Jess Armstrong

JESS ARMSTRONG is the USA Today best selling author of the Ruby Vaughn Mysteries. Her debut novel, The Curse of Penryth Hall, won the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition. She has a masters degree in American History but prefers writing about imaginary people to the real thing. Jess lives in New Orleans with her historian husband, two sons, yellow cat, speckled dog, and the world’s most pampered school-fair goldfish. And when she’s not working on her next project, she’s probably thinking about cheese, baking, on social media or some combination of the above.

The Perils of Researching Historical Mysteries By Jess Armstrong, Author of The Secret of the Three Fates

By Jess Armstrong

November 26, 2024

One of the most difficult aspects of writing historical mysteries as an ex-historian, is that between the drafting, the research for the book itself, and the revision process, I run out of time to read for fun. In the years before I became a published author, I was a voracious reader—inhaling books indiscriminately: fiction and…