from Cozy Corner: Anna Maclean Reimagines Louisa May Alcott
BY RT BOOK REVIEWS, JUNE, 15 2011
It is not easy to make a historical figure your own, but that is just what author Anna Maclean has done with the New England author Louisa May Alcott. In Maclean’s series, Alcott unravels mysteries that befall her friends and family. This series originally hit shelves in the mid-2000s from Signet and this month the series first, Louisa and the Missing Heiress, has been re-released by mystery publisher Obsidian. Today get Maclean shares a look at how she brought Louisa back to life to unravel these very unusual cozy mysteries!
Louisa May Alcott was so wonderfully complex! As a daughter she had to be loyal and useful; as a woman she had to follow the severe conventions of her time without losing her originality; as an author, she managed to find a way to work with so many different areas of her creativity!
Louisa, as I imagined her for my cozy mystery series, beginning with Louisa and the Missing Heiress, is a woman of her times: intelligent, well-bred, resourceful. Yet she has a shadowy side. She must, for the times themselves were often dark, brooding, dangerous.
Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 
This is a reissue of her series from a while back. I liked the first one and I hate mysteries š
I’m not a big mystery fan either. My childhood best friend became a published author (Kate Ross) and wrote a series of historical mysteries and I couldn’t get through them (though maybe, now that I’m reading historical books, maybe it’s worth another try . . .). It’s so cool watching someone that you know was destined to become a published author, become one. š
I think the reason I liked these was because it was heavy on the history and Alcott and the mystery almost was second fiddle. Or so it seemed to me at the time.