Fresh Chat | Lyndsay Faye Ignites Intrigue in THE FATAL FLAME

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

About THE FATAL FLAME

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.