The skillful use of history can deepen a contemporary story. In my writing and reading, I’ve identified several ways writers can weave history into modern tales.
Atmosphere and world-building:
In my Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, history is in the air—along with the aroma of fish and flowers. The Market’s design reflects its tangled past, from the mix of architectural styles to the dead-end bridge and the cobbled streets.
As Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece goes about her business, she feeds us tidbits: Physical changes that led to blocked windows and secret passages—and ghost stories. The first business licensed to a woman is going strong more than a century later. Those details often tie directly into the plots, as when a homeless man emerges from a hidden passage in Assault & Pepper to help Pepper subdue a killer, or in Lavender Lies Bleeding, where Pepper makes good use of the cattle ramp, a holdover from the days when livestock were sold in the Market.
Triggered by an object, discovery, or event:
An object can link the past and the present. A historical event—fact or fiction—may figure in the plot or a subplot.
Connie Berry often uses an object as the focus of her Kate Hamilton mysteries, which feature an American antiques dealer in the UK. In The Shadow of Memory, Kate suspects a painting she’s asked to appraise may be a forgery. Her questions lead to stonewalling and denial, and ultimately, danger. Clues surface in a long-closed Victorian sanatorium and a house once lauded for its mid-century architecture, appealing to readers intrigued by design, like me. Ultimately, Kate discovers the truth about a decades-old murder as well as three recent killings.
Iced Under, a Maine Clambake mystery by Barbara Ross, opens with the arrival of a package containing the Black Widow, a necklace once owned by Julia Snowden’s great-grandmother—and missing for a century. While tracing the package, Julia meets relatives she hadn’t known and probes a mysterious death. Along the way, she learns more about the history of the ice business in New England, the source of her family’s long-gone wealth. An intriguing slice of history, a rundown mansion, and black diamonds—the perfect late-night read.
Diaries, albums, and letters often feature as well. In my suspense novel, Bitterroot Lake (written as Alicia Beckman), my present-day characters find a stash of letters and an account book that help them piece together the history of a grand lodge, as well as tensions that triggered a recent murder.
Parallel stories:
Authors also blend past and present by weaving parallel stories. Rhys Bowen is a master of dual timelines. A reference in a letter sends a young British woman on the wartime trail of her late father in The Tuscan Child. Not only is the past not dead—it could still kill. In The Venice Sketchbook, we travel in tandem with two women: one sketching a city on the verge of war, capturing both love and memory, and her great-niece, seeking solace as she follows clues the recently deceased woman left behind, rediscovering herself in the process.
And for fun, a ghost:
Cleo Coyle’s Haunted Bookshop series brings the past to life through a pair of sleuths: modern-day bookseller Penelope McClure and the ghost who haunts her shop, a PI named Jack Shephard. In The Ghost Goes to the Dogs, Jack’s adventures pursuing a case in the 1940s give Penelope a clue to her own predicament. Readers get the best of both worlds, a delightful combination.
Stir it up:
Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You combines it all. When Joan moves into a Manhattan apartment building called The Refuge—just what she’s seeking—she has no idea it was once a notorious Magdalen laundry, an early 20th-century home for wayward girls. The nooks and crannies, along with a mysterious neighbor, amplify the fear and danger. The author writes that the real building’s existence “seemed to have vanished from living memory, as if it were an embarrassment.” This is the best kind of history—to show us why a forgotten time matters now.
Practical tips:
Walk the ground. A few years ago, my husband and I toured the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. It’s a fascinating place, featuring a replica of a Chinese grocery and tours of an old community center and boarding house.
Ask ‘what if?’ What if, I wondered, a body was found in the basement of a closed residential hotel? A fresh body, dressed like a lion dancer, was discovered during Lunar New Year festivities. What if Pepper, my Spice Shop owner, is drawn into the mystery not just to name the dead, but to probe other secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel?
Read up. Oral histories, websites, newspapers—inspiration abounds. When I read a historian’s account of traveling with her immigrant father, visiting old Chinese hotels and restaurants as he sold produce, I felt a mental click. Community is key to every immigrant, but especially those who have faced extreme prejudice and legal exclusion. That, I realized, was why my fictional hotelier in Between a Wok and a Dead Place held on long after the hotel closed. Why did he insist it stay in the family, despite his son’s indifference?
Why he did not destroy the apothecary in the basement, despite what it had cost him.
What ways can you weave the past into the present, and keep your reader up way too late?
Leslie Budewitz tells stories about women’s lives, seasoned with friendship, food, a dash of history, and a heaping spoonful of mystery. She writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, as well as the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries and historical short fiction set in her native Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense. A three-time Agatha Award winner and past president of Sisters in Crime, she believes stories are the spice of life.
