Jack the Ripper in St Louis -- and a Contest!

Note: "Fedora Amis" is a long-time friend of mine. I read Jack the Ripper in St. Louis a while back and loved it! You will, too. Here we learn about Fedora and her love for all things old and cool! -- Joanna

 By Fedora Amis

Ads from the past...

Call me strange, but I like to read newspaper advertisements--from 1897.  For a mere three cents, I can paper shop to my heart’s content.  A fine pair of Storm Queen winter boots cost $1.37.  I could buy a living room sofa for $7.75 or have my hernia repaired for under $20.

With no Truth in Advertising laws,  companies offered miracle products. One boasted it would cure a cold in a single day.  Dr. Dromgule’s Female Bitters promised to cure any and every female complaint. These nostrums didn’t really cure anything, but the consumer would feel better after taking a big swig. Most contained equal amounts of molasses, water and whiskey.

Fedora Amis loves reading and writing about the past.

Recipes for cosmetics...

Before Revlon and Maybelline, ladies had to make their own cosmetics. Here are two recipes--which I beg you never to use.

     For women’s hair: Was no oftener than every three weeks using egg yolk and cold water.

     For men’s baldness: Rub scalp with parafin. Stay away from fire.

     For the lady’s  face: Wash face seldom, and then with milk or salad oil.  Sleep with cloth soaked in strong lead lotion laid across the nose.   

     Thank heavens we now know that lead collects in the body.  Lead poisoning leads to pain, confusion, headache, seizures, coma and death. Suffering for beauty may be one thing--but this is definitely going too far.

Dangers lurked...

With no pure food or drug laws, candy makers used arsenic to color their confections green Morphine was the key ingredient used to calm tots in Winslow’s Baby Syrup and Kopp’s Baby Friend. I’ll bet it worked wonders on fussy babies--and opened many to lives of addiction. Drugstores sold paregoric and other opiates over the counter--as they did a variety of poisons.

The late Victorian era was a time when the earliest child labor laws reduced the working day for children under twelve years of age to a mere 10 hours a day. Smoke from coal-fired factories so blackened the air that buildings near the riverfront had to use artificial light at high noon even on a sunny day.  Local streets were flowing or rutted mud for three-fourths of every year. Shopgirls made 6 cents an hour. Trousers were called “unwhisperables.” Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, invented cornflakes in 1896 because he believed that a bland diet would reduce unhealthy sexual desire. 

I revel in the delicious irony of those times. Atlanta druggist John Pemberton cooked up a blend of cocaine and Kola nut in 1886. He called it the great National Temperance Drink. Substitute addiction to cocaine for addiction to liquor--what a concept! That’s why I love to read old newspapers.

I like nothing better than to discover odd bits of pop culture from the 19th century and to use them in writing my humorous Victorian whodunits

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

"Fedora Amis," author of Jack the Ripper in St. Louis, is the winner of the Mayhaven Award for fiction, now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine booksellers.

Visit Fedora's website at Fedoraamis.com and follow her on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/Fedoraamisauthor

Also online is a new interview   http://stlsinc.blogspot.com/

CONTEST:

Fedora has kindly agreed to give away one copy of Jack the Ripper in St. Louis to a lucky commenter. Add your comment and we'll choose a winner! 

DEADLINE: 

You have until Sunday, September 8 at midnight to make a comment. We'll choose one lucky commenter at random. The winner will be announced on Monday, September 9.

Twenty Types of Misdirection

There are a variety of ways to obscure facts, to cover over clues, and to intrigue our readers. Here are some of our favorites!

1. Red herring—The name is taken from the practice of dragging a dead fish over a trail to confuse hunting dogs. Here, a false clue is planted, usually by the author.

2. False clue—Different from a red herring, because this clue is planted by a character.

3. Overlooked clue—A classic method relying on our inability to triage information. Often the overlooked clue is “sandwiched” between other pieces of information.

4. Misinterpreted clue—When analyzing the clue, the sleuth comes to an erroneous conclusion. For example, a suspect has cat hair on him, but it came from his own pet not the victim’s.

5. Clues of omission—Something should have been present, something should have happened, or something should have been mentioned, but wasn’t. For example, a dog should have barked at an intruder. If the pooch didn’t, why not?

6. Classic misdirection—The sleuth was paying attention to the wrong situation so that a clue or the importance of the clue was overlooked.

7. Discounted clues—A clue is not given appropriate weight because it’s very commonplace or it’s too obscure to seem meaningful. (Example, a robbery didn’t occur on a cloudy day because a sundial was not functioning. Who would guess a cloudy day would matter?)

8. Dismissed clue—A clue is considered, and then decided to be irrelevant, but actually has import.

9. Cipher clue—A clue that can only be interpreted once a code is cracked or when additional pieces of the clue become available.

10. Point of view (POV) misdirection—Because of one character’s POV, the clue seems meaningless. This can happen because the POV character’s world view is askew, as when prejudiced. Or because the narrator is unreliable.

11. Botched clue—Information is mishandled or misinterpreted. For example, a fingerprint is smudged by the investigator. This could also be the result of an inadequate chain of custody.

12. “Pre-emptive strike” clue—The sleuth is provided information to purposely color interpretation of a clue or a person’s reputation. For example, the sleuth is told the informant is a drug addict when he/she is not, and therefore, the sleuth doesn’t trust the informant’s reliability.

13. Inaccurate witness—This is a case where the witness truly and honestly is mistaken, as when a person’s eyesight or hearing is faulty.

14. “Can’t chase two rabbits a1`nd catch one”—The sleuth, when presented with many leads, follows up on the wrong one, thus losing the opportunity to find/use/safeguard inform.

15. “I’m protecting someone” clue—A clue is falsely provided or a confession is made to protect a secret or another person.

16. Character flaw—A flaw in the sleuth’s character or world view—rather than in a witness’s character or world view —leads him/her to an erroneous conclusion or to overlook key information. For example, if the sleuth can’t believe a woman would kill viciously, he might overlook clues that prove the murderer is female.

17. Specialized knowledge clue—This is a clue that only has meaning to a person with specialized knowledge. For example, only someone who knows about opera might know that Puccini’s Sister Angelica concerns the death of a child.

18. “Warned off” clue—The sleuth is warned to stop an investigation or to overlook certain information. This in itself becomes a clue.

19. “Lost” clue—The clue is temporarily misplaced (such as put in a coat pocket) or forgotten.

20. Personal crisis—Not really a clue, but still a misdirection. This is when a problem in the sleuth’s personal life keeps him/her from properly following up on information or a suspect.

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Copyright 2007: Judy Moresi (aka J. Hassler Moresi) , Donna Ross (aka Fedora Amis), and Joanna Campbell Slan. For reprint information, please contact Joanna at joannaslan@aol.com


** NOTE: This handout was shared at Malice Domestic 2010