Tag Archives: Will Rees murder mysteries

Families

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As I looked around the table at Christmas dinner, and saw people who had not spoken to one another for years, I thought of how complicated families could be.

In Murder, Sweet Murder, I set the mystery against Lydia’s family, but Will Rees’s is no less difficult.

Lydia, estranged from her father and step-mother, left her family years ago. Her father is a wealthy Boston merchant engaged in the Triangle Trade. He owns a distillery that distills molasses into rum as well a fleet of ships that run slaves from Africa.

Lydia cannot accept her father’s profession and after some problems in her personal live, runs away. She lands at Zion, a Shaker community in Maine. In Murder, Sweet Murder I bring her back to Boston, and her family. She is no more tolerant of her father’s profession now than she was then.

Rees’s father was an abusive alcoholic who died by falling off a wagon in a drunken stupor. Rees is not an alcoholic but he makes other mistakes with his children. Before the action begins in A Simple Murder, David, Rees’s oldest son runs away from home, and takes refuge in Zion with the Shakers. Rees had left David (he would say his father abandoned him) with Caroline and her husband. When Rees returns home and recovers the farm, sending Caroline’s family packing, she never forgives him.

In A Devil’s Cold Dish, Caroline does her very best to destroy her brother and his family.

As the stories go on, and Rees’s history unfolds, his family expands. But it also changes. By the time of Murder, Sweet Murder, Jerusha, Rees’s oldest daughter, wants to leave home for school. David and Simon have already left for a farm in a distant town.

Families are complicated, even in fiction.

Sugar, Molasses and Rum

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Before rum, there was sugar – from sugarcane. Sugar is present in many fruits and vegetables. Sugar beets, for example, have more sugar than an apple. There are also many types of sugar: glucose, fructose, lactose, with slight differences in their chemical structures. 

The sweetest of all is sugarcane.

Sugarcane is a picky plant, requiring heat, sunshine and water. It must be grown in a frost free environment. Discovered millennia ago, it grew first in New Guinea and from there spread to India and the Indian subcontinent. It did not reach Europe until many centuries later, during the Middle Ages, and it was rare and expensive. A description of a banquet in 1457 mentions sugar sculptures. As sugar was planted in Madeira and the Canary Islands, the demand for sugar increased tenfold.

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World and the first sugar plantation was set up in Hispaniola. Slaves were imported to work the plantations and the desire for sugar continued to increase. With the plantations in the West Indies, sugar became cheap enough for most households to afford. From a few pounds consumed per capita in the colonies in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the amount rose to eighty pounds by the end.

Sugarcane is a grass. The crop is chopped into lengths, crushed and boiled. (Now much of this is done by machines but during the time of Will Rees, it was all done by hand.) The sugar we know and love is the crystallized result from the sugarcane syrup. Raw sugar is brown and has a higher molasses content. Slave accounts allude to the difficult and dangerous work connected to the production of sugar, from the chopping of cane to the boiling of the syrup. Slaves in the more northern states did not want to be sold down south: to the cotton or cane fields.

Molasses is a byproduct of this process. Once, it was discarded but the demand for molasses grew exponentially when it was discovered it could be fermented into an alcoholic drink. The fermentation of sugarcane juice is mentioned in Sanskrit texts. By the time of the sugar plantations in the West Indies, the enslaved were fermenting the molasses into ‘Rumbullion”, ‘kill-devil,’ and ‘screech’ – all forms of (probably undrinkable) rum. It rapidly gained in popularity, however, and was used as currency in Africa and was exported to Great Britain.

Sugarcane is a heavy feeder and requires about 660 gallons of water for every 2.2 pounds of sugar. So, not great for the environment as well as its role in obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, and other health risks.

Taverns Part I

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averns and coffeehouses were an important part of Colonial and Federalist life. They served as meeting places, inns, restaurants and more. Before post offices were built, taverns and coffeehouses also handled letters. In the early days of the colonies, taverns were built at ferry landings. Later on, when coaches began running, the taverns became handy stops and, in fact, Rouge’s tavern frequently sees an influx of passengers either going to or from Boston.

As one might expect, there was a wide range of comfort and amenities provided, ranging from a grand inn like the Raleigh in Williamsburg to the ordinary that served the ferrymen or waggoneers. In the last, the beds were likely to be hard wooden pallets, the mattresses filled with cornhusks or straw as well as fleas and other critters. Food offered was usually cornmeal mush.

All of the taverns mentioned in Murder, Sweet Murder, with the exception of the Painted Pig, which is my own creation, existed in 1801 in Boston. The Warren Tavern is still in use as a bar and restaurant. The Green Dragon, which was the Headquarters of the Sons of Liberty (and where much of the planning for the War of Independence occurred), was demolished in 1822.

The Triangle Trade

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The enslavement of thousands is a stain on the United States. The ripple effects are still being felt to this day.

Slaves were bought and sold in the northern colonies, but, by about 1800 these areas, states now in the new United States, had by and large forbidden the importing and sale of slaves. (That does not mean there were none; the slaves already present were allowed to remain.)

However, that does not mean merchants in the north were guiltless. Merchants, such as Lydia’s father, engaged in a three cornered trade in which New England businessmen took African slaves to the United States and the West Indies for work on the plantations, especially the sugar plantations.

The by product of making sugar, molasses, was shipped to New England for distillation into rum. That rum was exported to Great Britain and brought to Africa. The rum, and the profits from selling the rum, was used to purchase more slaves.

This trade was called the benign sounding Triangle Trade.

Faneuil Hall

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Faneuil Hall was opened in 1743 (and was the site of several speeches by luminaries such as Samuel Adams.) and was present when Rees and Lydia visited Boston in 1801.

Built by slave merchant Peter Faneuil as a gift to the town, it was funded in part by the profits from slave trading. The building was begun in 1740 with an open ground floor serving as a market house with rooms on the second floor. The National Park Service believes early slave auctions took place nearby.

The hall has been rebuilt several times. It was destroyed in 1761 by fire and was greatly expanded in 1806 by Charles Bulfinch. In 1960, Faneuil Hall was put on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still in use and can be visited.

Boston

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Murder, Sweet Murder, the next Will Rees mystery, is set in Boston.

Since the birth of the United States, Boston has been one of the country’s most important cities. It was settled by the Puritans in 1630 and quickly became a trading center and hub of commerce.

During the 1770s, Boston was a hotbed of patriotic fervor. The taverns in Boston were instrumental in firing up the populace and planning. (More about that later.) The first shots were fired nearby and several battles, including Breed’s Hill, were fought within the town.

By the time Rees joins Lydia in Boston, and finally meets her family, the war has been over for twenty years.

Once the war was over, Boston’s economy recovered and the population grew significantly, so much so it went from a village to a town. Then, in 1822, the name was changed to the City of Boston.

Boston was also one of the first cities to adopt a metropolitan police force. In 1790, Boston’s population was 43,000 and the ability of night watchmen and constables to keep order and protect lives and property was already strained. The rapid growth that occurred beginning in the early 1800s, and increased with the influx of foreign immigrants, further stressed the system. In 1837, Boston established a police force modeled on the London police.

Lydia

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Murder, Sweet Murder, the newest Will Rees, will be released February 1, 2022.

Almost all of the series focuses on Will, his family and friends. Through the years, readers have asked for more about Lydia.

In Murder, Sweet Murder, I answer that call.

Lydia receives a frantic letter from her sister begging her to come to Boston. Their father has been accused of murdering a young man, just recently arrived from Jamaica. Marcus Farrell is engaged in the Triangle Trade. Cod is shipped to the islands for the slaves that harvest the sugar cane. Sugar is sent back to the Northeastern United States to be turned into rum. And the rum is shipped to Africa (among other places) to purchase more slaves.

Has Marcus Farrell murdered the young man? And why?

Besides Lydia’s father, Rees meets her stepmother and her sister Cordelia. He finishes the journey with a new understanding of why Lydia fled her father’s home to live with the Shakers, and now that she is married to Rees, does not miss her former life of luxury.

Mistakes and more

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One of the pitfalls of writing historical fiction is the danger of making mistakes. It could be simple mistakes. In A Devil’s cold dish, I refer to a stack of hay as a bale. Balers were not invented until the early 1800s, a fact I knew. But I was trying to expand my synonyms from stack and pile and all the other words. A reader called on it immediately.

Then there was the mystery where I had Rees rewarding Hannibal with oats a few times. I immediately got pushback from a reader who accused me of giving the poor (fictional) horse colic.

These are somewhat trivial errors. More serious mistakes involve easily confirmed facts that somehow the writer (me) got wrong. In Murder on Principle, I refer to Jefferson’s opponent as John Quincy Adams. He is actually the son of the correct candidate, John Adams. This is a case of temporary forgetfulness. I knew it was John Adams but made the mistake once and it was repeated. No one else caught it, not the agent nor the editor. That was left to a reader who wrote a really harsh review.

This is what makes writing historical fiction so challenging; everything must be triple checked and even then it is all too easy to make a mistake.

Believe me, someone will know.

I must add, however, that sometimes the reader who is so sure of their facts, is wrong. I used the term ‘cracker’ in one of my books and a reader wrote a gotcha review. I, however, had done my research and had a copy of a letter written in 1763 by a British official using that exact term.

The passage of time always creates an undiscovered country.

Goodreads Giveaway

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The pub date for Murder on Principle is August 3rd, although I have heard that many people have already received the book.

I set up a giveaway on Goodreads so join in and win a free copy.

The reviews so far have all been very good to great!

Reviews for Murder on Principle

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So happy to see some good reviews for the next Will Rees, due out August 3, 2021

From Kirkus: A complex mystery that focuses on the institutional racism still sadly ingrained in the nation’s psyche.

From Publishers Weekly: The intricate plot builds to a satisfying resolution. This sobering look at the cultural divide over slavery in the early days of the Republic deserves a wide audience. 

I really hope other readers enjoy this book too.