Musing Monday (September 9)

Hosted by Should be Reading

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

This week I’m musing about the use of Family History as Fiction; This genre combines two of my interests in one:

It I have traced some of my ancestors mainly through tracking them back through the UK Census using birth, marriage and death certificates to add a little flesh to the bones of this 10 year glimpse at their lives. I often wonder what their lives were really like. How did my Great-Grandmother cope at the age of 24 when she realised she was pregnant and unmarried at the turn of the century?  Funnily enough this wasn’t passed down in the oral history I’d been told by my beloved Grandmother. Oh, I knew that Rose, her mother, had married a man who had been widowed and was 20 years older than she was. No-one said that she married him 6 months to the day after his first wife had died and my Great-Aunt was born less than 4 months after that – I did the maths! I’m sure the internet has uncovered many such secrets from the past leaving those of us in the present to imagine the back-story.

I digress; Dan Waddell who wrote the tie-in the to the popular family history program Who Do You Think You Are then wrote his first novel, The Blood Detective, (nominated for he CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, the Macavity Debut Novel award in the USA and the Cezam Prix Littéraire in France.)

Blurb

As dawn breaks over London, the body of a young man is discovered in a windswept Notting Hill churchyard. The killer has left Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and his team a grisly, cryptic clue…
However it’s not until the clue is handed to Nigel Barnes, a specialist in compiling family trees, that the full message becomes spine-chillingly clear. For it leads Barnes back more than one hundred years – to the victim of a demented Victorian serial killer…
When a second body is discovered Foster needs Barnes’s skills more than ever. Because the murderer’s clues appear to run along the tangled bloodlines that lie between 1879 and now. And if Barnes is right about his blood-history, the killing spree has only just begun…
From the author of the bestselling Who Do You Think You Are? comes a haunting crime novel of blood-stained family histories and gruesome secrets. . .

He then followed up with Blood Atonement, featuring the same central characters, genealogist Nigel Barnes and DCI Grant Foster.

Blurb

Katie Drake was an affluent single mother living in Queen’s Park – until someone cut her throat and tore out her tongue. Worse still, the killer has abducted her fourteen-year-old daughter, Naomi.
Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster quickly sees chilling parallels with the disappearance of teenager Leonie Stamey three years earlier. With hopes fading of finding Naomi alive, he calls on genealogist Nigel Barnes to piece together the links between the families of the two girls.
The trail leads Nigel back to 1890, when a young couple arrived in the UK. A husband and wife fleeing a terrible crime in their past, and harbouring a secret that’s now having bloody repercussions in the present …

Read more about Dan Waddell on his website http://www.danwaddell.net/

This led me to seek out other books in this genre and I came across Steve Robinson’s first book featuring Jefferson Tate. JT, to his friends is the genealogist who doesn’t know his own past but goes on thrilling adventures to find the truth in the past. His first adventure was within the pages of In the Blood

The story starts with American genealogist Jefferson Tayte, JT, having to board a plane to Heathrow before catching a train to Cornwall in order to complete an assignment for a client’s birthday, only problem is he is scared of flying. It took a while to get into the story as early on we are introduced to the Fairborne family boarding the boat, Betsy Rose, in America to sail to England in 1783. Once the JT had to Cornwall the parts from the past linked well with the many twists and turns happening.

JT is portrayed as a likeable character desperate to do a good job with integrity. There is quite a large cast of characters to get to know both in the past and in the present, and some of those baddies are really bad!!

This book is well written; it has a lot going for it and I would love to follow JT on his next adventure and maybe find his birth family in the process.

The second episode To the Grave and is set in World War II. This one is my favourite, possibly because of the time period.

Our American Genealogist Jefferson Tayte aka JT has been employed by Eliza Gray who has received a suitcase with some effects telling her that she was in fact adopted. JT travels to Leicestershire to discover who the mysterious Mena Lasseter was. The story of Mena is based towards the end of the war in 1944/45 but the current day story has just as much, if not more to offer.

The characters are well drawn and Mena’s story is an emotional one but at the same time there is a lot of intrigue in the present day. JT finds himself in danger but who wants to cover up what happened all those years ago.

This is a stand-alone story however I would suggest reading Steve Robinson’s previous book first. As before the genealogical angle is covered accurately but not laboriously so it only serves to enhance the story not get in the way of it.

This emotional, thrilling tale thoroughly deserves 5 stars, I can’t wait for the next one.

The latest book is called the Last Queen of England

This time the story revolves around Queen Anne and the Jacobites, a period in history that I didn’t know much about. Jefferson Tayte meets his old mentor, Marcus Brown and soon there is a murder and a puzzle to be solved. This is a fast paced story with JT getting into all sorts of difficult situations as he races to finish what his friend had started.

The beauty of Steve Robinson’s books are they can all be read as stand-alone books as they are all so different. Each one is written in an engaging way with JT being a rounded likable character. In this outing we are introduced to Jean, another strong, well-defined character who adds a different dimension to JT and one that I am hoping stays for the next instalment.

To give the reader a history lesson in a way that enhances and doesn’t interfere with the story indicates what a good writer the author is. A thoroughly good read particularly for anyone interested in genealogy and history.

I love JT and was thrilled that Steve Robinson has got a signed contract with Amazon Publishing even though it may mean a slight delay in the next book. Read more about JT and Steve Robinson on his website http://ancestryauthor.blogspot.co.uk/

Related articles

• Book Review: The Sleuth Book for Genealogists (eogn.com)
• How Genealogists Can Spread The Love Of WDYTYA Goodness (ipentimento.com)