by Terrance McArthur

This week we have a review of another book perfect for your Halloween reading, the first in a new series by Heather Redmond featuring Mary Shelley. We also have an interesting interview with Heather. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase the book from Amazon.

Death and the Sisters by Heather Redmond
Review by Terrance McArthur

It’s London, 1814. Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont are sisters—well, stepsisters. They live above the family bookstore, and there is a dead man downstairs. Is it Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet? If Percy isn’t the dead man, could he be the murderer? Death and the Sisters is Heather Redmond’s first book in a new series, sending the reader spinning into a historical maze of real-life historical and literary figures. Mary will become Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Jane will have a child by Lord Byron, but here they are two 16-year-old girls, smitten with Shelley, trying to find out who killed the body in the bookstore.

The “sisters” are different, and so are their presentations in the narrative. Mary’s chapters are told in a standard, third-person format “(Mary saw.” “She said.”) while Jane’s chapters are told in first-person (“I saw.” “I said.”). Mary thinks. Jane acts. They both want the attention of Shelley, who was married at the time, and history tells us who will win on that count. The step-sibling rivalry and the blended family dynamics (scholarly, non worldly father; favorite-playing stepmother; a delicate, fragile boy; three young women with aspirations beyond the bookstore or marriage) send the reader scrambling for non-fiction books (or, at least, Wikipedia) on the principal persons.

Jane and Mary traipse around lower-class London, meet the deceased’s poetical pals, sympathize with and interrogate his relatives and betrothed, and encounter the Bow Street Runners (the precursor of the modern police force). They do this to clear Shelley of suspicion, and because they don’t think an arrested suspect is guilty. The girls act like Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys, but with more family responsibilities…and disagreements.

Death and the Sisters is an engrossing exercise in case solving. Redmond’s meticulous work shows through in details on everything from the neighborhood prison to the 19th-century clothes. Immerse yourself in a world that Jane Austen might recognize…but with a lot more blood and grime.

Terrance V. Mc Arthur worked for the Fresno County Public Library for three decades. He is retired, but not retiring. A storyteller, puppeteer, writer, actor, magician, basketmaker, and all-around interesting person, his goal is to make life more unusual for everyone he meets.

Interview with Heather Redmond:

KRL: How long have you been writing?

Heather: I wrote my first short story when I was seven and that made me want to be a writer! I majored in Creative Writing in College, and published a poem while I was there. A few years later, I received a commercial fiction writing certificate, after realizing I’d done little but write computer code for years and I had to invest in myself to achieve my dream. I wrote my first novel in 1995, finally sold a mystery short story in 2004 and then my first romance novel in 2006.

KRL: When did your first novel come out, what was it called, and would you tell us a little about it?

Heather: My first Heather Redmond mystery came out in the Summer of 2018, after eleven or so years of publishing primarily romance novels. The title is A Tale of Two Murders, and it marked the first time I wrote about a historical figure as an amateur sleuth. I came up with the idea of a young Charles Dickens sleuthing because I had written a romantic novel right before that about a Dickens-loving hero called The Princess Dilemma. Just then, the market was changing, and it was the perfect time to move into the mystery again, which is where I started back in 2004.

Heather Redmond

KRL: How fun! Have you always written mysteries/suspense and if not, what else have you written?

Heather: I have written mystery in short and long form, and I’ve written a couple of cozies as well as my two historical mystery series. My series are – A Dickens of a Crime, the Mary Shelley Mysteries, and the Journaling Mysteries. I’ve written a lot of other things, such as contemporary historical and paranormal romance. I have also written gas lamp fantasy and even a little science fiction!

KRL: What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your latest book/series? Are you a horror fan? A fan of Frankenstein?

Heather: I’m a fan of authors! I can’t even remember when Frankenstein first appeared on my bookshelf. I have an old, worn copy from many years past before my more recent fancier versions. I love writing about the 19th Century, so I went searching for another person I could write about with the same name recognition as Dickens. Mary Shelley had such a fascinating life, and books set in Regency England are always popular – a winning combination. Another reason to choose her is the chance to write a female sleuth after five years of writing Dickens.

KRL: Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to experience from your work?

Heather: I write to entertain, but I also do my best to maintain historical accuracy, so I hope my readers learn something fascinating about the past in the process. With the Mary Shelley mysteries, it is impossible to avoid the issue of women’s rights and the nature of unequal relationships. With the A Dickens of a Crime series, I had to investigate, as with the new series, the nature of poverty, or relative poverty, in the first half of the nineteenth century.

KRL: What kind of research did you have to do to have real-life people as your main characters?

Heather: Mary Shelley was part of a large, multi-generational literary and philosophical community, so I’ve done a lot of reading of the work of these people, as well as biographies about them. Learning about Regency England is an ongoing process. My research about policing and justice in this era is also continual. It was very different back then. I remember shocking my editor with the reality of murder when I started writing mysteries.

KRL: Do you have a schedule for your writing or just work whenever you can?

Heather: As early as possible, and during my kid’s school hours as much as possible.

KRL: What is your ideal time to write?

Heather: First thoughts work really well for me, but with a kid, that largely isn’t possible. The earlier in the day I can get my page count in, though, the better I feel, and the words also tend to come faster.

KRL: Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what’s going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Heather: I am definitely a plotter. I brainstorm with worksheets I’ve cobbled together, then work through a detailed outline, then write a synopsis that is about a chapter in length to lay out the complete book. I then tend to forget the synopsis and use my outline again when I’m writing because it has a bit more information like who is speaking, what day it is, and notes for things I need to remember. The most important thing for me to remember is to copy my synopsis back into my outline so I don’t lose important details.

KRL: Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning?

Heather: I joined my local Romance Writers of America chapter in 1995 and as I remember it, it had been fairly easy to get published shortly before that, at least if you were winning writing contests, and then no one broke in for the first five years I was involved in the community. So, it was difficult, but we were all in the same boat. After that, things started to move a little bit, perhaps because a lot of publisher consolidations had finished, and small presses were popping up again. I spent years in the small press world.

KRL: Do you have a great rejection/critique or acceptance story you’d like to share?

Heather: My first mystery short story was accepted into a Sisters in Crime anthology, so it was a full circle moment when I became the founding president of the local Sisters in Crime chapter. I was so happy to give back because of that.

KRL: Most interesting book signing story-in a bookstore or other venue?

Heather: My first book signing ever, I had to drive through snow to get there. My second sale was a historical romance short story that was appearing in a print holiday anthology, Holiday in the Heart. The weather was so bad on the way back that even the gas stations were closed, and it was a couple hundred miles each way. I was horrified to discover that when I arrived, my books had not shown up. So, at my first book signing, I had no books to sign. That set my expectations for signings very low, which is probably a good thing.

KRL: What are your future writing goals?

Heather: I just hope to continue delighting my current audience, and for that audience to grow.

KRL: Who are your writing heroes?

Heather: Dickens and Shelley, of course, and many of the writers around them, like Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Connie Willis is my favorite contemporary author. No one in this genre can avoid the wonder of Agatha Christie, and I find myself rereading her often. I recently did a rereading project of my formative books from ’80s and ’90s authors like Lindsey Davis, Elizabeth Peters, and Sharyn McCrumb. So much fun!

KRL: What do you like to read?

Heather: My comfort read is cozy mysteries, but I do read most things, but honestly, most of what I have time to read is research for a book or a non-fiction piece.

KRL: What are your favorite TV shows or movies?

Heather: I have rather low-brow, reality competition TV tastes these days. I had to leave the habit of watching crime and paranormal dramas behind once I had a child. I love The Curse of Oak Island, Top Chef, Project Runway, all of those kinds of shows. We are watching our first Survivor series ever right now. A couple of seasons showed up on Netflix.

KRL: Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Heather: My best advice is to finish the book. Until you write an entire book, you don’t really know what you are doing. So many people spend years perfecting the first one to three chapters, but you need to get to the end and then return to the start.

KRL: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Heather: I love creating art, and my office and all the walls in my house are slowly being overtaken by paintings. I’ve been a bit out of the habit lately, but this week I painted a Frankenstein and a leaf for social media backdrops.

KRL: Do you have any pets?

Heather: No. I have lots of animal/bird allergies. I do have a few plants though. I’ve managed to keep the one that my mother gave me in honor of my son’s birth alive all these years.

KRL: Is there anything you would like to add?

Heather: Mary Shelley was from a really fascinating family, and I hope readers enjoy all the characters and hopefully pick up some of their work, enjoy the poetry and fiction, and also learn something about the early days of feminist and anarchist thought.

KRL: Website? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram?

Heather: Website: heatherredmond.com
Blog: heatherredmond.com/blog
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/815229628643004
Twitter: twitter.com/heatheraredmond
Instagram: instagram.com/hiestandheather

To enter to win a copy of Death and the Sisters, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “sisters” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen November 4, 2023. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Also listen to our new mystery podcast where mystery short stories and first chapters are read by actors! They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. A new episode went up this week.

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Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.