Tessa Arlen

Tessa Arlen's new novel is Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders.

From her Q&A with Jean Vallesteros:

What do you hope for readers to be thinking when they read your novel?

I have tried to take the reader back to the WWII Homefront in England and an isolated village trying to an American airfield that has been built on its outskirts. Rural England in 1942 was deeply conservative, immersed in tradition, and its country people often very narrow in their view. Little Buffenden is no exception: its villagers are a pretty insular bunch who strenuously resist change in all forms. But patriotism during the war years was the order of the day and Little Buffenden gradually comes to some sort of acceptance. Then one of the local girls who was dating an American is murdered. Inevitably the village closes ranks.

We all suffer from fear of the unknown: the fear of difference, or being different, in our world today. As I worked on the story I found myself paying attention to this theme: the business of being different or ‘other,’ either from within a close knit community or...[read on]

Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

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Writers Read: Tessa Arlen (November 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders.

--Marshal Zeringue