The Robin Paige Series: The Backstory
BookScapes 6
I had already begun writing full time when I met Bill Albert (a story I’ll save for another time). Plotting was something of a mystery to me then, and Bill offered some good suggestions for the Nancy Drew Case File I was working on. Over the next four or five years, we coauthored a dozen young adult books and he lent substantial editorial help with all of the others. (Our “official” list of 60+ YA titles is here, if you’re interested in the details.)
One of our favorite early collaborations was Ghosts of Foulksrath Castle, written for Cora Verlag, a German publisher. We came up with the plot after an apprehensive night in that Irish castle (a spooky 14th-century stone tower in County Kilkenny), where it was all too easy to conjure ghosts. The book was published in 1993 in German, never in English, so far as we know.
And then China Bayles happened, and for a couple of years, I was pretty focused on that project. At some point, Bill said, almost wistfully, “Aren’t we ever going to writing anything together again?” So we sat down to talk about what kind of adult mysteries we might want to work on. We both liked historical fiction, both of us were inveterate researchers, and both were interested in British history. Bill had traveled in England, where his parents lived for a time and where he had friends. I had a background in English literature. Would we set the project in Roman Britain? (Bill had worked on an archeological excavation in Colchester). Or maybe in the era of Chaucer (my academic field)?
After hours of back-and-forth, we chose a period new to both of us: the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We would create a male-female pair of sleuths, include historical people as characters, and anchor the mystery plots, as fully as we could, in historical events.
For our female protagonist, I chose Kate Ardleigh, a young Irish-American writer of penny-dreadfuls modeled loosely on Louisa May Alcott. Kate unexpectedly inherits Bishop’s Keep, an estate not far from the picturesque village of Dedham, in Essex. Dedham was the home of Bill’s longtime friend Ruby Hild, who generously offered us a base of operations for our research trips and patiently answered our questions about British customs and vocabulary. (It was George Bernard Shaw who called England and America "two countries separated by a common language.") For our male lead, Bill created Charles Sheridan, a renowned photographer, amateur scientist, and skilled detective. Charles is especially interested in the new forensic sciences, especially forensic photography, toxicology, blood typing, and fingerprint identification.
Kate and Charles teamed up for the first time in Death at Bishop’s Keep, which included Arthur Conan Doyle (with cameos from Oscar Wilde and William Yeats) and some shenanigans involving the occult Order of the Golden Dawn. Their second book featured the children’s author-illustrator Beatrix Potter. (I liked Miss Potter so much that I built a later 8-book series around her.) The third focused on Daisy, the beautiful, willful Countess of Warwick and her royal lover, the Prince of Wales.
After Charles and Kate marry, their adventures take them farther afield. To Epsom Downs, the British Jockey Club, and Lillie Langtry’s racing stable (Book 7). To Dartmoor, where they meet up with Doyle again (Book 8). To Scotland’s Glamis Castle, the secret home of the exiled Prince Eddy, who isn’t as dead as people think he is (Book 9). And to Blenheim Palace and the intrigues of the family of the Duke of Marlborough and his cousin, brash young Winston Churchill (Book 11). You can see all the Robin Paige books here.
The way we worked. The first step with these historical mysteries was to decide on the historical characters we wanted to feature and figure out how to use them in the narrative. Sometimes they were rather incidental. In Bishop’s Keep, for example, Doyle, Wilde, and Yeats were walk-ons. In other books, they served as main characters, as in Death on the Lizard, where Marconi played a central role. We divided the biographical and period research and Bill worked out a storyboard—necessary because there were several point-of-view characters in these books, and each one has a story.
When we were ready to write, we assigned ourselves chapters: Bill took Charles’, I took Kate’s, and we split the rest. To start the day, we’d talk (and argue) about what we intended to work on. To end the day, we’d spend an hour reading our work aloud, making revisions (and arguing some more). Then additional revisions of both the writing and the storyboard, because the plots and characters never developed exactly as planned. More revisions for continuity and style. It was a complex back-and-forth that taught us a great deal about our craft—and each other. Our discussions were often fraught, but we learned to work out the kinks. And respected each other more for the teamwork.
Of course, writing British historical fiction meant frequent research trips to England—always a great pleasure and a high point of our year. We tried to plan far enough ahead to manage the research for two books with each trip. I learned to navigate roundabouts, Bill became skilled at driving on the wrong side of the road, and we came away with wonderful memories of England’s beautiful landscapes and gracious people.
Publishing History. We sold the first three books to Avon in a 1993 “paperback original” deal—and then Avon discontinued its mystery line. But our agent persuaded Avon to return the rights and we moved the series to Berkley Prime Crime (China Bayles’ publisher), in hardcover and paperback. Ebook editions were added in 2010. More recently, the entire series was reprinted for British readers by Oldcastle Books in a UK edition.
All this took place before audiobooks were a major component of the book market, so it was quite a while before the series made it into audio. That project wrapped in 2023, with Dreamscape’s publication of Book 12, Death on the Lizard. (The first three books are bundled together for one credit on Audible.) We count ourselves extraordinarily lucky that the entire series was narrated by the talented Helen Johns, a British-Canadian actor whom you may remember as Eliza Barry in Netflix’s Anne with an E. We know you will love her performance of the books.
It's a great treat to know the back story of your early work (Nancy Drew!) and how you and Bill came to write British historical mysteries. It's a true romantic, creative collaboration, I think. Reading between the lines of the Beatrix Potter series, I always sensed a besotted undercurrent in the wonderfully talented, independent character of Potter.
I loved the Robin Paige series and have read it more than once. I was impressed by the idea of collaboration and always wondered how do you write a book with someone else. Thanks for cementing my love of historical fiction. I have used it to interwine my ancestors with important figures of their times and learned a lot about history beyond the traditional 'facts'.