SECRETS OF WISHTIDE by Kate Saunders
April 13, 2017
BORN: 1960, London, UK
CAREER:
Journalist and writer. Has worked for numerous London, England, newspapers; British Broadcasting Corporation, London, writer for BBC Radio 4 programs Woman's Hour, Start the Week, and Kaleidoscope. Also worked as an actress.
AWARDS:
Cost Children's Book Award, 2014, for Five Children on the Western Front.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
The "Belfry Witches" series has been adapted as a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television series.
The secrets of Wishtide In 1850 England, 52 year old Laetitia Rodd finds herself in reduced circumstances after the death of her archdeacon husband. Living with a friend in Hampstead, she pays her bills by occasionally acting as a private investigator for her barrister brother. ..This well-plotted 1st entry in a new series features a charming main character and is perfect for readers who'd like a Victorian-era novel with a Golden-Age mystery feel. -- Description by Dawn Towery.
Readalikes
1.Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters
Reason: Although The Secrets of Wishtide takes place in England while Amelia Peabody explores Egypt, both delightfully complex and atmospheric mysteries feature independent Victorian English women solving crimes while embracing life on their own terms. Melissa Gray
2. Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian lions by Mario Giordano Reason: Although these cozy mysteries differ in plot and setting, the older women whose plucky and resourceful personalities steal the show, are what make them alike. Whether solving a murder or quaffing a much needed drink, they get the job done. Jen Baker
3. Home by nightfall by Charles B. Finch Reason: Relatively minor problems take a nasty, murderous turn, requiring determined, professional sleuths to unravel complex webs of deceit and danger. These intricately plotted and engaging mysteries are set in vividly evoked Victorian English countrysides peopled with richly drawn, intriguing characters. Melissa Gray
4. Death at the abbey by Christine Trent Reason: Determined women's forays into wealthy estates turn into quests to suppress scandal and solve murders in these intricately plotted and richly detailed Victorian mysteries. Melissa Gray
5. Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series by Anne Perry Reason: Anne Perry is acclaimed for her two well-researched, detail-rich, atmospheric mystery series that probe the social and political injustices found in the underside of Victorian London society. Charlotte often assists her policeman husband, sometimes without his knowledge.
VIDEOS:
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PW talks with Kate Saunders: a sensible Victorian sleuth
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
British author Saunders launches a new Victorian mystery series with The Secrets of Wishtide (Bloomsbury; pub month, Sept.; Reviews, June 6), which explores the public and private faces of 1850 London.
You've noted that you have loved Victorian fiction since childhood; why do you think the fiction of that era resonated so strongly with you?
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house that was overflowing with books of every kind, from Portnoy's Complaint to Winnie-the-Pooh. Both my parents were addictive readers, and--most important--they never tried to control what their children read. (Krafft-Ebbing! What were they thinking? But it improved my Latin.) The 19th century was the golden age of fiction; I roamed at will among perilous stacks of vast Victorian novels, and even the bad ones (anything by Bulwer-Lytton) made me feel I was looking into another world. A great Victorian novel should make you cry buckets. Towards the end of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens discovered that he could do pathos as well as comedy, and he never looked back. I can't read him in public anymore.
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You've said that you were inspired by David Copperfield.
Dickens's David Copperfield has been my favorite novel since I was a teenager. Without giving too much away, Mrs. Rodd's first case was inspired by a certain strand of plot in that book that has increasingly annoyed me over the years. I want to climb right inside the story and interfere.
Mrs. Rodd is a 52-year-old widow with no money--quite a modern situation. Where did she come from?
I invented Laetitia Rodd when I was 52, divorced and penniless, so I had no trouble identifying with her situation. All these years later, the lone middle-aged female is still fighting for her place in the world--but we have it easy compared with Mrs. Rodd, who takes up private investigating because it's the only alternative to being a governess.
Was Mrs. Rodd inspired by any particular person or character?
My splendid heroine was designed so that she wouldn't look out of place if she strolled into the pages of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Yonge, or George Eliot. She is too sensible for the Brontes.
Mrs. Rodd's friend and landlady, Mary Bentley, offers a working-class perspective on the story. Where did you find her?
Mrs. Bentley was a real person: wife of the Hampstead postman, mother of a string of red-haired boys, and the landlady of the poet John Keats, many years before my story begins. I've always liked reading about her in biographies of the poet; she was kind to the Keats brothers, even when they complained about the noise.
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Another difference is that Wishtide is also, to some extent, a “social problem novel,” meant to expose some insalubrious condition of society. Well-known examples in American literature are Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Jungle, but the genre flourished also in Victorian England, and Charles Dickens was one of its greatest practitioners. Novels like Oliver Twist, Hard Times, and Bleak House decried the unhealthy state of English society, the immorality of the upper classes, and the suffering of the poor, and it’s no coincidence that Kate Saunders is a devotee of Dickens. In fact, it is a story line in David Copperfield, her favorite novel, that the author says was the inspiration for Wishtide.
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Videos
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An illustrated historical handbook to the parish of Chelsea
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vy5RAAAAYAAJ
Reginald Blunt - 1900 - History
Croker, in his interesting "Walk from London to Fulham," has the following note as to this famous sign : — "How the Goat became equipped in boots and the ...
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