It’s time to return to 1840s New York in Lyndsay
Faye’s latest historical crime thriller, THE FATAL
FLAME. Copper star Timothy Wilde’s story began in the Edgar Award-nominated
THE GODS OF
GOTHAM and continued in SEVEN FOR A SECRET, named one of The Wall Street Journal’s
Ten Best Mysteries of the Year. Lyndsay Faye is here to talk about the third
installment, life in New York City, a history of corsets, and more.
Pasha: Welcome, Lyndsay! Timothy Wilde avoids fires like
Indiana Jones avoids snakes. How did it feel to put your protagonist (whom
you’ve been with since THE GODS OF GOTHAM and SEVEN FOR A
SECRET) through the ringer with his worst fears in THE FATAL
FLAME?
Lyndsay: Awesome Indy cultural reference is awesome. Thank you
for having me!
It felt like the sort of thing I would typically do, to be honest. It felt
terrible.
So: here’s what I often do: I take characters I love and I pretty much put them
through a meat grinder. I took Sherlock Holmes in my first novel, DUST AND
SHADOW, and I basically ruined his self-esteem and stabbed him and made him
deal with it. Part of this was because the Ripper crimes were horrific and I
needed to do them historical justice, but part of this was deliberate.
Why would torturing beloved characters ever be a good idea, everyone might
wonder? It’s a good idea because I think that stories make us stronger. We
love our heroes, and anyone who loves Timothy has my undying gratitude, and we
love to see them struggle past situations that might not represent us in
specific ways but might be cathartic. Catharsis. It’s a real thing, and the
Greeks figured it out a very long time ago.
Is Tim going to be OK and figure his life out? I think so. But putting him
through awful stuff is what thrillers are all about.
Pasha: Though you are not a native New Yorker, you claim the
city as your true home (and rightfully so). How does living in the bustling Big
Apple impact your development of the sprawling city in your Timothy Wilde novels?
LyndsaySprawling is a wonderful word for this city.
My living here definitely does impact the books—I can state details regarding
the smells, sights, sounds, but additionally I know cultural things about NYC
that would be difficult to render without having experienced them. For
instance, it’s one thing to have physically been to Central Park, Inwood Park,
etc, and thus be able to imagine what parts of the city grid were like when they
were unpaved farmland. But it’s another sort of experience when Timothy gripes
about broken fountains in every installment of the series. He does that because
fountains in large urban areas often don’t work, and New Yorkers were
complaining about this in the Herald in antebellum NYC. We still complain about
it now. Or another good example is in THE FATAL
FLAME when Tim mentions the pedestrian version of road rage when you’re
trying to get somewhere and tourists are staring up at the buildings without
moving to the side.
Timothy hates NYC, and I think he has a lot of rational reasons for that because
he’s had so many traumatic experiences there. Valentine enjoys mastering NYC,
but I think he could survive anywhere. Jim Playfair says in SEVEN FOR A
SECRET that he can love the city because he wasn’t born there. I leave it
to the reader to decide with whom they agree.
Pasha: What first drew you to writing historical crime fiction?
Have you been a mystery lover all your life or is it a recent obsession?
Lyndsay: I was told by my parents that reading Shakespeare and
Sherlock Holmes and The Lord of the Rings should happen when I was about ten
years old. I’ve never gotten over any of that, I keep reading all of those, but
I guess I was always a mystery lover—Hamlet was a mystery lover.
Pasha: In addition to the list of historical thrillers in your
writing repertoire, you also have a performance background, during which you
donned corsets and dazzled crowds as a professional actress in the Bay Area. Do
you find much time for performing now? And if not, do your past performance
experiences inform your writing in any way?
Lyndsay: My stage experience regarding accent training and
voice is the entire reason I get to have this career, yes! And I still get to
tell stories, and I love that, but part of me will always miss belting really
high notes.
No, I don’t perform now. I tell everyone I’d rather be good at one job than
terrible at two. It’s kind of you to say I dazzled anyone—there’s a very
visceral thrill involved when singing for large crowds. Additionally, there’s
the social aspect; there could not be a more collaborative process than musical
theatre, and there could not be a more solitary one than writing.
Pasha: Thank you for being our guest today, and we have one
more question. Fresh Fiction readers want to know—what’s on your to-read list?
--THE WALLS AROUND US by Nova Ren Suma
--THE FAIR FIGHT by Anna Freeman
--THE LAST BOOKANEER by Matthew Pearl
No one in 1840s New York likes fires, but Copper Star Timothy Wilde least of
all. So when an arsonist with an agenda begins threatening Alderman Robert
Symmes, a corrupt and powerful leader high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Wilde
isn’t thrilled to be involved. His reservations escalate further when his
brother Valentine announces that he’ll be running against Symmes in the upcoming
election, making both himself and Timothy a host of powerful enemies.
Meanwhile, the love of Wilde’s life, Mercy Underhill, unexpectedly shows up on
his doorstep and takes under her wing a starving orphan with a tenuous grasp on
reality. It soon becomes clear that this wisp of a girl may be the key to
stopping those who have been setting fire to buildings across the city—if only
they can understand her cryptic descriptions and find out what she knows.
Boisterous and suspenseful, The Fatal Flame is filled with beloved Gotham
personalities as well as several new stars, culminating in a fiery and shocking
conclusion.
THE FATAL FLAME is available for pre-order now.
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