by Lynne | Mar 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
An article in the New York Times about seven children killed in a fire in Brooklyn just a few days ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/nyregion/funerals-for-7-victims-of-brooklyn-fire.html) reminded me of the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory 104 years ago. The Triangle fire lasted only half an hour, from the initial spark to final burning embers but in the end, 146 perished.
Near closing time on Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire erupted on the eighth floor in a bin of scrap materials and fabrics. A steady flow of wind rushed through the elevator shafts from the street and fed the flames. Smoke began its way upward to the ninth floor. Garment workers, seamstresses, mostly women and young girls, raced to the exit door on Washington Place. It was locked. Later, some claimed the doors were kept locked so the girls didn’t steal the fabrics. Within minutes the eighth and ninth floors were raging infernos.
Forensic science, often called forensics, is the application of science to the legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action. The word itself is derived from the Latin for?nsis, meaning “of or before the forum.” In Roman times, criminals would present their case before a group of individuals in the Forum.
Today, with the preponderance of CSI programs and movies, forensics is a household word. Law enforcement and crime-lab teams, however, view these programs as a hindrance since it colors the public’s (and the jury’s) view of the real work involved.
In 1911, fire forensics (in fact, all forensics) was in its infancy. In my book, The Triangle Murders, Cormac Mead searched the two destroyed floors at the Triangle factory for evidence that would prove his wife was murdered. If he suspected arson, what would he have been looking for? Probably things similar to what fire investigators look for today when investigating fires: evidence of accelerants, igniters, pieces of a bomb and explosive residues (if an explosion is suspected), point of origin, and point of entry and exit of the arsonist (if arson is suspected.) Interestingly, unlike crime suspects who are innocent until proven guilty, fires are considered suspicious until proven otherwise.
Photo: An officer stands at the Asch Building’s 9th floor window after the Triangle fire. Sewing machines, drive shafts, and other wreckage of the Triangle factory fire are piled in the center of the blaze-scoured room. (Photographer: Brown Brothers, 1911, Copyright: Kheel Center, Cornell University, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/.)
by Lynne | Mar 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
March 25, 2015, will commemorate the 104th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The 1911 fire was the deadliest workplace disaster in NYC before 9-11. It was significant not because 146 workers died, but because it instigated significant reform. At the time workplace safety was barely regulated and rarely thought about . . . except, perhaps, by the workers themselves. Other workplace disasters had occurred in the past and would again in the future. You may remember a similar fire at a factory in Bangladesh last year.
When I decided to write a mystery against the backdrop of the Triangle, I had no idea what I was in for. Research took me in several directions: the forensics of fire, the consequences of “defenestration,” that is, vertical falls from high places, the difficulty in identifying bodies falling from such heights, the safety hazards for garment workers, women’s rights, workers’ rights, changes in the American workplace.
But I also researched the time and place of the disaster. 1911, Greenwich Village, New York City. A time when Ellis Island kept its arms open to immigrants from many countries — immigrants who came for a better life, but often wound up in sweatshops, or worse. A time of Tammany Hall and corruption. A time of women’s suppression. But also a time of new beginnings, hope, and freedom in a new land.
I am a native New Yorker and was amazed at the fantastic bits of information I dug up. I learned, for instance, that Washington Square Park is built on what was once a potter’s field, where 100,000 people were buried for a century and a half. I walked the streets of Greenwich Village, saw the buildings my characters would have seen, drank in bars they patronized, and gazed up at the ninth story of the Asch Building (now part of NYU) to visualize the flames bursting through the windows and the workers leaping to their deaths.
The cover of my book is a photo I took of the building in 2010, with smoke and color added for dramatic effect. For those of you who write about history, or simply enjoy reading it, I know you’ll agree that real-life events in the past make a grand backdrop for a fictional story.
Murder, in particular.
by Lynne | Mar 9, 2015 | Uncategorized
Several writers have asked me if I felt press releases were a valuable marketing tool. My answer is yes, but with a qualifier. You must have something to market besides your book. There must be an interesting “story” to accompany the release. I’ve only used a press release for one of my books, Deadly Provenance, because, frankly, I couldn’t find an attractive hook for the others. But a hunt for a missing Van Gogh did the trick.
Here is the press release I wrote and distributed (through a distribution company.) It gained me a front page story on the San Diego Union-Tribune, a KPBS radio interview, a story in the San Diego Jewish Press, several author interviews, and a number of speaking engagements. I’d welcome your feedback.
For Immediate Release
lynne@lynnekennedymysteries.com
www.lynnekennedymysteries.com
Author available for interviews
Book Jacket artwork available
MYSTERY WRITER LYNNE KENNEDY ON THE HUNT FOR
MISSING VAN GOGH
San Diego, California, August 20, 2013. Mystery writer Lynne Kennedy is on the hunt for a painting by Vincent van Gogh, which vanished during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.
While researching her latest novel, Kennedy learned that the oil on canvas, called Still Life: Vase with Oleanders, disappeared in 1944. Inspired by this extraordinary story, Kennedy penned Deadly Provenance and created a fictional solution to the missing artwork. In reality, the painting remains lost.
With the recent release of her book, Kennedy hopes to re-energize the search for the missing Van Gogh. Through the Internet’s global community, she is enlisting the help of the public worldwide to track down its fate. Anyone interested in following her progress or has knowledge of the lost painting can contact her at The Hunt.
What facts are known? Before the war, the painting was on display in the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, owned by a French Jewish family. In 1940, the family suspected that they were going to be targeted by the Nazis. They packed up 30 or so of the paintings from their gallery, including Vase with Oleanders, and gave them to family friends at the Château de Rastignac, a country house near Bordeaux.
In1941, their gallery was, indeed, plundered and their paintings and building were confiscated. On March 30, 1944, Nazis raided the Château, looting as much as they could before burning the building to the ground. It is unknown whether the Bernheim-Jeune’s paintings were destroyed or stolen, but they have not been seen since.
Witnesses to the event declared that the Germans carried packages of every size and shape out of the Château and loaded them onto Nazi trucks. Was the Van Gogh canvas rolled up and secreted away?
As a former science center director, Kennedy has a wealth of contacts in the museum community. She has already begun tapping those resources at the Getty in Los Angeles and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Their information is sketchy, but Kennedy is not deterred.
She has acquired leads from the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) in Washington, D.C. which she is currently following up on. According to HARP, information might be obtained from the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Paris, where family losses are recorded, and the Archives Nationales, which houses materials in the General Commissariat records.
She will also be tracing records from the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, the Nazi agency tasked with the confiscation of art from “undesirables.” The records are voluminous, with hundreds of thousands of displaced artworks listed from myriad countries.
Of note, the diary of Alfred Rosenberg, the leader of the ERR, has recently been uncovered. Could he have alluded to particular art pieces in these pages? Kennedy hopes to confirm this when the diary reaches its eventual destination at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Other avenues of investigation are underway and as new information unfolds, Kennedy will make it public. If and when the work is found, it will be returned it to its rightful owners and, after 70 years, be made visible to the world.
Kennedy is the author of three historical mysteries, each solved by modern technology. With a Master’s Degree in Science and almost 30 years as a science museum director, she has had the opportunity to study history and forensic science, both of which play significant roles in her novels. She blogs regularly and has many loyal fans.
by Lynne | Mar 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
I recently read an excellent novel called “Help for the Haunted.” It’s about two sisters, ages around 14 and 18 and their parents who make a living by helping expunge demons from haunted individuals. Hmm. Well, never mind the plot – it actually works quite well.
When I was about halfway through I happened to notice the name of the author. Isn’t that awful? I didn’t even pay attention to the author’s name until then. Shame. Anyway, the author’s name is John Searles. A male . . . writing in the point of view of two young females. The characters were so well-formed and realistic I was surprised to learn they were created by a man.
I began to wonder how many other books I’ve read had characters developed by an opposite sex author. One that came to mind immediately was “Memoirs of a Geisha.” In this book, the author, Arthur Golden, does an excellent job of portraying the opposite sex main character. (Not to mention all the cultural differences that required a great deal of research.)
The other book I recalled was “She’s Come Undone,” by Wally Lamb. Also an excellent portrayal of a female character by a male author. Here the protagonist deals with rape, the death of her mother and suicide. How much tragedy and trauma can one woman deal with and how can the male author empathize so poignantly?
In “Help for the Haunted,” clearly I assumed the author was female. I applaud John Searles for getting into the heads of two young women so artfully. But how did he do it? Does he have daughters? Does he teach high school girls? Does he vet his characters through other young women to see if they are, indeed, realistic?
In my novel, “The Triangle Murders,” I attempted the same thing. The main character is a male homicide cop. But in this case, Frank Mead had been developed in other books with the help of a female character. In this book I simply let him fly on his own. The point is that Frank “grew” around my female protagonist in other books and I felt I knew him well enough to give him the lead. But how well did I know him compared to my female lead? As a woman, how well can I know any man?
Is it enough to be married, teach, have brothers, sons, uncles and cousins of the opposite sex, to claim to know what goes on in their heads? Is writing about characters from an opposite gender point of view different from writing about characters in a different time zone or location?
I think it is.
What do you think?
by Lynne | Feb 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
“The transfer of works of art from vanquished to victor is as old as warfare itself.”
. . . Lynn Nicolas, author of Rape of Europa
I open with this quote because it so aptly describes the events that began in the art world long before the outbreak of the second World War. Hitler’s dream of a pure Germanic Empire included works of art and he determinedly set about purging those pieces he considered unsuitable.
What was unsuitable? Works that were “unfinished” or abstract, that did not depict reality. Vasily Kandinsky. Works by Jews. Camille Pisarro. Works by leftists. George Grosz. Degenerate art they were called and exhibitions of them were set up to show the German people what not to like and admire. Shows like “Entartete Kunst” in Munich in 1937 drew thousands.
Hermann Goering was one of the first in Hitler’s regime to recognize the commercial value of some of these works of art and amassed thousands of works for his own personal collection. His “agent” took Van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” purged from a museum in Frankfurt, to sell in Holland. The painting eventually found its way to New York and was sold for $82.5 million.
Alfred Rosenberg, a Nazi ideologue, set up the ERR, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to systematically collect – confiscate or steal, to be more precise – works of art and artifacts from state museums, citizens and Jews, in particular. Millions of pieces.
As the war came to an end, the Allies closed in. With them were a handful of art-specialists called “monument men.” Their job was to locate and salvage these precious works of art from Germany, Italy and France. Every day these officers would find thousands of pieces on the verge of destruction. They saved what they could; still many disappeared through looting.
The fate of thousands of objects is still unknown, even today. One of those precious pieces is the subject of my book, Deadly Provenance. It is Van Gogh’s painting, “Still Life: Vase with Oleanders,” which vanished in 1944. Was it destroyed or is it hidden in someone’s secret art collection? In someone’s garage waiting for a sale, perhaps? Will it ever surface to please the world once more?
Can science and technology assist in authenticating the painting if ever it is found? And if so, will it be restored to its rightful owner? Provenance will tell.
For those interested, I will be speaking in depth about this topic and my book at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, CA, on Saturday, March 28 at 1:30 p.m. http://www.bowers.org/index.php/programs/lectures/event/2186-lecture-book-signing-deadly-provenance
by Lynne | Feb 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
First Harper Lee, then Dr. Seuss, now Lynne Kennedy. A manuscript lost since 1985 has re-surfaced. “Time Lapse,” an apt name for a missing manuscript has been unearthed by author Lynne Kennedy’s Labrador retriever, Rosie, in an old steamer trunk, buried in storage.
With the success of Kennedy’s mysteries, this is a valuable find. Her high-concept novels, historical mysteries that are solved today with modern technology, have become increasingly popular with the mystery and history set. “Time Lapse,” a follow-up to successful “Time Exposure” will pursue a character across the pond to England in the 1880s and will resolve the long-time, infamous mystery of Jack the Ripper.
How does she do it? Research, resourcefulness and imagination. A winning combination for any writer. Let’s hope she polishes the original manuscript with her usual skillful style and publishes it quickly. Fans are already clamoring for a new work.
Keep a watchful eye for “Time Lapse.”
Near closing time on Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire erupted on the eighth floor in a bin of scrap materials and fabrics. A steady flow of wind rushed through the elevator shafts from the street and fed the flames. Smoke began its way upward to the ninth floor. Garment workers, seamstresses, mostly women and young girls, raced to the exit door on Washington Place. It was locked. Later, some claimed the doors were kept locked so the girls didn’t steal the fabrics. Within minutes the eighth and ninth floors were raging infernos.
Photo: An officer stands at the Asch Building’s 9th floor window after the Triangle fire. Sewing machines, drive shafts, and other wreckage of the Triangle factory fire are piled in the center of the blaze-scoured room. (Photographer: Brown Brothers, 1911, Copyright: Kheel Center, Cornell University, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/.)
