Writers Read: Darcie Wilde

Darcie Wilde is an award-winning and bestselling author of over 30 novels in multiple genres including science fiction, young adult, cozy mysteries, and historical mysteries. A Useful Woman — her debut mystery novel, and the first to feature her popular sleuth Rosalind Thorne — was a national bestseller, and the sixth book starring the Regency sleuth, The Secret of the Lost Pearls, was declared “a must read” by USA Today. Wilde's new novel is The Heir, the first novel in her new A Young Queen Victoria Mystery series.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Wilde's reply:

What am I reading? That’s always a complicated question. I’m an ecclectic and enthusiastic reader, not to mention a semi-pro history nerd. That means there are a whole lot of books opened at once. Here’s a sampling of the most recent:

The Wharton Plot by Mariah Fredericks

It is really hard to write a good mystery centered around a live person (something I learned while working on The Heir). But Mariah Fredericks does a fantastic job balancing the factual and the possible without straining credulity and while presenting a believable and compelling, if not always likeable, heroine. She’s also got a deft touch with the prose, bringing the reader into the time period without shading into parody of her heroine’s actual prose. But there’s something else here. One of the hardest parts of tracking a real life or real events is that reality doesn’t follow the pacing we expect in novels. This book is a master class in how to handle that partic.

The Lost Orchid by Sarah Bilston

Did I mention I’m a history nerd? This book details the Victorian era’s obsession with orchids. It digs into colonialism, capitalism, upward mobility, elite snobbery and an unexpected connection to the development of the theory of evolution. I am constantly fascinated by pieces of history like this, and how they fit into the larger picture of a given time period. And if the writing is good (which it is here), so much the better.

Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James

I am a huge fan of the Gothic. One of my all time favorite books is Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier. It’s a book that rewards rereading. (P.S. Avoid all adaptations. They all get it wrong). Simone St. James speaks to this part of my reader-heart. I love Simone St. James work. Gothic and ghostly and some of the very best haunted houses I’ve ever read. While I am waiting impatiently for her latest release, I’m re-reading my absolute favorite. This books take all the gothic tropes, including all the ones in Rebecca and then subverts them beautifully, originally and believably.

A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb

Part of the job of the mystery writer is to research real crimes, and the people who committed them. Obviously, the writer needs to know about things like the state of the law, law enforcement, and social concerns of a give period. But it’s more than that. Real criminals are astonishingly creative, or foolhardy. Or both. This makes historical crime a constant source of inspiration and fiction writers like me owe non-fiction writers like Dean Jobb a huge debt. Now, I love a historical heist and have read a lot about them, but I’d never heard of Arthur Barry who, in the 1920s, boosted tens of thousands of dollars of diamonds and other jewels from private homes. Frequently while the residents were sitting down to dinner.

The Detection of Secret Homicide by J.D.J Havard

Remember at the beginning when I said I was a semi-pro history nerd? That means in addition to reading popular accounts, like Dean Jobb and Sarah Bilston write, I end up doing things like reading other people’s Ph.D. theses, including the footnotes (all the best stuff is in the footnotes). Which is where I found mention of this book. Published in 1960, it is a dense and academic look at the evolution of the coroner’s office and the UK’s unique medico-legal system. Would I recommend it for the casual reader? No. But if you want, or need, to get waaaaay too deep in the weeds of how the UK’s unique medico-legal system evolved, and how murder was really investigated (or not) from medieval times up through the 1950s, then this book is worth tracking down.