Tour Schedule

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
07:00 PM BARNES & NOBLE #2884/Dallas
7700 W Northwest Hwy Dallas, TX 75225

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
06:30 PM MURDER BY THE BOOK
2342 Bissonnet ST Houston, TX 77005

Thursday, June 26, 2008
06:00 PM - 07:30 PM BOOK PASSAGE/Mystery Conference
51 Tamal Vista Blvd Corte Madera, CA 94925

Friday, June 27, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM BOOK PASSAGE/Mystery Conference
51 Tamal Vista Blvd Corte Madera, CA 94925

Saturday, June 28, 2008
06:00 PM - 07:00 PM BOOK PASSAGE/Mystery Conference
51 Tamal Vista Blvd Corte Madera, CA 94925

Saturday, June 28, 2008
12:00 PM M IS FOR MYSTERY
86 E. Third Ave San Mateo, CA 94401

Saturday, June 28, 2008
03:15 PM - 04:45 PM BOOK PASSAGE/Mystery Conference
51 Tamal Vista Blvd Corte Madera, CA 94925

Sunday, June 29, 2008
03:30 PM BOOK PASSAGE/Mystery Conference
51 Tamal Vista Blvd Corte Madera, CA 94925

Monday, June 30, 2008
07:00 PM POISONED PEN
4014 N Goldwater Blvd., Ste. Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
10:30 AM MESQUITE PUBLIC LIBRARY
4525 Paradise Village Parkway Phoenix, AZ 85032

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
07:00 PM BARNES & NOBLE/#2892
Barnes and Noble 5130 E Broadway Tucson, AZ 85711

Monday, July 07, 2008
07:00 PM PRAIRIE LIGHTS BOOKS
15 S. Dubuque ST Iowa City, IA 52240

Tuesday, July 08, 2008
06:00 PM BOOKWORM
8702 Pacific St Omaha, NE 68114

Wednesday, July 09, 2008
07:30 PM LEE BOOKSELLERS
5500 S 56th ST Edgewood Center Lincoln, NE 68516

Thursday, July 10, 2008
RAINY DAY BOOKS AT THE KANSAS CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY/RainyDayBooks.com
2706 W 53rd ST Fairway, KS 66205
(913) 384-3126

Where Memories Lie—Behind the Book

I’m just back from almost three weeks in London, my second research trip for Where Memories Lie. I usually make at least two trips per book, sometimes three. The first trip is an idea gathering expedition, what I call “sponging”, as in soaking up ideas and atmosphere. This generates the basic building blocks of the story; plot, character, and most importantly, setting. The second and/or third trip is more detail-oriented, working out the exact locations where scenes occur and checking facts. On this trip, for instance, I had to make sure that Gavin Hoxley, my detective in 1952, would actually have seen the Albert Bridge when he goes to the scene of a murder. (It took me two days research on the Internet to make sure that the Albert Bridge would have been lit in May of 1952—and in fact, it was lit for the first time in May of 1951 for the Festival of Britain. And that little bit of research led to an idea for a future book set in a housing estate in North London that was purpose-built for the Festival, and has now been restored. That’s the way the odds and ends get into the idea soup that eventually turns into a book.) I had put the 1952 murder in the Royal Hospital Gardens, working from sketchy memory, and it turns out the garden I had in mind is actually Cheyne Gardens, a small heavily wooded garden just at the end of Cheyne Walk.

As much of the book is set in Notting Hill, I stayed, as I often do, in a flat in Pembridge Crescent, just one street off Portobello Road. It is what is called a garden flat, an English euphemism for the basement apartment. The flat does, in fact, have a wonderful garden in back, like a green well, and if the flat is rather shabbily chic, it has a gas fire in the sitting room, beautiful antiques and original art, and a conservatory built off the kitchen. I feel quite proprietary about the flat, as this is big part of what I do when researching a book—just living in London. I shop at the local supermarkets and delis, buy flowers, read newspapers, watch television, people-watch while I work at Starbucks, and of course, eavesdrop at the local pub. And as for any book set even partly in Notting Hill, there is Portobello Market. Every Saturday, rain or shine, masses of people flow down Portobello Road from Notting Hill Gate, past the antique arcades and junk stalls, the flower and vegetable and food vendors. The sounds of the different buskers fade in and out as you move down the hill, as do the smells of food cooking—sausages, paella, crepes—and it fascinates me just as much now as it did the very first time I went.

Good shoes and a camera are basic essentials of a research trip. I spend hours walking, taking pictures of possible locations for scenes, getting a feel for the streets and the atmosphere. For Where Memories Lie, a day’s walking in Notting Hill took me to Erika Rosenthal’s imagined house in Arundel Crescent; Duncan and Gemma’s house near the top of Lansdowne Road (imagining Gemma, walking down the hill to Erika’s house on a dark May night); Notting Hill Police Station; Melody Talbot’s imagined flat; the site of the former Jewish synagogue on Kensington Park Road, now a Montessori school; the site of the long vanished Mercury Café, where Erika goes for lunch and news during the war.

Other days I spent exploring World’s End on the far west edge of Chelsea, where young Kristin Cahill lives in a council flat with her parents; Cheyne Walk, where Kristin’s boyfriend Dominic lives with his mother in a grand house; Tedworth Square in the heart of Chelsea, where my detective lives in 1952 (that would still have been possible, then, on a policeman’s salary); St Barts hospital, near St. Paul’s in the City, where Gemma’s mum is being treated for leukemia; a rabbit-warren of streets in Fitzrovia, just north of Oxford St., the home of a down-and-out actor named Harry Pevensey; and Old Brompton Road in South Kensington, which in Where Memories Lie is the setting of the fictional auction house, Harrowby’s, where Erika Rosenthal’s long lost Art Deco necklace turns up for sale.

And always, as I walk the streets of Notting Hill, I imagine the bombs falling, and later the long, slow rebuilding of damaged lives and buildings, and Erika making a new life for herself, ever haunted by the shadows of the past.