Category: Stephen Lavender

News: 50K Sales for 'Plague Pits & River Bones'

28/3/2019

Plague Pits & River Bones
Reaches fifty thousand readers

My publishers have just told me that Plague Pits & River Bones (Book #4) has now surpassed fifty thousand sales.
I feel humbled and incredibly proud that so many people are buying and enjoying my Detective Lavender novels.
Thank you for your support.

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Article: Murderous Underwear

4/3/2019

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Killer Corsets

I first came across the unusual effect corsets can have on stab victims while researching the assassination of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898. ‘Sisi’ as she was called by her family and friends was generally considered to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe and she had the world at her feet. That same world was devastated when she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while walking with her lady-in-waiting to catch a steam boat on Lake Geneva.

Part of Sisi’s tragedy is that her life may have been saved if her corset hadn’t been so tight.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Due to the pressure from her tight undergarment, the haemorrhage of blood was slowed to mere drops. This confused her attendants who didn’t realise she was fatally injured and were slow to seek medical help. She was helped to her feet, walked another one hundred yards and boarded the steamer which left port. It was part way across the lake before she lost consciousness. Only then did her servants and the crew realise that they needed to turn back for urgent medical help. It was too late.

When I read about Empress Elisabeth’s murder, I knew I’d discovered an unusual device I could use in my fifth Detective Lavender Mystery, Murder in Park Lane. And my victim didn’t have to be restricted to a woman either. Fat Regency gentlemen (including the Prince Regent) often used male corsets.

Further research revealed that the internal bleeding caused by a single stab wound to a tightly-corsetted victim would probably cause them to lose consciousness within half an hour. But a dying person can travel a significant distance from the scene of the crime in half an hour, even in the horse-drawn world of the early 19th century. In addition to that, stabbing is a silent crime and if the victim was alone, the absence of a blood trail would make it very difficult, even impossible, for an investigator like my Bow Street Principal Officer, Stephen Lavender, to identify where the attack actually took place.

But where would be the fun in an unresolved crime?

If you’d like to follow how Lavender rose to the challenge and solved the strange murder of David MacAdam in The Murder in Park Lane, you can purchase the novel here.

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News: 'Murder in Park Lane' Published

13/2/2019

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Fifth Detective Lavender Mystery
An Instant Best-Seller

Murder in Park Lane, the fifth novel in The Detective Lavender Mystery Series, was published on February 12th 2019 and within 24 hours it was already in the Top 200 on Amazon.com - and had a Best-Seller tag.
At the time of typing, it is the best-selling novel in Historical Thrillers.
Go, Lavender!

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News: Cover Reveal

1/11/2018

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Murder In Park Lane

I'm delighted to reveal the wonderful new book cover for Murder in Park Lane, the fifth novel in The Detective Lavender Mystery Series, which will be published on February 12th 2019.

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News: 'The Sans Pareil Mystery' reaches 100,000 sales

30/6/2018

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Sales Milestone for The Second Book In The Lavender Series

I received a lovely surprise in the post today from my publishers - a plaque marking 100,000 sales of my second book in the Detective Lavender Series, The Sans Pareil Mystery.
I've now got a matching pair on the wall in the study.
The same plaque for The Heiress of Linn Hagh arrived two years ago.
I'm a very happy little author today.

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News: Researching in Ely

16/10/2017

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Researching Lavender Book #5

The summer is over, the academic year has started again and I've gone back to work.
I've recently spent four days researching for the fifth Detective Lavender Mystery in the tiny cathedral town of Ely in the watery fenland of Cambridgeshire.
Armed with a notebook and my phone camera, I've pounded the city streets; visited three museums and a nature reserve and taken two boat trips through the rural countryside.
I take photos of anything and everything which I think may come in useful from rush matting on the floor of ancient cottages to information plaques about the flora and fauna. My quest was to get 'a feel' for life in this remote and harsh area in the early part of the nineteenth century. I wanted to know about the social history of the people and their lifestyle. No detail was too small to note, whether it was the diseases that plagued them, how they survived the winter or how their gaols/jails were run.
Anyway, here are a few of the photos that will inspire my writing over the next few months. Enjoy.

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BBC RADIO INTERVIEW

14/1/2017

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The Real Stephen Lavender

Today I was interviewed about my recent contact with the living descendants of Stephen Lavender and what I've learned about the real Bow Street officer.

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Article: The Real Stephen Lavender

13/1/2017

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THE REAL STEPHEN LAVENDER

(TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION)

Thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, there is always a risk when you use real-life characters from history in your fiction that someone, or something, will pop up out of the ether and surprise you.
Real-life people, like my Detective Stephen Lavender, have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I knew that if Lavender's descendants ever decided to research their ancestor on the Internet, the chances of them stumbling across my novels was high. This thought actually made me a little nervous because although I’ve used Lavender’s name and two of his real cases in my novels, I knew hardly anything at all about the man himself. I used a lot of artistic license and imagination to flesh out the details of his personality and family life.
I focused on information I gleaned from reference books and contemporary newspaper articles about his work as a Principal Officer with Bow Street Police Office and just made up the rest. I didn’t even know how old the real Stephen Lavender was when he went up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the stolen rent money from Kirkley Hall in Ponteland. And when I introduced this hired private detective to my readers in Catching the Eagle I made him a mature thirty-year-old man.

Kirkley Hall, Ponteland, Northumberland

I’d often wondered if any of Lavender’s descendants were still living and if so, what they would make of my fictional representation of their ancestor? Would they like him and approve of the bookish, educated and slightly-introverted character I’d created? Or would I be facing a court case for defamation of character? As a cheeky, writer friend once pointed out, “the phrase ‘loosely based-upon’ can be very useful in times like these, Karen.”
I finally got my answer in December 2016 when I was contacted by several of Stephen Lavender’s descendants. Thankfully, the first message that landed in my inbox from Australian, Richard Kinch, began with the words:
'Thank you for making my ancestor famous!’
Richard’s delight with novels about his ancestor clearly out-weighed any concerns he had about historical inaccuracies.
The contact from Richard was quickly followed by more messages from other Lavender relatives including Lesley Morgan, another Aussie descendant. In fact, it turns out that Australia is teeming with Stephen Lavender’s relatives. He had nine children. Two of his sons, and one daughter, emigrated to Australia in the 1850s. There are Facebook pages and online groups all over the southern hemisphere dedicated to connecting the Lavender relatives and exploring their genealogy.
Lesley, in particular, was incredibly helpful and informative. She told me about the real-life background to my character and explained the family history to me. She also put me in touch with a British relative, Alister Palmer, who lives in Bristol. We exchanged many emails and a fascinating picture of the real man began to emerge.
I already knew from my research, that several other members of Stephen Lavender’s family worked for Bow Street Police Office in the early nineteenth century but I didn't know that his father, Edward, was a clerk there. In my novels I've given him a father called John and a Church of England vicar for a maternal grandfather. Also in my fictional character's background is a Grammar School education and an unhappy year spent at Cambridge University studying law. From Lesley I learnt that after starting an apprenticeship in 1803 with the horse patrol, Stephen was created a Principal Officer in 1807.

Bow Street Magisgrates' Court & Police Office

But the biggest surprise was that the real Lavender wasn’t born until 1789. This means that he became a Principal Officer at the tender age of eighteen and was barely twenty when he was sent up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the Kirkley Hall robbery. I know his investigation in this instance was meticulous and thorough – I’ve seen the court case documents at The National Archives in London – so he must have been a real child prodigy in the Regency world of policing. I wonder what thirty-seven-year-old Jamie Charlton, whom Lavender accused of the Kirkley Hall robbery, made of the situation when he was arrested and charged by a young man who was barely shaving?
I’ve always known that the London newspapers adored Stephen Lavender and zealously – and sometimes inaccurately – reported his cases and forays into the seedy underbelly of the crime-ridden capital. In 1818, Lavender solved the mystery of the vicious attack on an elderly man, William Sculthorpe in Northamptonshire (the basis for my novel, ‘The Sculthorpe Murder’) and this case was extensive reported by the London press. I wonder if his fresh-faced youth helped to make him so popular with the newspapers of the time?
Lavender, and his young family, left Bow Street in 1821 when he took up the position of Deputy Chief Constable in the industrial northern city of Manchester. Sadly, he died there in June 1833 at the relatively young age of forty-four. I’ve found his obituary written in over thirty British newspapers. He really was a celebrity in nineteenth century England.
So, what happens now? I hear my readers ask. Will you chop a decade off Lavender’s age, remove his fictional education and his gorgeous and exotic Spanish wife in order to bring the fictional character back into line with the real man?
No. I intend to carry on as before, ‘loosely basing’ my detective on the life of the real man and occasionally dipping into the archives to find more of Stephen Lavender’s cases to flesh out into an intricate plot. I hope to continue to share information with Lesley Morgan and Alister Palmer for the benefit of all of us who are interested in this fascinating man.
And anyway, I’m not sure that my mystery-reading public is ready for a detective barely out of his teens.

In this instance alone, the truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

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Plague Pits & River Bones ​Reaches fifty thousand readers

Killer Corsets

Fifth Detective Lavender Mystery An Instant Best-Seller

Murder In Park Lane

Sales Milestone for The Second Book In The Lavender Series

Researching Lavender Book #5

The Real Stephen Lavender

THE REAL STEPHEN LAVENDER

(TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION)

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Plague Pits & River Bones
Reaches fifty thousand readers

Fifth Detective Lavender Mystery
An Instant Best-Seller