The Romantic Mystery Instruction Manual
Prudence Emery and Ron Base have written three of what they like to call romantic mystery novels featuring Priscilla Tempest. Priscilla works in the press office at London’s iconic Savoy Hotel in 1968. In her spare time, she gets into a lot of trouble with the wrong men and murder. Murder she can handle. The wrong men are much more problematic. Their second novel, Scandal at the Savoy, is being published this month in the US by Douglas & McIntyre. Base has taken it upon himself to put together for interested readers the following manual of indispensable instruction for creating their mysteries…
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, grow up in a small Ontario town, lonely and miserable, longing to be transported away from the boredom.
Find a magical way of escape at the movies, specifically in witty romantic mysteries like Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly or Stanley Donen’s Charade, Cary again, this time romancing Audrey Hepburn.
Create fantasies—easily accomplished!—in which you replace Cary with yourself (difficult to do, but give it a try) in a sports car driving the Grande Corniche on the Côte d’Azur with Grace. Or racing through darkened Paris streets with Audrey.
Become an adult, never forgetting that childhood desire to escape to exotic places full of glamourous people who say witty things, then discover you can do it, even without Grace or Audrey.
Find the excitement and adventure as a journalist you previously only dreamt of. Meet and befriend a wonderful, larger-than-life movie publicist named Prudence Emery.
Learn that, in addition to a remarkable career working on more than 120 movie productions, Prudence as a young woman was employed for five years in the press office at London’s iconic Savoy, one of the most famous hotels in the world.
Be reminded of this as you read through Prudence’s delightful autobiography Nanaimo Girl. As entertaining as the book is, be sure to be most enchanted by the section dealing with her time at the Savoy in the late 1960s and early 1970s when she seemed to know everybody who was anybody.
Allow your imagination to run wild thinking that London’s Savoy would be the perfect setting for the type of witty, romantic mystery you loved as a kid, featuring all those glamorous, beautiful people. Keep in mind, Prudence won’t have to make any of this up. She actually lived it.
Next, call Prudence at home in Victoria, British Columbia. Suggest the two of you collaborate on a mystery set at the Savoy Hotel in 1968.
Listen carefully as Prudence says she’s never written a mystery. Tell her that you have never been to the Savoy. Point out that the two of you make a perfect team.
Arrange it so that both of you agree to give the book a try.
Come up with another novel that will serve as inspiration for what you plan to do. This will be harder than you think. Most mysteries these days, even though they are often set in the necessary exotic places (London! Paris!) are usually grim and humorless.
Remind ourselves that we don’t want to be either grim or humorless.
Settle on Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe by Nan and Ivan Lyons, first published in 1976. It is a minor classic of wit, mystery, sex, and food set in London about, well, someone who is killing the great chefs of Europe.
Now comes the hard part—actually writing a book.
First order of business: come up with a hero or a heroine. Settle on a heroine. But what kind? Do not look any further than your collaborator. The young Pru makes a perfect role model for our plucky fictional heroine.
Put Prudence in charge of the heroine’s first name. She decides on Priscilla. Ron comes up with Tempest.
Priscilla Tempest. A heroine is born!
Next step: Mix together Prudence’s innate knowledge of all things Savoy with Ron’s experience hammering out the nuts and bolts of a mystery plot.
Spend a lot of time together on the phone talking about the wild and crazy times you shared in the past.
Occasionally, mention the novel. It helps the writing process.
Come up with a title. What’s the book about? A death at the Savoy Hotel? You have your title: Death at the Savoy.
Upon completion of the manuscript, submit it to an agent.
And then wait. Ensure a recognized health care professional is standing by to handle author stress and anxiety.
Try not to make a total blithering fool of yourself when the agent phones to say he loves Death at the Savoy.
Stand by as the manuscript goes out to publishers.
Make doubly sure health care professionals are on 24-hour standby to handle vastly increased author stress and anxiety.
Try not to make a total blithering fool of yourself when a publisher, Douglas & McIntyre, agrees to publish your novel.
As soon as that happens, immediately get to work on a second novel. Repeat previous process.
Grapple with a title for the second book. What’s it about? A scandal at the Savoy? You have your title: Scandal at the Savoy.
Make yourself available for the New York Times and Sixty Minutes, also Strand Magazine. Undoubtedly, they all are anxious to talk to you.
Finally, be careful not to speed around the Grande Corniche in your convertible Rolls-Royce after the two novels are published and vast riches have begun to pour in.
Realize that you are once again fantasizing, that all these years later, you have not left your childhood very far behind.
Ron Base is a former newspaper and magazine journalist and movie critic. His works include twenty novels, two novellas and four nonfiction books. He has been published in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. He has written screenplays and worked with legendary filmmakers such as John Borman (Deliverance) and Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields). Currently, Base divides his time between Milton, Ontario, and Fort Myers, Florida.
Prudence Emery worked as the press and public relations officer at the prestigious Savoy Hotel, mingling with celebrities and politicians such as Canada’s past Prime Minister Pierre-Elliot Trudeau and actor Marlene Dietrich. She has worked on more than a hundred film productions and is the author of the bestselling memoirNanaimo Girl (Cormorant Books, 2020). She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.