Guest Blogger Karen Odden on AN ARTFUL DODGE

I (Donis) am so happy to host my friend Karen Odden to Type M 4 Murder today. Karen is a wonderful historical mystery author whose latest release is An Artful Dodge, about a gang of female thieves in 19th century England. Great concept, isn't it? And the best part is it's based on real people and real events. Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up.

Karen Odden

 The “wait, what?” moment that sparked the idea for An Artful Dodge, my sixth book set in 1870s London, happened in December 2021. 

My daughter Julia had just finished her semester abroad at Oxford. If you remember, there was a lull during the Covid pandemic. We rented a flat and spent a week bopping around London doing Mom/Daughter things. The gray days required umbrellas; the night winds turned our umbrellas inside out. We still had a lovely time, as my daughter is game for any number of long walks, teashops, bookstores, and museums. And Harrods. Here she is in one of my favorite cafes, inside the Victoria and Albert Museum, with a scone the size of her head.

One evening, we ducked into the Great Scotland Yard Hotel in Whitehall, not far from Big Ben. It’s built on what used to be the odd-shaped cobblestoned yard behind 4 Whitehall Place, which was the official address for the plainclothes division of the Metropolitan Police, what we now call Scotland Yard, in the 1870s. The yard served as the “public entrance,” was large enough for wagons, and usually smelled of horse dung and musty hay. 

The hotel (shown here in much better weather than we had) was built in 2019, an homage to the Victorian period. It’s run by Hyatt. 

Shivering, Julia and I entered the foyer and discovered glass cases full of Victorian crime memorabilia—mug shots, police truncheons, whistles, helmets, weapons, poison bottles, and more. (Be still my I-want-to-see-the-authentic-stuff heart.) 

Afterward Julia and I went to the restaurant to have dinner, but they said, regretfully, they were “full up.” However, we could go to the Forty Elephants bar across the way and get a drink and a bite to eat.

Forty Elephants. 

The Elephant and Castle

What an odd name, I thought. Did it have to do with the British Empire, which in the 1800s was busily expanding into India and Africa, home of real, gray, floppy-eared elephants? 

We entered to find a room with a portrait of a gorgeous woman over the fireplace. 

I was madly curious. Fortunately, on our wooden corner table, there was a QR code “For more information about the 40 Elephants.” Of course I clicked.

I discovered that the “Forty Elephants” were members of an all-women thieving gang based out of Elephant and Castle neighborhood, in Southwark (pronounced “South-uck”), in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The crime-ridden area was named for an old stagecoach inn, built in the 1700s, located at the intersection of six roads coming in from Dover, Canterbury and various parts of London. 

An all-women thieving gang, in a crime-ridden part of London! Women who went into the new department stores and tucked gloves and lace and jewelry into long thieving pockets that went down to their hemlines, and into special netting in their hair! Who wouldn’t want a mystery about that?

I was finishing my fifth book, Under a Veiled Moon, so I scribbled the idea down and set it aside. When I later pitched the idea to my publisher, he gave dubious little grimace. Clearly, no interest there. And although the Inspector Corravan series had earned out my modest advance, the publisher canceled the series.

It hurt because I really loved those books. I loved Michael Corravan. (For those of you who have seen Miss Scarlet and the Duke, which came out afterward, people were texting me: “This reminds me of your Corravan.”) 

It’s hard to have a beloved series canceled. It filled me with self-doubt. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever find another publisher. I didn’t know if anyone would want a book about women thieves, much as I loved the idea.

Fast forward to Left Coast Crime mystery conference in 2024, where I asked Juliet Grames, Editorial Director, of Soho Press, to sit down with me, so I could share the idea I had.

Wait. First, I should explain that I met Juliet Grames in 2019 at Bouchercon. It was my first mystery conference. I attended her panel, where she talked about her new novel, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna and how she’d spent two summers researching and mulling over the characters. I felt instant sympathy! That evening, I’d approached her at the Harper Collins party to congratulate her on her book and introduce myself. (My second and third books were with HC.) We exchanged numbers and emails. Only much later did I learn she was an editor at Soho Press.

[Moral of the tale.] Good things happen at mystery conferences. And it pays to talk to everyone. You never know what will happen years later.

OK, back to the Left Coast Crime conference. I found Juliet and asked if I could pitch her an idea for a book. She said she had twenty minutes. I told her about the 40 Elephants and their skirts and how they ran dodges in department stores. Her blue eyes got large. “I want to read that book. You should write it. I’ll buy it.”

[Moral #2: A grimace from one publisher does not mean you won’t be picked up by a different one.]

I signed the contract, put my butt in the chair, and in 8 months, I wrote the book about Kit Jimeson, my heroine and 20-year-old thief, pulling off a nearly impossible and incredibly dangerous jewel heist in London. It launched two weeks ago, and I hope if you’re in San Francisco, Bellingham WA, New York City, Columbus OH, Rochester NY, or Portland ME, you’ll come to my event, so I can share the other pictures and stories behind the book.

_____

visit Karen's website at http://karenodden.com 

Tell Me Your Story

 Since I seem to be at something of an impasse lately, I've decided that if I can't make headway with my own writing career, the least I can do is support my fellow authors the best way I can. On my own site I've been doing giveaways at the first of every month – physical copies only. Thus far I've only offered my own books, but I'll be expanding to other authors soon. I've volunteered to help with ZOOM panels at an upcoming writers conference. (Torture. I'm not fond of ZOOM conferences.  But needs must.)

Over the many years I've been writing and reading, I've been fascinated by other authors – their process, where the ideas come from, but especially their journeys – why they decided to start writing, what keeps them going, what keeps them writing in the face of the inevitable difficulties of life. 

In June, 2021, I began hosting  on my website a monthly series of author essays called Tell Me Your Story, inviting successful authors to share their life experiences and how those experiences have influenced their writing. Thus far my guests have included handwriting expert Sheila Lowe, whose life view changed forever when her daughter was murdered; Pricilla Royal, who recently took a leap of faith with her long-running historical mystery series; Mariah Frederickson, who was born with a speech impediment that has informed her whole life and world view, and our own dear friend Hannah Dennison, an Englishwoman who spent 25 years in the U.S., then made the hard decision to move back home—and what boost to her life and career that decision turned out to be! She discovered you can go home again. In October I'll be hosting Wendall Thomas, who will be our guest here on Type M this coming weekend, and I've lined up Karen Odden to tell me her story in November. I'm filled with admiration at how frank these women have been. It just goes to show that perseverance is all, and I don't feel quite as hopeless about my own difficulties.Visit  these brave authors as they share their intimate stories on the 20th of every month at  http://www.doniscasey.com 

p.s. If you've got the cajones to tell your own story, or know an author whose story must be told, contact me. I really want to share it. Someone out there need to hear it.

Guest Blogger Karen Odden

Type M 4 Murder is thrilled to welcome historical mystery author Karen Odden, who writes wonderfully evocative novels set in 1870s London, including the smelly Thames and the costermongers, medical puzzles and odd facts about poison, anything Scotland Yard, the true weird stories that surround musicians and visual artists, and good old-fashioned romantic plots.

On Time and Place by Karen Odden

Every year some girlfriends and I hike the Grand Canyon south rim trails, sixteen miles down Kaibab and up Bright Angel, all in one day.

I still remember the first time I did it, how struck I was not only by the beauty of my adopted state (I was raised in upstate New York) but also at how over the course of the 5,000 feet of elevation change from top to bottom, the color of dirt on my boots changed from yellow to brown to red and back to brown. I was literally walking through time, telescoping thousands of years into minutes, and as I turned at the one-mile marker and gazed up toward the rim, I felt surprised, stirred, humbled, and curious. And in that moment, I swear something in my brain sparked and spun in a new direction.

For me, the Canyon collapses time and place—or perhaps, more precisely, it renders time as a material place. I think the sheer enormity of the rocks overhead pressed two truths into my bones: first, that I should start paying attention to those wondrous moments when time collapses and takes a physical shape, and second, that sometimes, when I’m trying to absorb the essence of a site, there is no substitute for getting my feet on the ground, even if it’s decades or centuries later. Like some other writers who have blogged on this site, I write historical fiction and feel it is important to get as close as I can, physically, to the specific time and space of our settings—in my case, 1870s London. I do this partly for authenticity’s sake, but also because being in a place that evokes a particular time lights the creative spark in my brain better than anything else. And I am lucky because there are still bits of Victorian London in today’s city.

One of these bits is Wilton’s Music Hall, which is the last remaining Victorian music hall in London, occupying its original space on Graces Alley in Whitechapel. Most people know that borough as the site of the Jack the Ripper murders in the 1880s. Now the neighborhood is all gentrified and prettied up, but Wilton’s retains some of its Victorian grittiness and charm. I had been playing around with the idea of a novel about a young woman pianist who takes a position in a London music hall as a male entertainer because—yes—men were paid more. (Shocking, I know.) On a trip to London with my husband, I decided I would find Wilton’s.

I entered the twin painted doors and found myself in an irregularly shaped bar area with raw wooden planks.  Peering around and sniffing the lingering smell of hops, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and my shoe caught on a nail head. Recovering, I proceeded through that room and went down the wooden stairs into a space created by three basements patched together. Again, I had the sensation of descending through time. The concrete floors were uneven; the smell was musty; and the plaster was drawing away from the brick in parts.

All was quiet, and I stood still in the murky light, with the faint clamminess and the tang of rust in the air, and let it all work upon me. At last, I moved slowly along the passageway, pausing to inspect a stone carved with an inscription about the original owner, John Wilton; to read a framed newspaper article about a performer who leapt from the stage to attack his heckler—accidentally killing him; to study a framed piece of sheet music from the 1850s. Then I climbed the stairs and peered through the back door of the hall itself. To my surprise, it was elegantly painted in a pale greenish-blue, with chandeliers and spiraling gilt pillars.

(If you’ve watched the movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with Robert Downey, Jr. you’ve seen this room. It’s where Holmes takes Watson for a bachelor party that devolves into a chase scene with Holmes being pursued by a raging Cossack.) The stage was raised off the wooden floor, and suddenly I could see my heroine Nell at a piano in an alcove at stage right. In that moment, Nell’s world became real. And when I returned to my computer to write, naturally I had to plot out my novel. But often, at first, I would just put Nell in the music hall and back away, so I might observe how that time and place would work upon her.

I’m not one for fiddling with a formula that feels right, so for my next book, I again wanted a world that I’d actually walked through and laid my hands on. In A Trace of Deceit (forthcoming, December 2019), my heroine’s world is the (real) Slade Art School and (a fictional) London auction house.

I was drawn to that setting because I worked at Christie’s auction house in New York in the 1990s. For two years, I was their media buyer for all forty-some departments—American Silver, European Furniture, Latin American Paintings, Jewelry, Antique Books, Rugs, and so on. In order to purchase advertising space in magazines and newspapers effectively, I had to read many beautifully illustrated art publications. (Hand to forehead, dramatic sigh.) Under the guise of doing my work, I devoured stories of thefts, absurd wealth, death, sabotage, forgery, corruption, and embezzlement. I found myself enjoying the art but thrilling to the stories behind the pieces—and the passion or anguish or desire on the part of the artist, the subject, or the purchaser.

Upon reflection, I believe part of the attraction of art for me is the way a piece collapses time, or creates layers of it. The time of a painting, for example, invokes both the artist’s present and the viewer’s present; sometimes it calls up the present of the subject of the painting, which can be different from the artist’s. Often when I gaze at a painting, that feeling I had at the Canyon returns, and ideas begin to spark in my brain.

And now I’ll leave you with a question. We all have places that serve as a locus for feelings, sometimes both wonderful and unpleasant. To what extent do we love these places because they materialize and collapse our pasts for us? And do you have a place that makes time material for you?

Note: for more on why the 1870s are my absolutely favorite Victorian decade, see my blog “Why the 1870s?” at www.karenodden.com.