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Sam Smith Private Eye

Love Hurts

My novel, “Sam’s Song” will be published on the 16 January 2015. “Sam’s Song” is a hedonistic tale set in the music industry, a story of excess – of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It is also a story about Sam’s self-discovery as she comes to terms with her past and tries to look forward to a brighter future.

Love Hurts

Love Hurts. “For Derwena de Caro, songstress, female icon, teenage dream, success brought drugs, alcohol and a philandering boyfriend. It also brought wealth, fame and a stalker, or so she claimed. And that is where I came in, to investigate the identity of the stalker, little realising that the trail would lead to murder and a scandal that would make the newspaper headlines for months on end.”

Love Hurts

Love Hurts. “For me, Samantha Smith, Enquiry Agent, love arrived at the end of a fist. First, I had to contend with an alcoholic mother, who took her frustrations out on me throughout my childhood, then my husband, Dan, who regarded domestic violence as an integral part of marriage. But I survived. I obtained a divorce, kept my sense of humour and retained an air of optimism. I established my business and gained the respect of my peers. However, I was not prepared for Dan when he re-entered my life, or for the affection showered on me by Dr Alan Storey, a compassionate and rather handsome psychologist.”

Sam's Song

Sam’s Song – “This is the story of a week that changed my life forever.”

All website content Copyright © 2014 Hannah Howe. All rights reserved.

Categories
Movies Novels

Laura

Starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb, Laura is a romantic detective story with an original plot. It is also one of my favourite films. The film was released in 1944 with a storyline adapted from Vera Caspary’s (1899 – 1987) novel.

The plot centres on hard-boiled detective Mark McPherson and his attempts to solve the murder of Laura Hunt, whose face has been rendered unrecognisable after a shotgun blast. The suspects are wealthy snobs who annoy McPherson as much as he annoys them. Apart from their wealth, the one thing these suspects have in common is that they all loved Laura.

Laura
As the story develops McPherson gets to know Laura and, captivated by her portrait, he falls in love with her, her apparent demise notwithstanding. The film has been placed in the noir bracket, and the shotgun blast and McPherson’s growing obsession with a corpse might justify that category, though the stamp of a traditional noir film is the stereotypically bad girl using the man who falls in love with her, and that doesn’t happen in Laura.

With a brilliant and credible twist, Vera Caspary turns McPherson – and the story – upside down and we head off in a new direction. The assortment of eccentric and intriguing characters hold your attention throughout and you feel a strong empathy for McPherson as he tries to solve the murder.

The author, Vera Caspary, was a career-minded ‘modern’ woman who showed great determination to succeed in a male-dominated profession. She wrote twenty-one novels and several screenplays and received a Screen Writers Guild Award in 1957. She also held strong political views and was hounded by the McCarthy witch-hunts. But to her great credit she rose above all that and forged a successful career.

A favourite line from the film: McPherson is asked, “Have you ever been in love?” He replies laconically, “A dame in Washington Heights once got a fox fur out of me.”

YouTube clip showing the trailer for Laura http://youtu.be/u6f8jRplej8

All website content © 2014 Hannah Howe. All rights reserved.

 

Categories
Private Detectives

The First Female Private Detective

In 1861 Allan Pinkerton of the Pinkerton Detective Agency placed his entire squad of hand-picked detectives at the disposal of Abraham Lincoln and the Pinkerton agents became the North’s military intelligence arm during the American Civil War. These agents included Kate Warne, the first female private detective, recruited by Pinkerton in 1856.

A slim, brown-haired widow, Kate walked into Pinkerton’s office and asked for a job. Pinkerton noted that Kate was “graceful in her movements and self-possessed. Her features, although not what could be called handsome, were decidedly of an intellectual cast and her face was honest, which would cause one in distress instinctly to select her as a confidant.”

Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency

Pinkerton asked Kate why she thought she qualified for the job. Kate replied that she could “worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access.” Pinkerton spent a restless night mulling over the idea of recruiting Kate and he concluded, “the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.”

Kate Warne stayed with the Pinkerton Agency for many years, rising through the ranks to become a branch superintendent. With other agents she was given the task of tracking Southern sympathisers in Washington and with setting up a secret service for the army.

In 1861 Kate played a vital role in heading off a plot to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore. She booked two private sleeping cars on a train out of town for ‘a sick friend and party’ then she smuggled the president-elect out of danger and travelled with him as personal protector.

Pinkerton had a high regard for Kate and he left instructions in his will that her grave in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery should always be maintained to perpetuate the memory of the first female private detective.

All website content Copyright © 2014 Hannah Howe. All rights reserved.