Dianne joined us from Arizona -- as did other MAF members from other states. We had a terrific time talking directly to the author about how she came to write this book. It is a first-time mystery, and it won the prestigious Best First Agatha award in 2018. It is a historical mystery set in Victorian England. So one of our many questions for Dianne was about why as an American author she chose to write about both another time period but another country as well.

She told us that the Victorian period has always been a favorite time to her, and that she's read both fiction and non-fiction from that era. One of the things that intrigued her was the era's focus on the American heiress. Bankrupt nobility sought out rich heiresses from America, and esentially affected a trade deal: money for titles -- and the glamorous society they would gain entry to. Many of these relationships were doomed to be unhappy, and Dianne wanted to set her heroine up in a more positive way and made her have a knack for solving crimes as well!