Gardens are a traditional place to hide a body. In The Winter Garden Mystery, I not only have a body buried in a flowerbed, but the flowers themselves draw attention to its presence:

"And that bush?" She gestured at an unhappy-looking shrub in

the middle of a bare patch of ground. "What's that?"

"Azalea, miss." He frowned, puzzled. "They bloom early in here, too, but..."

"What's wrong?" 

"It's terrible it looks. And where's the irises around it? Myself I planted them, the kind that's flowering now, and hardly any has come up." He stepped over the low kerb and picked his way carefully to the small bush. Most of its few remaining leaves were brown, except for one bronze-green sprig.

Daisy saw that the dark soil of the bare patch was broken by a few scattered iris shoots. "Perhaps a dog got in and dug them up and buried them again too deep," she proposed, though there was no sign of the earthworks usually left by an excavating canine.

"The azalea is dying." Owen Morgan turned, panic-stricken. "All the buds are dead. What'll her ladyship say? Please, miss, I must find Mr. Bligh."

........

Owen had dug a trench right across the bare patch of soil. He and Mr. Bligh stood at one end, gazing down with fascinated revulsion.

"Go on, have a look," urged Mr. Bligh. 

Owen knelt in the dirt. Reaching down, he moved something at the bottom of the trench. "Oh God! Oh God!" He flung himself backwards onto his heels, his arms across his face. "It's her. It's my Grace."

We haven't even begun to consider the many beautiful deadly blooms: foxgloves, angel's trumpet, oleander, lily of the valley...the valley of death!

PS. You may recognize the title as being from Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado. After all, Mikado is all about deciding which of the characters is to be executed...

Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Carola Dunn

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH, my 19th Daisy Dalrymple mystery, is now out. It's a bit different from the rest of the series, not only in having a serious theme that still resonates in our time, but in that Daisy and her husband, DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, are involved in two different cases... Or so it appears.

While Alec tackles the discovery--by a dog, of course--of three bodies buried in Epping Forest, near London, Daisy goes off with a couple of friends to visit their daughter at her boarding school (which just happens to be the school I attended a good many years later!).

With three 13-year-old girls to entertain, they visit a public garden that has a maze. One of the girls, lost in the maze, finds the body of a much-disliked teacher. When the local inspector proves incompetent, Daisy feels obliged to do a bit of sleuthing.

According to Publishers Weekly: "The aristocratic but very modern Daisy makes a formidable amateur sleuth." And this--I assume--is the aspect of the book described by Kirkus as "amusing and sprightly" (!). Mysterious Women, on the other hand, called it: "gripping and fascinating," referring perhaps to Alec's side of the story.

Alec, meanwhile, is trying to identify the three buried men, all shot to death. He has to find out the connection between them, so that he can stop the killer before he kills again. It turns out that all three were in the trenches in Flanders during WWI, and something that happened there may hold the key.

This is the poem that inspired me and from which I stole the title. I have to admit that however many times I read it, it always brings tears to my eyes.

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH,
by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice.




The UK cover reflects this side of the story better. This edition will be out in May.


















Alec's race against time to prevent another murder converges with Daisy's efforts to find out who killed the teacher. They seem to be two aspects of the same investigation. However, as always, Daisy has her own opinion on the subject!