… the books featuring the Pitts have become more complex. 

The Monk books deal with most with military and medical matters, and always end in a trial. The Pitts deal with social and political issues, and have a little more of the ebullience of the "Naughty Nineties." 

Crescent Blues: We're living in the Naughty Nineties now. 

Anne Perry: Yes, but without the fun. We don't have the optimism of the 1890s, and we don't have the wit. There's no Oscar Wilde for our generation. We're much more cynical, sadder people now. 

And they had wonderful fashion back [in the 1890s]. It would've been very uncomfortable to wear, but it was wonderful to look at. 

Crescent Blues: Getting back to the series, the Monk books seem to have a sharper edge. Could that be because, although Thomas Pitt comes from humble origins and Charlotte married beneath herself, they have very defined roles in society, whereas William Monk and Hester Latterly are outsiders? 

Anne Perry: I think it's just because the Monk books are set in an earlier period. Things were considerably more restrictive in the 1850s and '60s than in the 1880s and '90s. And also, I didn't want the two series to have the same voice. 

Crescent Blues: How does your reading affect your writing? Do you read much fiction when you're working on a book, or do you spend most of your time doing research? 

Anne Perry: I don't have time to read much fiction, unfortunately. Life isn't long enough. If I could, I'd want three lives: one life for writing, one for reading and one for other things. But I don't have the time, so writing comes first. 

Crescent Blues: Are there things you read to inspire your writing or that put you in the right frame of mind to write? By the same token, are there things you avoid reading, because they might have a negative affect on your writing? 

Anne Perry: I avoid reading anything too similar to what I'm writing. You never mean to plagiarize, but you do, unconsciously. 

Depending on what I'm writing, yes, there are things I read to put me in the right frame of mind. Obviously, I read a great deal of research [material]. I also read poetry and philosophy, particularly poetry. Poetry puts me in the mood to want to write something good, because poetry captures the essence of a particular mood or thought. It makes me want to write more powerfully. 

Please, don't phrase that so that it makes me sound as if I do write more powerfully. I can't say that. But poetry always makes me want to write better. 

Crescent Blues: Is there any particular era in poetry that you turn to? 

Anne Perry: Yes, the poets of the period between 1890 and 1940. We call them the Georgians, but I don't think that name will mean anything to American readers. 

The Georgians are the great poets of the first World War: Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, G. K. Chesteron, Wilfred Owen, A. E. Houseman. Chesterton is one of my favorites. 

Crescent Blues: Didn't Chesterton also write mysteries -- the Father Brown series? 

Anne Perry: Yes, and poetry and fantasy and a tremendous number of essays. His poetry's wonderful, but there's a tremendous lot of it. And his best isn't necessarily in the anthologies. You could probably find "The Donkey," in an anthology, but you should try to find "The Man Who Was Thursday" or "The Ballad of the White Horse," though they are less well known. "The Ballad of the White Horse" will probably never be anthologized. It's too long -- around a hundred pages. 

Crescent Blues: Back to your books. In Breach of Promise, you describe the work of Killian Melville as being unconventional but beautiful, and particularly innovative in the way Melville's buildings used light. Were your descriptions of Melville's work based on a particular architect of the period? 

Anne Perry: No, not at all, but just this trip, I learned that there was an architect in America in this period who did the same sort of thing. But when I wrote about Killian, I was only describing what I would like to have done -- what seems beautiful to me in architecture. 

Crescent Blues: What did you think of the recent television movie made from The Cater Street Hangman, the first Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery? 

Anne Perry: I was very pleased with it and wish they would do more. We're working to try to have more movies made, and all encouragement will be gratefully accepted. Every letter about the movie that's sent to The Perry Illustrated Chronicles, my official Web site, is copied and sent to the producers of The Cater Street Hangman. They're actually using the letters as ammunition to go higher up and show people there is an audience for these films; the public likes this. 

Crescent Blues: Without giving away the plots, it's safe to say your latest installments in both series show a gradual growth in the lives of all your secondary characters. Do you plan to continue these developments? 

Anne Perry: I intend to do different things with various minor characters as the series progress. I've got plans for Gracie and Tellman, for Rathbone, Vespasia, Joshua, the bishop's wife -- all sorts of minor characters. 

Crescent Blues: So many of these subplots explore the intricacies of Victorian romance over lengthy periods of time, I can't help but wonder if you regret having Charlotte and Thomas fall in love and marry so quickly in their series. Do you ever wish you handled the Pitts' romance differently? 

Anne Perry: When The Cater Street Hangman was accepted for publication, I was so jolly pleased to have a "yes" instead of a "no" after twenty years of trying to write and be published, I couldn't think of anything else. I didn't think it would be a series. St. Martin's Press [the publisher which bought The Cater Street Hangman and other early Perry mysteries] never commissioned books in advance. 

But since I strung out the romance between Hester and Monk, it's probably better that I resolved matters between Charlotte and Thomas quickly. If I were to start today, I probably would have drawn out their romance. But at the time, I was working in the classical mystery tradition, where one did not emphasize romance, and I didn't have the confidence to follow my feelings then. 

It's wonderful to have a contract for several books in advance. You can plan your story and write it, then see if your notions will turn out. 

Crescent Blues: When we met a few years ago on the set of a local television show, you mentioned you were also writing a science fiction novel --  

Anne Perry: Not science fiction! There's nothing remotely scientific about it. It's an allegorical fantasy. 

Crescent Blues: For fantasy readers like me, that's even better. How far along are you with the novel? 

Anne Perry: [Tathea] was published in Britain in February. I regret I cannot offer you a copy, because it's out of print. My British publisher brought it out in a short run of a little over a thousand or so books, which is a respectable run for hardcover fantasy in Britain, and they sold out completely. I was looking for copies for some friends before I left, and I couldn't find any, but I signed two here in Bethesda [Md.] just yesterday. 

However, the book will be coming out from Deseret Book, LDS, in the U. S. in September 1999. 

Crescent Blues: LDS? 

Anne Perry: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's the Mormon-owned press. I've been a member of the Church for 33 years. 

Crescent Blues: Since the British print run was so small, would you mind telling our readers a little bit about the plot of the book to tide them over until September? 

Anne Perry: Tathea tells the story of a woman in an alternate world a little bit like our own Classical era circa 1 A. D. She is an empress who wakes in the night to a palace coup, in which her husband and child are killed. She goes into hiding and becomes a fugitive.  

Naturally, the sudden reversal of her condition causes her to think about the larger questions of life. Yesterday, I was an empress with the world in my hand; today I am a fugitive. Who am I? The answer, I believe, for everyone is that I am a child of God, but growing up is a long, hard journey. 

Donna Andrews and Jean Marie Ward