Exclusive interview with author Amanda Carmack and a review of her new mystery set in the court of Queen Elizabeth
Rating: 4 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I’ve always been fascinated by Queen Elizabeth herself,” says Murder at Whitehall author Amanda Carmack. “A brilliant, strange, unreadable woman who came out of a terrible, dangerous young childhood and young adulthood to become the greatest, or at least most famous, monarch in history. I am also a huge mystery reader, ever since I devoured my grandmother’s copies of Christie, Sayers, and Chesterton as a child. The Renaissance is full of mysteries anyway. I know I, and many other people, wonder what really happened to Amy Robsart…such a dangerous period.”
Murder at Whitehall is the fourth book in Carmack’s Elizabethan Mystery series. Amateur sleuth Kate Haywood becomes embroiled in Tudor court intrigue and a devastating scandal. The story has many plot twists and the feeling of the 1500s is authentic, if a bit confusing. There are many characters named Mary, Catherine, and Jane. In the 1500s everyone was named after someone else. But Carmack’s descriptions of clothing, castles, protocol, and music are enchanting and the central character of Kate is intelligent and warm. In sum, this is an engaging mystery to curl up with for a cozy evening.
The book opens in 1559. Queen Elizabeth orders preparations to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas at Whitehall Palace. She wants it to be as grand, like the celebrations her last stepmother planned for the family. There will be many visitors from Spain, Scotland, Sweden and even France. Not the friendliest crowd, many of them would rather see Queen Elizabeth dethroned. Kate Haywood is the queen’s personal musician. When one of visiting Lords from Spain is found murdered, the queen looks to Kate to help solve the mystery and trace a threat Elizabeth has received.
Cormack says that when writing she typically wears yoga pants and her Downton Abbey “What would the Dowager Countess Do?” t-shirt. She never suffers from writer’s block. “Ideas are never the hard part for me,” says Cormack. “Sorting them out, though, is almost impossible. I’ve always loved the 16th century. It’s a period full of enormous change and excitement in so many areas of life…exploration, scientific advancement, England’s rise as a real world power, and above all the arts, Shakespeare. The question was, what sort of hero did I need?” “Actors and playwrights were often recruited into Walsingham’s secret service,” says Cormack. “They were literate and usually very educated. They could mix with every strata of society and had very quick memories. Marlowe is the most famous of these actor-spies, but I didn’t want to use someone like him as my central detective. I decided on a female musician, someone whose family was close to the queen in some way, and that’s how Kate Haywood came to me.”
Cormack enjoys traveling to Europe. “I find just wandering around old homes and gardens helps the most. I can envision my characters there, and try to imagine their everyday lives. This is especially fun when I try to work in real historical figures into my plots: Robert Dudley, Dr. Dee, Margaret Lennox, Mary Queen of Scots, even Katherine Parr in a flashback. The British Library is wonderful, of course, and their librarians are helpful in finding whatever I need…letting me look at documents of the period, though under close supervision. Places like the Tower, Hardwicke Hall, Penshurst, Hatfield, and Hampton Court are also great, and their custodians are most generous. Elizabethan handwriting is the worst, and I often can’t read much …without help.”
Cormack, real name Amanda McCabe, is a RITA-nominated author of historical romances (RITA is the name of the awards given by the Romance Writers of America). She’s been nominated for a RITA four times, finaled in the Daphne Du Maurier Contest, and has won the Bookseller’s Best and National Readers’ Choice Award. Murder at Whitehall has yet to be optioned for TV or film. At university, Cormack was an English Lit major and took theater classes.
Cormack is finishing the next Kate mystery, Murder at Fontainebleau, in which Kate travels to France in a delegation meeting with the newly widowed Mary Queen of Scots. As Amanda McCabe, Cormack is writing a romance set in Ireland and England in 1588.
Cormack lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was born in Oklahoma.
Murder at Whitehall: An Elizabethan Mystery (Book 4) Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 2015, Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages, Publisher: NAL (December 1, 2015), Language: English ISBN: 9780451475695 $7.99
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