Sweet Things Dying - After Words, Part I

True Crime

A mystery writer is almost always, in some respect, a fantasy writer too. Not necessarily the sort of fantasy that involves swords and sorcery (though such a mix does exist), but one that twists facts into fiction and turns the scientific into the imaginative. After all, if a mystery writer wants to put out a book authentic to the real world of criminals and detectives, he is better off writing under the banner of true crime. Or at the very least, as Truman Capote did with In Cold Blood, he should write something that walks a fine line between true crime and crime fiction.

It's obvious that Sweet Things Dying is a work of fiction. But it was not generated entirely from the thin air, and in writing it I borrowed heavily from real people and events that, with a bit of creative wringing, were reshaped and repurposed into the novel’s narrative.

The largest influence on the story and the development of the fated Heather Bloom comes from the real-life mystery of Mary Rogers. Only 20 years old when she vanished in 1841, Mary was a popular New Yorker who worked for a Broadway tobacconist where she became known as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl.” Her employer, John Anderson, recognised the value of her attractiveness and paid her generous wages to keep her around for she proved to be an effective lure for men to come into the shop, flirt, and make eyes all while spending their money to do so. Heather serves a similar function for McWilliams at his Spitalfields coffeehouse, and the parallels between the young women continue from there.