As you may know, my love of history has been peeking out from the shadows lately. A good historical mystery will intrigue me, a great one, will hook me. I’m by no means an expert on the history of crime solving, but I am fascinated by how we’ve come to be where we are today.
That being said, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have two hundred years of humanity’s progress pass by in the blink of an eye, and find myself in middle of a murder scene where I could potentially be the suspect in foreign world that was strange yet familiar at the same time. Today’s author, Amelia Blackwell, did and she wrote a brilliant book doing just that!
Kym: Welcome to the Cozy Corner, Amelia and congrats on your debut novel!
Amelia: Thank you for hosting me on Cozy Corner. It’s an honor to be here.
Kym: When I read the blurb for A CRIME THROUGH TIME, I had to read it. What helped you develop the idea of having her transport to the future instead of someone more knowledgeable in criminal investigations traveling back in time to solve a murder?
Amelia: This is a brilliant question that I’ve not been asked before. I always enjoy fish-out-of-water stories and I loved the idea of a Georgian heroine trying to make sense of both the modern world, and a crime. Georgiana has lived a sheltered, privileged existence as the younger sister of Mr. Darcy, but her life has not been without its challenges. After she endured a terrible deception by Wickham, the confines of her life reduced even further and she now faces pressure to make a good marital match with a rich gentleman. The prospect of her arriving in the mid-nineties and seeing the freedoms afforded to modern young women was irresistible to me as a writer. The clash of 1990s and 1790s cultures also afforded lots of moments of humour.
Kym: My next question of course has to be, Why did you have Miss Georgiana Darcy stop in 1995 and not travel on to present day?
Amelia: I wish I had a better answer, but it all came about from a chat I was having with my friends on Instagram. My friend Rachel sent a Pride and Prejudice meme to the group, in which Georgiana Darcy was rolling her eyes at her brother for pining over Elizabeth Bennet, and my other friend – also called Rachel – told me I should write a YA book about Georgiana set in the modern day. I replied flippantly that I’d make it a cozy crime and set it in the 90s, so that our heroine could be ‘a prodigy who listened to The Prodigy,’ and the idea was born!
Kym: Ohhh, I love that! What was the most challenging part of having a woman from 1799 come forward in time?
Amelia: The language differences were tricky to navigate and I kept having to look up whether certain words and objects were in circulation in 1799. There were several anachronisms that I didn’t even question, but which were thankfully spotted by my editors and copyeditors. I suppose it’s the old quandary of ‘You don’t know what you don’t know...’ Some words that I’d assumed had been around for centuries, turned out to be quite modern in origin. “Drawstring bag” was one example of an anachronism that my clever copyeditor spotted. According to the OED, the word ‘drawstring’ originates from the 1830s in the US, half a century after Georgiana was born. Who knew, eh? I’d assumed it was medieval!
Kym: Good editors make a writer’s work timeless. When did you read your first Jane Austen novel?
Amelia: I was around the age of 11. I had worked my way through the children’s section of our community library and the kind librarian handed me a copy of Pride & Prejudice and said, ‘Why don’t you try this book?’
Kym: What is your first love, mystery or historical?
Amelia: I love mystery novels in all their forms, from tech thrillers to cozy crime. My attention span is quite poor these days (I’m not sure whether it’s due to perimenopausal brain fog or social media distraction – possibly a combination of the two) but I find that the whodunnit aspect of a mystery book keeps me turning the pages.
Kym: There’s always one (or a hundred) author who has influenced a writer’s journey. Who influenced you and how?
Amelia: You won’t be surprised to hear that Jane Austen has been a huge influence upon me. I’ve always loved her wit and keen understanding of human nature. I grew up in the 1980s in a loving but very low-income family, on the outskirts of Plymouth, and reading Austen was a solace and a balm. Even though Austen was writing centuries before I was born, I recognised versions of her characters all around me in my own life, and her novels made me feel understood.
Kym: What about Georgiana’s life can you relate to the most? The least?
Amelia: I have two older brothers, so I can relate to Georgiana’s younger sisterhood and her fear of worrying or disappointing Darcy. Georgiana is at the age where she’s striking out into the world and beginning to make her own choices about the sort of life she wants to lead, and that can be extremely daunting for all concerned. Georgiana and I are from very different economic backgrounds, so I can’t relate to her opulent upbringing within the walls of Pemberley, as I grew up in a small council house. However, in researching my family tree, I was surprised to discover various lines of nobility from just a few centuries ago, Alas, my family lineage springs from the daughters, not the sons, and as Lizzy Bennet knew all too well, the wealth generally flows down the male line…
Kym: If you were to go back into Georgiana’s life, what would you ‘fix’ for her or opportunity would you make possible for the women of 1799? (And you can’t say the obvious of escaping a marriage proposal, you’ve already helped her do that).
Amelia: I think Georgiana Darcy would have done very well in a professional field such as Law or Architecture, or even the Tech sector. I can easily imagine her as CEO of her own company, since she is a very logical and confident decision-maker.
Kym: Ahh, the constraints of society do tend to limit a woman’s potential. I love how you threw in a few Sherlock elements. Without giving away too much, can you tell us if you plan to add more historical characters into the series?
Amelia: Yes! In Book 2, THE HAUNTING OF A BRONTE we meet Anne and Branwell Bronte in the year 1845, at Thorp Green Hall, where they are governess and tutor to the children of the peculiar Robinson family. Soon after Georgiana arrives, characters begin to die… Writing a Bronte-Austen mash-up was such a joy and I loved every moment of the research. Book 3 is giving me the opportunity to write about some historical figures from the 1920s, including Agatha Christie.
Kym: How wonderful, and a definite tease for your next release! Describe your favorite cozy corner where you escape to read, but I think I need to ask you, what era would be your favorite time period to read in and where would that cozy corner be? Readers are a demanding lot, we like to visualize it and disappear into it. Help us time travel, please!
Amelia: What a gorgeous question. As a child, I used to love taking a picnic and a book into the countryside on a hot summer’s day to read under a canopy of trees. There’s nothing quite like reading in the fresh air with dappled sunlight on your face and an accompaniment of birdsong. If I could pick any time period, I’d like to travel back to when songbirds were more numerous and there wasn’t the rumble of distant traffic, so I think I’ll take my picnic to Georgiana’s time of 1799. Maybe I’d hear the calls of a Wryneck woodpecker or a Red-backed Shrike – common birds in Georgiana’s era, but which have sadly vanished from England.
Kym: That is a lovely corner in time to escape in a book. What are you working on now?
Amelia: The third book in my Miss Darcy Investigates series, an Agatha Christie/P. G. Wodehouse mash-up, set in the Roaring Twenties and called THE CASE OF THE MISSING BRIDE.
Kym: Where can our readers find you on social media?
Amelia: I’m on Instagram. Apart from book posts, it’s mostly pictures of my pets: a tiny shih tzu, two lazy cats, a corn snake called Colin, and an ancient tortoise who has been cared for by several generations of my husband’s family since the 1950s.
Kym: Careful, my daughter will want to adopt you and all your fabulous pets! Thank you for joining us on the Cozy Corner!
Amelia: Thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure!
Until next month, cozy up with a great mystery!
Narrator: Polly Edsell
Miss Darcy Investigates #1
Cosy, quirky and utterly gripping, A Crime Through Time is the debut from Amelia Blackwell – the start of a series where crime, time travel and Jane Austen collide.
Pemberley, 1799. When Miss Georgiana Darcy attempts to escape an unwanted marriage proposal, she isn’t expecting to end up quite so far from home. But after encountering a mysterious object in the nearby woods, she finds herself transported almost two hundred years into the future.
Saltram, 1995. At a grand country house where a film crew are busy shooting the latest Jane Austen adaptation, a terrible crime has been committed. And Miss Darcy – newly arrived, impeccably dressed and thoroughly confused – is the only witness.
It soon becomes clear that, somehow, Georgiana was meant to solve this riddle. With the help of a distractingly handsome Irishman named Quinn and a border collie named Watson, she sets out to stop the killer before they can strike again. But trouble is brewing back at Pemberley and time, it seems, is not on her side . . .
Mystery Time Slip | Mystery Woman Sleuth | Mystery Historical [ Pan, On Sale: March 31, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781035054114 / eISBN: 9781035054121 ]
Amelia Blackwell has a master’s degree in Creative Writing, a corn snake called Colin, and a deep love of the works of Jane Austen. Although the Boleyns appear in her family tree, it’s through marriage, not blood, which is probably just as well. Georgiana Darcy’s most persistent suitor, Baron John de Halighwell, takes his name from one of Amelia’s distant great-grandfathers, who lived in a mansion that even Lady Catherine de Bourgh would admire. Amelia lives with her husband and children in a tiny house by the sea in Cornwall.
Kym Roberts writes by day and is a pro-surfer in her dreams by night. Her humor is often raunchy, her jokes are often bad, but her hunger for a story keeps the adventures coming fast. Experience the thrill & catch the wave of passion, mystery, and suspense with her on her website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Her fourth SCANDALOUS SISTERS, THE WICKED BARONESS under the pseudonym Helene Matheson is available now for pre-order. Watch for her new Bow Street Mysteries coming soon.
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