Careful for spoilers! This is only intended for readers who have finished the book.

I know that sometimes your e-reader will stop on the magic words “The End” and start showing you new books to read. So, if you didn’t make it to the Afterward in Bones Buried Deep (Dr. Benjamin Bones Mysteries #4) that’s not surprising. You can find it by accessing the Table of Contents, or you can read it here, below.

I hope you enjoyed Bones Buried Deep. Life circumstances took me away from Birdswing for much too long, and I found it wonderful to sink back into the English summer of 1940. Here are a few notes on the story.

Regarding the child evacuees, my descriptions were informed by an excellent book called How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life during the Second World War by Norman Longmate. It’s a highly readable little book that relies on quotes from real Britons to describe what we now call “The War at Home.” You might be amused to learn that the scandalous story from Barking about the child who conversationally used the “eff word” is taken straight from this oral history.

In Plymouth, there was indeed a Jewish community on Catherine Street and probably at least one Jewish officer on the police force. Its synagogue is the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue still in regular use in the English-speaking world. In future books, DC Daniel Pearl will return (every amateur detective like Ben Bones needs a friend in the criminal justice system), and I’ll write about how Catherine Street changed because of the war.

The blackout gear given to Ben by his mum was no flight of fancy on my part; every item was available at Selfridge’s, London.

In the course of the story, I had to touch on some very ugly history regarding the “blood libels” against the Jewish people. Much of my information came from Tales of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius. It’s a scholarly book and not an easy read. Many details that might strike younger readers as outrageous—like Sir Howard’s letter claiming Ira Grossman was dirty and smelly—are real calumnies circulated at the time.

Regarding the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, it was first brought to my attention in Juliet Gardiner’s indispensable Wartime Britain 1939-1945, where she wrote it was “always thick with fascists.” Some of the characters, like Sir Howard Flatt-Collins and Major-General Layton, are based on real people I met in the pages of Hitler’s British Spies: The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs, and Fifth Columnists by Tim Tate. I wish I could say there were no retired English generals who longed to overthrow Churchill’s government and see their fellow citizens hanging from lampposts, but alas, at least two such men existed.

Chapter Twenty-Three’s title, “The Suspicions of Constable Enys,” is a play on The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, a popular TV series based on the book by Kate Summerscale.

Finally, regarding the phony ration card sold to Pearl’s Aunt Davida, crime boomed in Britain during the war, rising by sixty percent, according to some estimates. And, of course, there were murders—but in Birdswing, Ben and Juliet will always stand ready to take the case.

Cheers!

EMMA JAMESON

May 2024

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