Tom Mead On Sweet Revenge: The Dark Origins of Cabaret Macabre

My first novel, Death and the Conjuror, and the bulk of its sequel, The Murder Wheel, were written in 2020 at the height of the UK’s COVID lockdowns. They were attempts to channel the joy—the sheer delight—that I find in Golen Age mysteries and use it to create something new. As such, both books are love letters to my favourite authors: John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Helen McCloy, Christianna Brand, Nicholas Blake, Edmund Crispin, and so many others. But as well as direct references to the work of the greats, the first two Joseph Spector novels are conscious attempts to emulate their style—to create something with the feel of a novel that might have been written in the glory days of the 1930s, when the puzzle mystery was at its peak. 

When the time came to get started on the third Spector novel, I felt more comfortable and (dare I say it) confident with my characters and the overall style of the books. As such, I was a little wary of resting on my laurels, recycling the same themes and ideas. But I wanted to retain the elements which (to my mind, at least) define the series, namely: magic, the theatre, the Gothic, the locked-room mystery. So, I started thinking about other influences which would blend neatly with that already-established formula. This brought me to the classic Japanese murder mystery—the honkaku—and its contemporary counterpart, shin-honkaku. These are genres with copious Golden Age connections, but also a heightened, pointedly non-naturalistic approach, high body counts, eccentric families, and brutal, bizarre murders. Tropes which are shared by an entirely different, yet curiously analogous, field: Jacobean tragedy.

As a lover of theatre (The Murder Wheel is set primarily in the backstage corridors of a fictional West End theatre, The Pomegranate), I wanted my characters to leave theatreland this time around, but to bring a semblance of the innately surreal realm of the stage with them to the fresh environs of the snowbound house in the English countryside. So, I looked to Jacobean drama. Agatha Christie made copious use of Shakespearean quotations for epigraphs and titles (Sad Cypress, Taken at the Flood), while Sleeping Murder features the John Webster tragedy The Duchess of Malfi as a prominent plot point—as does P.D. James’s The Skull Beneath the Skin. Meanwhile, Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift (adapted for television as the very first episode of the long-running smash hit Midsomer Murders) borrows significant plot elements from John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore. There is therefore significant precedent for the overlap of such seemingly disparate genres. After all, both classic mysteries and these classic dramas rely on complex and remarkably convoluted plots, large casts of characters, and an all-important preoccupation with the macabre.

I have always been particularly fascinated by The Revenger’s Tragedy—even its origins are shrouded in mystery: it has been attributed to both Cyril Tourneur and Thomas Middleton. And the theme of revenge is incredibly potent and evocative. Of course, The Revenger’s Tragedy is decidedly not a mystery—though the characters deceive each other, they never deceive the audience. But what if, I wondered, the plot was reimagined and reinvented—transmogrified into a whodunit and, more importantly, a locked-room mystery? This gave me the shape of Cabaret Macabre.

Instead of Vindice the eponymous revenger, we have the troubled Victor Silvius. Instead of Castiza we have Caroline. And instead of the wicked duke, we have the judge, Sir Giles Drury. This was the inspiration I had been waiting for—I could practically see my cast of characters assembling in front of me.

And, perhaps inevitably, this one idea stimulated a slew of others. References to real-life criminous cases and characters--including the Brighton trunk murders of 1934 and the controversial celebrity pathologist Bernard Spilsbury--found their counterparts in the perverse yet fiercely logical murder plot. One strange, impossible death led to another, and my tapestry of puzzles began to coalesce into a single, cohesive piece. And the identity of the killer was a thrilling enigma.

The aim of any murder mystery is to give the reader a thrill; to whisk them away to another world. Whether Cabaret Macabre meets these criteria is not for me to say… but what I do know is that the book gave me plenty of thrills when I was writing it, and I can only hope it has a few more in store for the reader.

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead (Out Now) Head of Zeus

Bestselling author sleuth and illusionist Joseph Spector investigates his most complex case yet in this gripping new locked-room murder mystery, set in an English country house just before the Second World War. Hampshire, 1938. When prominent judge Sir Giles Drury starts receiving sinister letters, his wife suspects Victor Silvius, a man confined to a sanatorium after attacking Sir Giles. Meanwhile, Silvius’ sister Caroline is convinced her brother is about to be murdered... by none other than his old nemesis Sir Giles Drury. Caroline seeks the advice of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Flint, while the Drurys, eager to avoid a scandal, turn to Joseph Spector. Spector, renowned magician turned sleuth, has an uncanny knack for solving complicated crimes – but this case will test his powers of deduction to their limits. At a snowbound English country house, a body is found is impossible circumstances. Spector and Flint’s investigations collide as they find themselves trapped by the snowstorm where anyone could be the next victim – or the killer...

More information about Tom Mead can be found on his website. You can also find him on X @TomMeadAuthor, on Instagram @tommeadauthor and on Facebook.