The Magical Suggestiveness of Place: Blackfriars Bridge, London by Karen Odden

This past December I was lucky enough to sneak in a visit to England between Covid surges. My daughter was studying at Oxford for the fall term, and I arrived December 1 to retrieve her and have ten days together in London, walking through parks, prowling around the V&A museum and bookstores, and having tea. (Fortunately, we like the same activities when traveling.) One afternoon, I went for a solitary walk, revisiting places that appear in my fourth Victorian mystery, Down a Dark River. I made a point of stopping at Blackfriars Bridge because I set a climactic scene there. (No spoilers, I promise.) Places work on me, evoking the past and suggesting themes and tropes and plot elements. Blackfriars is so steeped in history and symbolism that the last time I was in England, four years ago, I stood on the bridge and thought, I should set a scene here someday.

 

Unlike my previous three books, also set in 1870s London, Down a Dark River was inspired by a twenty-first century source, an article about race and the law in the US that included a harrowing account of a young Black woman in Alabama. As she jaywalked across a quiet street, she was hit by a speeding car, driven by a wealthy white man who was intoxicated. She suffered terrible injuries, and when her family sued, the judge awarded her only $2,000 (ostensibly because she was jaywalking). Outraged, her father took an unusual step: he threatened the judge’s daughter. To my mind, he did this to show the judge what it was to almost lose a child, to force the judge to stand in his shoes, however briefly.

This story reminded me that revenge is more complicated than the rather glib, brief phrase “an eye for an eye” suggests. Sometimes revenge is a last-ditch howling cry for acknowledgment of one’s unspeakable pain. I found myself compelled to write a book about failures of empathy and the desire for revenge.

Given the absence of speeding cars in 1870s London, I began researching boats and slowly came to understand the profound symbolic value of the Thames River for Victorian Londoners. I have Michael Corravan explain it early on: “Some people say the Thames is the lifeblood of the city, and in certain lights I can see it, on those days when the breeze blows just the right way and shards of sunlight brighten the waves stirred up by boats carrying the foodstuffs and mail, textiles and machines that make our modern life what it is. But me? I say it’s mostly a cesspool, a receptacle for the entire city’s detritus, complete with entrails and rotting corpses.” In my book, the Thames serves both as the setting for the murders of young women who are laid out in boats and as a symbol of the dark vengeance that runs in some people’s hearts.  

For the book’s climactic scene, I wanted to set it in a place that reflected both the long history of

England and Victorian modernity; that had both solidity and changefulness; and that suggested how Corravan must wrestle with complex, ambiguous moral questions. The original Blackfriars Bridge (built in 1769) was named for a Dominican religious order founded around 1216. The current bridge was opened by Queen Victoria in 1869, so it was anchored, literally, in the heart of the Victorian era (1837-1901).

Many people don’t realize that the Thames is tidal all the way up through London to Teddington Lock, with up to 24 feet of change in the water level between high and low tide. The underground Fleet River, a silent stepbrother to the Thames, flows in by the north end of Blackfriars Bridge. All this suggested to me the daily changefulness and the underground currents that shape Inspector Corravan’s world.

The views from Blackfriars Bridge are striking, for you can see an important symbol of Victorian progress and modernity on the north shore—Bazelgette’s Victoria Embankment, which was built to allow sewage to be shunted away from central London to a processing plant about ten miles away.

 On the south shore are the mudlarks, scrounging for treasures from centuries ago.

 

 (If you want to know more about mudlarking, I recommend Mudlark, a fascinating account by Lara Maiklem.)

In the distance, you can see St. Paul’s and the twin spires of the law courts – which to me represent the values of mercy and justice, respectively. It felt wonderfully apropos for a protagonist wrestling with the question of how to balance mercy and justice in his work. So Blackfriars Bridge will be appearing again in my next Inspector Corravan book, Under a Veiled Moon (November 2022).

Have you gone to a place that shapes your writing? Or that you realize later has symbolic heft?

 

USA Today bestselling novelist Karen Odden earned her PhD in English at NYU. Her four novels, all set in 1870s London, have won awards for historical fiction and mystery. Her e-newsletter publishes every 6 weeks, featuring exclusive content and essays and giveaways by guest authors. Connect with Karen at www.karenodden.com.