My second historical thriller, The Darkest Sin, is published by Pan Macmillan. It follows on from City of Vengeance, which introduced my Renaissance Florence law enforcer Cesare Aldo. That novel won Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland, was shortlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and is currently shortlisted for the 2022 New Zealand Booklovers Award. In short, my new novel has a lot to emulate.
When I was writing The Darkest Sin most of that success was still ahead, so I didn’t have to worry about matching it. All I needed to do was break exciting new ground while remaining faithful to the first novel’s tone and style. The second novel had to be familiar and fresh, different yet the same. And it couldn’t be a repeat of what I had done in City of Vengeance where actual events from history provided the conspiracy that helped power my narrative.
In short, I was staring down the stiletto blade of second novel syndrome.
Debuts are big business in the world of books. The industry loves the thrill of discovery, the excitement of finding a new voice, a new character, a new author. Second novels? Not so sexy. Yet they are often much harder to write. An author has their entire life to draft and redraft their debut. Second novels are usually written to a deadline with the author fretting whether sales will be enough to justify another contract.
I had written City of Vengeance as part of a PhD in Creative Writing [still unfinished, that’s another story]. The PhD gave me deadlines, structure and – best of all – regular feedback. For The Darkest Sin I was on my own, under deadline and trying to write a new novel during the lockdowns of 2020 while simultaneously taking the Creative Writing MA programme at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland online at short notice. Not ideal conditions.
I had a clear sense of my story for the second Cesare Aldo novel, which helped a lot. City of Vengeance is a conspiracy thriller set in the city of Machiavelli and Michelangelo about the lies men tell themselves and one another. By contrast, The Darkest Sin is a locked room mystery set in a Renaissance Florence convent and focuses on the silencing of women.
Where the first novel features a threat to the city’s future, the second novel is a smaller scale tale. This made me worry The Darkest Sin was too different to City of Vengeance, but that contrast was a very deliberate choice on my part. I wanted to stretch the range of what a Cesare Aldo novel could be and demonstrate the possibilities of this character. While writing it I realised my true challenge was finding a balance between mystery and suspense.
Every novel in a series can be a reader’s first exposure to that series. Someone can pick up How the Dead Speak, Slough House or Tombland without ever encountering previous books by acclaimed, bestselling authors Val McDermid, Mick Herron or C. J. Sansom. I couldn’t assume anyone reading The Darkest Sin had already experienced City of Vengeance. Some crime fiction series avoid this problem by having little crossover from one book to the next. Regular characters may grow older and marry (or divorce), yet to a significant extent each novel stands apart from those before it in publication order.
But I wasn’t doing that. Oh, no. Not me. Nope.
I had ended City of Vengeance with a finale that changed everything irrevocably. I could not ignore that while I was writing The Darkest Sin, it had to be a plot line within the novel. But how was I going to make it function as a standalone suitable for new readers while ensuring it was a satisfying experience for all the peole who had enjoyed City of Vengeance?
The answer was finding the right balance of mystery and suspense.
The difference between them is measured by the readers’ state of knowledge in comparison to the characters. Where readers discover things alongside a character, this creates mystery – the intellectual puzzle box of crime novels. But if readers know more than a character, this can generate suspense and dramatic irony. Readers are waiting for the other shoe to drop, the tension ramping up as the moment of revelation gets closer. This engages readers at an emotional level, appealing to their hearts as well as their heads.
Rather than shying away from the City of Vengeance finale, I made it the secondary plot of The Darkest Sin. Constable Carlo Strocchi investigates the outcome of that finale, little realising where it will lead. Readers new to this series experience the discovery alongside him, so for them it will be a mystery. But those who did read City of Vengeance know what is coming. For them this plot strand reads as suspense: what will happen when Strocchi uncovers the truth? And how will other characters react?
Hopefully the balance of mystery and suspense in The Darkest Sin works for everyone, whether they read the novel that precedes it or not. So far early reviewer feedback has been very positive, but the response of readers will tell the true story. The best news for me is I am already writing the third novel in this series, so I know that Cesare Aldo will return!
The Darkest Sin by D V Bishop (Pan Macmillan) Out Now
Florence. Spring, 1537. When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city's northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets. His case becomes far more complicated when a man's body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer. Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city's most feared criminal court? As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined...
More information about the D V Bishop and his books can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @davidbishop
No comments:
Post a Comment