I've been working on the Companion Book for the Ginger Gold Mystery series, and I wanted to share a sample with you. I've been rereading each book which has been fun and eye opening. I've forgotten so much! I'm reading my own books and wondering "who-dun-it".
With each book, I list the title, when it was published and the year and month of the setting, along with the blurb.
Then I share some of my personal story, which gets quite personal as time goes on, followed by tidbits about the actual story.
And finally I expand on the historical backdrop, which I find fascinating and I think people who read historical books must do as well.
MURDER ON THE SS ROSA
Published May 4, 2017
Set in August 1923
Murder’s a pain in the bow!
Meet Ginger Gold: fashionista, widow, and former British Secret Service agent. She's crossing the Atlantic aboard the luxurious SS Rosa, bound for London to settle her father's estate. Her companion is the no-nonsense nurse Haley Higgins. Her sidekick is Boss, the most charming Boston terrier on the high seas. Her problem? The ship's captain has just been murdered.
Ginger can't resist a good puzzle, especially when the victim owed her late father a fortune. Partnering with the handsome and skeptical Chief Inspector Basil Reed, she uncovers blackmail, secret affairs, and a killer desperate enough to strike again. The suspects are plentiful: a jealous wife, a glamorous actress, a love-struck chef, and an officer with ambitions. As a storm batters the ship and tensions rise, Ginger must use every skill from her covert past to catch a murderer. But solving this case is only the beginning. A telegram awaits her in London, promising new mysteries at Hartigan House. Will Ginger stay to uncover the truth?
Personal: May 4 is my daughter’s birthday, so I was pleased to release the first book on that day. Another little easter egg is that I made Ginger’s birthday the same day was mine, July 31. You’ll see this in the journal entries and what is now the Velvet Spy.
Looking back over the last ten years, 2017 seems like a time of innocence. My life, my family’s life and the whole world went through many tumultuous times since then, and when I say the whole world, it’s not a hyperbole.
In February of 2017 I took a three week Mexican vacation with my daughter Tasia and my husband Norm. As a self-employed person, all my vacations are working vacations, and this was one were I worked on my new cozy mystery idea, writing the first draft of what would become the first book in the Ginger Gold mystery series.
I had such little expectation on the success of this series, that I didn’t even try to make it full length, so book one became an introductory novella.
At this time, we lived in a big house on a hill which at one time housed my husband and I, our 4 teenage kids (and one friend for a 6 month period), and my parents. It’s strange writing about it now, knowing what the next 10 years would bring, but at this time, life was about as ordinary as it could get for a struggling writer and her family.
Story: This was the early stages of planning and plotting, developing characters and situations. It’s been fun and interesting rereading this series from the beginning, knowing what I know about Ginger’s future now, that I didn’t know then. It’s art imitating my life!
I feel like I know the characters of Ginger and Basil and gang as well as I know my own in-real-life friends and family, but the time of this writing, we were just getting acquainted. I knew I wanted a feisty female lead, who was smart, beautiful, but with a hidden depth due to loss and incredible bravery. Having her as a former British Secret service agent explained how she would have such a diverse skill set which made her a terrific sleuth. Her heartache over the loss of a well-loved husband not only gave her a measure of vulnerability, it kept her from entering into a romance too quickly in the series. Basil’s own difficult matters of the heart worked for this as well.
I wanted to connect America with England (which subtly connects to my home country of Canada, a nation influenced culturally and politically to both of those countries).
The only way to get a character from North America to Great Britain was by steam ship, so naturally, this became the setting of the first mystery. I can’t remember why I chose the name SS Rosa, but it worked out well for other plot devices in the future.
Historical Backdrop:
When I was researching Murder on the SS Rosa, I found that an Atlantic crossing in the early 1920s wasn’t simply a way to get from Boston to England—it was an entire world unto itself. A floating society, sealed off from the modern age, governed by its own rules, rituals, indulgences, and contradictions.
By the early 1920s, steamship travel had reached its golden age. Ocean liners weren’t just functional vessels—they were symbols of prestige, national pride, and technological confidence. A ship like the SS Rosa would have been powered by massive coal-fed boilers, tended day and night by firemen who worked in punishing heat below decks, shovelling coal to keep the engines alive.
For passengers in first and second class, however, this industrial labor was almost invisible. What they experienced instead was elegance: carpeted corridors, polished brass railings, wood-panelled dining saloons, and stewards who seemed to glide rather than walk. A crossing could take anywhere from five to eight days, depending on weather, and each day followed a predictable rhythm—breakfast, promenading on deck, reading, tea, dinner, music, and late-night conversations that stretched long after the lights dimmed.
Ships like the SS Rosa were meticulously scheduled environments. Bells rang. Meals were announced. Dress codes mattered. Even boredom had structure.
First Class vs. Third Class: Two Very Different Voyages
One of the most striking aspects of steamship travel was how rigidly class divisions were enforced. First-class passengers enjoyed private cabins, access to lounges, smoking rooms, libraries, and sometimes even gyms or Turkish baths. Their days were filled with leisure and social maneuvering—who sat with whom at dinner mattered, and reputations traveled faster than the ship itself.
Third-class passengers, on the other hand, lived a very different reality. Often immigrants or labourers, they slept in shared quarters, ate simple meals, and spent much of their time below decks. Yet historical accounts suggest that third class wasn’t always miserable: there was music, laughter, card games, and a sense of communal life that first class, for all its luxury, sometimes lacked.
In Murder on the SS Rosa, this contrast plays an important role. A ship may be physically small, but socially it contains entire worlds stacked on top of one another.
The class system on the ship provided a perfect way to introduce Scout, a London-born waif, into Ginger’s life, and which would be the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship. Of course, Ginger didn’t know this at the time, and neither did Scout (though I, as the creator of both, had known from the beginning!). The boy gave a way to explore Ginger’s heartache over her apparent barrenness, and the strength of her maternal instincts.
Prohibition: America Goes Dry (Sort Of)
One of the most delicious historical contradictions aboard transatlantic liners in the 1920s was alcohol.
In the United States, Prohibition officially began in 1920 with the passage of the 18th Amendment. Alcohol was illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport. Speakeasies flourished, bootleggers became folk heroes, and organized crime found a very profitable new line of work.
Britain, meanwhile, carried on drinking quite happily.
This created a fascinating grey/gray area at sea. American-flagged ships were expected to enforce Prohibition rules the moment they left port. British-flagged ships? Not so much. Many continued to serve alcohol freely once they reached international waters, much to the delight of American passengers who suddenly found themselves able to order champagne without whispering.
For American passengers in particular, ordering a cocktail aboard the SS Rosa wasn’t merely refreshment—it was defiance. The moment the ship crossed into international waters, glasses were raised not just to pleasure, but to freedom from the strictures of Prohibition.
For the British, it was simply another civilized drink at sea.
Pop Culture on the High Seas
Despite being cut off from land, passengers didn’t feel disconnected from popular culture. Steamships were full of books, newspapers, sheet music, and dance. Jazz was making its way across the Atlantic. American slang was beginning to infiltrate British speech. Silent film stars were household names on both sides of the ocean. The 1920s saw the advent of the “talkies” and this pop culture phenomenon inspired me to include an American actress from the era, on her way to meet an important agent in London, who promised to get her into a talking film. Unfortunately, her voice didn’t match the beauty of her face! My research found this was a common phenomenon, and many beautiful actresses of the silent film era found their careers collapse when talking films became all the rage.
Fashion traveled too. Women packed evening gowns, day dresses, hats for every occasion, and gloves to match. Men dressed formally for dinner, even when the ship pitched beneath them. To be seen in the wrong attire at the wrong hour was a social misstep, even thousands of miles from shore.
These details mattered enormously to me while writing Murder on the SS Rosa. A murder doesn’t occur in a vacuum—it happens amid music drifting from a lounge, the clink of glasses, the hum of engines, and the quiet knowledge that there is nowhere to escape.