In the Lyme Crime Spotlight: William Shaw

Name:- William Shaw

Job: Journalist and Author

Website:- http://williamshaw.com

Twitter: @William1shaw

Introduction:-

William Shaw is the author of two different series. The DS Alex Cupidi series which is set in Dungerness where DS Cupidi works in the Kent Serious Crime Squad, and The Breen and Tozer series which is set in 1968/69 London. He is also the author of the standlone novels The Birdwatcher written as William Shaw and Dead Rich written as G W Shaw.

Current book?

Dead Rich, which is set aboard a Russian billionaire’s super yacht in the Caribbean. When I wrote it I had no idea it would be so topical. The book closes at the point that the awful war in Ukraine starts. I grew up loving the classic adventure thrillers by people like Neville Shute and Alistair MacLean. It was probably something to do with having been through lockdown, but I wanted to write a book which had some of that big screen romantic sense of adventure in it. 

Favourite book

That changes all the time. Graham Greene’s The Quiet American still stands up. I love the way it exposes the way our will to do good in politics is often not as innocent as we think it is. 

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why? 

I was thinking that maybe inviting Elly Griffiths’s character Nelson and putting him in the same room as M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe, but I’ve a feeling neither would talk at all. It would probably be much more fun to put the deeply eccentric and self-absorbed Tilly Bradshaw and the more empathetic Ruth Galloway together and watch the fall-out from two of my favourite crime fiction intellectuals.

How do you relax?

I help run something called Brighton Ceilidh Collective. We put on dances every month in Brighton. Playing low-level folk tunes is a) very different from writing and b) very good for the neurones.

What book do you wish you had written and why? 

Again, that changes all the time. The last book I read with some jealously was Mark Billingham’s Rabbit Hole which was a great example of how crime fiction can do very serious stuff – and it’s also very darkly funny.

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as an author?

Keep it simple. I have been writing fiction constantly since I was in my twenties. Though I won some couple of prizes with short stories, it took me until my bloody fifties to get a novel published. Lack of self-confidence which I had in spades makes you over-reach. When the light bulb came on I found how keeping things simple gave me much more power.

Why did you initially prefer to write two different series as opposed to a standalone novel and now that you have written a standalone what prompted you to do so? 

I wrote one series, then broke out to do a standalone with my fourth book, The Birdwatcher. I had no intention at all of turning that into a series but somehow the secondary character Alex Cupidi wouldn’t shut up, so she ended up forming the backbone of the second series, set in Kent. A lot of people do standalones now but it had always been my intention to mix them up. I think each form energises the other. 

What are you looking forward to at Lyme Crime?

It’s my first time there. I’m looking forward to everything! I’m from the South West so it feels like home turf – and will hopefully bring a new crowd along to see what a great community crime writers and readers now are. And Paddy Magrane who organised it is one of the loveliest people in crime, so I’m confident it will have a great atmosphere.

Dead Rich by G W Shaw (Riverrun) Published 26 May 2022 

Super yachts are secretive, like their owners. The bigger the richer. Like castles, they are created to inspire awe. Like castles too, they are defended. They are an entire world, separate from the rest of us. Kai, a carefree once-successful musician is invited by his new Russian girlfriend Zina to join her family’s Caribbean holiday. Impulsively accepting he learns that Zina is the daughter of a Russian oligarch, Stepan Pirumov and that the trip is aboard his yacht, the Zinaida, moored in St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. On arrival Kai discovers that the head of security has been arrested, armed guards are below deck, there’s an onboard panic room and a strong sense of all not being quite right beneath the gleaming surfaces of the Pirumov’s lives. An unnerving presence punctures the atmosphere: a murderous imposter is on board the Zinaida, but who is it?

You can also find him on Facebook.

Tickets can be bought here:- https://www.lymecrime.co.uk/tickets--contact.html

 

The Highs and Lows of Using Historical Characters.

Mixing ‘real’ people with invented ones in fiction can be tricky, as we are beginning to discover. Sometimes our inventions take on lives of their own, so much so that readers assume they are real. After a while, we start to wonder ourselves.

At the end of The Body on the Doorstep, the first Hardcastle & Chaytor mystery, we wrote an afterword to let readers know ‘what came next’, tying up the ends of the story. In the afterword we mixed real and fictional characters together. We thought we had separated out the only two real characters, J.M.W. Turner and Folliott Cornewall, but apparently not. Many of our readers were both puzzled and confused. We still get letters asking if other characters such as Shaw and Lord Clavertye are also real.

Oops.

Then there is also the question of whether the fictional characters are based on real people. Authors have been asked this question since the beginning of time (we suspect - no real research has been done by us!). People in our own small village have spent some time trying to find local models for Reverend Hardcastle in particular. (There isn’t one – we’re not stupid. We have to live here, and interact with our local clergy!)

Some of our characters may have been inspired by some characteristics of some people met in the past (note the deliberate vagueness), but the vast majority are inspired by reading history and picking character traits from a range of historical figures. Sometimes, though, it is just too tempting to use a person from history. People walk out of the pages of books, and you just have to use them. At other times the plot demands that well-known people – politicians, singers, bankers, sea captains, authors, painters and so on – appear as themselves.

J.M.W. Turner appeared ‘as himself’ in The Body on the Doorstep. We didn’t actually need a painter as such, but we did want a young man who was observant, rather impatient of authority and had freedom of movement. Someone in charge of his own work schedule, such as a painter, was perfect. Turner is known to have painted on this coast at various times in his career. At the time we were writing The Body on the Doorstep, virtually nothing was known about his whereabouts in the spring/summer of 1796. He was perfect for the story so we lifted him into the book (there was also a sneaking hope that his presence in the story might generate a little extra interest).

The Very Reverend Folliott Cornewall’s presence in The Body on the Doorstep has a much more prosaic reason. We needed a church authority figure and Cornewall’s career fitted well with Hardcastle’s back story. His move to become Bishop of Hereford was also timely. We know of nothing from history to support our version of his character, but he had no children, so hopefully there is no one around to complain!

We also toyed with the idea of inserting into a fictional character from another (now deceased) author, but decided at the last moment that it might make life too complicated. That would have meant having a real fictional character in a fictional real setting; or is it the other way around? You see what we mean.

In our latest book, The Body in the Ice, we have introduced a few more real characters, some seen and one unseen. The most famous, Jane Austen, is unseen, mentioned only in passing when we introduce her brother, Edward Austen (later Edward Austen Knight). Her ‘appearance’ is related to Hardcastle’s sister Calpurnia, who is a writer of Gothic novels.

Edward, on the other hand, is a significant figure in both The Body in the Ice and our next book, The Body in the Boat. We needed an officer of the East Kent Volunteers who would help chase down spies and other villains, and Edward was a perfect fit. Why invent a character, we reasoned, when there was a real one ready and waiting to walk on stage?

A few other historical figures appear 'off-stage' or have minor speaking parts in The Body in

the Ice too: Olaudah Equiano, the prominent anti-slavery campaigner, Lord Grenville, the Foreign Secretary (kudos to anyone who spots the Al Stewart reference), the Duke of Portland, the Home Secretary, and Rufus King, the American ambassador of the day. In The Body in the Boat, we have a few more, notably Lieutenant Newton Stark, captain of the wonderfully named Royal Navy warship Black Joke. And it turns out there really was a famous sea captain from Rye named – wait for it – Captain Haddock.

Using historical characters can be confusing in a work of fiction, we agree. It can also be fun, and make the narrative seem more real. We’ll keep doing it, and we’ll do our best to help our readers distinguish fiction from reality. Assuming we can tell the difference ourselves, of course.

The Body in the Ice by A J Mackenzie (Zaffre, out now)

Christmas Day, Kent, 1796.  On the frozen fields of Romney Marsh stands New Hall; silent, lifeless, deserted. In its grounds lies an unexpected Christmas offering: a corpse, frozen into the ice of a horse pond.  It falls to the Reverend Hardcastle, justice of the peace in St Mary in the Marsh, to investigate. But with the victim's identity unknown, no murder weapon and no known motive, it seems like an impossible task. Working along with his trusted friend, Amelia Chaytor, and new arrival Captain Edward Austen, Hardcastle soon discovers there is more to the mystery than there first appeared. With the arrival of an American family torn apart by war and desperate to reclaim their ancestral home, a French spy returning to the scene of his crimes, ancient loyalties and new vengeance combine to make Hardcastle and Mrs Chaytor's attempts to discover the secret of New Hall all the more dangerous.

Does crime fiction always have to be about murder?

Lisa Cutts is a serving full-time detective constable with Kent police’s Major Crime Department. She is the author of two crime fiction novels in the DC Nina Foster series, Never Forget and Remember, Remember.

Most people wouldn’t even think about taking another’s life, but the subject seems to fascinate people. When it happens for real it wrecks lives and devastates communities, and the aftermath is horrific. Reading about its fictional counterpart is far safer and less intrusive. I’ve read about many more murders than the fifty or so I’ve investigated, but still I have that sense of ‘I have to know who done it’ – whether it’s my actual job or I’m off duty and reading a book. What every reader, as well as police officer, wants to know is why did they do it?

I think this is where readers’ interest is piqued, and not I hope because of the gruesomeness and finality of it all. It’s trying to understand what makes us do the things we do. As a species, we can be nasty and cruel to each other.

Of course, there are other serious crimes that have devastating and far reaching consequences but they are often more difficult to write about, to read about and sometimes more difficult to find out about.

As a serving police officer, there are things I’m not able to reveal in my crime fiction books, or anywhere else for that matter, because they may either jeopardise an investigation or result in the collapse of a trial. Apart from not wanting to face disciplinary action and get fired, I don’t want to see people get away with committing crime. I also wouldn’t want to put my colleagues’ lives or those of the public in danger.

An example of where investigative methods must be kept confidential is those used in hostage situations. Kidnaps are crimes in action and preservation of life is always the main priority. Some means of getting a hostage back safe and unharmed are subject to PII (public interest immunity) and won’t be discussed in open court or defence counsel made aware of all the facts. There’s a very real and obvious reason for that, but it doesn’t stop people wanting to know what really happened.

This makes it impossible to write about such a crime without either putting life in danger,

or getting the facts wrong. Personally, I’d rather write inaccurate procedures than equip people with all they need to abduct and kidnap. I’ve prided myself on the procedural accuracies of Never Forget and Remember, Remember, so I’ve had to shy away from some such crimes. It’s also true that many people have been the victim of crimes which haven’t threatened their life, such as burglary or theft. While no one denies that these crimes can greatly affect people, especially if it’s something that has happened in their homes it doesn’t usually result in death. Murder gets more media attention, it whips people into more of a frenzy and it is bound to see the police pull out all of the stops.

That aside, I haven’t limited Never Forget or Remember, Remember to murder but I’ve included drug dealing, artifice burglaries, handling stolen goods and assault on police. Those that commit murder don’t usually start off killing someone – there’s a whole host of other misdemeanours they usually engage in first.

Even if a writer choses to write about something other than death, there’s so much crime out there, we’ll never run out of things to put in novels and stories.

More information about Lisa can be found on her website and you can also follow her on Twitter @LisaCuttsAuthor.  You can follow her musings on her blog.  

KENT AT THE DOUBLE

Kenneth Cameron, better knows as the author of the Gordon Kent thrillers has begun a new series co-written with his son Christian. MULCAHY'S WIDOW plus two other detective novels, will all be set in London between 1900 and 1903 and featuring an American with a somewhat chequered past and his valet, a retired British army sergeant, have been sold to Bill Massey at Orion UK).

The father and son team, the latter a military historian, and classicist will also write two novels set during the reign of Alexander the Great, about an exiled Athenian aristocrat who leads a small band of Greek mercenaries who join a group of Scythians led by a beautiful warrior princess, and eventually engage in battle with Alexander, again opttioned by Bill Massey at Orion, for publication beginning in 2008,

Cameron previously wrote Washington and Caesar which was Inspired by a little-known historical fact—that American slaves fought alongside the British in the Revolutionary War—this epic novel tells of a Mount Vernon slave who joins a Loyalist black regiment charged with defeating his former master on the battlefield.