Читать книгу The Prince and the Prosecutor: The Mark Twain Mysteries #3 - Peter J. Heck - Страница 7

As with my previous Mark Twain mysteries, this novel walks a line between history and fiction, using historical figures as fictional characters, and introducing them into situations that they never faced in real life. While Mark Twain met Rudyard Kipling on more than one occasion, they never crossed the Atlantic together on the same ship. Nor did they ever collaborate to catch a murderer—Carrie Kipling would certainly have mentioned such an event in her highly detailed diaries, had it occurred.

I have done my best to portray Mark Twain and his era as faithfully as possible, and to make him and the Kiplings (the only other historical figures here) act and speak as they probably would have in the circumstances they face here. The historical Twain’s financial difficulties in the early 1890s, stemming from a series of bad investments and worse luck, sent him to the brink of bankruptcy. He sent his wife and daughters to Europe, to take advantage of a cheaper cost of living, while he made several trips across the Atlantic, going on lecture tours and tending to his finances in the U.S. By the end of the nineties he had paid his debts. I show him at the beginning of this period, although I have rearranged his itinerary for my own purposes.

I have taken certain other liberties with fact. These include my resuscitation of Mittel Reuss, a German principality that ceased to exist in 1616, as well as my wholesale remodeling of the City of Baltimore, the historical version of which was a much older and smaller ship than the one portrayed here. I hope the reader will take these inventions in the same spirit as my creation of the various imaginary characters who play supporting roles to Mr. Clemens and the Kiplings.

My fictional Mark Twain tells a number of jokes and stories that the historical Twain wrote or told on many occasions. As a practiced public speaker, he had on hand a stock repertory of witticisms and anecdotes, which he expanded and modified for different audiences, so it is no surprise that he would do so during the voyage portrayed in these pages. I stand ready to accept the reader’s verdict that my own inventions (there are a few here!) fall short of Mr. Clemens’s enviable standards, but I hope they are at least in the proper spirit.

As always, too many people to mention individually have had some hand in helping me bring this novel to completion. I owe special thanks to my editors, Laura Anne Gilman and Natalee Rosenstein; to my agent, Martha Millard; and to my wife, Jane Jewell, my first and most demanding reader. Thanks also to Charles Chaffee, for information on early ocean liners. The book would have been far less than it is without their contributions; of course, any flaws that remain are my own responsibility.