Husband-and-wife writing duo Stanley R. Wells and Laura Giebfried team up for the second installment of their old-fashioned whodunit series featuring protagonist Alexandra Durant. In Saint Peter’s Tear, Durant once again finds herself at the center of a mystery, this time aboard the RMS Queen Mary, as she attempts to discover who has been sending threatening letters to the rich, aging socialite Mrs. Dabney.
As Kirkus Reviews says, “Giebfried and Wells skillfully mix standard plot elements into something that feels fresh and snappy.” This “fresh and snappy” approach to storytelling starts with a classic hard-boiled detective mold and injects it with more modern details: a female protagonist, for one, as well as the idea that being an official detective isn’t required in order to solve the case—or save the day.
Set in 1956, the novel is at once a cozy throwback to classic mysteries in the vein of Agatha Christie and a timely commentary on gender dynamics that resonates particularly loudly in the age of #MeToo. While Durant is not a trained detective, she has an extensive background in psychology and a near perfect memory—which leads to clever callbacks to the original book in the series, The Marlowe Murders. The riddle at the center of this novel, however, quickly unravels into something much bigger as Durant stumbles upon poisonings, broken engagements, mysterious fortunetellers, and a rapidly growing body count.
But in the midst of all the murder and mayhem, it is perhaps the amateur detective’s more mundane characteristics that will most endear her to readers. Durant’s addiction to pills in order to numb herself from the horror of the events of the previous book as well as her experience as a woman in a field dominated by men are likely to prove familiar to many modern readers. It is this parallel between “then” and “now” that helps Durant’s character resonate so deeply beyond the confines of her gender or profession.
And the authors are conscious of using their own unique backgrounds when crafting these types of people and stories: Giebfried, the author of seven novels, earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and technical writing from the University of Maine and screenwriting certificates from The National Film and Television School in the U.K., The Seattle Film Institute, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Wells, a playwright and director, graduated from the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington before going to work as an actor in several Hollywood television shows and movies. They now devote most of their time to writing books and screenplays at their home in Bangor, Maine, where they live with their two daughters.
Working as a team, Giebfried and Wells bring their own particular strengths to the table. “Being a woman has helped me write a female character whom we find compelling and realistic,” explains Giebfried. “Alexandra is strong but not without flaws. She has a good education, and she’s ultimately rather fearless, and yet she’s also abrupt, has difficulty expressing the emotions that she feels, and has a dangerous addiction to anxiolytic tranquilizers. She is—like most of us—a complicated soul.”
Meanwhile, Wells tends to set the scene, using his training as an actor to “see the characters and situations Laura and I have created through a filmic lens. When we started writing the series, I always saw the stories as movies and drew from my work on screen to ensure that we had vivid characters, entertaining settings, and a good balance of dialogue and action.” This tandem approach creates a compulsively readable tale full of alcoholism, greed, addiction, and betrayal…with a witty and fallible heroine at the center:
It was probably the heat from the fireplace that was getting to me and making me sweat beneath the collar. Or, if I had to psychoanalyze it, a relatively normal amount of anxiety centered around the undertaking of a job that I had fallen into almost serendipitously and had little qualifications for. I wasn’t a detective, after all. I had a nearly completed doctorate in psychology and a nearly perfect memory, yet little experience solving crimes other than the harrowing but singular experience with the Marlowes. Solving those murders had been a bit like an early Christmas present to myself, where the gift was that I got to live.
The decision to set the novel in a time period in which much of modern technology doesn’t exist was a very conscious one. The authors are huge fans of film noir and wanted to create a story in a similar vein. The result is a throwback to another era, not only in terms of characters, but also in terms of readers—to a time when you could wrap yourself up in a deliciously decadent, 561-page book with no time constraints or interference from the outside world. The highly detailed, immersive world of St. Peter’s Tear purposefully bucks the trend of catering to the modern lack of attention spans, in which everything we read must come in snippets and sound bites.
Instead, Wells and Giebfried construct a universe so complete that it reminds readers of the power of books themselves. From Durant’s struggle with her own personal demons to the increasingly delicate web of clues surrounding the central mystery, readers aren’t rushed from plot point to plot point. They are transported to an era that was, in many ways, “simpler”—both within the novel and without.
And fans of twisty thrillers will be particularly happy to learn that they can solve the mystery before the end…if they pay attention. The authors promise no last-minute reveals based on information that was never provided within the pages of the novel. Audiences are instead treated to a brilliant but at times struggling heroine whose evolution—from a woman forced to solve a mystery due to outside circumstances in The Marlowe Murders to a woman who chooses to tackle a mystery head-on in St. Peter’s Tear—is both complex and inspiring.
Andrea Moran is a professional copywriter and editor who loves all things books.
