18th Century mayhem

"A fellow by the name of Revere. Lives up in the North End. Charges a fortune..."

Murder, mystery, and lots of mayhem in pre-Revolutionary Boston – all in Jill Lepore's and Jane Kamensky's Blindspot, read my San Francisco Chronicle review here

Revolutionary fiction!

Long-time friends Jill Lepore and Jane Kamensky didn't set out to write a bodice ripper in Blindspot (Spiegel & Grau). But when the two historians – Lepore is the David Woods Kemper professor of American history at Harvard and Kamensky is chair of Brandeis' history department – started drafting a two-character sketch for the 70th birthday of their mentor, historian John Demos, the characters carried them off. Six hundred pages later, their personae – "a Gentleman in Exile and a Lady in Disguise," as the subtitle explains – have involved themselves in murder, scandal, slave stealing, and some very hot sex, all in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution.

I got to spend some time with Jill and Jane. To read our chat, click here.