Author Rhys Bowen talks to us about her latest novel The Paris Assignment and her love of The Lord of the Rings, classical music the timeless Greek sculptures from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels, including Where the Sky Begins, The Tuscan Child, and the World War II-based In Farleigh Field, the winner of the Left Coast Crime Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel and the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. Bowen’s work has won over twenty honours to date, including multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. Her books have been translated into many languages, and she has fans around the world. A transplanted Brit, Bowen divides her time between California and Arizona.
Rhys' latest novel is The Paris Assignment which was published in August 2023 by Lake Union Publishing. You can find The Paris Assignment and Rhys' other novels on our catalogue.
When I first discovered reading I was a big fan of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. Those children had my idea of the good life—going camping alone on deserted islands, following clues. I wanted to do that. My first real literary hero was Tolkien. When I discovered The Lord of the Rings in my teenage years I was blown away. That any writer could create a complete universe with its own rules, languages etc and make it all believable was incredible to me. It was the first book that I could not stop reading until I’d finished all three volumes. Also it was the first book that touched my soul. I’ve re-read it regularly every year since. It still moves me incredibly although I know a lot of it by heart.
My other teenage heroes were tennis stars. I was really keen on tennis and had pictures of Laver and Rosewall on my bedroom walls.
My mother tells me I wrote my first poem when I was 4. I’ve certainly always lived in pretend worlds, playing at being everything from a woodland animal to a circus star. I entertained my little brother with stories as we took car journeys. In my teenage years I wanted to be a film star so I wrote my own scripts for the day I became that star. They were all incredibly sad and dramatic! I also wrote lots of poetry at that age. But I also started seriously writing as a teen. The BBC radio accepted one of my short stories while I was still in school. So I’ve always known I would write—just not expected writing to be my profession for life.
No music. Silence. A bare wall to stare at. I still write two plus books a year. This involves a lot of discipline, as you can imagine. I try to get a first draft done in three months. That gives me time to rewrite and polish. My books are all historical these days and require a lot of research. I do the big stuff ahead of time—visit the sites (yes, I had to go to Venice, Tuscany and Paris, unfortunately) and read the historical background. Then I look up smaller things as I go.
I write every day and try to do about 1500 words a day. Some days this is easy and I breeze ahead. Some days it’s excruciating and I walk around muttering, throw loads in the washer, make coffee… but if I know I can’t stop until I complete my word count then I keep at it. Often I think what I’ve written is rubbish but when I read it the next day I decide it wasn’t so bad.
It’s actually a story that is more than wartime Paris. It spans from 1930 to after the war in Australia. It’s a great love story in many ways, but also a story of survival and revenge, highlighting the incredible bravery of young women dropped into occupied France. During my research I found out that the survival rate for these young woman was twenty five percent. They knew that three quarters of them would not make it but they still signed up. Their training was so brutal that I would have quit after day two. I presume it was to weed out those who might crack.
There is also a parallel story in Australia going throughout the book. I had wanted to write about Australia since it was a big part of my own life. I was married in Sydney when I was working for ABC. My brother moved to Australia and my parents followed him. So for many years my whole family was there. I used to visit at least once a year until my mum died so I have great affinity for the country.
Molly was created the afternoon I took a sightseeing tour to Ellis Island. I was completely unprepared for the emotional overload I felt there and knew I had to write about it. Looking across from Ellis Island to Manhattan I realized the immigrants were so close to America but couldn’t make that final crossing unless the government said they could. And I thought: it’s the perfect locked room mystery! But who to tell it? I had been itching for some time to write a feisty first person female, one who has a strong sense of justice but is not always wise and doesn’t know when to keep quiet or back off. I needed an immigrant I could identify with and since I’m half Welsh and my husband is quarter Irish I know all about Celts. So Molly was born. I started writing that first book, Murphy’s Law, in the first person and she hasn’t shut up since!
After 17 books I put the series on hold. I was writing the Royal Spyness series and enjoying the fun of it, also now writing big historical stand-alone novels that took a lot of work so I had no time for Molly. But I kept getting letters wanting to know when the next Molly book would be coming out. Clare came to me one day and suggested that we write the series together. I was not sure about this. I knew she was a good writer, but what if this didn’t work out? She’s my daughter and I love her. But I gave it a try. I had expected I’d have to do a lot of hand holding and guidance to start with but she came to that first book with great ideas, a good sense of who Molly was and it’s been a joy ever since. She loves the research, reads the New York Times for every day that we write about, and has come up with new and fresh plots. It also gives us an excuse to talk every day, which I love! We’ve now done three books together and are well into the fourth. What a blessing!
As I mentioned earlier I do the big research before I start. For The Paris Assignment I rented a house on the Seine near Fontainebleau in 2019. That gave me a lot of my physical setting. I intended to go back the next year but Covid struck. Thus it was last year that I went back, stayed in Paris, chose my houses in the Marais, took a Seine cruise and saw what it was like to go through a lock, visited the museum of the resistance and simply saw how long it took to walk from one place to another. I like to experience personally what my characters have to go through (not the torture part). So when my vision of the world is in place I start writing. I can look up small things as I go along — which Metro station? How would she cross the Seine etc? But I always find that I use ten percent of my research but knowing the other 90 percent makes the book feel real.
I’ve just finished the next stand-alone called, at the moment, An Abandoned Place. The story centres around one of those villages that were abandoned during WWII to let the army practice invasions. It is also about missing girls: three little girls after being evacuated from London during the Blitz and never found again, a girl vanished from London in 1968 and a heroine whose own life seems to be caught up with both these events. It’s quite tense and dark and was hard to write—like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, but I think it will be a satisfying read.
I’ve already touted the Lord of the Rings. I was raised on classical music but everyone’s taste is so different that what means something to me might not to you. One piece of art? I’m a huge fan of the Impressionists but should everybody like them? I think I’d have to say one of the sculptures in the National Museum in Athens. Classical Greek sculptures from more that 2000 years ago. When you look at the elegance, the line, the understanding of human beauty, human expression and realize that humans were capable of this skill and creation so long ago you realize we haven’t actually come very far, have we?
I’ve had so many women write to me saying, “I’m Molly Murphy”. There are a lot of them in the world. The strangest recently: I was on a ferry from Jersey to St Malo a few weeks ago. I looked up to find myself surrounded by strange women. One of them said, “Are you Madame Bowen?” When I replied “Oui” it turned out they were French fans of my books, saw from Facebook that I was taking the ferry that day and had been searching for me. A lot of selfies ensued.
I am a big fan of water… I love to snorkel, boogie board, just sit and gaze at the ocean.
