Two more terrific reviews, including one that calls The Perfect Ghost "a captivating story of love, rivalry, and revenge."
But I keep thinking about Richard III, or rather about his remains, recently dug up in a car park in Leicester. There are (at least) two Richard III's, the personification of evil in Shakespeare's play and the misunderstood, tragic figure of Josephine Tey's "Daughter of Time." Both writers write with conviction; both, I imagine, thought they were telling the truth.
When I worked on The Perfect Ghost I wanted to tell a story about the vagaries of "truth," even more than I wanted to write about love or rivalry or revenge. The protagonist, a writer of biographies, learns about her own power as a biographer during the course of the book. Facts are facts, but they can be adjusted, manipulated, and interpreted to fit a variety of agendas.