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I'm often asked why I set my Sydney Lockhart series in historic hotels. The answer is easy. What better place to stage a crime. Historic hotels have mystique all their own. Think about all the people who've stayed there over the years. Were they on their honeymoon? Were they weary travelers who needed a place to sleep after hours on the road? Were they involved in a little tete-a-tete, a secret rendezvous?
Hotels often have their own stories to tell, which I weave into the stories in my books. Al Capone lived in a room in the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the setting of my first Sydney mystery, Murder at the Arlington. The gangster was involved in illegal gambling and hung out at the Ohio Club across the street. Without giving too much away, I used this as a segue into the murder that occurred in the room where Sydney was staying. This is also the room where my husband and I stay when we visit Hot Springs. I think we've spent a total of four months in that room. As a result, I know every inch of that hotel and what lurks nearby.
Murder at the Luther takes place in Palacios, a small coastal town in Texas. Reading their guest books, which cover the shelves in the breakfast room, I was amazed at all the politicians who stayed there. President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird were regulars and often met with other politicians to plan strategies. During the 1940s, Palacios was home to a German prisoner-of-war camp. Several famous USO entertainers performed at the pavilion built over the water in front of the hotel, and this is where Guy Lombardo and his orchestra rang in the New Year. With a plethora of lively characters, I envisioned what might have happened on a crowded dance floor during a night of dancing and drinking, and soon, the plot materialized before my eyes.
Galveston, Texas was another notoriously wild locale during the first half of the Twentieth Century. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt repealed the Twenty First Amendment, ending Prohibition in 1933, and the Depression began to wane, Galveston's development exploded. It was like the island threw open its doors and invited the world to come to its beach for a big party. I learned that soon after, a controversial development project had the island citizens in an uproar. This became the jumping off point for Murder at the Galvez.
The ghost girl is still reported playing with her bouncing ball at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, where a murder occurs in a swanky suite in Murder at the Driskill. And the ghosts are so thick at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio that it's difficult to find a seat at the bar. Murder at the Menger takes you all over Alamo City. My latest mystery, Murder at the Pontchartrain, is set in New Orleans, where Tennesse Williams wrote Streetcar Names Desire. With voodoo as a factor in this mystery and the nearby swamps crawling with the worst kinds of creatures, I couldn't wait to dive into another episode in Sydney's harum-scarum life.
I'm finishing up number seven. I can't reveal the hotel's name, but it involves a beauty pageant, dance halls, birdwatching, and bootlegging.
Kathleen Kaska is the author of the award-winning mystery series the Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series set in the 1950s and the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series. Her first two Lockhart mysteries, Murder at the Arlington and Murder at the Luther, were selected as bonus books for the Pulpwood Queen Book Group, the country’s largest book group. Murder at the Menger was a finalist in the Chanticleer International Book Award in the Mystery and Mayhem category.
She also writes mystery trivia. Rowman & Littlefield published The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book. Her Holmes short story, “The Adventure at Old Basingstoke,” appears in Sherlock Holmes of Baking Street, a Belanger Books anthology. She is the founder of The Dogs in the Nighttime, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Anacortes, Washington, and a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars.
When she is not writing, she spends much of her time with her husband, traveling the back roads and byways around the country, looking for new venues for her mysteries, and bird-watching along the Texas coast and beyond. Her passion for birds led to The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story (University Press of Florida). Her collection of blog posts for Cave Art Press was published under the title, Do You Have a Catharsis Handy? Five-Minute Writing Tips. Catharsis was the winner of the Chanticleer International Book Award in the nonfiction Instruction and Insights category. Check out her popular blog series, “Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town.”
AlHoThe Were answer is easy. What better place to stage a crime? Historic hotels have a mystique all their own. Think about all the people who’ve stayed there over the years. Were they on their honeymoon? Were they weary travelers who needed a place to sleep after hours on the road? Were they involved in a tête-à-tête, a secret rendezvous?
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