Mystery Author Interviews

MBTB manager Dean James interviews Anne Perry, from her home in Scotland, about the publication of the first in a new series of five novels, each to be set during the successive years of World War One.  They talked about the inspiration for the new series – which begins with No Graves as Yet (Ballantine; $7.50) and the second, Shoulder the Sky (Ballantine; $25.95), as well as about the fate of her much-loved other two series.

Dean:  The main character in your new series first appeared in an Edgar Award-winning short story entitled "Heroes."  At the time you wrote the story, did you envision a series of books built around Joseph Reavley and his family?  At what point did you decide there was a larger story to tell?

Anne:  At the time I wrote 'Heroes', I had no idea it could be more than one short story.  It was my agent, Don Maass, who suggested a whole book.  I thought the idea was crazy – but it grew on me until it became a compulsion!

Dean:  The new series hero, Joseph Reavley, has a very personal connection for you.  What is it?  What would you like readers to know about him before they read the series?

Anne:  Joseph is based on my maternal grandfather, Joseph Reavley, who was a Presbytarian minister, and did serve as a chaplain in the trenches in WWI.  His character is invented because I never knew him except through my mother's eyes.  However she has often told me how I would like him, and that we have many things in common – love of gardening, of Italian art, literature, history, landscapes etc., and particularly Dante, and of course a religious faith.  So I have let some of his character be very personal to me.

Dean:  The England of 1914, when the first book begins, is not that distant in time from the other books, but how different was it from the two "periods" of Victorian England that your readers are now so familiar with?  Was the Great War the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of modern England?

Anne:  Yes, I think the Great War was very much the end of the 'past', and the beginning of the modern world.  By far the most tumultuous changes socially and politically in any five years in the history of Europe, and possibly America, also.  Just look at a picture of women in 1914, and then in 1919!

Dean:  I thought that one of the important themes of  No Graves as Yet was the conflict between individual ideals and the collective good, and this is mirrored in various ways in the different characters' lives.  Is this an accurate reading?

Anne:  Yes, it is an accurate reading.  Very perceptive, and also the great question, is there anything at all which is worth fighting such a war about, with the devastating loss it will bring.  I believe yes, there are some freedoms which to sacrifice would be EVEN worse.  If you lose your culture, your identity, your belief in yourself, it is worse than war, and the loss may last generations.  We can now see countries where that has happened, and the physical loss of life is just as terrible, running into millions, literally.

Dean:  You have stated that, although each of the five books in the series can stand alone, there is one story that spans the series and won't conclude until the end of the fifth book.  Did you plot the entire series before you started writing the first book?

Anne:  I plotted the whole series before I began writing – 100 pages of dense outline, roughly 20 pages per book.

Dean:  How will this new series affect the writing and publication of the two Victorian series?  For example, with Death of a Stranger, the most recent Monk novel in which he regains most of his memory, some readers have suspected that Monk is being retired.

Anne:  Monk knows a great deal about his past, but has not recovered a total memory, only broad strokes, and a little detail.  That kind of amnesia does not go, so I am told.  I have already written and completed the next Monk story, for next Spring, and have a detailed outline for the next Pitt, for the Spring after.  One WWI story each Fall.  One Victorian story alternating year and year about each Spring.  No intention of retiring anybody!  I have a whole stack of new ideas for Monk!!  I am now working on the second WWI story and find the challenge marvelous.  I am really delighted that you like No Graves as Yet, and hope this will feel the same.

Review of No Graves as Yet by MBTB manager Dean James.
      On a sunny summer day in 1914 Cambridge theology professor Joseph Reavley is attending a cricket match when his younger brother Matthew comes to bring him heart-rending news.  Their parents have been killed in an automobile accident.  As if that weren't tragic enough, Matthew informs Joseph that their father John, a former Member of Parliament, had telephoned him to say that someone had given him a document outlining a conspiracy which threatens to shake England to its very foundations.  Matthew, a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, fears that the death of the elder Reavleys was no accident.  Shaken, now thrust into a too-early role as head of the family, Joseph works with his brother to determine what really happened to their parents and to find evidence of this provocative document. Even as the storm clouds of war begin to gather over Europe, Joseph and Matthew slowly gain evidence of some kind of monstrous conspiracy.  To complicate matters further, one of Joseph's most gifted students is murdered, and he is left to wonder what role the young man's death has played in the mysterious web tightening around him and his brother.
      Long known for her two outstanding series of Victorian novels, Perry here begins a sequence of five novels which will span the years of the first World War.  Though each novel will be complete in and of itself, Perry promises that there is "one story of supreme ambition and betrayal that spans throughout all five" and which won't be resolved until the final pages of the fifth book, set in 1918.  If the remaining four novels in the series match the quality of the first one, this sequence may well be Perry's masterwork.  She effortlessly sets the scene of a gilded England, suffused with the glow of the heady Edwardian years, on the verge of the abyss which is to come so quickly, and so devastatingly.  Joseph Reavley, who was first introduced in her Edgar Award-winning short story "Heroes," is a man of strong faith and quiet courage who must look deep into his own heart and mind to try to understand the dark questions which confront him in this book.  No Graves as Yet is a stunning achievement by a writer at the peak of her game.

Interview added 09/17/2003