By Annie R. McEwen
“And what
do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you—I am at rest
with you—I have come home.” Lord
Peter Wimsey, speaking to Harriet Vane, in Dorothy Sayers’s Busman's
Honeymoon
It’s news to
nobody that genres overlap. My favorite genre is a layer cake: historical
romantic suspense. I like to read it; I love to write it. Maybe getting romance
all up in suspense’s face seems natural to me because I’ve had some success
with it, most recently in my four-book Victorian noir series The Corset
Girls, published by Bloodhound Books (UK). The series delivers eight working
class characters: four women from a bespoke corset salon and the four men who
love them. Of the men, three are former members of London’s most notorious
criminal gang, the Jacks, and the fourth is a Royal Navy deserter and spy.
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“Six years
in the gang. For him, they’d started with outrage. Outrage at being left to
hold together a family with no wage earner except him. At his older sister Con,
for running away with some man because she figured nothing could be worse than
Whitechapel, then disappearing so completely that she hadn’t been heard from
since. At foul water and disease that took two of his younger siblings, a boy
and a girl, and no money for help that might have saved them. At crooked
coppers, leaking roofs, putrid air, no coal, and streets so low and squalid that
the thieves robbed each other because no one else had anything to steal.
After the
outrage, it was just rage. The Jacks fueled that. Rage that was pure,
white-hot, useful after a fashion in his new profession, the profession they
all shared. The things they’d done, the things he’d done … At what point had the
leg-breaking and skull-cracking become a sick sort of normal? A day on the
docks. A shift in the factory.”
Bad enough that
he has to live with his violent history, but when Kell falls for an innocent
corset girl, Jillian Morehouse, he confronts an impossible choice. Bury his
gang past under half-truths and lies? Or disclose the horrors that might drive
away the woman he loves?
“How could
he tell her what he was? How could he not?
Jillian, I’m
a killer.
They all
were, the Jacks. They weren’t cold-blooded assassins; they hadn’t taken
contracts to end lives. But they had ended them. Defending themselves,
defending their gains, defending the hellish patch of ground they held. In
dustups, one on one, threats answered, revenge gone too far. In street brawls,
in gang wars.
Jillian, I
have to tell you about my past.
In his
mind, Kell heard himself say the words. But his mouth was sealed and that
shamed him almost as much as the truth he couldn’t bring out.”
So, what
about you? Do you enjoy a little love with your crime? A lot? Can you point out
any books you read and liked—or didn’t—because of the romance? Examples of slow
burns, fast falls, bad boys, femmes fatales, broken hearts, cold hearts,
or none at all?
Share below!
Let’s talk about when love is, or isn’t, a crime.
And to read The
Corset Girls, Unlaced, click here.
Book Two of the series, Unbound, launches August 6, 2025.
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Winner of the
2022 Page Turners Writing Award (Romance Category), Annie garnered both a First
and Second Place 2022 RTTA (Romance Through the Ages Award), the 2023 MAGGIE
Award, and the 2023 Daphne du Maurier Award. She was a Finalist for the 2024
Page Turners Writing Award and Shortlisted for a Writer’s Mentorship Award.
Annie’s short fiction appears in numerous anthologies. Sign up for her monthly,
mad, merry little newsletter for updates on where love and crime take her: https://www.anniermcewen.com/contact
Certainly sounds like a series I need to look into. Thanks for pointing it out to us.
ReplyDeleteKind of you to say so! I'm honored to be a guest here.
DeleteThought your layer cake example was spot on both to the description of your book and to much of what we read and enjoy.
ReplyDeleteWe like our fusion, don't we?
DeleteLove the layer cake metaphor. Perfect.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kait. I may have been hungry when I wrote that. :)
ReplyDelete