Guest Author: William S. Shepard

Diplomacy and wine, who can resist? I'm pleased to have William Shepard join me again to talk about his diplomatic mysteries. So this is my holiday treat for my blog readers. Happy Holidays!

Diplomacy and Wine

William S. Shepard

www.diplomaticmysteries.com

I was a career diplomat in the American Foreign Service, and served at our Embassies in Singapore, Saigon, Budapest and Athens, retiring as Consul General in Bordeaux. “Write about what you know,” is the usual advice given writers, and for me, that was the Embassy world. During one of my five Washington tours, I found myself staying late one late evening, as Duty Officer for the Secretary of State. I perused the files and diplomatic cables, and then realized what a variety of information from all sources a diplomat has access to. That is when the idea came to my – when I retired, I would write mystery stories set in American Embassies overseas.

It is a new genre, and to my knowledge I am the only writer writing what I call “diplomatic mysteries.” It now have a series of four, and my protagonist, Robbie Cutler, is a thirty something career diplomat. He serves where I have served, and where necessary, I have gone back overseas for research purposes.

The first novel, “Vintage Murder,” is set in Bordeaux. The bad guys are the Basque ETA terrorist group, who attempt to raise money by terrorism the great vineyards of the region. In “Murder On The Danube,” Robbie has been reassigned to the American Embassy in Budapest. Someone is killing prominent visiting Americans, in order to keep his secret, that he was a traitor to the Hungarian Freedom Fighter cause during the Hungarian Revolution.

Robbie is intelligent and knowledgeable, but he is not a people person. His sister, and then his wife Sylvie, often have a better feeling for people and their motives than he does. Readers like them both, but many prefer Uncle Seth, Robbie’s great uncle, a nationally prominent man, once Time Magazine’s Man Of The Year, who has access to Washington intelligence circles.

Where did the names come from? “Robbie” is a family name, and Cutler was my mother in law’s maiden name. I had an Uncle Seth, whom I just remember, and Seth is my middle name. Bad guys? They are all sorts, but they are not one dimensional. The ETA gunman in the first novel was motivated by a police killing of a member of his family. The bad guy in the second novel believes (incorrectly) that one of his fellow Freedom Fighters murdered his brother.

As I said, this is an original mystery genre. As the President of the American Foreign Service put it in a cover blurb, “London has Sherlock Holmes and San Francisco has Sam Spade, and now Washington has its first diplomatic sleuth, Robbie Cutler. Learn about embassy life from the inside, as you enjoy Bill Shepard’s latest diplomatic mystery.” You’ll have an enjoyable read in the process!

But diplomacy and wine go well together, as I discovered during my residence in Bordeaux. The 2011 Kindle edition of my book on French wines, “Shepard’s Guide to Mastering French Wines,” has just been issued. It costs less than one-third of the 2003 print first edition! And there are new features, including dozens of hyperlinks that take the reader from the book to websites of the great French wine estates! There are even e-mail forms embedded into many links, so that if you are actually thinking of planning your own overdue trip to France, you can send an e-mail directly from the book to the wine estate you wish to visit, and request the appointment to taste the estate’s wines!

Writing this wine book was a labor of love, and it grew out of my visits to the vineyards in Bordeaux. But we also went to Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne, the Rhone and Loire Valleys, to sample the wines and form judgments as to which wines were of fine quality and still offered the best value for the American consumer. Since returning to the USA I have become Wine Editor for two websites, with over 150 columns on French wines published on the internet.

It should be an easy errand for the purchaser of this book, at $5.95, to save more than the book’s cost with the first wine purchase made with its help. The two diplomatic mysteries are just $2.99 each.

And since all three books are now on Kindle Select, anyone enrolled in that program can borrow one of these books at no cost! That may just be why the wine book has been my best selling book for the holiday season.

Did you know that you can send one of these Kindle books as a gift to a friend? Just click on the “gift” button, and you’ll be linked with the e-mail message that you can fill out for a lucky friend! That’s also turning out to be a popular holiday season option.

And here are the links for these three books -
Vintage Murder
Murder On The Danube
Shepard’s Guide to Mastering French Wines

Bio
Now residents of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the Shepards enjoy visits from their daughters and granddaughters, fine and moderate weather, ocean swims at Assateague, Chesapeake Bay crabs, and the company of Rajah and Rani, their two rescued cats.

Prize winning mystery writer William S. Shepard is the creator of a new genre, the diplomatic mystery, whose plots are set in American Embassies overseas. That mirrors Shepard’s own career in the Foreign Service of the United States, during which he served in Singapore, Saigon, Budapest, Athens and Bordeaux, in addition to five Washington tours of duty.

His books explore this rich, insider background into the world of high stakes diplomacy and government. He evokes his last Foreign Service post, Consul General in Bordeaux, in Vintage Murder, the first of the series of four “diplomatic mysteries.” The second, Murder On The Danube, now also available on Kindle, mines his knowledge of Hungary and the 1956 Revolution. In Murder In Dordogne Robbie Cutler, his main character, is just married, but their honeymoon in the scenic southwest of France is interrupted by murders. The most recent of the series, The Saladin Affair, has Cutler transferred to work for the Secretary of State. Like the author, Cutler arranges trips on Air Force Two – now enlivened by serial Al Qaeda attempts to assassinate the Secretary of State.

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Thank you so much and I hope folks take advantage of the holidays to check out gifting, or the pleasure of reading, your books!

May you have a warm, cheery holiday season and a bright New Year!

Vintage Murder - Real or Research?

Vintage Murder - Real or Research?

A Look Behind the Scenes

William S. Shepard, http://www.diplomaticmysteries.com/

The first book in my series of Diplomatic Mysteries is Vintage Murder (http://tinyurl.com/3unnas5 ). It is set largely in Bordeaux, where I lived for several years, and in Paris. Much of the detail depends upon my research and memory of the days that I lived there, as Consul General.

Here are some examples, The meetings described in the book that take place at the Embassy in Paris are quite genuine in tone, and mirror actual meetings of American diplomats who were assigned to diplomatic missions around France. The Bordeaux vineyards are also real, and most of them (except where blackmailing episodes take place) are amongst the most famous and pricey wine estates of that storied region. So, unfortunately, are the activities of the Basque ETA, a terrorist organization whose stated purpose is Basque nationhood.

My idea was to combine these elements. Now, fortunately, the ETA seems exhausted (although we have seen that before), and its fortunes at a low ebb. But what if they were to revive, motivated by the desire to be a real player, with large sums of money at their disposal rather than the small amounts of “taxes” which they extort from local Basque businessmen? That led me to the creation of my first character, a young Basque of keen intelligence and a burning desire for revenge. Here I inserted into his background an actual event, the formation of paramilitary hit squads by Spanish authorities, who crossed the border and carried out murders in France. Unfortunately, they fairly often hit the wrong targets and murdered innocent people. That was the case with the father of my main Basque character. (I don’t like cardboard villains very much. I like to understand their motivation and to the extent possible, make them three dimensional.)

Having invented this character, I had the idea of having him be a keen student. Why not have him with an American MBA? That would do several things – he would think of the ETA terrorists as a group with a failing business model. To have any chance of success (specifically, liberating the hundreds of their members in prison) they would need a great deal of money and weapons. And there, in Bordeaux, just a few hours away from the coastline, are world famous vineyards, some bottles of which sell for enormous prices. It would be a tempting blackmail prospect.

My American diplomat, Robbie Cutler, is the Consul at the same mission where I served. He surely knows some of the same people, and of course is enjoying their wines! But when he is contacted by a wine estate owner who claims that he is being blackmailed, the action takes an official turn for Cutler. Add to that the sign paingted on the door of the American Consulate General, “Death to the American Consul,” signed by the ETA!

Robbie is on his second assignment. His father was also a career diplomat, so living overseas is natural for Robbie. He has long since paid all of his official calls, so that when help is needed, he already knows the key players in the French police and intelligence services. He also has that rare quality that Napoleon is said to have demanded of his generals – he is lucky! And luck is presented in the person of the beautiful Sylvie Marceau, a features newspaper writer for the local regional newspaper, Sudouest. He is logical she is intuitive. She also discovers the first wine estate owner to be murdered by the ETA!

Robbie and Sylvie ramble through the most famous vineyards of Bordeaux, in St. Emilion, Pomerol, and the Médoc, where they attend a reception at storied Château Margaux. Their detection becomes a love story, and on a visit to Bordeaux, Robbie’s sister Evalyn tells her brother that now he is the lucky one – Sylvie is far too good for the likes of him!

Since this is the first book of a series, Robbie Cutler and Sylvie Marceau become continuing characters, as do several of their diplomatic colleagues. Cutler is reassigned from Bordeaux to Budapest at the end of Vintage Murder, during the second book in the series, Murder On The Danube, but he and Sylvie keep in touch, and become engaged. Their honeymoon, in Murder In Dordogne, gives Sylvie a chance to play detective as well, and she solves a murder plot of which her husband was totally unaware! Finally, the American Ambassador in Paris in Vintage Murder is so well connected politically that at the start of the fourth book in the series, The Saladin Affair, he is named Secretary of State, and Robbie becomes his Special Assistant, responsible for planning his trips overseas. Here his diplomatic duties are compounded by a murder investigation, and the repeated attempts of Al Qaida to murder the Secretary of State.

Shepard’s Guide to Mastering French Wines (http://tinyurl.com/6eldhbn )

My years in Bordeaux also led me to a second career in wine writing, as the Wine Editor of the travel group, French Wine Explorers. My latest column, published last week, concerns the wonderful 2009 Beaujolais vintage. (http://tinyurl.com/3exy47g ).

My Kindle book on French wines, revised and enlarged for this 2011 edition, introduces you to the wines and wine regions of France. With dozens of hyperlinks, the reader can click back and forth between the book and the actual websites of the great regions of Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy. The 2009 and 2010 vintages are assessed, and there are many tips on quality wines that are reasonable priced. For the cost of a single glass of wine, here is your well-researched guide to the pleasures of French wines. Read this, and you’ll wonder why you ever relied on a point score rather than your own good taste!

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Thank you so much! My husband and I are just starting our efforts to learn about wine, so this was wonderfully serendipity to get a blog about this fascinating topic. We can't wait to learn more, and I, personally, can't resist a mystery with such an interesting premise as Vintage Murders.

Guest Author: William S. Shepard

First, I need to apologize to William for messing up his blog date. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. No excuses--especially since he sent me the blog ages in advance and I was really looking forward to it. But enough wringing of hands. Here he is!

Research and Mystery Writing

William S. Shepard

http://www.diplomaticmysteries.com/

The advice given writers is to write about what they know, and it is sound advice. For myself, as a former career diplomat, it meant creating a new mystery genre, the diplomatic mystery. My series of four Robbie Cutler novels is set largely in American Embassies overseas, where I have served and lived for years.

That doesn’t mean, I quickly found out, that an overseas location is easy to write about or to recall. For one thing, one’s memory begins to play tricks. Was that restaurant really on the hilly Buda side of the Danube, or in downtown Pest? For another thing, history is a moving target. It doesn’t stay still at all, particularly in areas where the politics are volatile.

My novel “Murder On The Danube,” for example, is set in Budapest.

It is set in the present time, with flashbacks to the Hungarian Revolution against Russian occupation. Someone is killing people now, to stop the past from being found out.

This made for interesting research. When I was assigned to the American Embassy in Budapest it was during the communist years, when the Hungarian Revolution was officially a nonevent, so it was impossible to do solid research. After the Berlin Wall came down, and with the assistance of both the Hungarian Embassy in Washington and the American Embassy in Budapest, I returned, did research for the book, and even lectured at the official 1956 Historical Institute.
Now that would be impossible, for the Institute no longer exists. The 1956 Historical Institute was defunded, some say because its files may have contained embarrassing information about presently powerful people! History tends to wobble around still, like that Budapest park filled with old statues of the Stalinist era!
In creating a back story for the Hungarian Revolution itself I was faced with difficult choices. Put in too much, and the back story intrudes. Too little, and it would seem shallow. I even put the problem to a creative writing class that I was teaching at the time! Finally the solution came. The thirteen days of turmoil are well known, and so I wrote thirteen chapters, each with a back story that contained some highlights of that day in the fighting, with clues as to the present murderer. This format succeeded, and a high compliment came from a friend who was himself a Freedom Fighter in those days. He said that his teenage son read the book, and then said “I read ‘Murder On The Danube,’ and now I understand what you and Mother went through!”

Let me mention also my latest ebook, “ Maryland in the Civil War.” 

It arose out of my lectures on that subject at Chesapeake College and Washington College, Maryland. This is the 150th anniversary of those events, and some of the background, for example how Maryland stayed in the Union, is little known today. But I soon discovered the truth of Faulkner’s axiom, from Requiem For A Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I found for example that fifty years ago, the centennial of the Civil War was marked by state observances. There arose an issue of whether to tell the story of John Brown’s 1859 raid at Harper’s Ferry. Some feared that the entire centennial observance might unravel if publicity were given to Brown’s exploits!

I have found unexpected richness in this topic. The courage of Governor Thomas Hicks, for example, is virtually unknown today. Sort of a Maryland Harry Truman, he was a Dorchester County farmer, who was elected by the Know-Nothing anti-immigrant party. Then Maryland was overwhelmed by the grand issue of whether to secede. Faced with a largely pro-secessionist state legislature, Hicks stalled and played a major role in ensuring that the state stayed in the Union. Had she not done so, of course, Washington would have been totally surrounded by the Confederacy, and the outcome might have been very different. It is a gripping story, one that I was thrilled to discover and write about. And of course the story was not one sided. At Gettysburg on the third day of the battle, Maryland units faced each other, and at Culp’s Hill, the opposing color sergeants were two cousins from Trappe, Talbot County, Maryland!

The richness and confusion of history is worth exploring. I hope you will share the excitement of that research, in “Murder On The Danube,” and “Maryland In Thed Civil War.”

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Thanks!
One of the reasons I was so fascinated by this is that I grew up in Maryland and have visited Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, and have had several wonderful trips to Russia, so it really resonated with me. I hope you'll enjoy these mysteries as much as I do!