Laura Shepherd-Robinson joins the Cluesletter today, discussing her new thriller set in Georgian-era London that features a widow, her new friend, and a harrowing battle of wits. The tension is delicious—literally, considering our heroine owns a confectionary shop—and I cannot overestimate how much it thrilled me. I felt like I was watching a Wimbledon match.
Read on for our chat about thriller heroines, writing multiple POVs, and the eighteenth century.
Connect with Laura on Instagram, Bluesky, and her website. Grab a copy of The Art of a Lie from your retailer of choice here.
Welcome, Laura! The Art of a Lie follows Hannah Cole, a widowed confectioner who is struggling to balance her shop’s business as her murdered husband’s secrets begin to surface. What do you love about Hannah’s character—in business, and in life? What makes her an excellent thriller heroine?
Thank you so much for featuring me! I love Hannah’s resilience and determination in the face of adversity. She is very much a woman in a man’s world and surrounded by men who are hostile to her ambitions, whether that be her fellow shopkeepers and suppliers (who don’t think a woman should be in trade), her unkind husband, or the London magistrate, Henry Fielding, who is investigating her husband’s murder. But Hannah refuses to be ground down, using her brains and charm to survive, however she can. I also love how she grows as a character during the novel: We see her warmth and wit emerge, even as we fear she might lose her lighter side forever if the forces ranged against her win out. Finally, she has a ruthless streak that the men in her life underestimate at their peril.
Hannah isn’t the only main character in the story; the handsome William Devereux, a friend of her late husband, offers her a helping hand with her business and with the investigation into her husband’s death. How does your mindset shift when writing the two characters’ perspectives? Is there one POV you prefer to write over the other, and why?
I had enormous fun writing William’s character. His voice came to me very naturally, and without wanting to spoil the plot, there was much opportunity for ribald humour, creative language and exploring the darker side of Georgian London. The voices of William and Hannah are very distinct, and yet their characters are very similar (which is a theme of the book). I loved writing some of the later scenes between William and Hannah as their relationship developed. I had the TV series The Affair in mind when writing some of the scenes, as the shifts in perspective mean you often see the same events from more than one viewpoint, giving you a different understanding of what has happened, and can appreciate the ways the two characters read and misread one another.
The magic of The Art of a Lie, in my opinion, lies in its tension. I don’t want to spoil it (!) but there is indeed a battle of wits so taut I was nearly biting my nails. How did you structure the story and plot the reveals of this book to maintain that tension?
My previous novels were more traditional crime stories which had a main ‘detective’ character trying to solve a mystery and ferret out other characters’ secrets. The reader only knew as much as the main character and could enjoy the process of trying to solve the crime alongside him or her. However, in this novel, I wanted to try something different. The secrets of the main characters are revealed fairly early in the plot, at which point the reader knows everything, and it is the characters who are in the dark about one another. The main tension of the novel comes from the reader being privy to that information, but not knowing how the plot will play out. I wanted to keep the reader in suspense all the way through, and to continue surprising them with plot twists and playing with their expectations. I’m so happy you thought that it worked!
Like The Art of a Lie, your other titles, The Square of Sevens, Daughters of Night, and Blood & Sugar, are set in Georgian-era London and beyond. What do you love about this time period, especially for crime? How do you research and prepare to write in this era?
I think the Georgian era is fascinating, but for baffling reasons it isn’t written about nearly as much as the Victorian era that came afterwards. I love the Georgian fashions and their craving for novelty and entertainment, but the period was so much more than the glittering world of balls and pleasure gardens depicted in Bridgerton (which I loved). During the eighteenth century, there was a great flowering of ideas (what we now call the Enlightenment), in which many of the concepts that still underpin our modern society developed: liberalism, the rule of law, and the rights of man. The scientific method also took hold on eighteenth century thinking and to my mind it has particular relevance to the crime novel, as it involved the process of weighing and considering evidence, considering hypotheses and coming to considered conclusions. But against this ‘enlightened’ backdrop, Georgian society was still very brutal: poverty, prostitution, the Atlantic slave trade, violent crime, blood sports and all the rest. I find these clashes of ideas and the attendant hypocrisies and contradictions to be very fertile ground for exploring in my novels.
Lastly, what’s next on your horizon? How are you celebrating this release?
I celebrated the publication of The Art of a Lie by making ice cream the Georgian way, as Hannah does in my book. In an age before freezers and fridges, the Georgians froze their cream by sitting it in bowls of ice. But of course, ice alone wasn’t enough to freeze the cream, they needed a secret ingredient: salt. When mixed with the ice, the salt causes an endothermic reaction (which the Georgians called the frigorific method) making the cream much colder so it freezes. I followed an original eighteenth century recipe to make Royal Ice, which is flavoured with cinnamon, clove, pistachio nuts and candied lemon and orange. I half-expected it not to work, but the salt worked its magic and after a few hours, I had ice cream! I can report that it was delicious, but I drew the line at some of the Georgian flavours. They made ice cream from everything, even Parmesan and artichoke!
Thanks so much to Laura for the interview. Detectives, I hope you enjoyed it! If you aren’t already subscribed, please be sure to sign up for the Cluesletter and get author features like this alongside other mystery goodies, delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday.