Crossings

This is my second novel, and with it I was still trying to find a balance between keeping  the mystery compelling and the tone light. I began it thinking I needed to introduce more tension into the plot, that Harry should be made to experience a certain amount of menace. But I soon realized that my tone made that all but impossible.

As with the first novel, I allowed my extensive research to lead me off on tangents. Which is why this may have been the hardest of the books to write—there was a great deal of cutting and reworking before I had something I thought presentable.

Emmie’s friend Elizabeth was introduced with this book and she’s proved to be one of my favorite characters. (I’m just finishing a new series which features her, or rather Emmie’s fictionalization of her.) Also, the episodes with Mrs. Warner came out especially to my liking, particularly this exchange with Emmie:

“Well, I mean, if someone is going to kill my husband, I think it should be me. Don’t you agree?”

I do indeed,” Emmie said. “I made the same argument myself just a week ago.”

Mr. Demming aka Larabee is another amusing character. And I was quite pleased with my construction of the crooked roulette wheel, which gives the sharp player the false sense that he’s taken advantage of the house.

There are too many slow scenes in this book, and the denouement is a bit of a weak point—somewhat rushed  and lacking the humor I’d managed to inject into that of Always a Cold Deck. But overall, I think it’s still an amusing read.

There’s more on Crossings, including its availability, at the Harry Reese Mysteries site.

The Chinese Farmers of Astoria

By the 1890s, there were 5-10,000 Chinese men living in New York (and about 100 Chinese women.) Among the things they missed most—no doubt well down the list from their women—were traditional Chinese vegetables. 

It wasn’t long before some of these immigrants realized the opportunity and set up farms in the outlying areas of New York. One Astoria farm is described in an illustrated article, “A Celestial Farm On Long Island”, found in an 1893 issue of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. This one was to the east of the Astoria Silk Works, located at 23rd Avenue and Steinway Street. It is also mentioned in the 1902 book, New York Sketches, by Jesse Lynch Williams, from which the illustration at right was taken.

An article from 1906 mentions another farm located near Steinway. I’ve found other mentions of this farm and believe it was located along Bowery Bay, between Steinway and what was then called North Beach but is now LaGuardia Airport. I found the census page (image below) that lists these farmers. Their place was located on Bowery Bay Road, and their closest neighbor was a German piano maker, who obviously worked in Steinway.

You can see that several of these Chinese were married and had been in the U.S. for ten to twenty years. Their wives were waiting for them back in China—patiently, one hopes.

Bowery Bay Road was an old thoroughfare the remnants of which are 20^th Road in Steinway and Bowery Bay Boulevard, located just east of the LaGuardia runways. North Beach was an entertainment center. A sort of low-end Coney Island, I believe, where gambling went on very openly.