THE PARIS SPY—Agatha Award nominee, in trade paperback April 17

Delighted to announce that Maggie Hope #7, the New York Times bestseller THE PARIS SPY, has been nominated for an Agatha Award, named for Agatha Christie (natch) and to be given by Malice Domestic on April 28th.

THE PARIS SPY is also coming out in trade paperback (yay!) on April 17.

Spend this April in Paris!

THE PARIS SPY! Finished books!

Well, here they are! 

THE PARIS SPY, officially out on Tuesday, August 8th!

"What We Didn't Have in the Old Days"

I must say a big thank you to British-born Blitz-survivor Phyllis Brooks Schafer, who has been kind enough to read my manuscripts and share her knowledge and experience of World War II Britain. (I remember specifically when I had the radio program "It's That Man Again" on at a particular day of the week and time — and Phyllis corrected me: "No! It was on on Mondays at 8:30!")

Phyllis is a friend of my college thesis advisor Susan Meyer (who also wrote  a novels, hers for children called BLACK RADISHES, set during World War II) and we met through Susan on Facebook. 

Phyllis and I became friends and we met in person in the Bay Area last year, where I was introduced to her two lovely cats and had a delightful tour of Berkeley, where she lives and works.

Today (here and on Jungle Red Writers) Phyllis shares with us details about growing up in England during the war.

PHYLLIS BROOKS SCHAFER: The world changes. 

Pre-1948 was a different world, defined for me in many ways by the things I didn’t have rather than those I did have. Life in England was more “primitive” than that I met in the U.S. when we arrived in Seattle at the end of 1948, but many of the things I didn’t have in England were also rare in poorer families in the U.S. at that time. Remember this reflects my roots – in a working class family with next-to-no disposable income, but the “No”s I list were common to large parts of the population beyond my immediate class limits. And of course this list would be as shocking to people under the age of 60 in England today as it is to those living in Berkeley.

What did not form part of my personal life?

No plastic – Oh, the occasional bakelite bangle or drawer knob, or a fragile celluloid floating duck. But none of the common plastics we live among now. None. No plastic wrap, no plastic bowls, no plastic bags, no sheet plastic to substitute for glass in picture frames, no plastic toys, no plastic pieces for games. Mah jongg tiles and dominos were made of ivory. Checkers were made of wood. No plastic table cloths. No plastic cases for typewriters, radios, clocks. No plastic typewriter keys. Instead ceramics, glass, wood, metal, rubber.

No television – I have a dim memory of seeing a small postcard-size TV screen with programing when I was about 6, but BBC TV went off the air in 1939 and did not return until about 1947. (When I first came to Seattle in 1948, TV transmission was just beginning there.) Instead of watching TV we listened to the radio, with its choices of plays, children’s programs, music, etc. The BBC, and no commercial channels. There only two BBC stations until 1947, and all tastes were catered to at various times through those two outlets, with everything from pop music to opera, from comedy to talks (more like lectures) on serious scientific subjects. We learned the hours when the things we liked to listen to were on, and the entire nation went quiet around the time of especially popular comedy shows. And there was reading, reading, reading. Mostly from the public library, but the local newspaper store ran a little lending library – books could be rented for a penny or two a day, mostly mysteries and romances.

No central heating – We heated the living room of our small house with a coal fire, and in the two bedrooms upstairs we had the ultimate in modernity – electrical heaters in the wall.Yes, the house could get cold. That’s why God made sweaters!And we folded a blanket to keep out the draft that whistled in under our front door when the winter wind was in certain directions.

No checks – For working class people, it was a cash economy. My father received his pay in cash, in a pay packet, once a week. (Still much the same in Japan!) Savings were not usually in a bank, but rather in a post office savings account. There was no bank in our community – one had to go into town for a bank. By the time checking accounts started to come in, it was usually the man of the house who wrote them. I had to teach my mother how to write a check when she divorced my father in her late 50s in Pasadena.

No bills coming in the mail – The rent man came round once a week to collect the rent and write down the receipt in the rent book. The electricity and gas men came round every few weeks to empty the meters inside the house, meters we fed with coins to continue the supply of power. The milkman brought his account book with him and collected payment about once a week. Same for the newspaper delivery man. The coal man had to be paid at the time of delivery. No money, no coal, no heat.

Almost no synthetic fabrics – Shirts, blouses, etc., were made of cotton, and outer clothing of wool. Silk or linen was beyond the means of the average person. Nylon stockings came in during the war years with the Americans stationed in England – the best present a girl could get from her Yank boy friend. Otherwise stockings were either expensive silk, or made of a kind of cotton knit called lisle. There was some rayon for dresses and underwear, but it was not common. At the end of the war, surplus parachutes were briefly much in demand: they were white nylon and made good wedding dresses (though there was a rumor that nylon should not be worn when you were having a photo taken - you would appear naked in the resulting pictures).

Almost no electrical appliances – We had only two electrical outlets in our little living/dining  room. None in our “front room” or the bedrooms, bathroom, etc.  We had an electric iron and a radio. Period. When my mother or I ironed, we could listen to the radio. There was no electrical outlet in the kitchen. No electric clocks. Alarm clocks, in their metal cases with a bell on top, had to be wound up each night. The big clock in the living room was an eight-day clock, and my father ritually rewound it every Saturday morning. No toaster. No electric kettle, no electric mixer or blender. And, of course, no microwave. Bread was either toasted at the fireside – a long handled toasting fork let you hold a slice close to a glowing coal till it was brown, and then you had to turn it over and toast the other side – or under the small grill on the gas cooking stove.

No refrigeration – Not even an ice box. Ice was something you broke on ponds and puddles, or slid on in the streets. I didn’t see ice cubes or block ice until I came to the U.S. To keep milk from souring in the summer, we stood the bottles in a bowl of water in the empty fireplace and draped a cloth over it to absorb water and cool as it evaporated. We shopped every day for meat, cheese, etc. – just enough for that day’s meals – so we had very few leftovers. In any case there was no aluminum foil, no waxed paper, no plastic film to wrap and cover leftovers – but there was cooking parchment to line cake tins for making fruit cakes.

No washing machine – My mother boiled clothes in a large metal container (called a “copper”) that lived under the wooden draining board beside the kitchen sink. It had a gas heating unit to bring the water up to the right temperature. She stirred the clothes with a wooden stick, and pulled them out to scrub them in the kitchen sink on a ridged scrubbing board. Buckets held washed clothes as she rinsed them, once again in the sink, in cold water. We did not have a wringer, so she wrung out everything by hand – including the sheets. (Our neighbor did have a wooden wringer turned by a big handle, but my mother was too proud to ask to use it.)

No dryer – The washed clothes had to be carried outside and pinned up onto the washing line that was then raised up into the air with a heavy wooden prop with a Y-shaped end. If we were lucky, the clothes dried before it started raining again. Otherwise we had to carry things inside to dry on racks in the tiny living room. In winter the sheets and clothes froze hard as boards. We had to be careful taking them down – they could actually break. But freezing and thawing did get rid of a lot of moisture. The smell of clothes taken down from the line on a warm summer day was wonderful. I remember burying my head in the sheets just for the joy of smelling them.

No vacuum cleaner – But then nobody we knew had fitted carpets. Rather the floors were wood or covered with linoleum, with area rugs on them. We carried the rugs outside, hung them over the washing line, propped them up higher, and then beat them with a carpet beater until the dust no longer came out of them. The carpet on the stairs to the second story was a long runner held in place by metal rods that could be slipped out of their holders. Periodically we removed the rods and carried the whole runner outside for the ritual beating.

No restaurant meals – Well, very, very rarely we might have a snack in a café (or, as adults, in a pub) while shopping in town. Even before the second world war, with its stringent food rationing, meals in restaurants, even of the most modest sort, were not part of working class life. I never sat down to a dinner in a restaurant with a table cloth and a menu until I came to Seattle. The only takeaway foods were fish and chips (bought from the fish shop on the nights when they were open and frying, and wrapped in newspaper to bring home for consumption) or pork pies and slices cut for each customer individually from a big, bone-in ham, which some butchers had for sale. In bigger towns or in the cities, there were often stands or carts on the street – something like the taco trucks on International Boulevard in Oakland – selling sausage and mash, or the Cockneys’ favorite winkles, little cooked sea snails that one picked out of their shells with a pin and dipped into vinegar, to be eaten standing up or on a nearby park bench. The only big treat meal eaten out by working class people with some pretensions to good taste was the occasional tea, usually in a dainty little tearoom: pots of tea, with little sandwiches, cakes, and, in summer, strawberries with clotted cream – only a fond memory for much of my life until the post-war austerity began to lift slightly.

No private telephones – In the small community where I lived, only the doctor had a phone. Maybe to call an ambulance if one was needed? There was no one local to call him. If he was needed, someone ran down to his house-cum-office to get him or to leave a note. The local policeman also had a phone, in the police station office inside his house – but that was half a mile away. There was one public telephone box at our nearby string of small shops, the bright red British telephone box with the glass paneled sides like the model that you see in “Doctor Who.” And those were all the phones I can remember in my immediate environment. I never made a phone call till I came to the U.S. Once I was going to high school I got to know a few people who had phones, people who lived in the local town. But they were all people whose parents (usually the fathers) needed a phone for work purposes. We wrote letters or walked over to talk directly to the people we needed to see.

No out-of-season vegetables and fruits – For six years the war made merchant shipping a dangerous endeavor used only for essential supplies (so no bananas), but even before the war items like fresh pineapples or asparagus were available only in London or other big cities and bought by professionals and other upper-class people. Our treats – pineapple and the like – came in cans, and those had only started to come back more commonly on the market by the time I left England in 1948. But we did have the joy of seasonal fruits and vegetables appearing in the shops as the year wore round. Too many potatoes, carrots, cabbages, rutabagas, and brussels sprouts – but always apples – during the winter. And then late spring: strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, green peas, green beans, new potatoes – each sweet and delicious.

No supermarkets as we know them. Even if you registered to buy certain rations at Sainsbury’s (groceries, meats, dairy), you could not buy there things like cleaning supplies, or soap, or the hundred other things we expect to pick up in our local Safeway store (or Tesco, etc., in England).

                                               

I’m quitting here – though things that people like us didn’t have keep coming to mind: no gears on bicycles, no Christmas trees, no credit cards, no yogurt, no typewriters, no pasta (except for canned spaghetti) – not start talking about things like computers!

And then there were the things that we had, but that we owned only one of – Where are the scissors? I need the sharp knife. Who hid the screw driver? That’s another story.

Raise a Glass of (Scottish) Gin to THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT

"You're going to Scotland and you don't like whiskey or play golf? Isn't that kind of a waste?" 

No. No indeed.

I may not drink whiskey (or whisky) or play golf for that matter — but it truly was one of the best trips of my life.

I fell in love with Scotland.

The Scottish trip was to research my newest Maggie Hope book, THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT. I spent a week in Edinburgh and then a week in Arisaig (on Scotland's west coast, near Port William). 

The week in Edinburgh was to research a plot line featuring Sarah Sanderson (remember her from MR. CHURCHILL'S SECRETARY?) Well, Sarah's still touring with the Vic-Wells Ballet (the precursor to the Royal Ballet), when a bevy of ballerinas become ill with a strange disease — or is it foul play? 

Meanwhile, Maggie — completely gutted from her last mission to Berlin where she did a number of unsavory things and is facing the moral fallout — is back at her old training camp in Arisaig, this time as an instructor. 

Here's where things get interesting. The actual manor house where the SOE (Special Operation Executive) agents trained is now a bed and breakfast, called Arisaig House. So I was not only able to go to Arisaig House, tour the buildings and walk the grounds, but I was able to stay there.

Readers, I loved it.

I saw exactly where all the agents did their paramilitary training. I saw the bridge they pretend bombed, the huts where the ammunition was kept, the beach where they threw grenades. ("You might see the odd grenade — they wash up on shore occasionally," said the gardener.) There are memorials to the brave women and men who trained there both at Arisaig House and also in the town of Arisaig.

Meanwhile, I was the only guest at the inn, so the family who runs it (and their three golden labs) pretty much adopted their odd American novelist for the week. I felt like an exchange student. It was fantastic.

Now, I might not be much for whiskey, but I would like to raise a glass today to toast Scotland — and I'm going to create a summer cocktail, using gin. 

Yes, gin.

Gin's having a bit of a renaissance in Scotland, with small-batch, handcrafted boutique gins using indigenous Scottish herbs and spices. Hendrick's is getting better known here in the U.S. (a gin that tones down the juniper flavor in favor of notes of cucumber and rose) — but there are others also worth seeking out, such as Edinburgh, Botanic, and Caorunn.

And so, without further ado, I'd like to present a summery cocktail, perfect for sipping while reading THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT — The Arisaig, a variation on the classic Gin and Tonic.

The Arisaig Cocktail

Here's what you'll need for ingredients:

2 parts Scottish gin (or any gin, really — but humor me)

2/3 parts freshly squeezed lime juice

1/2 part Elderflower liqueur (I'm partial to St-Germain, but I hear the Bitter Truth is excellent)

Mint leaves

Cucumber slices to garnish

Tonic water

And here's what to do:

Add mint to glass and break with muddler. Add ice. Add other ingredients. Top with tonic and give it a still. Garnish with cucumber slice.

And, as they say in Gaelic, Slàinte!

FROM THE PUBLISHER: For fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd, and Anne Perry, The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent is a gripping new mystery featuring intrepid spy and code breaker Maggie Hope. And this time, the fallout of a deadly plot comes straight to her own front door.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue. When three ballerinas fall strangely ill in Glasgow—including one of Maggie’s dearest friends—Maggie partners with MI-5 to uncover the truth behind their unusual symptoms. What she finds points to a series of poisonings that may expose shocking government secrets and put countless British lives at stake. But it’s the fight brewing in the Pacific that will forever change the course of the war—and indelibly shape Maggie’s fate.

“You’ll be [Maggie Hope’s] loyal subject, ready to follow her wherever she goes.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT is available at your local independent bookstore, library, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

Remembrance Day

It's Veterans Day here in the U.S. and Remembrance Day (or Poppy Day) in the U.K.

In Britain, a two-minute silence is traditionally observed. The First Two Minute Silence in London took place on November 11, 1919 — and was reported in the Manchester Guardian the following day:

The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

In 2006, it was discovered that Nazi agents in England had, in fact, embedded Morse code in drawings of models wearing the latest fashions, in an attempt to outwit Allied censors.

According to the released British security service files, Nazi agents relayed sensitive military information using the dots and dashes of Morse code incorporated in the drawings. They posted the letters to their handlers, hoping that counterespionage experts would be fooled by the seemingly innocent pictures.

British secret service officials became aware of the ruse and issued censors with a code-breaking guide to intercept them. “Heavy reinforcements for the enemy expected hourly,” is the message disguised as a decorative pattern in the stitching of gowns, hats and blouses in the line drawing above.

This discovery of hidden code, and the fact that it was concealed in an ad for women's clothes of all places, was the catalyst for my heroine Maggie Hope's foray into the world of espionage.

Thank you Evay, for sending that clipping my way!

The Sadler's Wells Ballet

One of the characters in Mr. Churchill's Secretary, Sarah Sanderson, is a corps dancer with the Sadler's Wells Ballet, the forerunner to the Royal Ballet.

Even after being an editor at Dance Magazine, I knew very little about the Sadler's Wells. Thank goodness for the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, particularly for issues of Dance Observer from the thirties and forties.

So, what did I learn? Well, the original company, the Vic-Wells Ballet, was established by Madame Ninette de Valoise in London in 1931. Frederick Ashton was named the company’s choreographer in 1935, and a young Margot Fonteyn (really Peggy Hookham!) was the company's fast-rising prima ballerina. The company was renamed the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1940, and in 1956 became the Royal Ballet.

Frederick Ashton and his Ballets by David Vaughn was a terrific resource for information on the Vic-Wells Ballet.

One of the most amazing stories about the Vic-Wells/Sadler's Wells Ballet is that they were stranded in Holland when war broke out, and barely escaped. They left behind the sets, costumes and notes for the Frederick Ashton/ Constance Lambert ballet, Horoscope, which starred Margot Fonteyn and Michael Soams, now forever lost.

However, I'm delighted to say that Ashton's 1939 production of Sleeping Beauty starring Margot Fonteyn not only survived, but will be be performed by the Royal Ballet in the spring of 2010.

Victory Gardens

UK Citizens were urged to plant their own Victory Gardens (or War Gardens) to add fruit and vegetables to their diet. Victory Gardens also saved on shipping costs and fuel.

After the U.S. joined the war in 1941, Victory Gardens became common in the States as well.

This past summer, in the shadow of the so-called Great Recession, First Lady Michelle Obama planted a "Victory Garden" on the South Lawn of the White House. It's the first vegetable garden on the White House grounds since Eleanor Roosevelt's during the World War II years

My family also planted a few things this summer. All right, in window boxes, but still. It wasn't inspired by the First Lady though, but by our young son, who wanted to grow pumpkins.

(Note: don't try growing pumpkins in window boxes. We did fine with pumpkin sprouts and even orange pumpkin flowers, but as the plants grew, they needed more and more water. And the soil of the window box, even with twice daily waterings, simply couldn't support them. Plus, the flowers need to be pollinated by bees; I'm not sure if bees can fly as high as our window boxes.)

RIP pumpkins.

We also planted fennel, again, because my son somehow got it into his head to plant fennel. I had no idea he even knew what fennel was, but I think he liked the picture on the seed packet. So far, so good, but I rather doubt that the kid who won't even eat corn or red peppers or carrots (foods other parents tell me their kids love) is going to eat fennel. But who knows? At least The Husband and I are looking forward to fennel.

We also tried to grow herbs. The chives did all right, but the cilantro took over everything else. The poor basil and oregano didn't have a chance.

Still, as I started to make a shopping list today for Spicy Sweet Potato Soup (which uses fresh cilantro), I had a moment of, "Hey, take that Union Markup (Union Market) and Whole Paycheck (Whole Foods). Screw you and your over-priced fresh herbs!"

I believe War-era Britons would be proud.

Alan Turing Honored

Alan Turing — mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer — is widely considered by many historians to be just as influential in winning World War II as Winston Churchill.

Turing's work was cracking German codes. More specifically, creating the "bombe" that translated the coded messages sent by Nazi Enigma machines, a forerunner to the modern computer.

Turing was homosexual — and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952, after admitting to a relationship with a man.

He was chemically castrated as a "treatment," and his criminal record meant his security privileges were withdrawn and he could do no more work with the UK government.

Two years later he killed himself, at age 41.

There is, of course, no happy ending to Turing's story; but at least last month an apology was made.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a statement apologizing for Britain's treatment of Alan Turing, ending with, "So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better."

(Read the statement in its entirety here.)

Keep Calm and Carry On

This British World War II poster from 1939 has had an unexpected renaissance of late.

Ironically, the poster was never distributed in England during the war, and was only recently discovered in a British shop.

Today it's on posters of all sorts of colors that might have surprised Brits back then (turquoise, hot pink, lime green). On design boards such as Apartment Therapy, it was first beloved and now decried as ubiquitous.

Still, I love it, both sentiment and design. It remains relevant seventy years later.