Exclusive interview with novelist Carol Carr and a review of her new novel about woman caught in an espionage plot…who runs a brothel
Rating: 3 stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I’ve always been a fan of cheeky, brash, adventure-prone heroines who occasionally bite off more than they can chew, and India is my version of that heroine,” says India Black author Carol Carr. “The background for the novel is the standoff in 1876 and 1877 between Great Britain and Russia over the Ottoman Empire.”
India Black is a historical mystery. India Black runs a London brothel that caters to titled and wealthy gentlemen. When a man dies at Lotus House, India needs help removing the body. The man to assist her in this unsavory task wants India to find a missing document that reveals British military secrets. Can India help find the missing document? Will it fall into the wrong hands? Has it already?
India Black is a fun, fast read. There are some unanswered questions about India Black, such as how exactly she got into this line of work. Carr uses some usual words not used in most novels. For example, whores are “bints” and having sex is “rogering”. The characters could be more developed and compelling, and hopefully they will be in the upcoming second book in this series out in October 2011.
Carr says that while researching the book she read a huge amount of material about the Victorian era, particularly the politics, foreign policy and military activities of the period. “I’ve also read a fair amount of social history,” says Carr. “Since my heroine is the owner of a brothel, I needed to bone up on the sexual practices of the Victorians and the general social conditions of the time. This caused a few raised eyebrows at the local library, as I ordered book after book about sado-masochism in Victorian England, streetwalkers of the East End, sexual deviance in Mayfair, and so on.”
“While I was writing the book, I’d often run across something that demanded specific research, like the type of revolver India would have used at this date,” says Carr. “This kind of research is fun for me, as I get to indulge my taste in arcane subjects under the guise of striving for historical accuracy.”
The context of the India Black story is a bigger game of a contest between Britain and Russia to control the Ottoman Empire. “The Turks killed some of their Christian subjects who hadn’t paid taxes, and public opinion in Britain, led by Gladstone, favored dashing over and teaching the Turks a lesson. Disraeli thought this was crazy talk, as British banks held lots of Turkish bonds. The Russians were just looking for an excuse to protect their own interests, which included dismembering the Ottoman Empire and helping themselves to the warm water port of Constantinople.”
Disraeli couldn’t allow that to happen, as that would put the Russians perilously close to Egypt and the Suez Canal, which they might be tempted to seize, thereby blocking British access to India. Disraeli tried to run a bluff on the Russians, assuring them that Britain was armed to the teeth and ready to step in if Russia attacked the Turks. Unfortunately, the British military didn’t have the weapons or the men to take on the Russians.
“What if the information about British military strength had been contained in a memo?” says Carr. “What if the man entrusted with that memo had made a detour to the nearest brothel? And what if he died there and the memo vanished? That became the plot for India Black.”
Carr’s next book in the series, India Black and the Widow of Windsor, will be out in October 2011.
India Black by Carol K. Carr. Trade Paperback, 304 pages, Publisher: Berkley Trade, Original edition (January 4, 2011). Language: English, ISBN: 9780425238660 $14.00
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