Monday, March 31, 2025

Introduction to Mrs. O'Malley's Midnight Mystery

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1671:

Brief check-in: A good weekend in terms of walking and getting first 751 words written! It’s actually raining this morning, all day it is supposed to be cloudy, with a chance of showers off and on. We had to cancel our visit with the border collie, Rio. I will try to get in my 2 walks in between the showers, and I do have a phone call in the afternoon, but otherwise I hope to get more writing done.

Throughout the month of April, I will be offering, for free, the seventh short story in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery. These will come out every Tuesday and Thursday, starting tomorrow. Today I am going to discuss briefly my impetus for writing this particular story.

Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery, is set outside the confines of the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse, and my primary purpose was to reintroduce another of my recurring secondary characters, Biddy O’Malley. While Biddy showed up in both Uneasy Spirits and Pilfered Promises, I had written very little about her family, beyond the fact that her mother, Mrs. O’Malley, had numerous children and worked nights for the local Catholic hospital. This story fleshes out Biddy’s family and home life, and since I knew that the next novel I was going to write about wollen textile mills (Entangled Threads) would feature Biddy, and this short story gave me a chance to expand some on this family’s backstory. I am doing something similar as I work on the current short story—Mr. Wong to the Rescue—since some of the characters in this story will show up in the next novel.

Mrs. O’Malley’s Midnight Mystery was also a chance to give Kathleen Hennessey’s beau, the police constable Patrick McGee, another important role.

Another primary reason I wanted to do this short story was to provide some insight into the what it was like to live in one of San Francisco’s working-class districts “South of Market.”

For most of the working poor in the 19^th century (and disturbingly this is still true), the low wages and the high cost of rents meant that few households could rely on a single income to make ends meet or afford more than one or two rooms in which to cram their large families. For widows such as Mrs. O’Malley, who faced fewer occupational opportunities and lower wages than men could get, life was generally one of unremitting labor and dependence on their children, like Biddy, who had been working since she was a young girl, to help out.

As with many of my stories, the actual mystery was prompted by some real crimes that were happening in the 19^th century. The initial idea came from the book Dark and Tangled Threads of Crime: San Francisco’s Famous Police Detective, Isaiah W. Lees, by William B. Secrest. I have found this story invaluable in doing my research on San Francisco. Not only is this book filled with details on the San Francisco Police department and their methods, but it also is filled with details on particular crimes that happened in the city. In the chapter “Footpads, Cracksmen, and Train Robbers” I found a short paragraph that sent me down a very satisfying rabbit hole of research (which I won’t elaborate on because this might spoil the story for you.)

Over all, this was a fun story to write, and hope you enjoy reading (or rereading it) as well.

Click HERE to start reading the story.

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