Carola Dunn

Carola Dunn's latest novel is The Corpse at the Crystal Palace: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery (Volume 23).

From her Q& A with Vicki Mejia-Gewe at FangirlNation:

Daisy Dalrymple, your most famous series, is a mystery set in the 1920s where the main characters are the daughter of a viscount and the middle class Detective Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. Why did you choose to focus on that era?

I’d already been writing Regencies for a good few years and I was intrigued by certain parallels between the 1920s and the 18-teens.

For instance, I’ve already talked about some of the changes in the lives of women between the two periods. But the Regency was already changing their situation. In terms of basics, look at the change in clothes. The wide hooped skirts of the earlier Georgians gave way to the Empire line, allowing far more freedom of movement. Fashion moved backwards later, alas, to hoops and bustles and 18″ waists, and then the horrific “S” bend of Edwardian corsetting. But by Daisy’s time, partly because of fabric shortages during WWI, clothes at last resembled something we might well wear today.

Ease of travel was another parallel. Compared to earlier Georgian times, in the Regency, roads were much improved, footpads and highwaymen much less frequently encountered, and someone invented springs for carriages, making them much more comfortable. The railway came along later, but unless you had money and lived not too far from a station, foot, horse, cart, or carriage was the way you travelled. In Daisy’s time, of course, the railways were still a common way to travel for all and sundry, but were supplemented by motor-cars and motor-buses that made it easier to reach out of the way places. The arrival of cars on the scene was an enormous change; so too was the influence of...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Carola Dunn's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Carola Dunn and Trillian.

The Page 69 Test: Heirs of the Body.

The Page 69 Test: Superfluous Women.

Writers Read: Carola Dunn (July 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue