A double homicide and a single homicide—separate incidents—occur, both inside houses on busy streets. Front doors are not locked during the day in 1277. The owners of both houses are known to be wealthy. Banks haven’t been invented yet, so people keep their money at home. A commotion happens to be in progress on each street at the time of the murders. Because of the tumult, no one hears the screams, if there are screams. The “hue and cry” isn’t raised, which would have summoned the coroner. The trail is cold by the time the bodies are discovered.

To complicate matters, the author of The Unusuals finds making up plots difficult. I didn’t figure out whodunnit until I’d written two-thirds of the book. In my defense, any vigorous, quick-witted passerby could have nipped inside, done the dastardly deeds, and slipped back into the crowd. The murders didn’t even have to be planned in advance.

On the upside, I was free to pick anyone. I wanted the reader to be surprised, but then to find the truth believable. Did I succeed? You can tell me on my Guestbook.

I first heard about Licoricia at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, where I was trolling for ideas because the Middle Ages fascinate me (outlaws, brigands, universal belief in magic, tragic Jewish history). What’s not to love?

Before newspapers, diaries, the printing press, the post office, few people who weren’t royal or noble made it into history. Licoricia is famous--or infamous—for many reasons: her second marriage to a man who divorced his first wife to marry her, and the divorce was forbidden by the rabbinical authorities—except that the king stepped in to make it happen; for her imprisonment for theft until she was proven innocent; for her many court appearances over her moneylending; and for being the mother of Benedict, the only Jew in medieval English history to be allowed to join a guild and become an English citizen. And, of course, for being murdered. How could I not write about her?