Marie Benedict, THE QUEENS OF CRIME: A Novel
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[0:45]Marie Benedict is the author of The Queen of Crimes, a novel, Maria's The New York Times
[0:50]and the USA Today bestselling author of The Midford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery
[0:54]of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in the Room, Lady Clementine, Carnegie's Made, The Other
[0:59]Einstein, and with Victoria Christopher Murray, who I'm also having on soon, The Good
[1:04]Morning, America, Book Club Pick, The Personal Librarian, and The Target Book Club Pick
[1:09]of the Year, The First Ladies, all have been translated into multiple languages, and many
[1:14]have been selected for the Barnes and Noble Book Club, Target Book Club, Costco Book Club,
[1:18]Indianapolis, and Library Reads List.
[1:20]She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.
[1:23]Welcome back, Marie, for coming on, now called totally booked with Zibi.
[1:26]I don't even know what my show is.
[1:27]Hello.
[1:28]Thank you.
[1:29]We're talking about The Queens of Crime.
[1:32]So exciting.
[1:33]We've got Agatha Christie, we've got all these fabulous women.
[1:38]Oh my gosh, tell everybody what it's about.
[1:42]So it is, gosh, it's a little bit of a departure for me, and yet it's very much in keeping
[1:49]with what I have written in the past.
[1:51]It's a little bit of a genre-bending story of these five incredible Golden Age of
[1:57]mystery writers, including, as you mentioned, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sares, who's
[2:01]really my main character, and the way in which these women band together to solve a very
[2:08]real-life murder mystery, which is unbelievable, but is actually true, and the way they
[2:14]band together and some and all, kind of what we were talking about before, some in all
[2:18]of their various talents to restore justice.
[2:23]And it's a story I came to.
[2:25]I wrote another book about Agatha Christie, and that's a whole other story of why I'm
[2:28]so obsessed at that time.
[2:30]These characters, and when I found out that Dorothy Sares, who was Agatha Christie's
[2:35]lifelong best very close friend, I don't want to say best, and that she was even involved
[2:41]in her disappearance and tried to help find her, but when I learned that she had actually
[2:46]been extremely involved in investigating the murder of this young British nurse, I was
[2:51]like, if that isn't a story, I don't know what is.
[2:54]And so, of course, I went down my rabbit hole where I love to live.
[2:58]When did you first find that thread of the story?
[3:02]It was when I was in the research for the mystery of Mrs. Christie, which is about
[3:07]Agatha Christie's 11-day real-life disappearance, and the sense that I had that her vanishing
[3:13]was she was too bright a woman, too skillful in the art of plotting to have just been
[3:18]a victim in her own vanishing.
[3:22]I have been in love with this time period in these characters, these authors, that's who
[3:26]they all are, a bunch of authors, really since I was a young girl.
[3:30]When I was in middle school, I had this amazing aunt who was an English professor, a poet,
[3:37]she was a rebellious nun, and that, yes, that is a thing, especially during that time period.
[3:42]It's really the one who kept me in books, and she loved this time period.
[3:47]She loved these writers, and so I was really steeped in them that interwar world and
[3:54]the sense of women's ability to restore justice.
[3:58]And of course, once I sort of lived it up the veil to learn more about the authors behind
[4:03]the stories, I realized how incredible these women were in their own right.
[4:08]Well, you do such a good job of drawing the reader in, and I know that sounds overly
[4:13]simplistic.
[4:14]But by all the ways you use dialogue and the details, you get us in, the book opens
[4:22]up and we're at a tee at a posh hotel, and you're giving us different foods and cakes
[4:31]that they love and duh duh, and Dorothy's reaction to Agatha and how she feels and will
[4:37]she open up, and honestly, I just started reading it and I was like, oh, I'm in it
[4:42]immediately.
[4:44]I was just so in it, and I'm sorry, I didn't have the chance to finish the whole book,
[4:48]but...
[4:49]That's okay.
[4:50]It's just spoilers.
[4:51]That's all right.
[4:52]Good, good, good.
[4:53]So how, like from a craft and writing standpoint, how do you do that?
[4:59]Because yes, you have to do other research, but then you have to bring it to life.
[5:02]You know, I read somewhere and I wish I could remember the author that wrote this, but
[5:06]it's like you have to go down that rabbit hole, which I talk about a lot, which is
[5:10]really my happy place.
[5:12]Within this case, you know, it luckily for me and involved not just historical documents
[5:16]and newspaper articles.
[5:18]It involved all these women's books because I do believe that we leave and I don't think
[5:24]you may or may not agree with me, but I'm suspicious that you might agree with me.
[5:28]That we leave pieces of ourselves behind in these stories, even if they're fiction, there's
[5:33]little bits of us.
[5:34]Things were working through parts of our personalities, parts of other people's personalities.
[5:39]So I got to re immerse myself in the canon of these five incredible authors, mystery
[5:46]writers.
[5:48]And I sort of dive down in and swim in the waters of their world.
[5:53]And then I step back out and I'm not saying you forget the research.
[5:58]You bring it with you, but the threads start to appear when you're there.
[6:02]And then you just instead of staying in the weeds, you try and stay in the story.
[6:06]For me, this probably isn't true for everybody, but for me, the threads of the story
[6:11]appear in the research.
[6:13]The, you know, learning, I might read one line about Dorothy and Agatha's favorite
[6:18]tea cakes, right?
[6:20]And suddenly I have a whole scene in my mind of them indulging in this lavish tea, right?
[6:27]And yet in that same moment, I want to bring in one of the main threads of the story,
[6:32]which is that women wear masks, many people wear masks, but I'm, you know, I write about
[6:37]women.
[6:38]So it's about the masks we wear to survive, the masks we wear to thrive.
[6:43]And so while on one level, it's a lighthearted tea on another level, it's like what
[6:48]mask are you wearing today, how, and then the thread of how are we going to propel the
[6:54]story further?
[6:55]How are we going to get these women to engage in this?
[6:59]Turns out to be one quest and then turns into another quest.
[7:03]And so, but it's all there for me in the research.
[7:07]And then you kind of have to live in it and then kind of forget it while you live in the
[7:12]moment of the story.
[7:13]Otherwise, as I'm sure you've seen in some, a lot of deep, very detailed historical
[7:17]fiction.
[7:18]Sometimes people get lost in the weeds.
[7:19]And the reader gets lost too, right, because it's story above all else.
[7:24]And those, those threads are there to bring us into the moment in the setting, but we're
[7:28]not meant to get lost in the threads.
[7:30]Unless, of course, it's a keeping pile of like British tea cakes, my personally could
[7:36]get lost in forever.
[7:37]Yeah, it was a nice escape, very much like I was not where I was, which was lovely.
[7:43]And I mean, that that's in part with this is, I mean, yes, I hope that people see the
[7:49]bigger story and the bigger theme and the way in which women can band together to make
[7:54]enormous change and all the other threads of the story.
[7:58]But it also is meant to be the same kind of engrossing mystery that these women wrote.
[8:04]It's really an homage to them that amaged my aunt who introduced me to this world.
[8:09]And yet, just like with these women who stories on the surface seems like dismissories,
[8:16]they only could get out these more complicated sometimes controversial themes through
[8:22]these seemingly innocuous mysteries.
[8:25]I actually love that.
[8:27]And I love what you were saying about the masks that women wear.
[8:30]Like what, and at the beginning, I realized you have a pseudonym yourself.
[8:35]So what masks, like what masks do you wear in your life?
[8:39]Oh, I wear a million masks.
[8:41]I think one of my like current, and one of the reasons that this is such a theme in the
[8:45]book is because I'm trying to shed my masks.
[8:48]Right.
[8:49]I think growing up, the time period I grew up, the world in which I lived, the masks
[8:54]were unconsciously encouraged.
[8:56]And so even though my love, let's just take, for example, I've always loved history
[9:01]and these hidden corners of history since that same aunt that introduced me to these
[9:06]women also started me on this other book, The Miss of Avalon, which was a retelling of
[9:11]the Arthurian legend from the women's perspective.
[9:13]I thought that's what I was going to do with my life.
[9:15]I thought I was going to become a story and an archaeologist, you know, ferriting out
[9:19]these little corners.
[9:21]But that really wasn't encouraged, right?
[9:24]And so I took my history major and I became a New York City commercial litigator for a decade
[9:29]because that mask was more pleasing, was more socially acceptable than someone who was trying
[9:36]to become a writer or thinking about history or any of these other parts of me that were
[9:42]down in there.
[9:43]And that's just one example, you know, I try very hard every day to not slip behind
[9:49]the mask and shut it and be more authentic and writing the books that I write reminds
[9:54]me of that.
[9:55]Do you feel like, as you get older, as you were saying, do you feel that...
[10:00]But when you show more of the real behind whatever else there is, it is well received
[10:06]or do you feel like there are people that it pushes away?
[10:11]Both.
[10:12]Both.
[10:13]I would definitely say a lot of my friends and I'm one of six and I have four sisters.
[10:19]We appreciate the mask shedding because I think a lot of us are in the life stage of
[10:25]shedding the masks, right?
[10:27]Definitely there are people in my life who would prefer it.
[10:31]It's easier.
[10:32]It's not challenging.
[10:33]It's more palatable.
[10:35]And what I've learned as many of us have learned is that you have to streamline, you know,
[10:40]it's healthier for me to be around people who really want to see me as me.
[10:45]And that if that has led to fewer friendships or different ways of interacting with people,
[10:52]you know, like I love board games.
[10:54]And so now I do a lot of board games, you know, 10, 15 years ago, would that have been
[10:59]what I do with my friends?
[11:00]Maybe not, you know?
[11:02]So there's a lot of that that's happening and it's a process and like you, I have kids
[11:06]and I want to show them that they don't need to be wearing masks because they can be exactly
[11:11]who they are, feel what they feel, pursue whatever path they want.
[11:15]And so I have children with wildly different interests and that is something I celebrate
[11:20]and I hope feel safe enough to show and feel their feelings.
[11:24]So I love that.
[11:27]That's my one of my goals.
[11:28]And writing about these women helps me, I mean, I intentionally picked topics that are
[11:32]very pertinent to me, that are very much about what I'm processing, what I'm feeling,
[11:38]and writing about it in that little distance of, you know, another character's eyes helps
[11:44]me process it and I help help readers process it too.
[11:47]And so what did you uncover, I mean, I obviously can't share the spoilers, but about
[11:54]Agatha Christie and some of these authors that you can share now that you were surprised
[12:00]about and all of that.
[12:02]Well, there's one big secret, the really, the main, it's Dorothy Sayers who was during
[12:08]her lifetime as almost as popular as Agatha Christie, but like many of these golden age
[12:14]of mystery writers, their names have been forgotten, the authors have now their characters
[12:19]and their series live on PBS and they're part of it's canon of, you know, these murder
[12:25]mysteries that they show.
[12:26]But what I learned was that the woman, the women behind the masks, right, were very different
[12:34]and yet very similar.
[12:35]They had to wear the masks to survive, right?
[12:39]And yet they are all hiding something deep within themselves, something very authentic.
[12:44]Now the main character, Dorothy Sayers, she's hiding an enormous secret, which I won't
[12:48]say, but it is very much tied into the quest that these women find themselves on.
[12:55]The kind of gateway drug to the story was the fact that Dorothy Sayers, whose husband
[13:00]was an investigative journalist, they in fact did become involved in the coverage in the
[13:07]investigation into the murder of this young English nurse in a French seaside town.
[13:12]This nurse disappeared in circumstances that honestly seemed torn from the pages of their
[13:16]books.
[13:17]You know, she stepped into a restroom that had one entrance exit, one only, her friend waited
[13:22]outside and she never stepped out again.
[13:25]And she wasn't, her body wasn't found for months afterwards and there was a lot of newspaper
[13:29]coverage then and when they found her body, which was fascinating for me as a researcher
[13:34]to go into the coverage.
[13:36]And what I learned so much about this time period is that these women in the interwar
[13:42]years who were working women.
[13:44]So these girls were nurses, right?
[13:46]They were nurses because this decidedly accepted path for them, which was marriage, was not
[13:52]available.
[13:53]There were very few men to marry because of the war and they were reviled for this choice
[13:59]and they were dubbed surplus women.
[14:02]And I learned so much about the attitudes, not just about this group, but other women in
[14:07]these newspaper articles in the way in which this murder was covered.
[14:12]And this marginalization of women, especially women who have made different choices is very
[14:18]much a theme in the book and very much tied into Dorothy Sarah's own secret.
[14:25]They're intertwined and uncovering these layers is in many ways analogous to the, the lifting
[14:32]of masks that these women do.
[14:34]The closer they get to the truth, the more they learn about each other, the more they learn
[14:39]about their, their actual views about each other.
[14:42]I intentionally chose women who, and they really were friends, so it wasn't that hard.
[14:46]But women who were from different, different parts of the country, different parts of the
[14:51]continent, different ages, different religions, different backgrounds, different socio-economic
[14:57]strata of society so that you could see that you don't all have to be the same to band
[15:05]together and do something good.
[15:08]And in fact, it is in these lifting of layers and these lifting of masks that allows these
[15:13]women to come together, despite maybe because of their differences.
[15:19]And what they learn is that they're stronger than they thought.
[15:22]What they learn is that they have prejudices that they have to overcome.
[15:26]They have to share the way in which they have been marginalized, which is something that
[15:30]they've internalized as opposed to really come forward with.
[15:35]I learned a lot about societal attitudes, about women, that unfortunately you still
[15:42]see in some capacity today.
[15:44]Some of the newspaper coverage about this poor girl, you know, lambasted because she had
[15:50]a bobbed haircut, which was a sign of a loose woman, you know, you know, criticized because
[15:55]she chose to work instead of stay home and have a family, you know, and it didn't even
[15:59]have to be over.
[16:00]Like it was almost like code in these newspaper articles.
[16:03]And in different descriptions, you still see that today, really.
[16:09]And that's one of the things that always surprises me and saddens me is the way in which
[16:15]some of these historical attitudes really haven't shifted that much.
[16:19]It is hard to believe in some really hard to believe it's much, it's much growth as we
[16:24]have had.
[16:25]And, you know, these women are all a little bit outside the box there.
[16:28]They've all had success.
[16:29]They're all incredibly successful mystery writers in a field that's very dominated by women
[16:34]or by men, excuse me.
[16:36]They're part of a club that's very dominated by men.
[16:39]And so these are, these are strong women to begin with and yet there's something about
[16:44]banding together.
[16:45]And back to your question about like learning stuff at my age and the age of my peers,
[16:50]like I see that.
[16:51]Like I see how crucial my friendships are, how necessary they are not just for my growth
[16:59]as a person, but for the kind of work I want to do in the world overall.
[17:03]And these women see that too.
[17:05]And again, it's just like, you know, it parts of my life that are processing through
[17:10]to the lens of these, some of these women love it.
[17:13]Okay.
[17:14]So what rabbit hole have you fallen into next?
[17:18]Oh, well, I do have, I guess I could say I have a yes, I have an incredible story coming
[17:26]out next in a year from now about it's about 1920s England, high-clear castle setting
[17:37]of Downton Abbey, ancient Egypt and colonial Egypt.
[17:43]And it's a story that it's about a woman who becomes an archaeologist.
[17:48]It's about an ancient, really the only female Pharaoh had to upset.
[17:54]And it's about the way in which the pastor reverberates into the present like in ways that
[17:58]we just don't often don't understand those spreads like keep on coming through.
[18:03]And it's a place I've always wanted to be, I think I told you, like I always wanted to
[18:07]be an archaeologist and ancient Egypt was like 100% my jam for a long time and actually
[18:12]get to envision this world, both that time, the 1920s colonial time period and this ancient
[18:20]Egyptian time period about this, Queen, this Pharaoh who was systematically, physically erased
[18:27]from his dream.
[18:28]We only learned every Sunday really in this time period has been just a gift.
[18:34]It's kind of returning to what I always envisioned.
[18:38]I wanted to do and really a very much a full circle, for a full circle moment for me.
[18:43]It's really been really wonderful.
[18:46]Well, I can see how excited you are and you're like beaming talking about it so that
[18:50]is very exciting.
[18:51]You know what's crazy is that, you know, if you are true to yourself and I'm sure you
[18:57]found this in the work you do and the force that you've become in publishing and more
[19:03]largely, when you pursue what you're meant to be doing, things start to fall into place,
[19:09]right?
[19:10]And it's when we try and again back to the masks when we try and really squeeze our circle
[19:15]selves into square holes.
[19:17]Like it just, it never feels right.
[19:19]It never really takes and works.
[19:21]Whereas if you're pursuing those things that are really your authentic self, it does tend
[19:27]to align.
[19:28]You know, when I give talks in schools, especially like middle school, high school, I always
[19:33]ask the students, what are the things that they love right then?
[19:37]And when I talk to a dog audience, I ask them, what did you love at that time?
[19:40]Because it's very what you're kind of called and meant to be doing.
[19:43]It's very often that thing.
[19:45]It's that thing that that you loved and celebrated before kind of society in the world kind
[19:50]of took hold.
[19:51]And I see that even with the queens of crime, you know, I see them, they've, they've all
[19:56]tried other things and returned to writing and create.
[20:00]this impossible life for themselves. And then they want to go out and take that power,
[20:06]take that, what they've learned about themselves in the world and then do something better with it.
[20:12]So I love that. I guess. Well Marie, thank you for coming on. Thank you for the queens of crime and
[20:21]the escapist, very immersive and of course super well-written. If that's even how I would say that.
[20:30]Like all of your others and very excited for the next one too. Thank you for the very
[20:34]very lovely to be today. Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me. It is such a treat and an honor.
[20:40]And thank you for all you're doing out there in the world. Thank you. Great to see you. Bye.
[20:47]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[20:52]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[20:58]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.