Wicked and the Wallflower

Author’s Note

Two years ago, in London, I met a man who regaled me with the tales of his grandfather, who sold shaved lemon ice from an ice block he’d cart from the docks into Covent Garden. I wish I remembered your name, but wherever you are, I’m indebted to you, as I am to Gavin Weightman for The Frozen Water Trade, which was an invaluable resource on the history of moving ice and how it impacted the world.

Around the same time, I became transfixed by the “Perfect Security” episode of the 99% Invisible podcast, which chronicles the invention of the unpickable Chubb Lock, and then the lock controversy of 1851, when a brash American turned up at the Great Exhibition, picked the lock, and ensured that the world would never feel safe again. Felicity Faircloth is fourteen years earlier than that American, but she picks the Chubb the same way he did, and I’m grateful to Roman Mars and his team for bringing the story to me at the perfect moment.

Felicity’s Whispering Bench is a replica of the Charles B. Stover Bench in Central Park’s Shakespeare Garden—the perfect place for secret-telling.

Covent Garden is a pretty posh place these days—very little like it was in the 1830s. I spent hours at the Museum of London poring over Charles Booth’s extraordinary anthropological survey of “Life and Labour of the People in London,” from later in the 19th century, and am so grateful to the Museum for making such a rich resource available to the public in digital format.

As always, my books are fostered and cared for by an incomparable team, and I am immensely lucky to have the brilliant Carrie Feron on my side every step of the way, along with Carolyn Coons, Liate Stehlik, Brittani DiMare, Eleanor Mickuki, Angela Craft, Pam Jaffee, Libby Collins, and all of Avon Books. My agent, Steve Axelrod, and publicist, Kristin Dwyer, are the very best.

The Bareknuckle Bastards would still be a whisper of an idea without Carrie Ryan, Louisa Edwards, Sophie Jordan, and Ally Carter, and they wouldn’t be on the page without my sister Chiara, and my mother, who teaches me every day how the world changes women, and how we change it right back.

And finally, to Eric, who takes all my research in stride, including the kind that ends with me picking the lock on a safe, getting drunk on power, and considering a life of crime: If I’m ever on the lam, I hope you’ll be with me.