Constance and Gwenyth Little

🎭 What happens when two Australian nurses move to New York City and start writing "wacky cozies"? Join me for the interesting story of the Little Sisters, whose 21 mysteries combined clever plots with laugh-out-loud humor.

🏥 I explore the backstory of their unique collaboration style and how Constance and Gwenyth Little's experiences as working nurses influenced their resourceful heroines.

⭐️ Their recently “rediscovered” books blend romance and mystery and are still drawing in new fans.

Where to start with Constance and Gwenyth Little books?

I suggest the first book in the series, The Grey Mist Murders, but you can pick up any because they’re all stand-alone titles. 

For more classic whodunits, check out my books in print, audio, or ebook: 

High Society Lady Detective series 

1920s Lady Traveler in Egypt series

Sources:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55837.Constance_Little

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55836.Gwenyth_Little

https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com

http://gadetection.pbworks.com

http://www.girl-detective.net/little.htm

🕵️‍♀️ 📦 Cozy Books Corner Subscription Box (affiliate code), a book box curated for cozy mystery readers.

➡️ Use code SaraR5 and get 15% off! ⬅️

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast. I'm Mystery Author Sarah Rosette. This is Season 6, Episode 3, and it's all about Constance and Gwenela Little. So we're continuing our look at mystery authors from the Golden Age of Crime that are not quite as well known. And Constance and Gwynoleth Little were Australian-born sisters who co-authored 21 mystery novels together between 1938 and 1953. And their books are often called wacky, and they have humor and romance along with the Who Done It mysteries. And they um are just a lot of fun. So I thought we'd take a look at these books from The Little Sisters, is probably what I'll refer to them as. They were born in Australia. Constance was born in 1899, and she was the oldest. And Gwynoleth was born in 1903. Both sisters immigrated to the U.S. and they lived in New York City. Their younger sister, Iris, also wrote under a pen name. Her pen name was Robert James. So for their collaboration, Constance focused on plotting and drafting the first draft of the book, and Gwynoleth edited and revised the final manuscript. So it's kind of a unique system. I'm not sure how much crossover they had, but that's what the information that I found about them, that's uh how they said they wrote their books. They have some very common themes. Um, unlike most of the authors that I'll talk about this season, the Little Sisters wrote standalone novels, but all their books have several elements that are in common. They're all funny, they all have this very characteristic kind of zany writing tone. And the girl detective blog had a great quote about their books, and I wanted to read it to you. So this is the quote from the girl detective. Modern readers seem to value the little sisters primarily for the humor and the that characterizes their mysteries. Zany characters, woody dialogue, and ridiculous situations all typify the little sister novel. So that was from the girl detective. So humor is the first thing that you'll find in all of their books. They also all have resourceful female protagonists. They take the classic romantic suspense setup with the main character going about her life as normal with her own goals and plans and motivations, and she gets tangled up in a murder investigation. And of course, she must solve it to get on with her life. And that's kind of how uh her all of these stories go with from the little sisters. And the advantage of the standalone book is that you have a new character in a new situation, and you can explore this again and again, this finding of a murderer, getting involved in something suspicious, and it doesn't stretch the bounds of believability that the same person is finding body after body as in many cozy mystery series have this problem, and traditional mysteries have this problem too. So if you do standalones, uh a series of standalones, you don't have this Cabot Cove syndrome, which is an advantage. Another characteristic that all their books have is um they worked as nurses. Both Constance and Gwynoleth worked as nurses in New York City, and they since I think probably that was infused into their novels, they wrote about single working women a lot of times. So that's part another distinctive characteristic. And almost all of their books, except for the very first one, have black as a word in the title, and it's uh just a motif that's repeated over and over again, I think hinting at uh darkness and mystery and intrigue. But the books themselves have a very light tone, but they do have this element of mystery in them as well. And they also used very interesting settings. Uh, they had the typical whodunit settings of you know mansions and villages. They also had work-related settings, they had settings on passenger trains in the Australian Outback and a cruise ship. So they have some kind of exotic settings as well. And I think the cruise ship setting probably was inspired by their own trips around the world. I think that I read that they have been on three around the world trips. So, of course, if you do something like that, if you're a writer, you're going to work it into a novel somehow. Now, the Little Sisters novels had sort of faded out of public awareness, I guess you could say, because their books went out of print. So it wasn't until uh the 1990s that the Rugemore Press began reprinting the Little Sisters novels. And um, you can easily find them now. You can find copies of the print versions of the reprints online at, you know, online retailers that sell used books. So they're much more readily available now than they used to be. So, where should you start if you want to read a little sister novel? I would suggest the first book, which actually doesn't have black in the title. It's called The Gray Missed Murders, and it takes place on a cruise. You can pick up any of the titles because they're all standalone. You don't have to read them in order. So I hope this podcast has given you some new possibilities for your to be red pile. If you've enjoyed it, I hope you'll tell a fellow Mr. Reader. And if you can't get enough of 1920s who done it, check out my High Society Lady Detective series in ebook, print, or audio at Sarah RosetteBooks.com. Happy sleeping, and I'll see you next time.