Cecelia Tichi’s fascination with Gilded Age America calls readers to the “Val and Roddy DeVere Gilded Series,” mystery crime novels that pulse with turn-of-the-century American life…and death! An award-winning author and Professor of English and American Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University, Cecelia brings fiction’s “odd couple” to crime scenes where they match wits to discover “whodunit.”
Based on actual historical figures and events, the couple charts life in New York Society, where we find Val too rich to be black-balled but too “low” for full acceptance as a “Wild West” daughter of an Irish immigrant “Silver King.” Roddy (Roderick Windham DeVere), a fifth-generation Knickerbocker New Yorker, brings the savvy of his lineage but freshens the scene with cocktail recipes he has mastered in the bon-vivant hobby that has made him a stealth mixologist for resorts, clubs, railroads, and other oases of the era, dubbed The Golden Age of Cocktails.
Having traveled the US numerous times, East-and-West, Cecelia’s research includes on-site inspections of places and spaces featured in the series, together with the deep delving into books and files about the US Gilded Age.