Exclusive interview with author Anna Dean and a review of her Jane Austen-era murder mystery
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“The idea for the Dido Kent mystery series arose from my love of Jane Austen’s work and the world she creates in her novels,” says A Place of Confinement author Anna Dean. “It is, as she describes it, the world of two or three families in a country village. It occurred to me that this same world is ideally suited to the classic murder mystery story, in which all the suspects are known to one another.”
A Place of Confinement: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent captures the quirks and fears of its characters. Once you start reading you can’t stop. Spinster sleuth Dido Kent is adventurous, strong and willing to take risks. She loves her family, but not so much that she can be pressed into marriage with a man she doesn’t love. Dean uses letters to convey life during the Regency period and to move the story along. This story of the trials and tribulations of an impoverished spinster in Regency England is for anyone who enjoys the Regency literature and Austen. It’s more Northanger Abbey than Pride & Prejudice.
The story opens in April, 1807. We meet Miss Dido Kent, a spinster, accompanying her aunt on a visit to Charcombe Manor. An inveterate letter writer, Dido shares with her sister all the goings-on at the manor. When heiress Miss Letitia Verney disappears without a trace, Dido decides to solve the mystery. To complicate matters, Letitia’s fiancé, who’s just arrived from the Caribbean, is accused of murdering a man. Could he be a double murderer? Or is he being framed?
Dean says her research sparked several ideas that became part of her book. “In an archive in Carlisle I came across the most unromantic marriage proposal I have ever encountered. It is a letter from a nineteenth century schoolmaster which begins: ‘Dear Madam, As I am on the look out at present for a suitable companion, I beg most respectfully to inform you that I have a fancy for you.’ I have never been able to find out whether the gentleman was accepted or even the name of the woman he was addressing. But I have always hoped she said no. That was where the idea came from for the unpleasant suitor Dido is avoiding at the beginning of the story.”
There are four books so far in the Dido Kent Mysteries series: Bellfield Hall, published as A Moment of Silence in the UK, A Gentleman of Fortune, A Woman of Consequence and A Place of Confinement. All are published by Minotaur. Dean has had several short stories published, including a collection of stories based on archive sources. Her short stories and a series of monologues about the abolition of the slave trade were broadcast by BBC radio. She has a historical novel, Bloodlines, published under her real name Marian Veevers.
Dean is currently working on a novel that begins with a dead body being discovered in a box on the Edinburgh coach, a real incident that Dean uncovered in her research. “It is not exactly a murder mystery, and it is not about Dido Kent, but it is set in the same time period as my last four books. It is based here in the Lake District, involves the Romantic Poets and draws on entries in the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth.”
Dean lives in a very small village in the English Lake District. She ran the Post Office there until recent government cutbacks closed it down. She was born less than twenty miles away from her present home. More details about the character Dido Kent are available at www.annadean.co.uk.
A Place of Confinement: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent (Dido Kent Mysteries) by Anna Dean. Hardcover: 416 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (August 6, 2013), Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1250029676 $25.99. Also available on Kindle.
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