What attracted you to it?

I came to historical mysteries by way of long-standing interests in  archaeology and anthropology. Or it might be better to say I came to history that way and to history mysteries by accident. I enjoy both  history and science fiction and fantasy. All of them, done well, serve to broaden the mind and emotions out of the limitations of whatever time and place we live in. If we stay cramped into where and when we are, our chances of mental and emotional growth are in effect stunted. I like to venture into other when and other where, to explore other ways of seeing the world, other ways of being alive than what the confines of here and now dictate. What I was working at was the writing of historical novels when the chance to write historical mysteries came my way. Intrigued by the added challenge, I took it.

Were attracted to a particular time period? What about that setting appealed to you?

Out of the various time periods I’ve an interest in, I’ve ended up spending most of my time in England in the first half of the 1400s. It was first the politics and personalities of the time interested me, but to understand those, I had to understand the economics, sociology, philosophy, religion, literature, and everything else about the time. The more I’ve researched (and I’ve been at it for about 45 years now, with no end in sight), the more I’ve enjoyed the complexities and nuances of the time. I like, too, that we have actual portraits of people – ordinary as well as royal -- from then. We can see their faces and trace their lives and visit places where they lived, all of which helps me go deeper into that other when I mentioned above.

What are the hardest and easiest things about writing in the genre?

The hardest thing is staying “in period”, of having the characters behave according to their time, their beliefs, not ours. So many historicals – both mystery and otherwise – are just paste works of modern people stuck into costumes and castles or whatever, acting out the author’s fantasy of “Here is how I would have been had I lived then,” usually in a rehash of clichés about a time period that set my teeth on edge. If I come across one more novel set during the Black Death ...

Of course I go what could be seen as overboard in trying for accuracy: I try to keep the vocabulary in my books pre-1500 – not just what the characters say but what I say as the author. For an instance, in one book a main character was a very nervous man, but while “nervous” existed as a word in the 1400s, it did not at all mean what it means today. So I had to find medieval ways of describing the character. Nor was “pregnant” a word at the time, and I had to search out the different ways a bearing woman would have been referred to. Things like that serves to keep me “in period”, forcing me to be inside the medieval world, rather than writing about it from “outside”.

How do you perform your research?
I start with books – at first scholarly studies with footnotes and bibliographies that can lead me ever deeper in ever more refined works about whatever aspect I’m pursuing. Then published actual documents from the times – bureaucratic documents such as the Close Rolls, Patent Rolls, and Fine Rolls are wonderfully detailed; and household records; and court proceedings not only at the high courts but at village levels – those are all deeply revealing. And of course there’s the actual literature of the time. Right now, for me, it’s the plays that were being performed. But going to the actual landscape, being in actual buildings from the time – not just the churches and castles but ordinary houses; there’s much reconstruction being done – is invaluable. AND wearing the clothing and living by the manners of the time, for a few days at the very least, reveals more than can be had from any book.

Do you read other authors in the genre?

Very few. I tend to get cranky very fast, especially with books purporting to be in a medieval setting and awash in clichés about the time. (If I read about one more garbage-infested street … What do you think all those town laws about keeping streets clean were meant to do?)

How do you avoid anachronisms, especially in how the detective investigates and reasons?

I do my best to avoid anachronisms by way of all that heavy-duty research I wrote about above. I have immersed myself in the time as far as possible, to the point that sometimes something I haven’t thought about just doesn’t feel right when I come to it in my writing and I have to go and look it up, usually discovering it is indeed wrong for the time. As for how the detective investigates and reasons – reasoning was alive and well in the Middle Ages. Churchmen were advised to analyze carefully any claims of miracles and cross-question the witnesses. Juries received directives on how to weigh evidence. Coroners were told how to investigate a crime scene and the dead body. The word “detective” may date from the 1700s, but the verb “detect” and the noun “detection” are very much medieval and meant what they mean today. The vocabulary and tools of investigation have changed -- oh, what I sometimes wouldn’t give for an alibi, fingerprints, and some DNA testing -- but the awareness of how to go about investigating suspicious circumstances was strong. And by the way, speaking of clichés, by the 1400s in England both torture and ordeals by fire and water were illegal; they were no longer believed to be reasonable ways of learning guilt or innocence.