Matt Cost started out as a history major at Trinity College and later went on to own a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing histories and mysteries. Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, due out in December of 2023. Cost combines his love of histories and mysteries into a new historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.
Velma Gone Awry follows Hungarian private eye, "8" Ballo, whose mother was certain he was going to be born a girl, but when he comes out a boy, she writes down simply the number 8, as he has seven older siblings. Now, in his mid-thirties, 8 is a college educated man, a veteran of the Great War, jilted in love, and has his own private investigator business in Brooklyn, New York. When he is hired to find the young flapper daughter of a German businessman, life suddenly becomes much more complicated in a search that will lead him to cross paths with Dorothy Parker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Bugsy Siegel, Babe Ruth, and many more.
Matt stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing and researching the book:
I write histories and mysteries. The difference in research between the two genres varies, but in reality, is not all that different.
The historical fiction that I write requires a great deal of preloading. I have written historical fiction novels about Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, and New Orleans during Reconstruction.
The most important facet of doing the research for these books was visiting the place where they took place, getting in tune with the locale, and allowing that knowledge to make my writing more sincere. I visited countless American Civil War battlefields for At Every Hazard, and even spent so much time at Gettysburg where the defining moment of Joshua Chamberlain’s life and potentially the turning point of the Civil War occurred, that my son ended up going to Gettysburg College.
That same son went to Cuba with me as my translator for researching I am Cuba. I had worked with a company to develop a twelve-day journey across the island of Cuba following the revolutionary war path of Fidel Castro, getting guides as necessary, and gaining an appreciation for the terrain, the cities, and the people.
The most important thing that I learned on my travels through Cuba was how 300 bearded guerillas were able to defeat an army of 10,000 Cuban soldiers. This knowledge was gleaned by climbing the Sierra Maestra through dense jungle and stifling humidity to the camp of Fidel Castro (a historical site in Cuba that only the brave hike to). The soldiers simply didn’t have the desire or the mettle to flush them out of this jungle mountain hideout.
My wife and I had a grand time researching New Orleans for Love in a Time of Hate. Fascinating historical details by day, and by night, fabulous food, music, and drink. What’s not to like?
But on to the mysteries. I write two different mystery series with a third debuting in April. My Mainely Mysteries and Clay Wolfe/Port Essex books are fast-paced, action on every page, but also complex and twisting, with an underlying educational theme that has grabbed my attention and incorporated itself into my books. These themes include nuclear power, potent lobbyists, heroin smuggling through lobster traps, cults, genome editing, and unidentified aerial phenomena.
While the characters, or the good guys anyway, are set, as is the setting for these PI mysteries, the plot requires preloading by reading up on these topics, and then diverging into internet searches and documents. The rabbit hole is real. Through the course of writing the books, I am constantly dropping nuggets of information to family and friends regarding the fascinating thing that I learned that day. Some of this research comes before I put fingers to keyboard, but most of it occurs as I write. The subject, the topic, and the plot are constantly evolving, so the research must follow suit. I quite often will have ten or twelve tabs open at the top of my browser with such things as heroin laced with fentanyl, how to poison somebody, famous serial killers, and so on.
I am debuting a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry, in April of this year. This is a combination of my love of histories and mysteries and also contains probably the most unique research tool that I have utilized. There is a site, www.newspapers.com, that has archived onto their site most of the newspapers in the history of the United States. Perhaps the world, I’m not sure, as I have not needed to cross outside the country since I found it.
This is a treasure trove of information. I can read a number of papers such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for the time period I’m research, in this case, 1923. The unique thing that I’ve come up with regarding research is I read this newspaper every morning before writing. Front to back for the days that I am currently writing about. From this I get a feel for the politics, the news of the day, what things are being advertised, and so on. It has been a fantastic tool and I’d highly recommend it to anyone writing historical fiction.
I love every part of the writing process, but delving into a topic that interests me and peeling away layer after layer is gratifying and fascinating and a part that I truly do love. But I equally like writing, editing, and marketing my books.
Write on.
You can find our more about Matt Cost via his website and follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Velma Gone Awry: A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery is now available via Encircle Publications and all major booksellers.
Thanks for the great space in which to share!
Posted by: Matt Cost | April 11, 2023 at 11:50 AM