Every Diamond Tells a Story – by Lily Milner
I love stories about diamonds, and that’s probably why I’ve written two novels based on diamond mysteries. Although The Tallisbrook Emeralds is not specifically about diamonds, it was prompted by one of my favourite books by Anthony Trollop, The Eustace Diamonds. In that story, a woman is fighting for an inheritance of diamonds that her dead husband’s family is trying to take away from her. It’s quite a hilarious situation in many ways, with the resourceful widow pretending they were stolen, while she herself is the actual thief.
My book, The Tallisbrook Emeralds, explores the opposite situation, where the woman who inherits the jewels decides she’s not entitled to them, but giving them back will lead to all sorts of complications.
I wrote The Devil Diamond after reading two books about the fabulous Kohi Noor diamond that once belonged to the people of the Punjab, but somehow found its way into Queen Victoria’s crown jewels. My story is what’s currently known as a Romantasy, and my diamond has no relation to the Kohi Noor, but great stories stay with us and often become seeds of something else. Now The Devil Diamond has led me to the follow up, A Perfect Witchcraft, and so it goes on.
The True Story of the Kohi-Noor Diamond–And Why the British Won’t Give it Back.