A Perilous Perspective by Anna Lee Huber

I always intended for there to be a romantic element to the stories. When did you decide to change gears and write about a couple who are investigators? Was that planned from the beginning? This series started out with a single Lady Darby as a sleuth. I really feel like they stride very much along the middle of the road. Though by no means do I delve excessively into the gore. But they are definitely darker, more intense, and descriptive of the murders than the average cozy. There is no foul language, on-page love scenes, or gratuitous violence. I always struggle a bit with this question because my books definitely lie somewhere in the middle. How would you describe this mystery novel? There are readers who enjoy cozy mysteries, and those who enjoy thrillers. It was an absolutely fascinating subject to research, and then try to figure out how much my heroine could have feasibly known and been able to detect in 1832 versus all the tools we now have at our disposal for detecting forgeries. I was inspired to explore the art forgery aspect for this book because Lady Darby is a gifted portrait artist, and I hadn’t utilized that trait fully with any of my recent plots.

Do you normally have different criminal elements along with murder? In A PERILOUS PERSPECTIVE there is a forgery and a murder. Plus, I’m often reading general and social histories during my free time, simply trying to always be increasing my knowledge and search out interesting plot ideas. And of course, that is on top of the vast amount of background research about all the particulars of the time period and my characters’ backgrounds that I conducted before ever beginning to write the series.

Sometimes the particular subject matter or slice of historical time in which the book is set requires a great deal of research, and sometimes it’s not quite so intensive.

How much historical research is involved with your books?

A Perilous Perspective by Anna Lee Huber