Books: Move Your Blooming Corpse
Exclusive interview with the authors and a review of their new mystery novel based on the characters of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins
Rating: Three Stars
This week’s review sees the latest work from D.E. Ireland – the nom de plume of Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta, who write in tandem.
“We’ve been friends since college and were published authors on our own, so the idea of collaborating seemed quite doable,” says Pisacreta. “We’ve also critiqued each other’s manuscripts for years, and were familiar with the differences and similarities in our writing styles. This made it easier for us to combine our styles and create a unique end product, now known as D. E. Ireland.”
“In 2011 I drove to Sharon’s house on the other side of the state for a brainstorming session on a book that needed work,” says Mims. “During the three-hour drive, I listened to the My Fair Lady soundtrack and suddenly had a what-if moment. By that evening, I had convinced Sharon to collaborate on writing the Eliza and Higgins mystery series.”
The story is set in 1913 and features flower girl Eliza Doolittle and linguist professor Henry Higgins as sleuths who still have their foibles and endearments. It’s a charming twist on British mystery writing. Murder, kidnapping, horse racing, and the struggle for women’s right to vote, all on one book. Move Your Blooming Corpse is the second book in the series, and features wonderful character development and verbal interplay. Details about location and clothing build a strong image of the time. The whodunnit was not difficult to decipher, it’s but still a wonderful read.
Eliza Doolittle’s father is part owner of Donegal Dancer, a champion racehorse. Eliza and Henry go see the horse at Royal Ascot, but tragedy strikes at the track. There’s a dead body in the stables, and nobody knows how it got there. To solve the mystery professor Higgins will use his deductive powers and Eliza will use common sense.
“Our series is based on Shaw’s Pygmalion,” says Pisacreta. “We regard his play as the series bible. We’ve put together files listing the favorite turns of speech and phrases uttered by each of his characters. Everything Shaw mentions about the play’s characters is included in our books, even the smallest detail.
“We both have extensive research libraries, from books on Downton Abbey, the fashions, footwear, hats, and houses in Edwardian times, a fabulous book about English horse racing, books on London, the East End, theaters in England, British foods and customs, the nobility and forms of address,” says Mims. “When it comes to research, each of us delves into different areas. In book two, I handled much of the research about suffragettes, while Sharon handled research for the Henley Regatta and Ascot.”
For Move Your Blooming Corpse, the authors needed to come up with racing colors for Donegal Dancer. “I suggested green and purple,” says Pisacreta. “Not until we were farther along in our research for the book did we discover that green and purple were the colors of the suffrage movement. This fit in perfectly with our story.”
The first novel in the Doolittle/Higgens series, Wouldn’t It Be Deadly, was one of five Agatha nominees for Best Historical Mystery in 2014.
Pisacreta recently sold a cozy mystery series to Kensington Books. The Berry Basket series is set along the shores of Lake Michigan in a beautiful village similar to the one in which the author lives. The first book in the series, Dying For Strawberries, will be published in November 2016 under Sharon Farrow, a new pen name.
Mims is writing short novellas with a Christmas dog-and-cat rescue theme and Western romance short stories for Prairie Rose Publication anthologies.
Pisacreta lives in Saugatuck, Michigan, which has been an art colony and lakeshore resort for over a century. Mims is based in the northern suburbs of Detroit. Both were born in Detroit. The authors met as students at Wayne State University in downtown Detroit.
The authors will be at the holiday party at Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore in Ann Arbor in December and at Malice Domestic in May of 2016.
Move Your Blooming Corpse: An Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery by D. E. Ireland. Hardcover: 320 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (September 22, 2015, Language: English ISBN: 9781250049360 $26.99
