The most talked-about tourist attraction in Regency England in the summer of 1815 was the deposed French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, who spent two weeks on a British naval ship anchored off the southern coast of Devon. This little-known footnote in history plays out in the background of my new historical mystery-thriller, WHAT CANNOT BE SAID, in which Sebastian St. Cyr, Lord Devlin, investigates the bizarre murder of a woman and her daughter that takes place that fateful summer. After his bloody defeat at Waterloo on the eighteenth of June, Napoleon had returned to Paris, where he abdicated in favor of his young son before retreating to Josephine’s famous Château de Malmaison. At that point Josephine, his first wife, had been dead for over a year, the house had been ransacked, and its famous gardens were dying from neglect. Napoleon’s family and supporters urged him to immediately head for the west coast and take ship to the United States—in fact, his brother Joseph successfully did just that after failing to convince Napoleon to come with him. Instead, sunk in grief and depression, Napoleon wandered the echoing empty halls and ruined gardens of Malmaison. He delayed his departure for so long that by the time…

1–What is the title of your latest release? WHO CRIES FOR THE LOST. It’s #18 in my Sebastian St. Cyr series (and yes, I can’t believe I’m at #18!) 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? I’ve never been very good at these, but here it goes: When the mutilated body of an earl’s son with a treacherous past and ties to anatomist Paul Gibson’s mysterious French lover is pulled from the Thames, Sebastian St. Cyr must plunge into a sinister world of espionage and ancient folklore in order to save his best friend from being hanged for murder. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? In my former life as a history professor, my area of specialty was the French Revolution and Napoleonic Period. But when I thought about setting a mystery series in, say, Paris during the revolution, I quite frankly decided it would be too depressing. So I moved across the Channel to Regency England. Same general period, much more pleasant. This particular book takes place against the backdrop of the days leading up to Waterloo, as the population of London waits anxiously to hear the results of what everyone knows…

WHEN BLOOD LIES is the 17th in your Sebastian St. Cyr series. What keeps this character inspiring for you? Sebastian St. Cyr is such a complex, dynamic character: he’s clever and passionate and honorable, although he’s also willing to step over a few lines when necessary. I find that if I’m away from Sebastian and Hero and the others for too long, I miss them and get impatient to start the next book. A part of that is probably because there is an important personal story arc that runs through this series, plus several overarching mysteries that make this series unusual, and I suspect help keep it fresh for me. Before I started the series I had only written standalones. It’s fascinating for me as an author to be given the opportunity to follow a set of characters through years of their lives, exploring the ways they grow and change because of various life events and experiences. And of course, the period is fascinating. We tend to think of the Regency in terms of balls and carriages and duels at dawn, but there was so much more to it than that. This was the age of Napoleon and Goethe, Byron…