500 Square Foot of History

“His bedroom and his bathroom looked out on a tiny court containing a sundial and a silversmith. Few people who walked down St James’s Street knew of the court’s existence.” – The Human Factor by Graham Greene

One November day, many years ago, I was walking back from a meeting near St James’s Park in London and spotted an intriguing passageway I’d never noticed before. Lined with dark panels, it appeared to lead to a little courtyard and the sign on the wall named it Pickering Place. Peering down the covered passage, what I glimpsed of the courtyard appeared secluded and private, so I carried on my way but, curiosity piqued, I looked it up on the train home.

As a teenager, my father had given me Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City to read, and, as an already-avid crime fiction fan, the idea of a varied and eccentric community investigating a murder immediately popped into my head. The idea recurred several times over the years, and I even spent a month in San Francisco in my twenties, staying in a Barbary Lane-style courtyard, exploring the city I’d read so much about, but the idea was transient and unfixed, and the exact way in which I could bring these people together in a UK setting eluded me.

Until the day I discovered Pickering Place. Described as the smallest residential square in London – and it really is small, about 500 square feet – it was rich with history. Sometimes, it only takes a word or a phrase to spark an idea for a writer, and ‘the smallest square in London’ was enough for me. The idea for a crime novel set in a London square immediately began to form, and that was before I read the wealth of history in this tiny place. 

Formerly part of Henry VIII’s real tennis courts, it was acquired by builder Thomas Stroud in 1731, who built many of the houses surrounding the square. By 1741 however, William Pickering, a coffee merchant, had taken ownership. He was son-in-law to Widow Bourne, the founder of Berry Bros. & Rudd Ltd, the historic wine merchants who have been operating next door on St James’s Street since 1698.

In the 18th century, Pickering Place became something of a ‘scene’ and, as a secluded, unseen corner of St James’s, attracted all sorts of unsavoury activity from the aristocratic society in the neighbourhood. It gained a reputation for gambling, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, bare-knuckle boxing, and even as a location for illegal duels. One of its most famous duellists was rumoured to be Beau Brummell, famous dandy and inventor of the cravat, whose statue stands in nearby Jermyn Street. It has even been suggested that the last duel in London was fought there, but since pistols were the weapon of choice for duellists by then, the limited square footage would make that unlikely. The words ‘fish’ and ‘barrel’ spring to mind.

The square appeared to clean up its act in the 19th century however, becoming home to the Texan Republic’s legation until Texas joined the United States in 1845, and in 1914 was put to use as a temporary recruitment and sign-up spot for The Royal Fusiliers. The historians at Berry Bros. & Rudd even discovered photographs in their archive from 1922 showing Pickering Place being used as a film set, the film’s title unknown but featuring two duelling, costumed swordsmen. A source of those ‘last duel’ rumours, perhaps. In the 1950s, writer Graham Greene lived there, in a flat above an oyster bar and below General Auchinleck, using the square as inspiration for the living quarters of Colonel Daintry in his novel, The Human Factor. 

Did you know London still had lamplighters? I didn’t, until I went back to Pickering Place to explore. I found that not only was the square truly tiny, it was also very beautiful, with Georgian architecture, iron railings, and an original, still-used Victorian gas lamp. My fictional Marchfield Square sprang fully to life for me that day, albeit on a larger plot and with fewer people, and the story of a special and quite improbable place in London was born.

Sadly, Pickering Place’s gas lamp has now been converted to LED but there are still over 250 left in the area, looked after by a devoted group of skilled engineers. The commitment of others to preserve and document our history also inspired the second book in the Marchfield Mysteries, Murder Like Clockwork, although setting the books in London has provided an embarrassment of riches in that respect.

While the idea for Marchfield Square appeared to download itself to my brain in a single moment – an eclectic residential community in the heart of London, overlooked by a wealthy, somewhat mysterious widow – the rest of the story came in snippets, inspired by the history of the square. The characters include a coffee addicted writer, a military man, and a retired film actor, all part of a community of found family hiding their secrets in the shadows… And then I asked the question: what would happen to that community if the wrong person moved in? 

When I finally sat down to write 10 Marchfield Square it was 2021. Even for me, that was a long time for an idea to percolate, but sometimes, the moment is just right. Publishing was rediscovering the joy of crime novels with heart and humour, and the book flowed easily, and I had a great time planting little references to Pickering Place in its pages.

One thing most writers have in common is our curiosity, our need to look up (and subsequently rabbit-hole) even the idlest of thoughts. And even if that research never makes it into a book, I sure none of us would have it any other way. 

For more in depth history about Pickering Place, do visit the sites of Berry Bros. and Rudd, The London Gasketeers, and The Paris Review.

Murder Like Clockwork by Nicola Whyte. (Bloomsbury Publishing)

An empty house that isn't empty. A victim who vanishes. An impossible crime? Every Thursday at midday Audrey Brooks cleans the Petrov house. Mr Petrov is never home - in fact he seems to use the house purely as storage for his impressive collection of antiques - but that doesn't affect the care with which Audrey mops, polishes, and carefully winds each of the dozens of beautiful clocks that decorate the tall, elegant, empty London mansion. Until the morning she finds a corpse in the back bedroom, the pristine walls and floor covered in blood, and flees the house in panic. Fifteen minutes later, the police arrive... and find nothing. No body. No blood. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the clock in that back bedroom, which is now running four minutes slow. With no victim, the police are convinced there was no murder, but Audrey knows better. A man has been killed, and if they won't do anything about it, she - and her annoying friend Lewis - will. Whodunnit is one thing, but this detective duo must also wrestle with when - and where on earth is the body? It's not long since they solved the murder of their neighbour, so they're not rookie sleuths, and at least this time the case has no connection to their home. Does it?

More information about Nicola Whyte and her books can be found on her website. She can also be found on Facebook. She can also be found on Instagram, X, Bluesky and Threads @nixawhy.

The Case of the Mad Doctor by P D Lennon

 Settling down to read Kei Miller’s poetry* one day, it never crossed my mind that the idea for my first historical crime novel lay within his acclaimed verses. An eighteenth-century serial killer? In Jamaica?

As a crime fiction writer, this was a real “Whoa!” moment. This piece of Jamaican legend had managed to evade me. How? I do not know. I re-read page 47 about five times, intrigued by the knowledge that in or around 1760, a Scotsman sailed silvery blue oceans to the tropical climes of Jamaica for a new life and brought violence. He could have brought tartan, a few kilts or shawls to show off, but no. True, a great majority of Europeans also came to kill, but they had navies and the blessing of queen or king and country. Scottish immigrant Doctor Lewis Hutchinson had no navy, just cruel intent and ammunition. Bows, arrows, muskets and plenty of lead balls.

For years, I delayed writing about Doctor Hutchinson (referred to as ‘Hutchison’ in some journals) because information about his early life is quite scant. Believed to be born in the year 1732, he was twenty-eight when he left Scotland for Jamaica. Where he obtained medical training is unknown. His name is nowhere to be found in the register of Edinburgh physicians, nor was he a student or graduate of Edinburgh Medical School. Where he lived in Scotland or what informed his decision to leave that country is also a mystery.

Although Hutchinson’s infamy is rooted in Jamaican crimes, I do wonder if he was always a brutish fellow who fled Scotland to avoid law enforcers. He settled in Pedro, St Ann, a tiny remote district on the island and built a home boldly titled Edinburgh Castle. Before long he was accused of stealing cattle to start a cattle business - the first sign of his descent into lawlessness. His encore was to launch a vicious assault upon his neighbour, Dr Jonathan Hutton, of such severity that the victim returned to England for a trepanning operation. This was a mere taster of what Hutchinson could do. A lot more evil was concealed up his ruffled cuff sleeves.

Somehow, someway, this mysterious character belonged in a story. What I had to do was work out a structure, and that evaded me for some time until I saw an article about a book called Black Tudors. I liked the idea of gainfully employed Black people in King Henry VIII’s time and wanted to write about a clever Black man. After all, literature has to find space for a different type of hero. They can’t all be Tom Holland lookalikes. King Henry’s Tudor era was sixteenth century. Doctor Hutchinson’s reign of terror came much later in the Georgian era. A light bulb went off. I decided that my tale would be about a smart Black Georgian, a fictional hero to take down the Mad Doctor. Originally entitled The Adventures Of Isaiah Ollenu, it was later changed to The Case of the Mad Doctor in consultation with my astute editor, Craig Lye.

The desolate district of Pedro would have been too restrictive as a setting for the entire book. Instead, much of the island is on show. Spanish Town (St Jago de la Vega), St Catherine, was the capital city and features prominently throughout. A few of the imposing buildings from that era still exist in Spanish Town square, some as ruins, others as local government facilities. The populous and popular Kingston gets a look in too, as does Montego Bay where a magnificent ball is held. Determined to include Jamaican folklore - as not many books do - I added elements of magical realism in the tale, including African mermaids and a rolling calf. Yes, Jamaica’s most terrifying four-legged duppy gets a whole scene to run riot.

Despair can be a close companion when conducting research into what was a barbarous time for people in Africa, the West Indies and the Americas, but creating art through pain is something that writers of dark fiction must get used to.

In the colonial era, unimaginable cruelty was inflicted upon human beings, enslaved and forced to work in degrading conditions to ensure Europe grew wealthy. Doctor Hutchinson ran a sugar plantation and owned enslaved Africans. While we do not know much about their lives, they deserve a voice and were given one.

Combining fiction with dark fact to produce entertainment is a delicate task. Early on, I realised that the only way to write the tale without falling into depression was to include a good dose of humour, which tone is set from chapter one. Whether you chose to root for the good guys or the bad guy, I hope you savour the antics of the very different characters.

 

The Case of the Mad Doctor by P D Lennon (Canelo Press) Out Now.

Inspired by the true story of Jamaica’s first serial killer. Jamaica, 1772. Caribbean jewel, or a killer's playground? On the island of Jamaica, people have started disappearing without trace. Have they run away, trying to start new lives in the British colony under assumed names, or is something darker afoot? Some of the missing had taken out large life insurance policies before leaving England, and so word of the vanishings reaches Bristol when relatives try to collect their pay outs. With suspicion of a grand fraud in the air, ambitious Black barrister’s clerk Isaiah Ollenu is thrown together with pious insurance agent Ruben Ashby and ordered to the Caribbean to investigate. But, confronted by prejudice, untoward characters and vengeful spirits, the task may cost this unlikely duo more than either man is willing to pay…

P D Lennon can be found on X @PaulaDL16 and on Instagram @pauladl16

*Kei Miller - The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, Carcanet Press.

Incorporating research into writing – or how I learned not to get bogged down in toilets.

It began as a simple problem. I needed a character to meet his untimely end while relieving himself at the back of an eighteenth-century London tavern. But how, I wondered, did people go to the loo in those days? Would there have been a latrine or even an outhouse? I had no idea. My research took me down several internet rabbit holes, where I learned a lot about the development of sewerage, the disparity between facilities for the rich and the poor, and the reason why women with long skirts and petticoats didn’t wear underwear. It was fascinating, but, in the end, a week of research ended up as half a paragraph of text. 

This is the joy and the frustration of researching for historical fiction. Those of us who write it often say that it is the research that draws us. It can certainly bear fruit for the plots. In my second Lizzie Hardwicke novel, The Corpse Played Dead, much of the action takes place at Drury Lane Theatre. I read a number of books about eighteenth-century staging, which helped me come up with the method of the murder. Reading about gambling houses and the outrageous wagers that took place in them gave me a crucial plot point for the latest novel, Viper in the Nest. 

But however fascinating the research is – and believe me, the history of toilets is utterly enthralling – the novel reader is reading fiction and wants to press on with the story. As a reader, I can always spot when a writer has become over-excited about their research because they feel the need to offer several paragraphs of information – sometimes delivered from the mouth of a character who would surely not need to explain because they inhabit that period. 

It's not easy to get it right. Too little information about something specific to your chosen era and you risk the reader missing something crucial to the plot. Too much, and they may be wearied by the history lesson. 

My own preference is to allow my protagonist to describe what she sees, and to make her own observations on the situation. I’m lucky that Lizzie Hardwicke has a conversational tone of voice – she’s more likely to make a wry aside than to lecture. I also tend to trust the reader. People who enjoy historical fiction already have a historical imagination. My readers may have read Georgette Heyer, Antonia Hodgson, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, or Winston Graham – or, indeed, watched Poldark or Harlots. They are familiar enough with the landscape of the eighteenth century and all I need to do is nudge them now and again with a small detail or comment. 

At the end of each of my novels, I add a short historical note. Mostly, I want the reader to know that I’ve done my research and, if I’ve made a few tweaks to historical facts, I prefer to confess my anachronisms openly rather than have someone point them out. I also add a short list of some of the books I’ve found helpful so that, should any reader wish to engage further with the history of theatre, or gambling, or even toilets, then they may do so at their leisure – perhaps even when alone in the smallest room. 

Viper in the Nest by Georgina Clarke (Verve Books) Out Now

London, June 1759. When a charmless civil servant takes his own life, few are interested in his death. But Lizzie Hardwicke, who plies her trade in the brothels of London whilst also working as an undercover sleuth for the magistrate, can see no reason why a man who had everything to look forward to would wish to end his life. Lizzie's search for answers takes her from the smoke-filled rooms of fashionable gambling houses, where politicians mix ambition with pleasure, to the violent streets of Soho, ready to erupt with riots in the sultry summer heat. All the while, she is navigating her complicated feelings for the magistrate's trusted assistant, Will Davenport, and a disturbing situation at home. Then a gambling house owner is brutally murdered, and Lizzie finds herself tangled in a chaos that she cannot control. The darkest of secrets threatens to turn Davenport against her forever; its exposure will send her to the gallows. London, June 1759. When a charmless civil servant takes his own life, few are interested in his death. But Lizzie Hardwicke, who plies her trade in the brothels of London whilst also working as an undercover sleuth for the magistrate, can see no reason why a man who had everything to look forward to would wish to end his life. Lizzie's search for answers takes her from the smoke-filled rooms of fashionable gambling houses, where politicians mix ambition with pleasure, to the violent streets of Soho, ready to erupt with riots in the sultry summer heat. All the while, she is navigating her complicated feelings for the magistrate's trusted assistant, Will Davenport, and a disturbing situation at home. Then a gambling house owner is brutally murdered, and Lizzie finds herself tangled in a chaos that she cannot control. The darkest of secrets threatens to turn Davenport against her forever; its exposure will send her to the gallows.

More information about the author and her books can be found on her website. She can also be found on X @clarkegeorgina1

Georgina Clarke’s latest novel Viper in the Nest is a gripping and vividly imagined historical mystery set in 18th century London, featuring brothel worker and sometime sleuth Lizzie Hardwicke and follows on from the first two in the series (Death and the Harlot and The Corpse Played Dead). Clarke is also the author of the acclaimed novel The Dazzle of the Light which is based on the Forty Elephants - a gang of notorious female thieves in 1920s East London. All of Clarke's novels are published by VERVE Books.

Where True Crime Meets Jane Austen, by Jessica Bull

The Miss Austen Investigates series is my tribute to Jane Austen, telling the story of her life and work through the format of a murder mystery. I really wanted to capture the vibrant, witty, and joyfully irreverent woman I believe Austen was. I also wanted to tell her story, because it’s tempting to conflate Austen with her more privileged heroines and imagine her path to success was easy. 

All the things that stand in the way of her investigations are the same obstacles she faced in becoming a published author, and the unique qualities which enabled her genius in real life (such as her sense of justice, an innate understanding of human nature and a determination to succeed) allow her to solve the mysteries in my novels.

In this second instalment, a broken-hearted Jane Austen travels to Kent to look after her brother Neddy’s children and further her writing. She soon realizes it’s imperative she uncovers the true identity of a mysterious young woman claiming to be a shipwrecked foreign princess before the interloper can swindle Neddy’s adoptive mother out of her fortune and steal the much-anticipated inheritance all the Austen’s rely on.

As well Austen, there is another fascinating historical figure who inspired this novel. In 1817, a former servant girl, Mary Baker (née Willcocks), persuaded a Gloucester magistrate and his wife she was Princess Caraboo of the fictional island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean, and that she had been captured by pirates and escaped by jumping overboard in the Bristol Channel and swimming ashore.

Her ruse was eventually discovered but, rather than prosecute, Mary’s benefactress gave her some money to start afresh in America. Everyone who knew Mary said she loved to tell stories. It made me wonder, if Mary had been born into the class of women who were fortunate enough to receive an education, would she be remembered as another Jane Austen?

A Fortune Most Fatal will be published by Penguin Michael Joseph on 27 March 2025. Who are you, Miss Austen, but a young lady of little experience and no consequence?’ Welcome to Godmersham Park, 1797. Following many years apart, Jane Austen is set to spend the summer with her estranged brother, Neddy. As heir to wealthy widow Mrs Knight’s fortune, it is imperative that Neddy stays in his benefactor’s good graces. But upon arrival in Kent, Jane quickly realises Neddy is in dire need of her help. For a mysterious young woman named Eleanor currently resides with Mrs Knight – a stranger who threatens to swindle the inheritance for herself. Jane must uncover who Mrs Knight’s guest really is, to protect the fate of her entire family. When she discovers a series of threatening letters meant for Eleanor, her investigation takes an unexpected turn. Because the dangers aren’t just within the walls of Godmersham Park. Jane knows someone else is out there watching, waiting – but for what? Is this curious Eleanor friend, or foe? And can Jane solve the mystery, before danger comes for them all?

Jessica Bull lives in Southeast London with her husband and two daughters. A former librarian and communications consultant, she studied English literature at Bristol University and information science at City, University of London. A Fortune Most Fatal is the second novel in the Miss Austen Investigates series.

More information about Jessica Bull can be found on her website. You can also find her on Instagram @ jessicabullnovelist, on Facebook @JessicaBullAuthor and on Bluesky @jessicabull.bsky.social

Buy your copy: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/a-fortune-most-fatal-jessica-bull/7703849?ean=9780241642115

Was Shakespeare a Spy? By Howard Linskey

The man at the heart of my Elizabethan murder mystery was a writer and an actor but was he also a spy?

William Shakespeare was a playwright, the world’s most famous in fact, and he was also an actor who appeared in his own plays and others. That is a matter of record. We also know that he was a businessman, a shareholder in a theatrical company and the Globe theatre and had investments in all manner of things, including land. He may even have been a money lender. But was he also a spy? 

The premise of my new novel, ‘A Serpent In The Garden’, is that Will Shakespeare is called upon to investigate the mystery of a woman’s suspicious death, in exchange for patronage. He is still a young man at this point and has only written one play, Henry the 6th. That was a small success, but now Will is struggling to write that difficult second play, and the Earl of Southampton is dangling the promise of financial support in exchange for more than just poetry. His cousin is the first reported victim of an outbreak of plague that hit London in 1592, claiming thousands of lives, but the Earl does not believe it, and asks Will to find out what really happened to Lady Celia. 

When the Queen’s spymaster, Robert Cecil, learns of this, he orders Will to spy on his new patron and report back to him. Will soon realises how dangerous it is to have two masters in Elizabethan England, especially when they are the most powerful men in the realm. 

The plot of my book does draw upon the truth, though I am not claiming Shakespeare was a Tudor James Bond. Back then, he might very well have been called upon to report on people to powerful men at court, since many others were given similar tasks, whether they liked it or not. Shakespeare’s most famous patron was the young, handsome and very rich, Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Will dedicated sonnets to him, including ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, using such flowery prose some have suggested they must have been lovers, though flattering dedications to a patron were fully expected, no matter how chaste the relationship. 

The Earl of Southampton had a very powerful enemy at Elizabeth’s court. Sir Robert Cecil took over the role of her principal advisor from his father, William and became spymaster for both Elizabeth and her successor, King James the 1st. He even uncovered the Gunpowder Plot. Back in Shakespeare’s time, he would have known that the Earl of Southampton, a lover of plays and poetry, was looking favourably on Will and might be about to give him patronage. Crucially, the Earl was also a Catholic in a Protestant land and suspected of conspiring against the Queen. Later, in 1601, he would join the Essex Rebellion against her, and be sentenced to life imprisonment, though he was eventually released by King James. Perhaps more importantly, the two men hated one another. Wriothesley was ward to Cecil’s father as a child, and they grew up together. Cecil was very short and had a curved back caused by scoliosis. He envied Southampton’s good looks, his vast fortune and, most galling of all, his ability to charm the Queen into becoming her favourite. Southampton also broke off his engagement to Cecil’s niece, humiliating her and, by extension, his family. 

This was a time when plots against Elizabeth the 1st abounded. As a protestant Queen in a religiously divided nation, she was always a target. Catholics still saw her as the illegitimate child of an illegal second marriage, between Henry the 8th and Anne Boleyn. If they needed any further encouragement, the Pope himself declared, in an official Papal Bull to his faithful, that removing and even killing the Queen of England was no crime, since he had already excommunicated her. He was granting Elizabeth’s English Catholic subjects official permission to commit a regicide, blessed by God himself. 

Cecil already had a network of spies everywhere, and he needed them to protect the Queen. Most notably, Christopher Marlowe is believed to have spied for him in the Lowlands, and he was a far more famous and successful playwright than Will Shakespeare at this point. It is usually accepted that Marlowe died in a ‘tavern brawl’ in 1593, but the building was not a tavern and the only other men there were his friends; Skeres, Frizer and Poley, all of whom had links to the criminal world and had worked for Robert Cecil. Poley even played a significant part in the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots, when he acted as a double agent during the Babington Plot of 1586. Significantly, Marlowe was about to be brought before the Privy Council, to be questioned about dangerous heretical writings that would have severely embarrassed Cecil, his former employer. How convenient that he was instead stabbed in the eye, by a supposed friend, just before he had the opportunity to discredit the Queen’s spymaster by association. 

There is another interesting historical slant to this story. When Will Shakespeare left Stratford as a young man, he had little or no money. By 1592, he was an actor who had just been paid the sum of two pounds for his first play. Within a little over a year, he had somehow acquired the enormous sum of fifty pounds. Enough to become a shareholder in a new theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. No one knows how he did this. Many believe the money came from his patron, the Earl, but that is a lot to pay to have sonnets dedicated to you, hence the suspicion that Will might have been Southampton’s lover. In my book, Will hopes to get the money by risking his life to uncover the enormous secret linked to the suspicious death of Lady Celia. 

Revealing anything more would be a spoiler and, like spies everywhere, I reserve the right to keep some secrets. But, if you would like to know what really happened to Celia, and how Will manages to narrowly avoid a gruesome death, at the hands of two of the most powerful men in the realm, you can find the answers between the pages of ‘A Serpent In The Garden’.

A Serpent in the Garden by Howard Linsey. (Canelo) Out Now

London, 1592. 28-year-old William Shakespeare is the rising man of English theatre. But plague has hit the capital, and the playhouses are to be shut. Livelihoods, and lives, are at stake. Lady Celia Vernon is one of the first to perish but did she really die of plague? Her cousin, the Earl of Southampton, orders Will to discover the truth in a London filled with conspirators, cutthroats and traitors. The Queen's spymaster, Robert Cecil, suspects the Earl of treason and orders Will to spy on him in return. Caught between two of the most powerful men in the kingdom, Will cannot possibly serve both masters, and could easily become the next victim of the killer he is trying to catch. With his future, safety and life on the line, Will uncovers a devastating secret, and changes the course of his, and the world’s destiny forever.

Nachtigall, ick hör dir trapsen …

Nightingale, I hear you singing (Saying from Berlin, meaning: I can hear which way the wind is blowing)

Most of the time I can't say exactly how I come up with ideas for my novels, because it's often a lengthy process. But the idea for this series came to me in a rather unusual way, which I’d like to share with you.

Did you know that Berlin is considered the capital city of nightingales, with around 1300-1500 specimen recorded? This queen of the night is an inconspicuous gray-brown bird by day that is difficult to spot in the hedges, but it blossoms by night. A nightingale can sing an average of 180 musical phrases. By way of comparison – the average tit chirps just 6 phrases. In addition, the nightingale learns something new every year, inspired by its surroundings. 

It is often regarded as a symbol of spring, its song is a poetic embodiment of the soul in love, but it is also the harbinger of death. In Oscar Wilde's fairy tale 'The Nightingale and the Rose', the nightingale sacrifices its lifeblood - in the truest sense of the word - for a student in love, showing itself willing to help even in the death. Yet in that story, her death is in vain, and the gift is not appreciated. 

A few years ago, I was in Berlin in the spring, researching my Radio Free Europe novel 'Fräulein Kiss träumt von der Freiheit'. I also visited the Allied Museum in Clayallee, where there was an exhibition on the Berlin Airlift. There were lots of photos of hungry and injured-looking children and portraits of the famous Raisin Bomber pilot Gail Halvorsen. The next day, I had the opportunity to walk through the escape tunnels that were dug shortly after the Wall was built and during the Cold War.

This tour made me realise that what you think you know in theory about this period can become a nightmarish reality. You suddenly realize how powerless people must have felt waking up behind a barbed wire fence that wasn't there the previous evening. How families were amputated and life plans destroyed by an arbitrary division into East and West, across streets, houses and even cemeteries.

All these impressions were simmering away when I took a cab back to my apartment late at night after visiting my son. The driver, a true Berlin eccentric, suddenly stopped on a somewhat dilapidated corner in Wilmersdorf and lowered the windows. I was a little nervous, but then he asked, 'Hear that? The little wonder?' 

Unfortunately, all I could hear was my slightly accelerated pulse. 

He shook his head and explained that he was an amateur ornithologist and that the nightingales of Berlin were his hobby. Then he suggested that I get out of the car and listen more closely. But as a crime writer, you tend to be overcautious, so I politely declined. Grinning broadly, he shrugged his shoulders. “Well then, no,” he said, and drove me to my destination in silence, then sped off. 

I was just taking the key out of my backpack when I heard something. It was rather delicate at first, a chirping, which then gathered incredible momentum and became a beguiling song. Somewhere very close to me, in one of the hedges at the edge of Preussenpark. Fascinated, I paused and listened. 

All the quotes, poems and stories that I’d heard or read about nightingales rushed to mind. And while I stood still, enchanted, the germ of an idea crystallized. I saw a child in front of me, one of those waiting for the Raisin Bomber, a girl who does her utmost to bring her mother a gift. A gift that would lead to a catastrophe that would henceforth cast a shadow over her life. 

Carla was born in that instant, and with the next even louder warbles, her sister, Wallie, the queen of the night, popped up. From the very beginning, they were as real to as the song of that nightingale, they ignited my imagination ... and the result of that is what you’re holding in your hands now.

Nightingale & Co by Charlotte Printz (Corylus Books) Translator (Marina Sofia) out now.

Nightingale & Co is the first in a cosy historical crime series featuring the sisters of the Nightingale & Co detective agency in 1960s Berlin. Since the death of her beloved father, Carla has been running the Nightingale & Co detective agency by herself. It’s a far from easy job for a female investigator. When the chaotic, fun-loving Wallie shows up at the door, claiming to be her half-sister, Carla’s world is turned upside down. Wallie needs Carla – the Berlin Wall has been built overnight, leaving her unable to return to her flat in East Berlin. Carla certainly doesn’t need Wallie, with her secret double life and unorthodox methods for getting results. Yet the mismatched pair must find a way to work together when one of their clients is accused of murdering her husband.

Forthcoming Books from Verve Books

 January 2025

Gone To Earth is by Jane Jesmond. Still reeling from a life-threatening experience on the coast of Calais, daredevil climber Jen Shaw finds herself in Glasgow for a funeral, devastated with grief and in search of answers. As her dogged determination propels her closer to the criminal underworld than ever before, Jen and her family become the target of some dangerous and powerful people with links to the heart of Glasgow's Police Force. In the absence of anyone she can truly trust, Jen has no option but to rely on her own instincts and everything she's learnt from her close bond with police officer Nick Crawford for survival. Even if it means going undercover herself and disappearing into the city's dark underbelly.

March 2025

Death takes centre stage. Does the killer lie in the wings? An undercover assignment for the Bow Street magistrate sees Lizzie Hardwicke trade Mrs Farley's Bawdy House in Soho for life as a seamstress at a theatre on Drury Lane. Once there, she quickly realises that what goes on in the wings is much more intriguing than the theatrics being played out onstage... When a high-profile investor is brutally hanged at centre stage, Lizzie discovers the body and is once again thrown together with William Davenport, the magistrate\'s assistant with whom she is growing ever closer. The suspect list rivals any casting call, and Lizzie must use every trick hidden up her sleeve to see through all the performance and bring the culprit into the spotlight. The Corpse Played Dead is by Georgina Clarke.

Death and the Harlot is by Georgina Clarke. In a city built on secrets, who would kill to keep theirs hidden? The year is 1759, and London is shrouded in a cloak of fear. With the lawmen at the mercy of robbers and highwaymen, it's a perilous time to work the already dangerous streets of Soho. Lizzie Hardwicke is somewhat protected from the fray at Mrs Farley's Bawdy House, a reputable brothel. But then a wealthy customer is found brutally murdered... and Lizzie was the last person to see him alive. The magistrate's assistant, William Davenport, has no hard evidence against Lizzie, but his presence and questions make life increasingly difficult. Desperate to be rid of him and prove her innocence, Lizzie turns amateur detective, determined to find the true killer, whatever the cost. Yet as the body count rises, Lizzie realises that, just like her, everyone has a secret they will do almost anything to keep buried...

April 2025

London, June 1759. When a charmless civil servant takes his own life, few are interested in his death. But Lizzie Hardwicke, who plies her trade in the brothels of London whilst also working as an undercover sleuth for the magistrate, can see no reason why a man who had everything to look forward to would wish to end his life. Lizzie's search for answers takes her from the smoke-filled rooms of fashionable gambling houses, where politicians mix ambition with pleasure, to the violent streets of Soho, ready to erupt with riots in the sultry summer heat. All the while, she is navigating her complicated feelings for the magistrate's trusted assistant, Will Davenport, and a disturbing situation at home. Then a gambling house owner is brutally murdered, and Lizzie finds herself tangled in a chaos that she cannot control. The darkest of secrets threatens to turn Davenport against her forever; its exposure will send her to the gallows. Viper in the Nest is by Georgina Clarke.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

The compelling new novel from the author of THE HOUSEKEEPERS in which London's most talented con woman has five days to lift a fortune from the richest family in England. I’m delighted to be taking part in the cover reveal for #TheQueenOfFives by @alexhaybooks Out 30th Jan 2025 from @headlinepg

'The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay (Headline Publishing Group)

They whisper her name in every corner of town.The lady with a hundred faces, a thousand lives. Five moves, five days - for such are the rules of her game.' 1898. Quinn Le Blanc, London's most talented con woman, has five days to pull off the seemingly impossible: trick an eligible duke into marriage and lift a fortune from the richest family in England. Masquerading as a wealthy debutante, Quinn is the jewel of the season. Her brilliant act opens doors to the grand drawing rooms and lavish balls of high society - and propels her into the inner circle of her target: the corrupt, charismatic Kendals. But as she spins in and out of their world, Quinn becomes tangled in a dangerous web of love, lies and loyalty. The Kendal family all have secrets of their own, and she may not be the only one playing a game of high deception...

Creating Constantinople: Influences on a Victorian Novel

I started writing novels at a very early age. I was twelve when I wrote my first novel (a crime-thriller told from multiple perspectives in seedy LA), and fourteen when I wrote my second (an epic revenge Western)! Growing up in leafy Golders Green, novels were an escape from normal life – and that escapist urge still motivates my writing to this day.

Murder in Constantinople follows Ben Canaan, a troublesome 21-year-old in the East End of London in 1854. When we meet Ben, he is torn between a life of petty crime under the wing of a dockland gangster, and following his father’s footsteps as a tailor in the family workshop. But an affair with a beautiful stranger and a theft gone wrong results in Ben going on the run to Constantinople: capital of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the Crimean War. Ben quickly finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a deadly serial killer terrorising the city, and must unravel a series of brutal murders in order to survive.

Murder in Constantinople began life when I graduated as an English student at Cambridge. My literary passions were the Russian giants of the nineteenth century – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev – as well as specialists in serialised storytelling including Dickens and Henry James. I particularly loved the Bildungsroman genre: coming-of-age stories such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations, focused on the personal growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. 

I wanted to bring this type of storytelling to the detective genre. Our hero Ben is not a detective when we meet him, but over the course of the story, he becomes one. This explodes the conventional trope of detective novels: usually, we meet the detective once he already has his bag of tricks, his modus operandi, his view of the world (think Sherlock or Poirot). But in Murder in Constantinople, we see Ben start to fill his bag of tricks – we are watching the formation of a detective in real time.

The nineteenth century fascinated me not just because of my literary influences, but also because of my family history. Similar to the Canaan family of my novel, my ancestors were Jews who fled to London from Vienna in the mid-nineteenth century, setting up shop as milliners in the Jewish ghetto of London’s East End. I wanted to explore what it must have been like growing up in that world as an immigrant, but told from the perspective of a young man with my mindset: wanting to break free from these confines and chart his own course.

Ben, like many children of immigrant families, is saddled with his family’s rigid expectations – especially his father, who demands that he joins the family business. For Ben, the alternatives are stark: either he fully embraces life in London’s criminal underworld, or he embarks on an unexpected adventure into a warzone. Murder in Constantinople tells the story of how Ben makes this choice, and in the process finds his calling.

A major theme of Murder in Constantinople is colonialism and its legacy. Ben’s adventures are set against the backdrop of colonial conflicts, allowing us to see colonialism at work – its perpetrators, its winners and losers, the roots of modern conflicts, and how the practices of colonialism persist even today in a post-colonial age. 

The Crimean War is a powerful example of this which still resonates today. In the 1850s, Crimea was the epicentre of a violent clash between the Russian Empire and the empires of Europe. And now, in the 21^stcentury, that same region is the focal point for another violent clash between the “modern empires” of the Global East and the Global West.

A significant part of my research was devoted to understanding Constantinople, the location of modern-day Istanbul, as it existed in the 1850s. To do this, I read travel books from the 19^th century – old Baedekers and Murray’s Handbooks – to develop a nuanced sense of life in all its facets: the city’s topography, its rich array of languages, peoples and cultures, its architecture, its political hierarchies, its local economy, its laws. The goal was to portray Constantinople not as a place in history, but as a place that feels as present for readers as it is for the characters inhabiting it.

Murder in Constantinople is the first in a planned series of five novels, each exploring Ben’s adventures as a globe-trotting detective. I am currently writing the second book in the series – titled Death on the Pearl River, also for Pushkin Press – which takes an older Ben into even darker territory. The Ben Canaan Mysteries will chart the course of Ben’s entire life over several decades. So, on some level, these detective novels taken together will be a biography both of Ben and the century he lived in, as much as a series of crimes to be solved.

Murder in Constantinople by A E Goldin (Pushkin Press) Out Now. London, 1854. Twenty-one-year-old Ben Canaan attracts trouble wherever he goes. His father wants him to be a good Jewish son, working for the family business on Whitechapel Road, but Ben and his friends, the 'Good-for-Nothings', just want adventure. Then the discovery of an enigmatic letter and a photograph of a beautiful woman offer an escapade more dangerous than anything he'd imagined. Suddenly Ben is thrown into a mystery that takes him all the way to Constantinople, the jewel of an empire and the centre of a world on the brink of war. His only clue is three words: 'The White Death'. Now he must find what links a string of grisly murders, following a trail through king making and conspiracy, poison and high politics, bloodshed and betrayal. In a city of deadly secrets, no one is safe - and one wrong step could cost Ben his life.

More information about Aron and his work can be found on his website. You can also follow him on X @A.E.Goldin and on Instagram @a.e.goldin and also on Facebook.

A Case of Mice and Murder

Whenever I meet new people and they ask me what I do, I say ‘I am a barrister’. I never pause to think about it. I have been saying it all my adult life. I live and work in the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London. I put on a wig and gown and went to court and argued cases every day for more than thirty years. I am a barrister. The last time I said it, was at a party thrown recently by my agent. It was the first publishing party I had ever been to. ‘I am a barrister,’ I said in response to a polite query from a fellow guest. ‘Oh, he said ‘What are you doing here, then?’

What was I doing there? I am still wondering.

‘A Case of Mice and Murder’ is my COVID novel. Faced for the first time in my life with enforced seclusion, I wrote it more for fun than with any thought of publication.

The story was inspired by the extraordinary status of the Inner and Middle Temple (collectively known as the Temple.) The area, as a so-called ancient liberty, is in many ways quite separate from the whole of the rest of London. It is an independent local authority. And believe it or not, the City of London Police enter only with the permission of the Temple and share policing of the area with the Temple porters. Couple that with the fact that the same Temple porters man the gates 24 hours a day and the area is locked at night to all outsiders, and you have the makings of a classic murder mystery. It really only needed a body, a detective and a sidekick. So I set to, and ‘A Case of Mice and Murder’ is the result.

It tells the story of two mysteries in 1901 in the heart of legal London.

The first is the dramatic murder of the Lord Chief Justice and the quest to find his killer. The second a sensational legal battle over the rights to a book written by an anonymous author. 

There is one man linking them; Sir Gabriel Ward KC, Eton and Oxford educated, brilliant, solitary, reclusive, bound by compulsive rituals; reluctant sleuth in the first story, legendary advocate in the second.

The body of the Lord Chief Justice, is found in evening dress, with mysteriously bare feet, lying in the Temple one morning in 1901. The ‘how’ is not very difficult; a carving knife is sticking out of his chest. But who would do such a thing to a conventional successful Judge? And why?

Sir Gabriel Ward KC has no desire to play detective. He wants to be left alone to prepare for his next case. But he literally stumbles upon the body and so becomes drawn into the mystery.

His sidekick is Constable Maurice Wright of the City of London Police, who yearns to become a detective, left school at fourteen, has never read a book for pleasure and who lives with his large loving family in the East End of London.

At the same time as he and Wright investigate, Sir Gabriel is worrying about his next case; and that is a mystery, too. Sir Gabriel is not the kind of barrister who blusters his way round the Old Bailey representing murderers and his cases might be thought dry and technical. But not this one. Ward is representing a publisher who found the manuscript of a children’s book on his office doorstep with no hint as to its authorship. He published it and found himself with a smash hit that makes him a fortune. A woman claims to be the author. But is she really?

Between them, Sir Gabriel and Constable Wright while unravelling the complexities of the cases discover, along with the murderer, and the true author of the book, a friendship across the social divides of Edwardian England.

Now close to publication, I still feel like a barrister at heart but maybe, when my book actually comes out I will get over my imposter syndrome and feel able to say, when I am next asked, that I am a writer as well.

A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith is published by Raven Books on 18th July 2024.

The Inner Temple: a warren of shaded courtyards and ancient buildings forming the hidden heart of London’s legal world. A place where tradition is everything, and murder belongs only in the casebooks. Until now… When barrister Gabriel Ward steps out of his rooms on a sunny May morning in 1901, his mind is so full of his latest case – the disputed authorship of bestselling children’s book Millie the Temple Church Mouse – that he scarcely registers the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England on his doorstep. But even he cannot fail to notice the judge’s dusty bare feet, in shocking contrast to his flawless evening dress, nor the silver carving knife sticking out of his chest. The police can enter the Temple only by consent, so who better to investigate this tragic breach of law and order than a man who prizes both above all things? But murder doesn’t answer to logic or reasoned argument, and Gabriel soon discovers that the Temple’s heavy oak doors are hiding more surprising secrets than he’d ever imagined.

Mary Horlock on The Safest Place in the World.

‘There was something magical about an island—the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world—an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.’

So thought Dr. Armstrong, one of the characters in Agatha Christie’s classic novel And Then There Were None. The story is now familiar: a group of strangers are invited to a mysterious island where they are then stranded and killed off one by one. It’s a kind of locked-room mystery, but by using the setting of on an island, cut off from the rest of the world, Christie increases her characters’ isolation, ramping up the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. 

To re-read the novel now it’s surprisingly dark, but islands can be dark, and I think I’m allowed to say that since I’ve lived on two. They are these fragments of land adrift from the wider world, always a little out of step with it. Whether it’s a tropical haven or a windswept stretch of rock, an island is a border, exposed to the sea on all sides. To be able to see your limits should be reassuring and novels set on islands, particularly crime novels, have that comforting lure. The natural boundaries of cliff and shore shape and contain the narrative. We have a set number of people and places. It is like a puzzle or a game, and also, like a smaller version of our own world. We can put it under the microscope, poke it and prod it and pull it apart. 

But the limits are a danger, too. The island is at the mercy of the elements and can throw up all kinds of surprises: a bad storm, something strange on the beach. In And Then There Were None, just like in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or more recently Alex Garland’s The Beach, our characters find themselves on an island that is not their home, and with life’s normal rules suspended, things quickly fall apart. 

Inevitably perhaps, I’m interested in islanders as much as islands. Islanders often feel like outsiders. By choice or birth, they live on the fringes. This makes them good observers and also, narrators. My father’s family were from the Isle of Wight, and my grandmother, who lived in house looking out over the Solent, would regale me with stories of wreckers and smugglers who were apparently my ancestors. 

When I was seven we moved to Guernsey, an even smaller island in the English Channel. ‘There’s no crime on Guernsey,’ my mother would say (which is often what someone says in a crime novel just before they die). But she’d then point out - quite rightly, I should add - that on a tiny island where everyone knows everyone else, why bother to commit a crime when you’d be swiftly caught? To me, that sounded rather like an invitation. 

My new novel, The Stranger’s Companion, is based on a true crime, a real-life mystery that happened on the island of Sark in 1933. Now Sark, to those who don’t know, is an island even smaller than Guernsey. It measures three and half miles long and has no cars or streetlights to this day. In 1933 it had a population of 500, two telephones and only three wireless sets on the whole island. Unsurprisingly, it had become a haven for shell-shocked veterans of the last War, and was regularly advertised as the perfect place to escape the more ‘disturbing elements of modern civilisation.’ Then the clothes of a man and woman were found on a cliff edge, with no sign of their owners. Despite days-long searches over the cliffs and coves, nobody was found and nobody was reported missing. It caused quite a sensation in the press precisely because it seemed so unlikely. Sark was ‘the Island Where Nothing Ever Happens’ and yet something obviously had. 

The story and the way it caught everyone’s attention points to the truth at the heart of island mysteries - whether real or invented. We think we are on safe ground, but we’re not. Bad things happen everywhere, sometimes in places where we least expect them to happen. All we can do is create the frame to contain and make sense of them.

The Stranger's Companion by Mary Horlock (John Murray/Baskerville) Out Now.

October 1933. With a population of five hundred souls, isolated Sark has a reputation for being 'the island where nothing ever happens'. Until, one day, the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot. As the search for the missing couple catches the attention of first the local and then national newspapers, Sark finds itself front-page news. When young islander Phyllis Carey returns to Sark from England she throws herself into solving the mystery. As Phyll digs through swirls of gossip, ghost stories and dark rumours in search of the truth, she crosses paths with Everard Hyde, a surprise visitor from her past. As press coverage builds to fever pitch, long-suppressed secrets from Phyll's and Everard's shared, shadowy history begin to surface.

More information may be found on her website. 

Reading and Escapism! - By Dr Luke Deckard

Raymond Chandler criticised Dorothy L Sayers in his essay The Simple Art of Murder (1950) for commenting that crime fiction wasn’t a serious type of literature but one of escapism. She’s not the only one to snub the genre that was an author’s bread and butter. Before Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously hated Sherlock Holmes! He didn’t want to be remembered solely for that character because he felt they were silly, unimportant stories. 

I can imagine Raymond Chandler sitting at his desk, reading these quotes while swishing a glass of whisky, pausing to look at his cat and huff. Chandler’s rebuttal to Sayers was simple: all pleasurable reading is a form of escapism. If that meant your jam was mathematics, philosophy, or Western or romance, that was fine. Chandler disagreed with Sayers’s implication that escapist literature is essentially dumb and unimportant literature. 

Nevertheless, this attitude persists today. I once read a press release for a book described as a “frothy thriller” That baffled me! A book without substance! I would be devastated if my work was described as frothy! I instantly felt bad for the author. My reaction couldn’t have been unlike Chandler’s when reading Sayers’s comments. But it’s not uncommon to see people on social media describe a film or a book as ‘turn your brain off fun’ or ‘you don’t have to think about it.’

This attitude of disposable, empty, forgettable storytelling is far too common. And is often used to excuse poorly told stories. 

When I started to write bad Blood, it was for my PhD at Kingston University. One of the most challenging aspects at the start was battling with the idea of how to make this book meaningful and live up to the quality of what a PhD novel should be. I was dead set on writing a historical noir. I wanted gangsters, femme fatales, and a tough-talking yet charming PI. I wanted it to be thrilling, fun, and sexy. 

But is that literary? Is that good enough? Hard-boiled fiction was birthed out of pulp magazines printed on cheap disposable paper. Were the tricks and tropes just as disposable today? Was there any literary appeal left? I wrestled with these questions. 

In the same essay, Raymond Chandler says that form doesn’t matter; it’s style that counts. What he meant was you can write any ole genre, but it is the author’s flare that makes it pop and stand out. Then, Chandler’s criticism of Sayers and his comments on style all clicked. I knew what I needed to do: escape into the genre. I needed to embrace the form shamelessly and respectfully while making it my own.

That’s what Chandler was getting at—there is no literature of escape in a derogatory sense. Meaning no single genre is less than simply because of its formula.

The filmmaker Robert Meyer Burnett once phrased what audiences are genuinely after: they want good stories told well. Genre is irrelevant. The form isn’t the it thing that makes something work. It’s all about style! The execution. That’s why you can read two books in the same genre and love one but hate the other. Audiences don’t seek out bad, forgettable, disposable art. So, we writers shouldn’t treat stories as such. When we’re hungry, we don’t go into a restaurant and say, ‘Give me the worst thing on the menu, please!’ We want something delicious. 

When I think about the book described as a frothy thriller, what the headline was trying to say was it’s a fun ride. The word choice of frothy was a mistake. The value of fiction doesn’t come from the seriousness of its content or ‘realism’, but from the joy the readers have with a well-executed story. That’s what Burnett means by a good story told well.

And that’s what I attempted to do with Bad Blood. It wasn’t about ‘writing literature’ or trying to make something more out of it. The form is the form. So I wrote it for the people who love noir fiction, who love historical fiction, who love Edinburgh, and tough and gritty atmospheres. There was no shame in embracing the tropes and trying to subvert a few along the way! If someone escapes into my book, that’s a beautiful achievement! 

So readers, feel free to escape into fiction! It’s not a bad thing. But do keep your brains switched on!

Bad Blood by Luke Deckard (Sharpe Books) Out Now

London 1922. American ex-pat Logan Bishop, suffering from shell-shock and an addiction to morphine, is working as a Private Investigator. When Logan’s father, Reverend Daniel Bishop, arrives from Chicago, desperate to see his son, Logan wants nothing to do with him. That is, until his father is brutally attacked. Daniel begs his son to find Greta Matas, a Bolshevik woman with an unknown connection to his father, in Edinburgh before she is murdered. Before Logan can learn more, his father slips into a coma. Logan takes the first train to Edinburgh. The journey proves far from routine, however, and two mysterious men follow the investigator out of Waverley Station. Logan soon discovers that Greta is missing and her son, Peter, is wanted for murder. The case begins to take a darker and deadlier turn than he ever imagined. As Edinburgh police suspect Logan of keeping information from them, the pressure to find Greta and her son increases. Secrets and lies are exposed as Logan clashes with Chicago gangsters, the authorities, and Edinburgh’s elite to expose the truth behind the woman's disappearance.

You can find Bad Blood on Amazon UK and Amazon US

More information about Dr Luke Deckard can be found on his website. You ca also find him on X @LukeWritesCrime. You can also find him on Facebook.