Agatha Christie, Julia Child, and Abraham Lincoln feature in Colleen Cambridge’s mysteries. In this week’s episode, she joins Brook and Sarah to discuss what writing mysteries that include real people.
Discussed and mentioned
An American in Paris Mysteries (series featuring Julia Child) Colleen Cambridge
Phyllida Bright Mysteries (series featuring Agatha Christie) Colleen Cambridge
Lincoln’s White House Mysteries (series featuring Abraham Lincoln) C.M. Gleason
My Life in France (2006) Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme
A Fashionably French Murder (2025) Colleen Cambridge
And Then There Were None (1939) Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile (1937) Agatha Christie
French Chef (1963-1973 TV series) PBS
The Body in the Library (1942) Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) Agatha Christie
The ABC Murders (1936) Agatha Christie
More about Colleen Cambridge
Website: https://www.colleencambridge.com/ or https://www.colleengleason.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColleenGleason.Author
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colleengleason/
Other episodes you might enjoy
Celebrity Sleuths (released November 22, 2022)
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi Brook. |
| Brook | Hi Sarah, I have been so excited this week knowing that today we’re going to interview Colleen Cambridge. |
| Sarah | I know I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun. |
| Brook | So I’ll introduce her. Colleen Gleason, aka Cambridge, C.M. Gleason, and Alex Mandan is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling and award-winning author who can’t seem to decide what type of book to write, so she writes a lot of different genres. |
| Brook | So far, Colleen has written everything from vampire hunters to dystopian romance to steampunk, historical romance, and mysteries with a supernatural flair or a historical setting. One element, however, that appears in all of her stories is that of partnership, whether it be professional, romantic, or both. Colleen lives in the Midwest US with her family and two dogs and is always working on her next book. Welcome Colleen. We are so excited to have you on Clued In Mystery. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Thank you so much. I love a podcast that is devoted to mystery, which is my absolute favorite genre. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, The Three Investigators, you name it, and Agatha Christie. |
| Sarah | Wonderful. Well, let’s dive in and let’s talk a little bit about your series. American in Paris series and the Phyllida Bright. Is that how you say the name? |
| Colleen Cambridge | Phyllida Bright, yep. |
| Sarah | Uh, and your Phyllida Bright series. So both of these feature real historical people and also some fictional characters. |
| Sarah | And on past episodes, we’ve discussed how mysteries featuring real people can quickly veer into outlandish or campy territory and yours don’t do that. So how do you avoid that with your books? |
| Colleen Cambridge | Well, first of all, to, you know, I guess clarify, the an American in Paris mysteries take place in post war Paris and my main character, my amateur detective is fictional, but she is the best friend of Julia Child, who is at the time learning how to cook in Paris. |
| Collen Cambridge | And my Phyllida Bright mysteries. Phyllida Bright is the amateur detective and she is the housekeeper for Agatha Christie and Agatha Christie of course makes appearances in the books. Also I wrote three books in the Lincoln’s White House mystery series with an amateur detective named Adam Quinn and he is mentored by Abraham Lincoln. So I have three series where I’m doing what I kind of thaught ah consider a famous person to be like an anchor to the series, to the world, to the setting. um Everybody or most people probably have an idea of who Julia Child is. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Although recently, a young man said to me, was she an artist? He had no idea who she is. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Anyway, so most people have an idea of who Julia Child is, Agatha Christie, and of course, everybody knows Abraham Lincoln. So these people, these real people are the anchor, but they’re not the spotlight. |
| Colleen Cambridge | They’re not the main character in the series. So what I try to do in order to keep things real, if you will, is I try to keep them in their lane. So basically, if you see Lincoln in my Lincoln books, if you see Christie in my Phyllida Bright books or Julia Child in the An American in Paris mysteries, they’re in their own lanes. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Julia’s in the kitchen cooking or shopping for food or talking about food. Lincoln is being a president during a war in Washington DC and Christie is really just wants to be left alone to write her novels and she really does not like that all these dead bodies keep showing up and disrupting her but, she gets a lot of ideas for books from all these dead bodies showing up. So I don’t mean to suggest that Julia’s in the kitchen cooking and that’s all that’s happening but she and Tabitha Knight who’s my main character are friends. Most of their interactions take place in the world of Julia’s lane, if you will, L-A-N-E, lane, cooking, talking about food. She might be in the kitchen cooking while she and Tabitha are talking about the mystery and going over clues or theories or whatever. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Lincoln is being very presidential and saying things that he would have said or did say or is documented as saying relative to the war, but he’s also maybe talking to Adam Quinn about you know what what’s happening with these dead bodies. And Christie, like I said, um she was kind of a shy person and didn’t really want publicity. So it seemed realistic for her character to not be in the forefront um trying to figure out who left a dead body in her library. |
| Colleen Cambridge | One night, by the way, the body in the library, Agatha Christie, you know, okay, so she she it really fits her character. |
| Colleen Cambridge | So trying to keep them in their lane and keep them in their character. is how I try and manage those characters, it those real people as characters. Interestingly though, I do have people who would love to see more of Julia, more of Agatha, but I resist that a little because of that fear of mine of going out of their realm too much, you know what I mean? And a side note to that for that same reason, I would not probably, I can’t ever imagine wanting to or being successful at writing a series or a book where the main character is or was a real person. To me, that is way too restrictive. I would just feel like I had too many guardrails. I’d feel like I was trying to bowl, and I don’t bowl very well, so my ball would always want to go in the gutter. So this isn’t going to work for me. It was suggested originally that Lincoln be the detective in this mystery series, and that Julia be the detective in the mystery series. And I i kind of fought. Not thought I want to say I fought back. I want to say that I really negotiated for it not to be that way for those reasons. |
| Brook | So you made that distinct decision to keep Julia Child, Agatha Christie, Abraham Lincoln as sidekicks rather than sleuths. and you know What else contributed to that? |
| Colleen Cambridge | Well, in particular, Agatha Christie was the one like because I wanted to to mention that because you would think, not you, but the reader might think, well, gosh, if you’re writing a mystery series, Agatha Christie should be the amateur detective. She’s a mystery writer. |
| Colleen Cambridge | And other than the fact that her personal character is such that she would rather just be writing and certainly does not did not really want to be she had a fear of publicity because of when she disappeared and that became a big deal and people only ever wanted to talk about that. But aside from that, as a mystery writer, I can appreciate the fact that she didn’t want to be solving mysteries because As a writer, I’d much rather create the suspects, develop the clues, you know come up with the motives. It’s easier to be in control than to try and follow paths, which is why I’m a writer and not a detective. So that was the reason I really had to struggle myself for a little bit with myself when I first started that series. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Why would Agatha not want to be the detective? Why would she not you know push herself forward? And those were the reasons that came that I came up with and they made more most sense to me. That’s not her wheelhouse. |
| Sarah | How did you select specifically that Julia Child was going to be that anchor or that Agatha Christie or Abraham Lincoln were going to be those those anchors for your mysteries? |
| Colleen Cambridge | Well, the truth is, it was not my idea. None of them were my ideas. um I have written a a number of books, as you mentioned, um and one of my most well-known series is the Stoker and Holmes series, which is Sherlock Holmes’ niece and Bram Stoker’s sister. So that’s where I was starting to touch base, was starting to touch into this whole idea of real people with fictional people. um So I think that was in the mind of the editor that I was working with. And she liked my historical, my my ability, I think, to write historical set. And I think she also liked the mysteries that I was working on. I was doing some other mysteries. And she said, Hey, would you what would you think about doing something like this? So honestly, I have to give my editor credit for the basic concepts of, “hey, do you want to do something with Agatha Christie’s housekeeper?” I mean, that’s what she told, that’s what she said and left everything else up to me to sort of develop. um Same with the Julia Child situation. So I can’t take credit for the idea, but I will take credit for the development of the of the stories. |
| Brook | No, that’s great. I think that, you know, a good editor or even, you know, writing partner or something that can see those um strengths that we have and, you know, help develop those ideas. I mean, that’s just invaluable. |
| Brook | So how much creative license do you feel like you have when you write about these real historical figures, Colleen? |
| Colleen Cambridge | I actually try to not take any creative license in the sense that I mean, obviously, any interaction they have with my fictional characters has to be, you know, fictional, has to be made up. But I really try and be extremely strict with how these characters are portrayed. um I really try and not push the the the envelope with any of them. It would be very unusual, I think, for for example, Agatha Christie to be, you know, walking around interviewing people. I just don’t think that that would be in her character. She was a shy person and just wanted to be left alone, mostly to write. So um I’m pretty strict about that. I try really, really hard to keep them from not doing anything that really would be evident to me from my research that they had done. |
| Colleen Cambridge | For example, when I first started working on the American and Paris mysteries, the first thing I did was start reading Julia’s autobiography, My Life in France, which put not only her voice in my head, but also the things that she noticed and did in specific things. And I lift specific things from that book all the time. For example, in the first book in the series, the very first line of the book is “Julia Child had a mayonnaise problem”. That’s like a one line thing in her autobiography, and I took that and blew that into like a subplot throughout the book. So, you know, I just tried to take something it could be a throwaway line like that and take something that I know made sense and just develop it and then I don’t go anywhere else with it. Like, you know what I mean? For example, also, in the third book that’s coming out in April, A Fashionably French Murder, which is basically in the world of haute couture, which makes sense, 1950. I have Julia and Tabitha and another person go to an actual you know a modeling show at at ah at a fictional haute couture, and I know for a fact that Julia went to one. I would never have thought of her going two one. You know, haute couture, pardon my French pronunciation, I can hear it in my head, but it doesn’t always come out, right? So um I could see, you know, she, I wasn’t sure, like I’m thinking, Julia really wasn’t, you know, known for her fashion. She was a, you know, a very statuesque woman. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Who was very different than the French, you know, she couldn’t find shoes there because her feet were so big. It was very hard for her to find shoes. So I thought to myself, hmm, you know, do I really want her to go to this fashion show? But I actually read in her autobiography that she did go to one fashion show. So I felt, OK, I can justify this. So if I can’t justify it somehow with something in the research, I’m not going to have them do it and for the most part. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Obviously the investigating of the murders, you know, obviously Julia Child didn’t find dead bodies all the time, like like she does with Tabitha in the book. Neither does Agatha have bodies showing up in her household all the time. But their reactions and and I tried to put them in positions where if it’s going to happen, it made sense for it to happen. I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’m explaining it, but I’m really strict about it. I don’t want to have anybody go, oh, Julia would never do that. Or, oh, my gosh, Agatha Christie would never. You know what I mean? |
| Brook | So, you mentioned research. And with Julia Child, for instance, that would be pretty easy. We have lots of television appearances, her own television show. Like you said, she’s written books, her cookbooks. You really can get a feel for her voice that way. um And Agatha Christie, not so many interviews, not very many appearances on television, and and then even more difficult with some of the other ah people that you reference. |
| Brook | How did you, because it for Agatha in particular, I really feel like, yes, this is what Agatha would sound like. This is what she would say in this situation. She feels very real to me. So how did you research that and get a feel for it when we know she was someone who kept to herself? |
| Colleen Cambridge | That’s a great question. Agatha in particular, the research that i did that I did and continue to do for that series is wonderful because a lot of it entails rereading Agatha’s books. I can consider that research if I’m taking an afternoon to read, you know, And Then There Were None or, you know, Death on the Nile or something. And then the research elements are really threefold when I’m reading those books. First, you know, I get my head into the world of British. The way they speak the way they talk you know that kind of a thing um so I mean I have that in my head and then it gives me an insight into her as a writer because of certain elements that are always in her books she’s a romantic Agatha Christie was quite a romantic. |
| Colleen Cambridge | In most of her books or stories there is this you know this either a romantic couple or you know star-crossed lovers or something where you you know it’s very could be very subtle or very small part of the story but there’s often this element of a partnership of a man and woman partnership. There are a few gay characters in her books, very subtly gay. um There’s some questions about but generally male and female relationships. But the whole idea that she you know had these certain core things and justice and you know those kinds of things. so And how her mind worked with the plot. So those two things. And then also the actual time period itself. |
| Colleen Cambridge | The 1930s is when the Phyllida Bright books are set. They’ll be perpetually in the 1930s, early to mid. I’m not going to get too close to World War II because that gets ugly and I like to stay not ugly other than dead bodies. Like she’s funny. I mean, Christie’s funny too. So I can take all those little elements that I get from reading her books and also even what I know about her her life from her biography and use those pieces to create the Christie character as I imagine her. |
| Colleen Cambridge | As being a writer myself who would rather just be left alone to write most of the time whose mind is always trying to figure out how to kill somebody like literally I don’t know how my husband goes to sleep at night because I spend my days trying to figure out how to kill people and hide it you know so with that in my mind that’s probably the best way to describe how I’ve developed Christie herself. I do want to say though that It’s a both good and bad thing that I have access to so many things about Julia Child because that means if I’m wrong or inaccurate, the error can be very glaring for many. like you know You can go look at the French Chef TV show ah online if you want to see it. And if I’m not embodying Julia Child, it’s very obvious. People can check on me, basically. It’s easy for people to check on me. |
| Colleen Cambridge | And with Lincoln, the same kind of thing, everybody knows stuff about Lincoln. And there are lots of people who know a lot of things about Lincoln. So, in writing those books, I was always very, that was probably the most nerve wracking of all of them was just like, oh my gosh, am I going to get something wrong about Abraham Lincoln? Because there are so many people who are so knowledgeable about him and the Civil War and all that. So, um, tenterhooks, a little bit of tenterhooks. |
| Sarah | What has surprised you, Colleen, about writing mysteries that feature real and fictional people? |
| Colleen Cambridge | To be honest, how they actually can kind of fit in, like how they actually can fit in and still stay in their lane, so to speak. I don’t have any other way to to to say it. you know. For some reason, it made sense that somebody died at Lincoln’s first inaugural ball. For some reason, it made sense that somebody found was found dead in Julia Child’s apartment building with her chef’s knife next to it, bloody chef’s knife, that kind of thing. So I don’t, and a body in Agatha Christie’s own library, and you know I don’t know, it just they just feels like they fit, which is kind of wild, but that’s what makes it incredibly fun. |
| Sarah | Well, and and I love that you take those pieces of known history and weave them into the stories like, you know, you referred to the mayonnaise, or we know that she wrote a book, The Body in the Library. So, you know, yeah, maybe she did get that inspiration when when there was a body in her library. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Exactly. I mean, that that is that is the the where I have the most fun with these books, honestly, it’s in the second book in the American and Paris mysteries, isn’t the the historical element to that is also something that Julia Child wasn’t connected to, but the the way the French people protected or tried to protect their wine during the occupation. |
| Colleen Cambridge | So much fascinating information about what they did to try and protect you know basically their national entity. This sense that wine is so incredibly important to the French people. It’s not just a beverage. It is their national you know part of their national psyche. |
| Colleen Cambridge | And all the interesting things that I learned about it and to be able to weave a story around that, even if it’s well after the occupation, five years after the occupation, take that those elements. That is one of the most fun things about writing historical set mysteries and with real people involved is just it. |
| Colleen Cambridge | You know, in in the bio you said I can’t decide which one, what to write or because i that’s why I write so many different things. I actually should change that in my bio because I feel like the sweet spot for me I have found and that is historical set mysteries for all of the reasons we’ve been talking about. |
| Brook | Can you ever imagine a crossover where Julia Child and Agatha Christie meet and combine forces, maybe with their sidekick sleuths along for the ride? |
| Colleen Cambridge | Yeah, I mean, actually, I have thought about um it would probably be, you know, Phyllida Bright and Tabitha Knight, which by the way, I didn’t intend to make them rhyme. |
| Colleen Cambridge | I realized well after the fact Tabitha Knight Phyllida Bright, okay. So I actually have thought about that because Agatha Christie traveled a lot and I could see her bringing Phyllida in the household to Paris, you know, after the war. I mean, they’d be much older, which would be super fun for readers of the Phila Bright series to read something set in the 1950s, 20 years later and see, oh, what has happened that we don’t know is gonna happen in the series. So yes, I actually have toyed with that idea at some point down the line, I might do that. |
| Colleen Cambridge | But I could see that happening. Not necessarily, like I said, Julia and Agatha teaming up, but the two but two worlds colliding somehow. |
| Brook | That would be a lot of fun. |
| Sarah | I love that. |
| Colleen Cambridge | It really would be. |
| Brook | I really love that you set the Agatha stories with Max in them because you talked about Agatha being a romantic and I just think the Max and Agatha story is so sweet and wonderful after everything we know that happened in her earlier life. Was that a conscious choice of what time period of Agatha’s life you chose to write in? |
| Colleen Cambridge | 100%. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, it was very deliberate. So when the idea was posed to me, you know, Agatha Christie’s housekeeper, that was all the suggestion it was really a vague, “Hey, what about this? Would you ever do this?” So I had to take a look at Agatha’s life. I really didn’t know anything really about her life at that point. I’d read most of her books when I was younger and through as I got older, but I didn’t know enough about her life. So yeah, it took me not long, maybe a couple hours of research and be like, Oh yeah, early to mid-30s, it was like her, you know, her prime, if you will, and not her prime in her writing so much, but it was really when she was coming into her own. She was, you know, remarried to Max. It was after the Archie Christie debacle and she was never she was, you know Writing the books that were sort of starting to break out Murder of Roger Ackroyd and some of these at the ABC Murders some of these other ones so was the right time it was the right time period. Their relationship was fine, but there were issues later on. But at the time period, I have them in. Everybody’s very happy. |
| Colleen Cambridge | And he really did. I mean, i do you know he insisted that she marry him. She didn’t want to. She’s like, “I’m 13 years older than you. Oh, we can’t do this.” And he convinced her to marry him, which I think is wonderful, and that he appreciated her who for who she was, her personality. |
| Colleen Cambridge | They were on a trip. If I remember correctly, and he was taking her back because her daughter was ill and he was helping her get back to England. And they had some rough patches where I don’t know, something broke down or something, but the way she handled herself really impressed him. And so then later he came and visited her in England and was going to go home. And the night before he went to go home, as the story goes, he went into her bedroom and sat in her bed and said, let’s get married and she’s like no and he’s like let’s get married so when they got married she actually put her her age at least it was at least a year younger than she really was on her marriage certificate because she felt super conscious super self-conscious about it and they traveled a lot together but later on you know later on like closer to the end of their marriage I think that you know things were quite as hunky-dory. |
| Colleen Cambridge | I was sad when i when I read that too. I was like, damn it, I’m just gonna ignore this. So I am ignoring it. Because right at this time, and when I’m studying the books, they’re they’re fun and they’re good together. |
| Sarah | So, Colleen, where can readers find you? |
| Colleen Cambridge | My website is ColleenCambridgedot.com and it actually has all of my books that I’ve written as both Cambridge and Gleason. So everything’s all in one place. I’m also on most social media places now. I mean I mean, social media is sort of in flux right now, but you can find me on Facebook under Colleen Cambridge or Colleen Gleason, either one. And I am on Instagram as Colleen Gleason. |
| Colleen Cambridge | So, you know, if all else fails, look for Gleason. Cambridge usually follows because I was Gleason long before I was Cambridge. Let’s put it that way. So yeah, so website, Instagram, Facebook, and my newsletter is a good thing to sign up for, because with social media being awkward and in flux, you’ll get all the information about my events, because I always do many events around each book release. I have a book coming out in April, at the end of April 2025, and a book coming out at the end of October 2025. And so those, I’ll be doing lots of events. I do travel, so maybe I’ll be coming to your locality. Who knows? |
| Sarah | Wonderful. Well, um, I’ll make sure that I’m signed up and I hope that our listeners do as well. |
| Colleen Cambridge | Thank you so much. This has been really fun, really interesting questions. um I do a lot of interviews and these were different, sort of a different approach. And I really appreciated the thoughtful questions that made me really think about, how do I do that? Why do I do it? So thank you very much. |
| Brook | Thank you so much for joining us. This was just a pleasure. And thank you for joining us today on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
