There this a question that keeps me up at night, a question that spills from the black inside my skull and into the shadows that dwell in the corner of my eye; were female detectives a thing in America during the thirties? Who knows, really? I certainly don’t and that’s why Violet took almost twenty-seven years to gestate — to concoct a scenario where such a thing seemed plausible, plausible enough for someone to suspend their disbelief and enjoy what I’d written.
This is starting to sound like one of those recipe posts…
Allow me to set the scene: The First World War’s been over for thirteen years, America’s still in the depths of of The Big Sad, crime and Gangsters have swept the nation, but in a quiet part of Brooklyn, behind the blinds of an unassuming, dimly lit office… Violet is finished entertaining her latest client. Unusual for the time of day and having never done it in the last year, Violet is surprised by Chief Trent moments later. Trent looks worried, shaken even, and that’s all Violet needs to know about the case he’s about to lay on her lap; it’s going to be a bad one.
So far so good? I’ve my own doubts and the thing’s available right now…
Instead of starting with a fresh-faced, bright-eyed protagonist, Violet’s been through the ringer once. She already knows that the world is a cruel, apathetic place — the War taught her that. Having been born into the prestigious Vickers Family, Violet was raised in little dresses with cute petticoats, social dinners with her Mother while her Father was off hunting in Africa and attempts to break free of it all with her Brother. Alas, as tomboyish Violet hovered on the cusp of sixteen, England required her brother to do his bit. And so, off he went; some undisclosed location in France to fight Fritz.
Letters were exchanged for a time, then Violet stopped receiving replies. Faced with the grim notion that her Brother may not be coming home, Violet had a choice to make; she could remain at the family estate and do her Mother proud, or she could pack a bag, hitch a ride to Dover and find a boat to take her to France. Luckily for our story, Violet chose the latter and found such a ship under the command of Captain McCready and his youthful apprentice, Harry (both of whom knew she was a girl, despite cutting her hair short).
The bulk of Glimpse is set in the present day (for all intents and purposes) with some flashbacks to Violet’s time during The Great War and her quest to find her Brother. Without spoiling it, her journey was harrowing, but prepared her, sculpted her almost, to be the perfect detective — a plausible scenario indeed. However, it wouldn’t be my book unless there was an element of fantasy (which, I think, puts a lot of publishers off). Violet… well, Violet has a twin of sorts; a reflection of her, but not literally of her. It’s hard to put into words, especially when taken out of the story, but it boils down to Violet having a ghostly sidekick (for want of a better phrase). With one hand in reality and another in the plane beyond, Ms Vickers is uniquely poised to tackle any case.
The following excerpt will give you a better idea of their relationship:
“Violet?” a tepid whisper called from somewhere beneath the desk. I spun around. “Violet, Violet, Violet… let me talk to you, please?” I sighed and opened the hidden, void-like drawer in the desk’s leg-space. My hand-mirror glinted in the low light seeping into the room.
“I’d like to be alone, that’s why I put you there,” I held it tight, watching the reflection within comb my… her hair. “What do you want?”
“We lied. Well, you lied,” she stopped brushing and pouted; her soothing voice thrice-repeating in unnoticeable intervals. “I’d ask why, but I already know.” I envied her; perfectly presented in her linen nightgown, her black hair long and flowing over her shoulders, her hands pale, delicate and free, free from ever gripping the weight of a loaded- “Not to interrupt, but these hands,” she waved them about, “know the grip of many choking throats.” I hated when she did that – not the interruption, but the mind reading. “Regardless of my hands and their motives, I fear this is a case we must take.”
I moved my weight onto my right side again in a bid to ease the pain along the back of my left thigh. It had been bothering me of late, the first time I’d even noticed it since arriving in New York. “We take the cases I want.”
“And what of the cases that I wish to take, hm? Think of this as repay… well, let’s not get into favours owed at this hour.” She turned and faced the dresser behind; a wide vanity mirror the centrepiece of which. In it I saw her forever-adolescent face; that cute button nose, the smattering of freckles on each of her cheeks, the calm lull of her half-moon eyes. “You’re lucky, Vicky-Me, to even be sitting here,” those half-moon, big-browns rolled.
“Listening to you, you eerie bitch.” I despised her sass, but in truth she was the ace up my sleeve and good company; company I couldn’t do without.
Writing Violet’s sassy, otherworldly twin was the most fun I’d ever had with the vocation. Aside from being a foil for her, it gave me an opportunity to critique Violet in her own story — her voice essentially being my voice, or the reader’s voice within the four walls bordering the page. It’s a common trope, though I’d like to think I was at least a little bit clever in how I used it. Maybe I wasn’t, but I’ll keep telling myself I was — it helps me sleep.
I don’t think Glimpse is a slog to read. It moves along quite briskly once the story shifts from New York City to Bradley’s Shore, Massachussetts, where the bulk of the action takes place. There’re certainly no chapters in it that it could do without, likewise with paragraphs. Again, I could be wrong, but the pacing feels quite tight, the plot beats transpire at steady intervals, the set-pieces go off just as boredom valley hoves into view. No book is perfect, of course, and there are sections that could’ve done with a shuffle before the crescendo, but it was good enough at the time for me to publish it and, reading over it now, it still feels right. Y’know when something just feels right, feels correct? Yeah, Violet’s pretty good.
I’ll leave you with a favourite of mine. Sure, it’ll mean little out of context, but it sticks out in my mind as one of the most perfect passages I’ve ever construed:
I sighed. “I was with Dover Patrol at the start of 1918. Our boat sank and left me stranded in France.”
“No shit?” his hazel eyes widened. “How old were you?”
I cleared my throat. “Fourteen, maybe fifteen.”
“I was twenty when we landed in France; me, Trent and Lee.” He rubbed his stubbled cheeks. “The three of us went to the same bootcamp.”
“William Trent?”
“The very same,” he nodded knowingly. “So, Vickers. Here’s my question. How’d the War change you?”
“That’s a trick question, Charlie. The one I’d ask is how didn’t the War change me,” I sighed again. “Do you, do you see things during the day? Visions from your service?”
“No, only at night,” he winced. “I hear them in the day, I hear them fuckin’ guns pounding all the time. I feel the mud and filth reachin’ to swallow me. I cry when I’m bored, because that’s what the War was, it was boring, but not a lull of nothin’ happening.”
“No,” I rubbed my temple, feeling the heat on my forehead from the tip of the cigarette clamped between my fingers. “No, there was always something happening, you just didn’t know if it was coming for you or not.”
“Yea-yeah, that’s the one,” he stole a sharp pull. A quiet then descended, a restless quiet. Birds chirped, blades of grass waved and the wind rustled the surviving leaves on threadbare trees. “If I tell you where she’s gone,” he suddenly opened, “you’ll find her and protect her. I can’t, I’ve got no fight left in me.”
“I’ll do my best, Charlie,” I patted his shoulder. He handed me a sheet of creased, weighted paper; the header filled with Gable Gates’ information. In the middle was a pretty scrawl; a town and a state. Someplace North, as he had said.
“I know my experiences don’t make right what I did to Jules, but I couldn’t protect her, that’s where I failed… but you’ll keep Lilith safe, I know you will. There’s battle in your bones, Vickers.”
“I hope you’re right, Charlie,” I stood and wiped my skirt, turning in time to see Ray pulling up in his shiny black car.
“That’s a serious rope-burn… Some boy treating you wrong?” he stood too and brushed his thighs clean. He then pointed to the bruising around his own neck. My scars, he’d seen them. I, I had forgotten to close my top button.
I quickly did-up my shirt. “No, no that’s an old one.”
“D’you kill the man that gave it to you?”
“It was either me or him.” My mind now went into places I had forbidden it from going; not to the sinking ship that changed me on a night where the rain never stopped, not to the soldiers, the German ones in a bunker forsaken by the front, not even to the boy who had given them to me. It went somewhere darker, somewhere colder; the place where Tom visited me when I couldn’t sleep, the same place his Captain’s face would fill like some kind of miserable wallpaper.
Auf Wiedersehen.
AJ Carney 