Connie Berry Takes Us Across the Pond in 'The Shadow of Memory'

Connie Berry, author of the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, chats with us to discuss the fourth book in her series, The Shadow of Memory. In this latest novel, Kate, an American antiques dealer, works to uncover a dark secret hidden in Victorian England. While The Shadow of Memory is part of a series, this book can also be read as a standalone. Berry explains, “…You really only have to mention things very briefly and only certain things…quite a number of people have said that in reviews that this works well as a standalone. So that there are character arcs that have developed from the first book now to the fourth and hopefully going forward. So, if you’re a person that wants to know all that, it’d be good to start at the beginning, but I’m very glad that the books can be read as standalones.”

One of the critical parts of the story involves the authentication of a valuable painting, which Berry describes as a fairly new and intricate procedure. While it is not illegal to reproduce a painting in the style of the original artist, it is illegal to give false credit. So to determine if a painting is a forgery, it needs to go under scientific analysis. Berry had to understand this procedure well enough to incorporate the essentials in her story. She explains that since the testing of one of the first atomic bombs in the 1940’s, radioactive isotopes have been found in everything, from our bones to pigment, etc. Therefore, if traces of radioactive isotopes are found in paintings before that time, it would be a clue that the artwork is fraudulent.

As far as creating mystery novels, what is Berry’s writing process? “I have plot points that I know throughout the book, maybe major plot points. I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to get from point A to point B to point C to point D, so things sometimes change, and sometimes it’s unexpected to me when things change and then I have to go back and make sure everything lines up from what I’ve written before.” Berry’s books are even more complex because she delves into multiple time periods that have to intersect at some point to uncover the mystery. For her, the payoff is getting to revise her work and going back to fill in plot holes. However, “even with all that, there are in just about every book that you find there is some mistake there that somebody didn’t catch…”