Laura Hartman Maestro,
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Garden of Lamentations
Necessary as BloodWith Necessary as Blood, Laura Maestro has captured the color and texture of London’s East End, in settings both real and imagined, with consummate skill. Beneath the title, three-year-old Charlotte Malik naps with her plush elephant, Bob, under the loft windows in her mother Sandra’s studio. Sandra, a textile artist, keeps colored pencils on her worktable in a mug commemorating the Duke of Edinburgh—only the mug’s manufacturer misspelled “Duke.” Although not old enough to read, Charlotte loves the joke and calls the pencils her “duck pencils.” Sandra, Charlotte, and Sandra’s husband, Pakistani lawyer Naz Malik, live in a Georgian house in Fournier Street that Sandra and Naz restored themselves. The houses in Fournier Street were built by refugee French Protestant silk weavers, the Huguenots, in the early 18th century, and although for many years they were used as slum tenements, most have now been returned to something near their former elegance. Around the corner from Fournier Street, just off Brick Lane in Ely Yard (part of the old Truman Brewery), is the Rootmaster, an old double-decker Routemaster bus that has been turned into a vegetarian restaurant. Charlotte may not understand the pun, but she loves to climb the stairs to the table The area between Commercial Street and Brick Lane is the heart of this part of the East End. Old Spitalfields Market, once one of London’s bustling produce markets, is now a covered arcade filled with shops and restaurants, although vendors still set up stalls on Friday and Saturday. Fournier Street is anchored at the Spitalfields end by Christ Church Spitalfields, an Anglican church built between 1714 and 1729 to a design by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The church faces the City ofLondon, and was part of an initiative to build fifty new Anglican churches enacted by Parliament in 1711. The government hoped to counteract the influence of French Protestants, but only twelve of the planned fifty churches were completed. Six of the twelve were designed by Hawksmoor. At the Brick Lane end of Fournier Street is the Jamme Mosjid Mosque. Much of this part of Brick Lane is strongly Bangladeshi, and the streets are sign-posted in both English and Bengali. The Jamme Mosjid was built as a French Protestant Church in 1763. In 1819 it became a Methodist chapel, and in 1898 a synagogue. In 1976 it became a mosque, thus reflecting once again the changing character of the neighborhood and its people. Nowhere in the East End are you far from the City of London or the river Thames, and from many vantage points you can see the new glass tower blocks of Bishopsgate, which seem to be marching inexorably eastwards. But the twisty streets hide 30 St. Mary Axe, known as “the Gherkin,” until you are almost upon it. The Gherkin, completed in 2003, is now as familiar a part of the London riverscape and skyline as St. Paul’s Cathedral. London, as always, juxtaposes the old and the new.
Where Memories LieWhere Memories Lie presented a challenge for illustrator Laura Maestro, as the novel’s action is spread over a large area of London, including Notting Hill, Chelsea, Soho, and the City of London, and parts of the story take place in the late 1940s and early 1950s as well as the present day. Fortunately, much of London is enduring, so that landmarks like the Albert Bridge haven’t changed. Gavin Hoxley (the detective who worked on the murder case in 1952) lived in a house that still stands in Tedworth Square, Chelsea, just across from a house once occupied by Mark Twain. It’s hard to imagine that the lovely garden in the square’ The oddly triangular Lucan Place Police Station, where Gavin works and Gemma later searches through his old case reports, is one of the few police stations in London still in its original building. Notting Hill Police Station is another. While Gemma’s and Duncan’s house, and Erika Rosenthal’s nearby, are fictional, Laura has captured the wedding-cake architecture of these Victorian streets in Notting Hill. Like down-at-heel actor Harry Pevensey, you can have a drink or a meal at The French House with its cheerful French flags on Dean Street in Soho, but you won’t be able to use your mobile phone! Or you can wander down Portobello Road on a Saturday morning. Browse the antique stalls and arcades, pick up a chocolate croissant from Mr. Christian’s Deli on Elgin Crescent, check out Books for Cooks (possibly the best cookery bookshop in the world), and the Travel Bookshop, which was the model for Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill bookshop in Richard Curtis’s film, Notting Hill. Alas, the blue door of Hugh Grant’s flat has since been painted black. Shop for flowers and produce from the stalls on the lower end of Portobello Road, like the woman in Laura’s charming illustration. And then, on a very lucky day, you might have a Pimm’s at The Duke of Wellington and catch the fabulous jazz fusion guitarists who sometimes busk in front of the pub. Laura somehow manages to portray the animals in the novels exactly the way I see them, as she’s done with Gemma’s blue roan cocker spaniel, Geordie, and his feline buddy, Sid. But my favorite is the English mastiff, Mo, who takes pride of place in the map’s center. Mo’s owner, Susan Braunstein, won the opportunity in a Humane Society raffle to have her rescued mastiff portrayed as a character in the book, and I hope both Laura and I have done Mo justice.
Water Like a StoneNantwich is an ancient market town, situated in the fertile reaches of the Cheshire Plain. Romans mined salt here, hence the name—wych means salt. In Tudor times it was the last English garrison on a major route into Wales. When the town burned to the ground in the late 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I contributed monies for its rebuilding as a protection against Spanish invaders, so that Nantwich has one of the most purely Elizabethan black-and-white timbered town squares in England.
A few streets from the house where Duncan’s sister Juliet lives, the great red-brick edifice of St. Mary’s Church, known as the cathedral of South Cheshire, dominates the town center. Across the square, light sparks from the leaded windows of the old Crown Hotel as it leans precariously over the High Street. Just to the west of the town runs the Shropshire Union Canal. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the canal was the major trade route between the Potteries to the south and the industrial cities to the north—Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds. Now the working narrow boats are gone, but brightly-colored pleasure boats, both new and old, vie the reed-lined waterway, watched by the resident swans. Above Nantwich, the Llangollen Canal meanders south-west into Wales, and at Barbridge the Shropshire Union meets the Middlewich Canal which carries boat traffic to Manchester and points north-east. Here the Barbridge Inn provides food, drink, fires, and good company, and if one is lucky enough, New Orleans jazz played by the Salt City Jazzmen. The author’s photo of the bridge at Stoke, the scene of the fictional dairy barn, graces the cover of Water Like a Stone.
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Now May You WeepSituated in the Scottish Highlands, Aviemore boasts a ski and hiking center and doll-house railway station. A sleek, black Labrador, Murphy, is companion to th Innesfree, Bed & Breakfast Inn, a comfortable and welcoming converted farmhouse and barn, is where the story is anchored in modern day. A pun on the owner’s name, John Innes serves as chef, along with his wife, Louise, who runs the house and does the gardening. MacGillivray’s Stables is the home and business of sister and brother Janet and Tom MacGillivray, Tom’s son Callum, his black Lab Murphy, and a stable of hill ponies. The stables business is dependent on the trekking trade and the occasional riding classes for novices. Benvulin, home of Donald Brodie, was built by his great-great grandfather and is the site of the Brodie family Highland whiskey distillery. From the Gaelic meaning mill hill, this fairy-tale design of twin pagoda-roofed kilns was made popular by Victorian architect Charles Dig. Rothiermurchus Estates – the famous estate of the Grant family, and former home of Elizabeth Grant, who chronicled her life in Memoirs of a Highland Lady, published in 1898. Nestled in the Braes of Glenlivet, Carnmore was Hazel’s childhood home until at 14, her family moved to Newcastle and she was shipped off to school in Hampshire. 1980 was the last year the whiskey distillery operated. The cover photo featured on the William Morrow hardcover edition ( U.S.) is the historic Speyside distillery, Cardhu.
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A Finer EndGemma and Duncan explore the environs of Glastonbury in A Finer End. As Faith’s delivery draws closer she is magnetically pulled to the ever- vigilant Tor. Edmund, a young 12th century monk, speaks from Glastonbury Abbey throughout the book. Andrew’s liver-and-white Springer Spaniel, Phoebe, is his companion on walks around the Tor. Garnet’s familiar, the calico cat Dion, faithfully sleeps at the foot of Faith’s bed. The Abbey Ruins find their way into the unconscious thoughts of artist Fiona, as well as Gemma and Winnie. Standing high on the western flank of the Tor is Garnet’s ramshackle farm, where she prefers the ochre warmth and comforting shadows of lantern light rather than electricity, and the spring water that bubbles right up from the heart of the sacred hill to the chemically poisoned water the town pumps out of its tanks. As a ceramist, she restores tile flooring: often for churches, using only the materials and techniques available to the original artisans. Buddy, the Texas Hill Country proprietor of the Dream Café, employs Faith to look after customers serving tea and soup in the café that is built into the base of the Tor. His history reaches back to the days of the first Glastonbury festival. George & Pilgrims is the pub at Market Cross where Nick Carlisle, who works in the New Age bookstore upstairs from architect Jack Montfort’s office, meets Jack as Jack experiences his second episode of automatic writing.
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Kissed a Sad GoodbyeNear the East London docks, the police discover Annabelle Hammond’s body in Mudchute Park, her jacket and short skirt carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. The Mudchute is an area of land that originally belonged to the dock authorities. Covering about 30 acres, roughly square in shape, it has high clinker banks (on which grass and wild flowers now flourish). These banks were built to contain a lake of silt dredged up during the building of Millwall Dock in the 1880s and 1890s. The last of the docks closed in the late 1970s, and by the early 80s, the Island was a rotting wasteland. 
Bounded on three-sides by the river Thames, and communications hindered (in those days) by the swing bridges at the entrances to the working docks, (the Island) had (and still has) a special feeling of isolation, which separates it from the rest of East London. The Island (of the Dogs) population had reached its peak of around 21,000 in 1900…The green field has been replaced by docks, warehouse, factories and streets of terraced houses. In this predominately working-class community, young people found a job, married and set up house not far from their parents. Island Gardens, a small park on the riverbank opposite Greenwich, created by the London County Council in 1895, is one of many places in the East End where people are attracted to the music of the buskers, who play selections that range from classical music, New Orleans jazz , to solo clarinet. Stebondale Street includes a short block of half a dozen homes that survived the bombing of London during World War II. Hammond ’s Fine Teas occupies one of the last of the old warehouses on the river. The four-storied, brown-bricked square bastion of Victorian industrial prowess has been home to the family-run business since 1879. Its grimness is relieved by an arch of orange brick set in above each of its many windows, and another over the main door. A pediment rises above the flat roof, giving the façade an incongruously playful air. No windows are found along the sides at ground level and the back of the building is flush with the waterline. Hammond’s is renown for its blending of teas from India, Sri Lanka, China, Africa, and even South America. On their way to the Island Gardens entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, Gemma and Kincaid walk past the knee-high iron railing that separates the flower bed from the round brick bulk of the Isle of Dogs entrance to the tunnel. (pg. 15) A curving split-rail fence separates the grassy area bordering the path from the slopping ground that marks the park’s edge and entrance. The flat, trellised top of the wooden gate give it the look of a Japanese shrine beyond the thick screen of trees, the gleaming buildings of Canary Wharf rising incongruously against the pastoral view. Cutty Sark sits in dry dock at Greenwich Pier. The ship was the last survivor of the lovely clippers that had once unloaded their cargos in the East End’s docks. By 1808, over 10,000 coasters and nearly 3,500 foreign-going vessels contributed particularly to the river (Thames) traffic jam…In September 1793, (the East India Merchants) held a meeting in an attempt to resolve it, which was to lead in due course to the building of London’s first commercial docks.
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FICTION Books by Deborah Crombie In a Dark House (Morrow, 2004)** Other Mysteries The Game, by Laurie King (Bantam, 2003)* Novels Ya Yas in Bloom, by Rebecca Wells (HarperCollins 2005)**
Biography/History The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America, by Russell Shorto (Doubleday, 2004)**
The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion (Countryman press, 2004) Travel/Journalism Ella in Europe: An American Dog’s International Adventures, by Michael Konik (Random House 2005)**
The Fat Free Truth, by Susan Canavan (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)
How to Speak Dog, by Stanley Coren (Free Press, 2000)
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