Death of a Princess, Guest Post by R.N. Morris

Summer 1880.

Lipetsk, a spa town in Russia.

The elderly and cantankerous Princess Belskaya suffers a violent reaction while taking a mud bath at the famous Lipetsk Sanatorium. Soon after, she dies.

Dr Roldugin, the medical director of the sanatorium, is at a loss to explain the sudden and shocking death. He points the finger at Anna Zhdanova, a medical assistant who was supervising the princess’s treatment. Suspicion also falls on the princess’s nephew Belsky, who appears far from grief-stricken at his aunt’s death.

Meanwhile, investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky arrives in Lipetsk from St Petersburg, seeking treatment after a nervous breakdown.

Against his better judgement, Virginsky is drawn in to the investigation. But is he getting closer to the truth or walking straight into a deadly trap?

Mud baths and murder

Why a Russian spa town is the perfect setting for a historical crime novel

When I started thinking about Death of a Princess – the third and final instalment in my Empire of Shadows series – my first idea for a setting was a German spa town such as Baden-Baden. Ever since I started writing novels set in nineteenth century Russia, I have always been inspired by Dostoevsky. Each of my Russian-set books in some way references a different Dostoevsky work. For Death of a Princess, I’d picked Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, which is set in an unnamed German spa and casino town, and so my new story would be too. Like The Gambler it would revolve around a cast of Russian émigrés thrown together by their passion for the roulette wheel.

Dostoevsky himself was a compulsive gambler and repeatedly tried to extricate himself from his money problems at the tables. Always with disastrous results. The Gambler is informed by his own experiences and deep personal understanding of gambling addiction.

The idea of writing my own story about Russian gamblers really appealed.

At the same time, I had in mind a historical event that had happened in 1879, a year before the action of Death of a Princess. A group of Russian revolutionaries sworn to overthrow the tsarist regime had come together in the sleepy – Russian – spa town of Lipetsk. To all appearances they were there to take advantage of the local facilities. They drank the mineral water, took mud baths and went for picnics and boating trips. All this was a cover. The real reason they had gathered in Lipetsk was hold secret meetings to establish a new terrorist organisation – The People’s Will. They voted through a manifesto sentencing Tsar Alexander II to death in absentia, a sentence which they eventually carried out 1881.

Lipetsk in the early 20^th century. Wikimedia

As I worked on the story, the gambling element became less important. In fact, I dropped it altogether. The group of terrorists, some of whom came from wealthy or even aristocratic families, fascinated me more and more. I decided to switch the action to Lipetsk and to centre the story around a similar, though entirely fictional, group.

So far all of my Russian books had been set in nineteenth century St Petersburg. Over the years I had immersed myself in the city, poring over maps, studying old photographs, reading travel books and even visiting St Petersburg to get a first-hand feel for its streets and buildings. I think I’d built up a reasonable working knowledge and was over the moon when one Russian reader, a lifelong inhabitant of the city, complimented me on my “authentic St Petersburg atmosphere”.

Laying all that aside to write a story in a different setting was quite a wrench. I was certainly moving outside my comfort zone. But the more I learnt about Lipetsk, the more I felt sure that the story had to be set there.

The town was (and still is, I believe) famous for its mineral-rich healing mud, sourced locally. Visitors come from all over Russia to be submerged in the miraculous substance. The image of a woman in a mud bath, with just her face above the surface, gave me the opening scene of my novel.

I also discovered that Lipetsk, which was founded by Peter the Great, was an important industrial centre, specialising in the manufacture of iron. This provided a reason for my terrorists to be in town.

When two ideas come together, the result is often something unexpected. That’s what I felt I had here.

All I needed now was a reason for my central character, the investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, to be in Lipetsk. Well, that was easy. The tumultuous events at the end of the previous book in the series, The Crimson Child, had brought on a nervous breakdown. Virginsky is sent to Lipetsk by his doctor to recover.

As I researched Russian spa towns, I learnt that there’s a strand of Russian literature that uses them as a setting. There is always a sense of license and freedom to these stories. The characters behave in a more uninhibited way than they would in the city – a sort of “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” vibe. That too appealed to me.

Everything seemed to be coming together. In Lipetsk.

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Meet R.N. Morris

Roger (R.N) Morris is the author of 18 books, including a quartet of historical crime novels set in St Petersburg featuring Porfiry Petrovich, the investigating magistrate from Dostoevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment. These were followed by the Silas Quinn series set in London in 1914. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger and the CWA Historical Dagger.

A former advertising copywriter, Roger has written the libretto for an opera, modern retellings of Frankenstein and Macbeth for French school children. He’s also a scriptwriter for an award winning audio producer, working on true crime and history podcasts including The Curious History of your Home.

His work has been published in 16 countries.

Married with two grown-up children, Roger lives in Chichester where he keeps an eye out for seagulls.