R. N. Morris and I connected several years ago over our shared love of historical fiction. Roger’s forte is mystery with one series set in St. Petersburg, another set in London plus a few standalone novels. His latest novel is Death of a Princess. And where does he get his inspiration? Over to you, Roger.
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Death of a Princess is the latest in my “Empire of Shadows” historical mystery series. The books are set in Russia in 1880 and each one can be read as a standalone.
To be honest, when my publisher first suggested I write a spin-off series derived from my earlier “St Petersburg Mysteries” series I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. Although they’ve since been reissued, the original novels first came out between 2007 and 2011. It felt like a long time ago. I’d written a whole other series in between. My head was no longer in nineteenth century Russia.
Plus, I knew how much research I had put into those first four books. The prospect of trying to get back up to speed was daunting.
But then I started getting ideas. Ideas of what the stories could be and how the main character – Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky – might have moved on from the period of the original books. So I decided to go for it.
When I wrote the first Porfiry books, I played a little game where each of the stories was a homage to a different Dostoevsky novel. A Gentle Axe came out of Crime and Punishment. A Vengeful Longing was my Notes from Underground. A Razor Wrapped in Silk was inspired by The Idiot. Cleansing Flames owed its genesis to Demons. It didn’t matter if the reader got the connections or not. It’s just something that appealed to me.
I should say here, it’s perfectly possible to read my books without having read any Dostoevsky. In fact, some readers have told me that they went on to try Crime and Punishment after reading one of my books.
Anyhow, I decided to play the same game with the new series. After all, there was still a number of Dostoevsky books I hadn’t tackled, most notably The Brothers Karamazov, which is my favourite of his novels. A stone-cold masterpiece. But that felt too big to take on. (There is a limit to my literary hubris.)
For Law of Blood, the first in my new series, I went back to Demons. It is a rich source of inspiration for the period, as it is set in the world of pre-revolutionary terrorists. Demons itself was inspired by a real-life event Dostoevsky read about in the papers, the murder of a radical dissident by a group of his fellow agitators led by Sergey Nechayev. A similar incident finds its way into Law of Blood.
The Crimson Child, the second book in the trilogy, was inspired by the opening of Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband, where the protagonist Velchaninov is struck by the sudden appearance of a mysterious man wearing a black top hat who turns out to be someone from his past.
Another black top hat features in Death of a Princess, but the book’s main inspiration is The Gambler, the novel which Dostoevsky wrote hurriedly to fulfil an onerous publishing contract. Originally, I wanted to write a novel set in a German spa town revolving around a set of Russian gamblers. But after a little bit of historical research, I discoverd that by the time my novel was set (1880) the puritanical Prussian state had closed down all the casinos.
I decided to switch the action to Lipetsk, a Russian spa resort. I chose Lipetsk because that was the location of a real-life meeting of extremist radicals that led to the foundation of the People’s Will, the terrorist organisation that set itself the goal of assassinating Tsar Alexander II. You can read more about that event in an article I wrote for Aspects of History. I dropped the gambling aspect of the story and focused instead on Lipetsk’s role as a health spa. The fact that there was also an important ironworks in the town gave me the basis for my plot.
Death of a Princess is the last of my “Empire of Shadows” series. All three books are set to be published as an omnibus.
So what next for me? I still haven’t written that Brothers Karamazov inspired book, but to be honest, I don’t think I ever will.
Many thanks, Roger. Clearly, Dostoevsky has been your muse!
Death of a Princess by R. N. Morris
Summer 1880. Lipetsk, a spa town in Russia.
The elderly and cantankerous Princess Belskaya suffers a violent reaction while taking a mud bath at the famous Lipetsk Sanatorium. Soon after, she dies. Dr Roldugin, the medical director of the sanatorium, is at a loss to explain the sudden and shocking death.
He points the finger at Anna Zhdanova, a medical assistant who was supervising the princess’s treatment. When Anna disappears, it looks to some like an admission of guilt.
Suspicion also falls on the princess’s nephew Belsky, who appears far from grief-stricken at his aunt’s death. He now stands to inherit the entire family fortune, which will enable him to marry his fiancée Amélie Damour. Meanwhile, investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky arrives in Lipetsk from St Petersburg, seeking treatment after a nervous breakdown.
Virginsky is befriended by the Babkins, an elderly couple staying at the sanatorium. Learning that he is a detective, they urge him to investigate the suspicious circumstances of the princess’s death. But Virginsky is unwilling to be drawn in.
Then, while wandering the streets, Virginsky overhears a conversation that he is unable to ignore.
Believing he now has information about the whereabouts of the missing woman, he tries to alert the local magistrate but is dismissed as a fantasist. And so he reluctantly undertakes his own investigation, alone.
But will Virginsky get closer to the truth or walk straight into a deadly trap?
R. N Morris is the author of the Porfiry Petrovich series of historical crime novels, featuring the investigating magistrate from Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment.
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
