My book ideas come from all kinds of sources, from newspapers or cocktail parties or when I’m researching something else, and this one started with my editor, Rachel Kahan. I was heading off to the Bahamas with my husband for a long-anticipated Weekend Away from the Kids, and she reminded me the Duke of Windsor had been governor of the then-British colony during the Second World War, and wouldn’t that be a terrific setting for a book?

So I did a little research, and I spoke with our hosts—Sean and Kara Nottage, who are lucky enough to make their home in Lyford Cay—and discovered all kinds of fascinating lore about the Windsors and the island they called home for nearly five years. It took some time, however, for the right story to take shape in my head. Generally speaking, while my novels take place in historical settings, I prefer to write from the perspective of a fictional protagonist, and in order to navigate all the significant episodes in wartime Nassau without taking a historical figure as narrator, I had to make a giant, complex imaginative leap. Lulu was the product of that leap.

Most of the major events in this novel actually took place, and many of the characters Lulu encounters actually existed. The murder of Sir Harry Oakes remains one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century, and I’m not the first novelist to take on the subject. Each detail of his life and his untimely end are as accurate as I could make them, and I refer anyone interested in further research to the excellent Blood and Fire, written by the journalist and Bahamas native John Marquis, and to Alfred de Marigny’s memoir A Conspiracy of Crowns, both of which were indispensable to my understanding of the crime and the personalities involved. Keep in mind, however, that this novel is a work of fiction, and both Lulu’s involvement in the affairs of the Windsors and her speculation as to the true identity of the murderer derive solely from my imagination as inspired by the known evidence.