Clare Mackay’s starter for ten

Seven years ago, I found myself on submission, the phrase that strikes fear into every writer’s heart. I had written a crime novel with a detective called Clare Mackay and had managed to secure an agent who was busy sending my book to prospective publishers. It was an exciting but anxious time as I waited for news, so I distracted myself by writing a second book with the same detective, handy to have if a publisher asked, ‘have you written anything else?’ At the time I hoped these books might become a two, or even a three-book series. 

Fast forward seven years and the tenth book, Watch Them Fall, is about to be published. How on earth did that happen? If I’d hoped for overnight success, I would be disappointed. I’d read stories of writers who’d had enthusiastic replies from publishers within an hour of reading their submission, making me believe it could happen to me. (Reader: it did not!) But I was thrilled to be offered a contract with digital first publisher, Canelo and my first book, See Them Run, came out in October 2019. There were no fireworks, no best seller chart appearances but slowly it gained traction.

As the months went on, I dreamed of bookshop and library appearances, of signing events and of, one day, seeing people read my book on trains and planes (still waiting for that one!) In February 2020 I made a trip to London to meet with my agent and publisher where I signed copies of my soon-to-be- published second book. Little did I know that was the last time I’d be promoting my books in person for quite some time. One month later we were in lockdown. Being shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020 was both a thrill and a let-down. I was so happy that See Them Run had been shortlisted for a major prize but sad that the festival was unlikely to take place, in person, at least. I would miss the awards ceremony and the chance to meet so many writers who, over the years, had inspired me. The festival team did everything they could to make up for this with online activities, a short story jointly written by the shortlisted authors and festival appearances the following year, by which stage my third book, Lies to Tell, had also been published.

More contracts followed and this week I finished the first draft of book 11, to be published in 2027. It’s a privilege and a joy to be able to write what is becoming a long-running series. But let’s be honest here. There are days when the joy can be in short supply. Let me explain.

St Andrews, the setting for my books, is a beautiful university town that plays host to some ten thousand students, plus a large influx of tourists and golfers all year round. It’s a diverse population with the potential for a variety of crimes. So far, so good. But it’s also a fairly small town, geographically. Putting it frankly, I’m running out of places to leave bodies!

For the planned three-book series, this wouldn’t have been a problem. But as I wrap up book eleven and my thoughts turn to book twelve, I start to wonder where the next lot of crimes could take place. Where will my victims live? Where will the clues be found? And then there's the murders themselves. When you’ve shot, stabbed, garrotted, poisoned and bludgeoned victims to death, there’s little left in a murderer’s armoury.

The starting point is usually what do I want to write about? When I was planning Watch Them Fall, I knew I wanted to explore the problem of housing in an expensive town like St Andrews. Sound riveting, eh?! But throw in a body floating in the harbour, a protest march that threatens to get out of hand and a burglary where nothing is taken, and Clare is pushed to the very limit of her powers. 

And what of Clare? And Chris, her Wagon Wheel-loving sergeant? Over the course of ten books, they’ve become old friends to me as they progress in their personal and professional lives. Clare has acquired one dog, given two boyfriends the boot and (so far) has settled happily with the third. She continues to drink too much red wine, is domestically challenged (putting it politely) but remains fiercely loyal to her team and to the town that has become her adopted home. My affection for the detectives is undimmed but my favourite character – the only one I guarantee never to kill – is Clare’s badly-behaved dog, Benjy. He even has his own page on my website where you can see what he’s been up to. For the record, many of Benjy’s exploits are based on those of our family dog who takes ‘interesting behaviour’ to a whole new level.

What I love most of all is the way readers have taken Clare & co to their hearts. Last week a lady told me she’d made a traybake mentioned in one of the books and it’s now her favourite thing to bake. Some tell me they know exactly where Clare lives, what she looks like while others speculate about her having a baby. For readers to be so engaged, ten books on, is all the thanks I need to keep writing the series, and I hope to keep Clare busy with murder and mayhem for many years to come.

Watch Them Fall by Marion Todd (Canelo) Out Now

DI Clare Mackay is looking for danger in the wrong places. A body is hauled out of St Andrews harbour. This was no accident – DI Clare Mackay and her team have a murder investigation on their hands. Superintendent Penny Meakin is more focused on a break in at the salubrious home of local property developers. Many residents of the town oppose their plans for a new housing estate, and Penny insists that this controversy was a motive for the crime. Clare sees no evidence of this, but what is she overlooking? When another death occurs and links are found to the first victim, the intensity on all sides ramps up. Stretched to the absolute limit, how much strain can Clare’s officers take before something breaks, never to be repaired…

More information on Marion Todd and her books can e found on her website. She can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and TikTok @mariontoddwriter and on X @MarionETodd

Lina Areklew on researching her crime novels

When friends and family start asking you about the legal system and police work, you know your research obsession has officially reached a whole new level.

When I first began writing, research was the part I found most intimidating. But also, the most exciting. I used to pore over my fellow crime writers’ books, making notes on the sections that dealt with police work, so that I could later check whether they were accurate or not. When I started writing my first novel, I realised that facts are not the most important thing in a crime novel. The average reader does not know exactly how a DNA test is carried out, or what post-mortem fluid looks like. Or perhaps they do – those who, like me, binge on true crime series and podcasts – but most people do not read crime fiction as if it were a textbook. That would drain the story of its tension.

Even so, it became something of a calling for me to try to recreate the work of police officers and forensic pathologists as accurately as possible. It helped, of course, that I already had a somewhat unhealthy fascination with emergency services long before I started writing, but taking the step of actually approaching someone and asking for an interview felt enormous. Just the thought of saying, “Hello, my name is Lina Areklew and I want to be a writer – could I interview you?” was enough to make me blush.

Through my mother, however, I was put in touch with an acquaintance of an acquaintance who worked as a police officer in Örnsköldsvik. He had been involved in the investigation of one of the most high-profile murder cases in the county’s history: a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared after getting off the bus at the wrong stop. When she vanished, she was about the same age as I was at the time. She was later found raped and murdered in a wooded area not far from where she had disappeared. The perpetrator was convicted in the district court but acquitted on appeal. It would take more than twenty- five years before DNA technology finally caught up, allowing the case to be reopened and the man to be convicted of murder.

But I knew none of this when I walked into the police station with my dictaphone Dictaphone in hand. I had asked was expecting to be granted for half an hour to ask a few questions about what it was like to work as a murder investigator and to have a look around the station. I walked out six hours later, dizzy and overwhelmed by everything I had learned. Above all, I was more motivated than ever to write a crime novel that genuinely reflected the reality of police work.

I buried myself in research, made more contacts and kept digging. I quickly realised that many – I would say all – people who work within the justice system are immensely proud of what they do. Many want to share their experiences. With the rise of social media, communication became easier, and research evolved into new friendships.

This may sound insensitive, but one of the most memorable conversations I have ever had took place over dinner with a forensic pathologist. As we ate Carpaccio, we discussed what a person’s skin looks like after repeated stab wounds. I’m not sure the people sitting next to us in the restaurant found the conversation quite as engaging.

There have also been many occasions when research has been heavy and difficult. My main character, Fredrik Fröding, survived the horrific sinking of the MS Estonia but lost his entire family in the process. His fate is constantly present throughout my books, and it was extremely important to me to portray what happened that night – when so many people lost their lives in Sweden’s worst ferry disaster – as accurately as possible. I ordered the government accident report, devoured every book written about the catastrophe, and watched deeply disturbing dive footage from the wreck, filmed just weeks after the sinking.

I have always tried to approach that aspect of my writing with as much respect as possible. This is a wound in the Swedish collective soul, and not something one should trample on in order to create entertainment in the form of crime fiction . I believe I have succeeded in that. The inclusion of the disaster in my books has come up in discussion at many In all the appearances at writing events, and I have made where this has been discussed, no one has ever come up to me to say they felt hurt by my portrayal. Quite the opposite.

My research has taken me to some truly extraordinary places and introduced me to remarkable people. In addition to the most obvious locations – libraries and police stations – I have trudged through metre-deep snow to visit fictional murder sites, test-driven boat routes, harassed my teenage children with embarrassing questions, visited people’s homes out on island of Ulvön, toured a forensic station , gone caving, and while working on my new series, due to be released in autumn 2026, I spent a week working at a funeral home. That is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

My fascination with death has always meant that I feel no fear of it as a phenomenon, and it was deeply moving to meet people who, just like those within the justice system, showed such immense professional pride. I was allowed into a world where respect was one of the guiding principles. I saw the other side of the spectacular murders we writers so casually describe. I can honestly say that if I were not an author, funeral director would be the profession I would choose.

Over the years though, I have also learned a great deal about writing as a craft. As mentioned, it is impossible to portray everything exactly as it is in real life. That would be make some tedious reading. But I hope that through thorough research I have managed to depict the justice system in a way that makes the people who work within it feel genuine and human. That being said, no one is flawless. I have stumbled at times and have no doubt described both events and procedures in ways that have made some police officer somewhere clench their fists in their pockets .

Still, I can proudly say that the only time a reader has ever stopped me in the street wanting to have a serious conversation about my research was regarding the colour of the fence outside his house, as described in one of my books. I had written that it was white, when in fact it was green.

That, I can live with.

In The Dark by Lina Areklaw (Canelo Crime)

A four-year-old girl has disappeared from her home. And then more family members vanish. Detective Sofia Hjortn is in a race against time to find them as she and her colleagues desperately search a snow-covered rnskldsvik. Meanwhile, Sofia has other problems to deal with. Heavily pregnant and balancing work and a difficult relationship with her boyfriend, she is at breaking point. Can she make it to the light at the end of the tunnel?

Lynne McEwan on - How news photography prepared me for a life of crime.

Like many writers, I had a whole other life before I came to crime fiction. I’d already written my first published novel, In Dark Water, when a question at a festival event started me thinking just how much newspaper photography had influenced what I wrote. The answer was quite a lot and in ways I’m still discovering five books later.

I’d cut my teeth as a freelance photographer for The Glasgow Herald, straight out of college -very keen, very short – I’d cause amusement when, unable to elbow my way through a photocall scrum of big blokes I’d instead crawl to the front through their legs. It gave me a unique angle, as did the advice to always shoot a three or five picture series, a visual story, even if the job only called for just one. Little did I realise this created a subliminal narrative process that even now I find difficult to switch off. I see the world, and write my books, as a long series of images.

There were some big moments – the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the First Gulf War – but it was from working with crime reporters covering murders I learned the most about how people react when faced with the worst possible news. Some of the stories I covered faded quickly from the public consciousness, others did not.

The Pembrokeshire Murders, recently a three-part ITV drama staring Luke Evans, were a pair of double murders several years apart carried out in the national park in the 1980s. It took a cold case review in 2010 to convict the serial killer responsible by which time he’d also committed multiple burglaries, sexual assault, rape and an armed robbery. This wasn’t just down to the lack of forensic techniques. What I remember most was the fervent way the officers on the investigation stuck to the line of enquiry they’d formulated, that the crimes were so heinous they must have been carried out by an outsider, probably someone off the ships at the nearby tanker terminal at Milford Haven. They were wrong, the monster was among them and perhaps if they’d stress-tested their own narrative against the evidence, he’d have been caught sooner.

The murder in Cardiff of Karen Price, dubbed The Body in the Carpet was the first time a forensically reconstructed clay head was used to identify a victim, an example of creative thinking useful to crime writers ever since.

Through these experiences I spent time with police officers and forensic scientists. I even had a memorable day with a police pathologist who, once the portrait I’d come for had been shot, allowed me to tag along to a couple of sudden deaths, and subsequently becoming the model for Professor Sue Kitchen in my books. No pictures could be taken at the crime scenes, but she explained with knowledge and compassion how much responsibility she felt to find answers for the deceased’s loved ones.

And it was the victim’s families and friends that really stayed with me. Often, taking the actual photographs would only last a few minutes in an hour-long interview but I’d sit and listen as people poured their hearts out. In the early days there were no family liaison officers, police delivered the news and left. Journalists were often the first people the bereaved encountered. If you did not have empathy and respect you wouldn’t get far. Leafing through albums to collect pictures of the dead was one of the most moving experiences of my life and many of those encounters are still with me.

When I worked at the Sunday Mirror, a reporter and I were the only journalists to visit Stephen Lawrence’s parents the morning after his murder. Seeing the impact that case has made and the way it continues to change attitudes is a testament to the fortitude of Stephen’s family.

As Val McDermid once commented about her time as a reporter, ‘it’s the sort of job that gives you a card index of memories that you can dip into for a character, an atmosphere, a look’. In my case, I’m often not aware I have them until they’re shaken lose from their dusty folder by a line from a scene, or the need to portray some action or emotion.

When I first wrote the character of DI Shona Oliver she’d been brewing in my mind for nearly thirty years. Early in my career I worked for the Western Mail and lived in Cardiff where I sailed with the yacht club. Penarth RNLI had a female crew member, which was unusual for the time. Sitting in the bar in atrocious weather, we’d watch the lifeboat go out when everyone else was running for cover. I wanted to shoot a feature with her, but for one reason and another it never happened. It was one of those stories that got away, so I was never able to ask my burning question – why would you voluntarily put yourself in danger to help a complete stranger? The DI Shona Oliver series has been my exploration of that question and making her also a police officer as well as an RNLI volunteer felt like the perfect fit.

I’d travelled to most parts of the UK in my career, but when it came to finding a setting for my crime series, the Solway coast jumped out at me. It’s a crossing place between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so if I run out of home-grown crimes I can easily import more. It helps me link the location and crime to a national and international issues. It’s also beautiful but dangerous place. There’s menace in the very landscape itself.

For the latest in the series, A Troubled Tide, I drew not only from murders but the bread-and-butter photographer’s jobs – community fund raisers, amateur sporting events. Shona witnesses the drowning of a fellow officer at a charity triathlon, and what at first appears an accident soon takes a darker turn.  As novelist and screen writer William Goldman once said, life is material.

Being a photojournalist allowed me a window on the world and gave me pictures in all their fascinating, tragic, joyous glory. I’m still telling the stories I think are important, only now it’s the words rather than the pictures that make it onto the page.

A Troubled Tide by Lynne McEwan (Canelo) Out Now

The threat has never been so close to home… DI Shona Oliver’s fellow officer PC Hayley Cameron drowns during a triathlon in the Solway Firth. The post-mortem reveals drugs in Hayley's system, perhaps self-administered performance enhancers. But a puncture wound in the back of her wetsuit suggests foul play. Shona and her colleagues investigate, but those closest to Hayley grapple with the truth and risk letting personal feelings cloud their judgement. Could the answers to Hayley’s death lie within Shona’s own ranks? As the case hits the buffers, Shona clashes with her daughter and also faces difficult questions about the murder of her old boss. Will Shona keep her head above the water long enough to see justice done, and what will it cost her if she does?

More information about Lynne McEwan and her books can be found on her website. She can also be found on Facebook, Threads and Instagram @lynnejmcewanwriter 

Forthcoming books from Canelo Crime

 

January 2024

Unburied is by Heather Critchlow. The police. They’re digging in the scrapyard.’ Cal Lovett has spent half his life telling other people’s stories on his true crime podcast. But the police are close to solving the mystery of his sister’s disappearance – now he might finally get to tell Margot’s story. A desperate relative begs for his help. Cal seeks respite on a holiday in the Scottish Highlands, but is dragged into a new cold case: an unsolved murder that shattered a family fourteen years ago. An isolated community wary of outsiders. Eyes follow Cal everywhere. And someone makes it very clear that they don’t want him snooping around… How far will he go to find justice? And how far is far enough?

Directions for a Dark Thing is by Stephanie Sowden. There was a history in this house, secrets he hadn’t even got close to scratching the surface of…’ Something peculiar is going on at The Lloyd Estate. The enormous house and its vast grounds are rarely seen by outsiders. Only Audrey Lloyd – the cantankerous elderly owner and only daughter to the famed movie mogul who built the mansion – knows of the suffocating darkness that has settled on the place. Property developers have come to Audrey over the decades. Countless times they have been rebuffed. Now, she agrees to sell to ambitious broker Terri Nicholls. But Terri has to trade something of her own in return. Detective Don Vernon is on the brink of retirement. Instead, he is about to be caught in a web of lies; one which Audrey has been spinning for decades. Can those who cross the threshold make it out again intact?

February 2024

England, 1716. The only certainty in a thief’s life… is death. Christopher Templeton is a lawyer whose conscience troubles him. He knows many of the secrets of The Fellowship, the shadowy group profiting from the civil unrest in the nation, and has intimated to the Company of Rogues that he is willing to share them. The problem is, he has vanished. Jonas Flynt – thief, gambler, killer – still recovering from a duel with death upon the frozen Thames, is tasked with finding him. The trail takes him from the dark slums of London to a quiet village in the north of England, where all is not as it seems. But while he hunts for the missing man, someone else may be stalking him… someone with murder in their heart. A Grave for a Thief is by Douglas Skelton.

March 2024

As the Nazis roll into Warsaw, a serial killer is unleashed… September 1939. A city ruled by fear. A population brutalised by restrictions and reprisals. Amid the devastation, another hunter begins to prowl. What are a few more deaths amid scores of daily executions? Former chief investigator Jan Kalisz lives a dangerous double life, forced to work with the occupiers as he gathers information for the fledgling Polish resistance. Even his family cannot be told his true allegiance. When the niece of a Wehrmacht general is found terribly mutilated, Jan links the murder to other killings that are of less interest to his new overlords. Soon, he finds himself on the trail of a psychopathic killer known as The Artist. But, shunned as a Nazi collaborator, can he solve the case before another innocent girl is taken? Blood Roses is by Douglas Jackson.

Bridges to Burn is by Marian Todd How can DI Clare Mackay uncover the facts if nothing is what it seems? DI Clare Mackay is called to Albany High, where the body of a girl has been found. A suspected suicide – yet Sophie Bakewell was by all accounts a cheerful, talented student. Could she really have been hiding a darker side? It’s not the only disturbing case to land on Clare’s desk. Across town, an elderly man is in danger. Yet before the police can determine the facts, everything changes and they are presented with two suspicious deaths to investigate. As Clare and her team face the possibility that anything they believe to be true about the deaths is wrong, they might find that a killer can lurk behind the most innocent of faces…

Ten years ago, in the pine-shaded town of Savage Ridge, Nick, Emmy, and Pete murder their high school classmate, Sammy Saint John. His body is never found, and no arrests are made. The three friends make a pact to leave Savage Ridge and never return… Now, each is drawn home, seemingly by chance or fate. But it’s neither: Private Investigator Sloane Yo has brought them back to finally answer for their crime. The noose begins to tighten. But with each stone turned over in pursuit of justice, the long-buried secrets of Savage Ridge, and Sloane’s employers – the ruthless Saint John family – start to come to light. What aren’t they telling Sloane? Is Sammy Saint John the only victim? And when the truth is finally revealed, whose side will she choose? Savage Ridge is by Morgan Greene.

On The Run is by Max Luther. Framed for murder. Out for revenge. Private bodyguard Alex Drayce is on assignment in the States, tasked with protecting a wealthy businessman under threat of assassination. He is presented with the opportunity to make some quick cash for a week’s work, aiding one Carlos Garcia in finding his daughter, who has gone missing in Las Vegas. A seemingly simple task... As events soon spiral out of control, Alex must go on the run, hunted down by the combined might of the Las Vegas police department, fronted by Detective Naomi Ocean, and a ruthless gang out for blood. But his pursuers should be wary. Alex Drayce is not a man to be taken lightly…

Heather Critchlow on The Rise of the True Crime Podcast

©Photography by Helen Rosemier

Ever since the first series of US podcast Serial aired in 2014, millions have been fascinated by true crime podcasts and the dynamics behind them. That series, which ultimately led to an innocent man being released from jail, lit a spark and inspired countless others to follow.

These podcasts form a steady backdrop to my life. I take them walking, running and driving, cook and clean with them as the soundtrack. The voices trickle into my mind and the stories they tell stay there, haunting, terrifying, raging with injustice. 

The podcast has breathed new life into audio and the beauty of it is that it’s a democratic medium. There are media organisations making slick and well-funded series, but the barrier to entry is low and plenty start out as a couple of people with an iPhone. The sheer number of true crime podcasts out there means families of victims have a greater chance to be heard, with an audience invested in finding answers and fresh sets of eyes on the way their loved one’s case was handled.

My preferred type of true crime podcasts are those that dive into cold cases and attempt to find new evidence to solve these decades-old mysteries. To do this, podcasters travel to remote places, doorstep unlikely and uncommunicative people and lend a voice to those who have been forgotten by the wider world. The Teacher’s Pet, an Australian podcast about missing woman Lynette Dawson, led to a conviction, while US series Up and Vanished has help solve the mystery of what happened to missing teacher Tara Grinstead. It’s heartening that people who think they’ve got away with murder now have something else to fear.

Unlike TV documentary series, which are usually commissioned for a set number of episodes, true crime podcasts have been known to go on much longer than originally planned, with podcasters returning to review developments in ad hoc episodes. Some spend years working on the cases they investigate, often becoming far more drawn into a case than they expected when they set out. What drives them to do this and what is the impact on their own lives?

That is one of the questions at the heart of Unsolved, my debut novel about a true crime podcaster. In the first book, Cal Lovett travels to Aberdeenshire to investigate the cold case of a missing woman who rode her horse into the woods thirty-five years ago and never came out.

I’ve taken inspiration from the real world in creating him. David Ridgen, the Canadian journalist behind podcast Someone Knows Something is a master at delving into complicated cases that remain unsolved. Ridgen has a poetic style of narration and tenacity backed with kindness that I wanted my protagonist to emulate. He has also been known to take his son with him when investigating cases and in Unsolved Cal’s teenage daughter Chrissie accompanies him for a time.

And then imagination takes flight. Cal has particular reasons for seeking justice in cold cases – his own older sister vanished when he was nine years old and has never been found. Like those of us who listen to true crime podcasts, Cal desperately wants to know the truth. For him, it is deeply personal.

Time changes everything: people age and perspectives alter, allegiances shift and guilt seeps through relationships where someone knows something. As well as scientific advances moving things on, sometimes the simple truth is that people are now just ready to talk. 

When I started writing Unsolved, I was interested in this willingness to speak, the motivations behind people opening up years on from events and the possibility that even in the present day they have their own agenda, shame about their actions and secrets they want to hide. How do we know those opening up are telling the truth? These are themes I am keen to explore in the series.

Undoubtedly, the true crime podcast taps into our burning desire to know. It’s not only the podcaster that becomes entwined in the search for the truth – they take the audience with them, creating an unofficial workforce and network of investigators. The best of them give voices to the families of victims who have been forgotten by the wider world, shining a light on corruption or ineptitude. If we’re lucky, then they also deliver justice to those who have been waiting a very long time for it.

Unsolved by Heather Critchlow (Canelo Books) Out Now. 

He won't rest until he finds out the truth... Cal Lovett is obsessed with finding justice for the families of missing people. His true crime podcast is his way of helping others, even if he can't help himself. His sister, Margot, disappeared when he was a child. Only one man seems to know something. But he's behind bars and can't be trusted. So when the family of a missing Scottish woman begs for his help, he heads to Aberdeenshire in search of the truth. Does Cal have what it takes to unearth the secrets hiding in the hills? And what if he finds something that leads him back to the heart of his own family's past?

More information about Heather Critchlow and her writing can be found on her website. She tweets @h_critchlow and can also be found on Instagram @heather.critchlow

Walking the Mean Streets of Historical Noir

‘So, Douglas, why yet another new direction?’

I was asked this question recently in relation to my new book, An Honourable Thief (Canelo), an historical adventure/crime/espionage thriller (I think that just about covers it) set between London and Edinburgh in 1715.

It is true that my writing career appears to have encompassed more changes of direction than an indecisive sat-nav – from true crime, to non-fiction history, to biography, to gritty Glasgow underworld fiction, wisecracking private eye novels, a fast-paced New York set conspiracy thriller and dark – may I say lyrical? Yes, I may – crime novels set in the Scottish highlands.

Okay, so why?

Well, I believe authors should always stretch themselves, step out of their comfort zone. But is this new one really THAT much of a change of direction?

Look at the list above. I’ve written historical books before. In fact, that’s how the plot for AHT – as we in the know call it – came about. I was researching Dark Heart, which told the story of Edinburgh’s Tolbooth, a building that played a major role in the city’s blood spattered history, and came across a line about a certain document that old Queen Anne may, or may not, have penned. The story was that the letter may have suggested she favoured her half-brother James Edward Stuart to succeed her to the throne over George of Hanover, of whom she was apparently none-too-enamoured.

That notion stuck in my mind and over the next 20 years or so I added bits and pieces of plot, set-pieces and a protagonist named Jonas Flynt rubbing shoulders with real-life characters of the period. One of those set-pieces features the aforementioned Tolbooth. 

Of the non-fiction books with my name on them, I am very proud of Indian Peter, a true-life tale of adventure and legal shenanigans in Scotland and the American Colonies of the mid-18th century.

And the four Davie McCall books are set between 1980 and the millennium. Apparently that’s deemed as historical, although I can remember those years so, frankly, I don’t see it that way. 

Then came A Rattle of Bones, the third in my Rebecca Connolly series. The opening chapter was set in 1752 and that prompted crime writer Denzil Meyrick to suggest that I try my hand at historical fiction. I resisted but secretly the idea took root. After all, I’d already done most of the research over the years. Why not give it the old college try?

Fully expecting to abandon it before it was halfway done, I set to the task.

Three months later I had a complete draft, so perhaps all that had gone before was paving the way for the new book.

The words literally fell onto the screen. Yes, they needed work – it was a first draft, remember – but I don’t think I’ve ever written a novel quite so quickly, but then, the narrative style is very much in my ball-park. I think if there had to be a label put onto the series, and there ALWAYS has to be a label, it would be Historical Noir.

With the exception of the Rebecca Connolly series, I’m a believer in the Raymond Chandler dictum that whenever the story seems to slow down, have two guys with guns kick in the door.

In fact, Jonas Flynt is introduced limbering up to do just that, only it’s a brace of flintlock pistols he wields. The streets of Georgian London and Edinburgh are ideal for the genre. They were mean. And dark. And dirty. And far from fragrant. 

Oh, and no CCTV or mobile phones and no real forensics to speak of. My goodness, that sure does free things up for the writer. Think about it – Flynt doesn’t need to worry about fingerprints, DNA, contact traces, or disguising his digital footprint when getting up to anything murky. He may be on the side of the angels but he sure as hell ain’t one.

He does have demons because I seem to have a thing for people being haunted by dark pasts. I don’t know why such characters attract me, because I am such a sunny, carefree fellow.

I’ll pause here to let those who know me hoot with laughter.

So, in the end, how much of a departure is AHT? Well, linguistically, chronologically, geographically and other words ending with -cally, it is different. 

Otherwise, it’s business as usual. Only with added research!

The second book in the series to feature Jonas Flynt, A Thief's Justice is due to be published in May 2023.

A Thief's Justice by Douglas Skelton. (Canelo Crime) Out May 2023

London, 1716. Revenge is a dish best served ice-cold… The city is caught in the vice-like grip of a savage winter. Even the Thames has frozen over. But for Jonas Flynt– thief, gambler, killer – the chilling elements are the least of his worries… Justice Geoffrey Dumont has been found dead at the base of St Paul’s cathedral, and a young male sex-worker, Sam Yates, has been taken into custody for the murder. Yates denies all charges, claiming he had received a message to meet the judge at the exact time of death. The young man is a friend of courtesan Belle St Clair, and she asks Flynt to investigate. As Sam endures the horrors of Newgate prison, they must do everything in their power to uncover the truth and save an innocent life, before the bodies begin to pile up. But time is running out. And the gallows are beckoning...

More information about Douglas Skelton can be found on his website.  You can also follow him on Twitter @DouglasSkeleton1 and on FaceBook.