Category: Historical Fiction

New Release: The Resurrection Mystery

2/2/2024

Lavender is Back!
The Resurrection Mystery
Detective Lavender Mysteries #7

I'm excited to announce that The Resurrection Mystery will be published on Thursday, March 7th in eBook and paperback formats. The audiobook will follow later in the year.

Once again, my amazing cover designer, Lisa Horton, has come up with a wonderful book cover for the novel and my editorial team have been as professional and supportive as ever. They thoroughly enjoyed catching up with the latest adventures of Stephen Lavender and Ned Woods - and I sincerely hope you do too.

If you want to pre-order the novel, please click on this button or any of the images. It should take you straight to your local Amazon market place.

Pre-order 'The Resurrection Mystery' Here

'DUSTY FOSSILS' & YORK’S AMAZING CASTLE MUSEUM

2/6/2023

Both of York’s incredible museums feature in my novel, Dancing With Dusty Fossils. The older, more prestigious Yorkshire Museum features on the book cover, but the curators from both museums worked closely together during WW2. Many scenes in my book are set in at the Castle Museum and its female curator, Violet Rodgers, helps my two intrepid sleuths track down the killer of her colleague.

So, imagine my delight when I discovered that the Gala Dinner at this year’s Crime Writers Association (CWA) conference in York was to be held in the highly unusual venue of the cobbled Victorian Street in the Castle Museum. While we dined, we were surrounded by rows of recreated Victorian shops, including a chemist with a glistening array of poisons in jars behind the counter and a police station complete with a prison cell.

2023 CWA GALA DINNER IN YORK

Opened in 1938, York Castle Museum was the first of a new kind of museum in Britain which explored and commemorated our social history. It paved the way for bigger attractions, like Beamish, all of which show the life of our ancestors in context rather than in dusty glass cabinets.

Unbelievably, the bulk of the exhibits at the Castle Museum were collected by one man, Dr John Kirk.

Dr Kirk had a medical practise in Malton. He was fascinated by history, and by vanishing ways of life – especially rural life. He realised that many old traditions and ways of working were changing forever. Acutely conscious that some trade skills were becoming obsolete he started to collect archaic work tools and other rare survivals of these endangered ways of life. He filled his home with bygones, his collection growing year on year. Sometimes Kirk accepted objects in lieu of payment for his medical services.

By the 1930s, his vast collection had outgrown his home. It included everything from perambulators and children’s toys to antique weapons, potato dribblers to a Tudor barge and Victorian hypodermic needles to horse bridles. Larger items included whole Victorian shop fronts, a hansom cab and a stuffed horse.

Determined to find a permanent and publicly accessible home for his vast and rare collection, Dr Kirk approached York Corporation who gave him the disused female prison in the centre of the city for his museum and helped modify it, so it was fit for purpose.

Dr Kirk with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the museum

The Castle Museum finally opened in 1938 and it caused much excitement in the city. Its biggest attraction was the recreation of a late Victorian street, named 'Kirkgate' in Dr Kirk’s honour and lined with all those shopfronts he’d collected and filled with his treasures. This street was the first of its kind in Britain and this was where we dined at the CWA conference.

The queue for the opening of the Castle Museum

Sadly, by the time the museum opened in 1938, Dr Kirk was already a very sick man. He only just lived long enough to see his dream realised. He died in February 1940. Thankfully, he’d already appointed a successor, Violet Rodgers, one of the first female museum curators in Britain.

With the outbreak of war, most of the men in York were called up for military service and York Corporation asked Violet to run the museum (although they didn’t raise her salary).

Violet Rodgers at work at the Castle Museum

WW2 was a difficult time for all British museums and art galleries. Once hostilities were declared, they scrambled to remove their most precious items to safety, away from the threat posed by the Luftwaffe. For example, most of the valuable antiquities from the British Museum in London were stored at Skipton Castle in West Yorkshire.

Although, the exhibits at the Castle Museum were unique, Violet recognised that in terms of historical value they didn’t compete with the incredible collection of Roman, Viking, Saxon and pre-historic artifacts at York’s older and more prestigious museum, the Yorkshire Museum. Violet gave up a lot of her free time during the war to help her colleagues at the Yorkshire Museum pack and dispatch their own items to safety.

Thankfully, when York was heavily bombed in 1942 the Castle Museum was spared – although the Yorkshire Museum was hit.

In 1945, when the men returned from war, the corporation appointed a male curator for the museum and gave him twice the money they’d paid Violet.

Naturally disgruntled, Violet married her fiancé, a Polish army lieutenant, Władysław Włoch, and in 1947 she moved with him to Warsaw to continue her career. She became a Curator at the Historical Museum of Krakow and was awarded the Polish Cross of Merit for her work.

It was a pleasure and an honour to walk in the footsteps of Dr Kirk and Violet Rodgers during our Gala Dinner in April. And who knows? Maybe this fascinating and slightly spooky venue, which contains an interesting collection of potentially lethal curios, will spark my imagination and lead to a further outpouring of grisly and unusual crime fiction?

Here’s hoping.

Article: A Ghost in a Murder Mystery?

13/3/2023

The Museum Ghost

It’s inevitable that writers of historical crime fiction occasionally stumble across the odd ghost story or some unexplained paranormal activity during their research. Our ancestors were a superstitious bunch and strongly believed in a revolving door that separates us from the afterlife, through which the dead return.

But I was genuinely shocked to discover the fascinating tale of a frock-coated gentleman ghost that allegedly haunts the prestigious Yorkshire Museum while researching for Dancing With Dusty Fossils the second novel in my series about a WW2 York ladies’ detective agency.

I know that there’s more spooky sightings in York than any other city in England. Every medieval tavern seems to have its own ghost who jangles the keys and harasses the guests. Even the buildings on the hallowed ground around York Minster echo with the tramping feet of long-dead Roman legions, the rumble of cartwheels rolling over the cobbles and the screams of Royalist soldiers.

But I never expected to stumble across a ghost story linked to the Yorkshire Museum. This was the main seat of serious scientific learning and discovery before York University was built. The people who ran the museum were archaeologists, renowned antiquarians, and experts in the field of natural history. A ghost just didn’t belong there.

The Yorkshire Museum, York

For nearly 130 years the museum was owned and run by The Yorkshire Philosophical Society (YPS), an auspicious group of learned gentlemen (and a few ladies) drawn from 150 of the north’s wealthiest families. They built the museum in the grounds of the ruined abbey in 1829. Many of them left large bequests of money and the entire contents of their library to the society in their wills – and that’s where the museum’s ghostly trouble began.

Alderman Edward Wooler of Darlington was one such gentleman. When he died in 1927, he left over 1,600 books on archaeology and local antiquities to the museum. During his life, he was in the habit of pushing letters, notes and other memorabilia inside the volumes; he used them as an informal filing system. But such a haphazard system has its problems – in death as well as in life.

Alderman Edward Wooler (1851-1927)

The ghost of Alderman Wooler, an elderly, stooped gentleman who had fluffy side whiskers and very little hair, was first seen by the museum caretaker wandering through the library in September 1953. He was muttering: “I must find it; I must find it.”

After pulling out one of his own books and flicking through the pages, he tossed it onto the floor for the humans to clear up then promptly disappeared.

It was quickly established that the ghost of Alderman Wooler appeared every fourth Sunday at 7.40 p.m. on the dot, looking for something he’d lost. By the end of that year, evidence of the ghost’s antics – lots of scattered books – had been witnessed by several people, including a journalist from The Yorkshire Evening Press who duly reported it in the newspaper. Although no-one else, apart from the caretaker, had seen his spectral form or heard him speak.

Article in York Evening Press

By February 1954, it was suggested to the YPS that they invited the Society for Psychical Research to mount an investigation, but this caused a lot of furious arguments amongst the members, many of whom felt this was ridiculous and their scientific credibility and reputation would be ruined. A lot of resignations followed.

Despite the turmoil, the Society for Psychical Research came twice to the museum to investigate the ghost. Sadly, both evenings were a non-event. No-one saw anything; Alderman Wooler didn’t appear.

Was I tempted to include the ghost of Alderman Wooler in Dancing With Dusty Fossils which features the brutal murder of a museum sub-curator? After all, novelists need book-lovers – and Alderman Wooler was definitely one of those.

Yes, in my more fanciful moments I toyed with the idea. Sometimes the ghost left muddy footprints on the tiled floor. Maybe I could use these as a red herring to distract my two private detectives, Jemma and Bobbie, from solving the murder? Perhaps I could write a scene where the killer spooks the spook – or the other way around?

But, ultimately, I decided to let Alderman Wooler rest in peace.

Most readers of crime fiction – and mine are no exception – expect the case to be solved by dogged detection and brilliant deduction; there’s no place for ghostly interference.

Dorothy L. Sayers and Dame Agatha Christie

Back in 1929, the British Detection Club, a society peopled by such legendary mystery writers as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and G. K. Chesterton, came up with the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction. And the second commandment was ‘All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.’

Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the grandfather of the genre, who attended many séances and popped up to Yorkshire to investigate the mystery of the Cottingley Fairies, downplayed his own fascination with the supernatural when it came to writing his stories. Other characters might be superstitious, but Sherlock Holmes isn’t. He’s the embodiment of logic and reason.

And then there was the small problem of space. There’s already three mysteries in Dancing With Dusty Fossils. Apart from solving the museum murder, Jemma and Bobbie are led a merry dance around the city by Jodie, Yorkshire’s most famous and spirited actress, whose aristocratic husband wants evidence for a divorce. In addition to that, Jemma is still looking for her own husband who’s gone AWOL from the RAF.

Quite frankly, there wasn’t room in the book for a ghost story as well, and I didn’t think including Alderman Wooler as a character would have matched the expectations of my readers.

Anyway, Dancing With Dusty Fossils was published – without a ghost – on November 15th 2022 and is available in eBook and paperback from all good bookstores.

New Release!

15/11/2022

Published: 'Dancing With Dusty Fossils'

And she's launched!
My 10th book - Dancing With Dusty Fossils - is now available to buy on Amazon!
If my American readers have any spare time over the Thanksgiving Holiday, I'd cheekily like to suggest that this is the perfect read! Either way, I hope all of you have a lovely time with your family and friends during Thanksgiving.
I loved writing and researching for this novel and I honestly think it is one of the best mysteries I have ever written. The research itself threw up some surprising discoveries (I'll tell you more about that in later newsletters) and the writing process was a dream.
After ten books, I've now decided I'd make a good circus juggler if I ever wanted to change career. There are three mysteries at the heart of Dusty Fossils and In the past I've tied myself in knots juggling multiple storylines. It's getting easier now.
But as ever, my reader, YOU are the most important judge of a book's success...it's over to you now.
And if you do like Dusty Fossils, please remember to leave me a review on Amazon.

Blurb:
York, England: June 1940
While Jemma continues to search for her missing husband, the citizens of historic York are shocked by a series of vicious crimes at the city’s two museums.
A bungled break-in at the Yorkshire Museum is quickly followed by the brutal murder of Lance Richards, a sub-curator at the neighbouring Castle Museum.
The main suspect is Anthony Gill, a quiet and unprepossessing clerk. But Gill doesn’t have an alibi and is uncooperative with the police. His desperate lawyer hires Jemma and Bobbie from Smoke & Cracked Mirrors to prove his innocence.
Meanwhile, the two women are led a merry dance by Jodie, a famous and spirited actress, whose aristocrat husband wants evidence for a divorce.
As the nation waits nervously to hear the fate of their sons and brothers trapped at Dunkirk, a twisting series of events whisk Jemma and Bobbie through the glamourous world of the starlet, down corridors of dusty fossils and into terrifying danger.
Vengeful passions and a dark crime lie beneath the civilised veneer of those elders who preserve our history.
But if Anthony Gill didn’t murder Lance Richards, who did – and why?

'Smoke & Cracked Mirrors' Audiobook

17/10/2022

UPDATE: Audiobook News

'SMOKE & CRACKED MIRRORS' AUDIOBOOK
Huzzah! There's finally some news about the audiobook of 'Smoke & Cracked Mirrors'.
It should be published on the 27th DECEMBER 2022.
The lovely Corrie James has been chosen as narrator for the series. I'm delighted; she speaks beautifully - and can do a Yorkshire accent too!
With two female lead characters in my York Ladies' Detective Agency Mysteries, it was important to me that I had a female narrator for this series and the fact that her surname is the same as Jemma's is purely coincidental!

250,000 sales for 'Heiress'!

20/8/2022

'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' Sells a Quarter of a Million!

I've recently received the good news from my publishers that The Heiress of Linn Hagh has now sold a quarter of a million copies worldwide!
I'm absolutely delighted and doing my happy dance around the kitchen!

Policing York in WW2

21/6/2022

Policing York in WW2

Whilst researching for my latest novel, Smoke & Cracked Mirrors, which is set in wartime York, I came across loads of material about the city’s beleaguered police force. I say ‘beleaguered’ because like most forces across the country, York City Police lost a third of their officers to the armed forces once war was declared. Nationally, reported crime rose by 57% between 1939 – 1945 – and York saw its fair share of that. Retired officers were called back to duty to bolster the ranks of the elderly officers who remained. But unlike in other areas of the country, York’s police force refused to allow women officers across the threshold of their Victorian police station on Clifford Street to fill the gap.

But what was behind this huge jump in crime on the home front? Especially in such a quiet, beautiful city, with its soaring 12th century Minster and quaint cobbled streets encircled by medieval walls. Unfortunately, the war brought with it a raft of new restrictions and regulations which many people chose to break or circumvent. Rationing of various staples of life offered huge opportunities to fraudsters, forgers and thieves and created a vibrant black market. Meanwhile the blackout allowed all sorts of criminal activities to flourish in the dark and chaos.

By early 1940, York Magistrate’s Court was over-run with cases of blackout infringement. On several occasions the police had to disperse angry crowds who’d gathered in the dusk outside shops where the proprietors had left a light blazing. If the offending shop owners couldn’t be traced quickly, the elderly officers had to clamber over back fences and break into the buildings to shut down the light. In addition to this, fatal car accidents doubled in the city once the blackout was enforced, and thousands of people were forced to move about in darkness close to moving vehicles.

Another factor involved in the rapid rise in crime was the arrival of thousands of service personnel to Strensall Barracks and the four airbases that circled the city on the flat land of the Vale of York. Drunkenness, brawling and alcohol-induced accidents dramatically increased. The police had to drag bodies out of the River Ouse and one poor soldier even managed to kill himself by toppling from the top floor window of a hotel onto the cobbled paving of the street below. The indignant locals watched with horror as drunken brawls broke out in the hallowed precincts of the mighty York Minster and the tiny Minster Police Force (yes, York Minster has had its own police force since 1285) had a tough time stopping the vandalism.

Drunkeness amongst the young women of city also rose at an alarming rate as they flocked to the side of the soldiers and airmen in the dancehalls and the bars. Particularly popular with the girls were the Canadian air force men, who were paid four times as much as our British boys and were very generous with their cash. Alarmed at the number of intoxicated young women being hauled off to the police cells, the female leader of York’s Watch Committee asked the police to reconsider their earlier decision and start appointing female officers whom she felt should deal with the drunken girls. The request was promptly denied, and the ensuing argument spilled over into the pages of the Yorkshire Post.

It is surprising, perhaps, that alcohol managed to cause so many problems for the police because after some confusion at the start of the war, when initially all entertainment venues were shut down – and then reopened – pub opening times were severely restricted. However, this brought a new set of problems from the belligerent Yorkshiremen of the city who were unhappy at the early closing times. Police officers were often called to the pubs to remove old soldiers, who couldn’t understand why, after fighting for years against the Hun in WW1, they couldn’t finish their pint in peace because of another bloody German called Hitler.

The strong anti-German feeling prevalent at the time also caused the police headaches. Hundreds of German and Austrian Jewish refugees had been evacuated to the area and they, and many foreign business owners were subject to intimidation and attack. Even Chief Constable Herman didn’t escape suspicion. Despite his own exemplary WW1 service to his country, whispers began to circulate about his loyalty because of his surname. This led to hate-mail and direct calls for the resignation of Herman-the-German. He was robustly supported by the indignant Yorkshire Post.

But the biggest single problem facing the police according to Chief Constable Herman, was the constant theft of cars and bicycles by off-duty servicemen. All the airbases provided buses for the men to return after a night out, but if they missed the last bus, many just helped themselves to the nearest vehicle.

The police spent far too much time and money recovering stolen cars and bicycles. R.A.F. Elvington, where two thousand men were stationed, was a particular problem. Every morning there’d be dozens of abandoned bicycles dumped in the ditch by the main gate. The weary police came in a van every day to retrieve them before attempting to return them to their owners. In fact, they were probably grateful when four German seamen escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp on York Racecourse, and they had to do some proper detective work for a change and track them down. (Which they did).

Despite the fact, that York was well-prepared for air raids with shelters and ARP volunteers and there were over eight hundred air raid warnings, no one really expected the city to be hit hard. York was internationally famous for its chocolate manufacture. Kit Kats and cocoa were hardly a threat to the Germans.

Yes, they’d converted part of the Rowntrees’ factory to make fuses for land mines and Terry’s chocolate factory was secretly manufacturing propellor blades for submarines, but most of the authorities expected the biggest attacks to be centred on the Hull Docks, thirty-eight miles away. York police were involved in several night-time practice manoeuvres, along with the ambulance service and others, which focussed on the dreadful potential scenario of escorting thousands of injured and traumatised refugees from Hull to the safety of the North Riding.

So secure were they in the notion that York wasn’t of much interest to the enemy, the children of York weren’t evacuated, and the city took in evacuated children from Middlesbrough and Hull.

In the first two years of the war, there was the odd bomb dropped here and there on the farmland encircling the city by Luftwaffe pilots lightening their load before returning home. But during those early years, the Germans killed more farm animals in the North Riding than they did people.

All that changed on the night of 29th April 1942; the night of the infamous Baedecker Raid.

A month before, the R.A.F. had bombed the historic German city of Lübeck, causing a firestorm that burnt out dozens of ancient buildings and monuments. Hitler, enraged at the destruction, allegedly threw a copy of Baedecker’s Tourist Guidebook to British Cities at his Air Marshalls and instructed them to destroy every historic British building marked with three stars in the book.

In rapid succession, the Luftwaffe bombed Exeter, Bath and Norwich.

Unable to read the mind of this vengeful despot, British High Command were confused by this sudden change in strategy and failed to see the pattern. No warnings were issued.

And then, on the night of the 29th April, the Germans came for historic York.

The ancient Guildhall on fire

During the horrific bombardment that followed, seventy German planes dropped 250kg of bombs, killed ninety-two people and injured hundreds of others. Over a thousand buildings and homes were destroyed, including many medieval buildings and churches.

There were no barrage balloons or anti-aircraft fire and the R.A.F were slow to scramble to the city’s defence. Unopposed, the German aircrew dive-bombed the streets strafing the terrified civilians with machine-gun fire as they tried to flee the falling masonry. The ancient Guildhall and several medieval churches were blazing, and the convent was hit killing five nuns. Blinded by dust, the terrified citizens of York scrambled on their hands and knees amongst the rubble and the shattered glass, trying to dig out the bodies of their injured and dead.

But the one thing the Germans failed to hit was the biggest bloody building for fifty miles: York Minster.

As dawn broke over this ancient Roman city, which had seen off centuries of plague, pestilence and invading Scots, York’s exhausted residents took comfort from the fact that somewhere, above their smoke-filled streets, the Minster’s honey-coloured, gothic towers were still soaring serenely into the sky in defiance.

SMOKE & CRACKED MIRRORS
by Karen Charlton

Available on Amazon in eBook and Paperback

£5.99/$5.99

PUBLICATION DAY!

15/4/2022

SMOKE & CRACKED MIRRORS

It's finally here!
'Smoke & Cracked Mirrors', my first new novel for two years, is finally published!
A new book, set in a new era with brand new characters!
I sincerely hope that everyone who takes a chance on this new series, thoroughly enjoys it.
Please let me know via a review what you think. xx
https://geni.us/TcUcZH9

Cover Reveal: 'Dancing With Dusty F ossils'

5/4/2022

'Dancing With Dusty Fossils'
Published: 15th November 2022

Yes, it's crazy, isn't it?
Smoke & Cracked Mirrors, the first novel in my York Ladies' Detective Agency Mystery series, won't be published until next week...but the second book, Dancing With Dusty Fossils, is already available for pre-order on Amazon - and I have a book cover for it!
But there's method in my madness. I always knew I needed to have Dusty Fossils up on Amazon before Smoke & Cracked Mirrors was published, in order to capture further sales from happy readers. Fortunately, my lovely cover designer, Lisa Horton, was able to move straight from Book#1 to Book#2 - and this is the result.
I do hope you like it.
My son's talented partner, Lorena, took the background photograph of the Yorkshire Museum. I love how she captured the shadows and the gleam of the honeyed stone of this early-Victorian building.
Anyway, Dancing With Dusty Fossils will be published on 15th November 2022 - just in time for the Thanksgiving break.
For those of you who still have faith in me as a writer, it is now available to pre-order on Amazon and you can buy it below.
It's reduced to the special low price of $2.99/£2.99 for one week only!
https://geni.us/DNQVJw8

Cover Reveal: Smoke & Cracked Mirrors

27/1/2022

Smoke & Cracked Mirrors

I'm delighted to reveal the book cover for my brand new novel, Smoke & Cracked Mirrors, the first full-length book in The York Ladies' Detective Agency Mysteries.
As usual it was created and designed by the lovely Lisa Horton - and the fabulous background image of The Shambles was taken by Yorkshire photographer, David Zdanowicz.
I stumbled across this photograph completely by accident. I was googling photographs of York earlier in the day...and then, Lo and Behold! this brilliant photo turned up in the middle of my Facebook newsfeed! I tracked down Dave and bought a licence from him to use it on my book cover.
I've heard a lot of rumours over the years that Mark Zuckerberg can read our minds through Facebook. If this is true, then yes, it's a bit spooky - but it definitely worked to my advantage this time!
The Shambles is York's most famous medieval street and normally it's heaving with tourists. I understand Dave went just after dawn to take this photograph while it was empty.
I absolutely love this book cover and I hope you do too. I think Lisa's done a great job.
https://geni.us/TcUcZH9