In The Spotlight: Jill Dawson

©Jill Dawson

Name:- Jill Dawson

Job:- Author, Poet and Journalist

Website:- https://jilldawson.co.uk

Twitter:- @Jdawsonwriter

Introduction:

Jill Dawson is the author of 10 novels including The Crime Writer which won the East Anglian Book of the Year. Most of her books have either been long-listed and short-listed for a number of awards including the Whitbread and the Orange Prize. She has taught for the Arvon Foundation, the Faber Academy, the Guardian/UEA and for the Sunday Times/Oxford Summer School. She was instrumental in founding Escalator, an award for new writers, and is founder and director of Gold Dust Mentoring Writers, which matches new writers with established ones. Her most recently published book is The Language of Birds.

Current book? 

I have started a new novel set in the late 16th century so it’s a lot of non-fiction reading for research, with titles such as Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (Enid Porter) and Hilary Mantel’s favourite: Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas.

Favourite book –

The Ballad of the Sad Café, Carson McCullers (But it changes, and if you ask me next week I will definitely say something else).

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why?

Miss Amelia from The Ballad of the Sad Cafe – one of the strangest and most brilliantly drawn characters in fiction and Sula from Toni Morison’s novel of that name, so that I can ask her why she betrayed her friend.

How do you relax?

I’m always relaxed - as I think my friends will testify!

What book do you wish you had written and why?

Michael Ondaatchi’s Divisidero because it’s so sexy and startlingly beautiful on such an achingly sad subject (addiction).

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

I know this looks bad. But you know this will be great material, later…

How would you describe your series character?

I don’t have a series. But….my favourite historical crime fiction has to be George Simenon’s The Mahe Circle (1944) for the dreamy troubling atmosphere and brilliant description of an obsession. And Patricia Highsmith knows a thing or two about obsession, too. I’d go for The Talented Mr Ripley, such an original and perceptive depiction of a fantasist and psychopath, where many imitators since are corny, psychologically inaccurate and predictable. 

The Language of Birds by Jill Dawson (Hodder & Stoughton)

Drawing on the infamous Lord Lucan affair, this compelling novel explores the roots of a

shocking murder from a fresh perspective and brings to vivid life an era when women's voices all too often went unheard. In the summer of 1974, Mandy River arrives in London to make a fresh start and begins working as nanny to the children of one Lady Morven. She quickly finds herself in the midst of a bitter custody battle and the house under siege: Lord Morven is having his wife watched. According to Lady Morven, her estranged husband also has a violent streak, yet she doesn't seem the most reliable witness. Should Mandy believe her? As Mandy edges towards her tragic fate, her friend Rosemary watches from the wings - an odd girl with her own painful past and a rare gift. This time, though, she misreads the signs.

In The Spotlight: Sara Sheridan

Name:- Sara Sheridan

Job:- Author and activist

Website:- http://www.sarasheridan.com

Twitter @sarasheridan

Introduction:-

Sara Sheridan is a Scottish writer over over 20 books which the include cosy crime Mirabelle Bevan noir series. The first book n the Mirabelle Bevan series is Brighton Belle (2012) subsequently followed by London Calling (2012), England Expects (2014), British Bulldog (2015), Operation Goodwood (2016), Russian Roulette(2017) and Indian Summer (2019). The most recent book is Highland Fling (2020). In 2017 she wrote the companion guide to the ITV series, Victoria and in 2019 she also wrote the companion guide to Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s final, unfinished novel, Sanditon.

Current book?

Literally finished last night: Tough Jews by Rich Cohen, which is non-fiction about 1940s Jewish gangsters in New York. 

Favourite book

This is like picking a favourite kid. I mean HOW? I’m going to reply by saying books that resonate with me are Eva Ibbotson’s adult fiction, Lorna Moon’s brilliant short stories, The Green Mile by Ann Enright, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why?

If you mean fictional characters: - Jane Marple because she is my lifelong favourite character (even though someone might get murdered while she was visiting cos that happens a lot) and Johnathan Strange because of the magic. 

How do you relax?

I’m not very good at relaxing but I deep breathe several times a day and that helps me to pace myself. I also love walking and swimming. Plus if things get really stressful I knit. (I know – I’m a granny, basically)

What book do you wish you had written and why? Oh gosh – well you wanted 2 of my favourite historical novels and why and these tie in with this question so….

Water Music by TC Boyle, which is about Mungo Park’s doomed trips down the Niger in the late 1700s/early 1800s – absolutely the best historical novel I ever read. I seethe with jealousy over the way Boyle captures the rambunctious late Georgian era. 

Next – Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, which I love for its wit. Alasdair was a very funny man and this book set in Victorian Glasgow is a riot. 

Now this is tricky cos neither of those are historical crime. I mean – I don’t consider Christie historical crime cos she wrote contemporary crime – it’s just that time passed. This is further complicated because the two genres tell their stories in different ways. So if I’m picking 2 historical crime books ie crime stories written in a past era by a writer not living in that era, it would be:

Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. The medieval fascinates me and there is an inescapable tension to this book that I LOVE. 

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters which is clever but still manages to engage the heart. I also enjoy Waters’s female characters a lot – they feel real.

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

I’d say keep going! I never meant to be a writer so I think the younger me would reply ‘what are you talking about?’ I was always an enthusiastic reader, and then I had to take some time off work and decided to write a novel (really so I could say I was doing something….) It sold 3 weeks after I sent off the first draft and went into the top 50 when it was published and that was that. 

How would you describe your series character?

Mirabelle is an evolving character – we first meet her in the early 1950s when she is grieving and in post-war traumatic shock. Today we’d recognise her as being mildly depressed. The whole country was, pretty much. Over the series, she cheers up (in fact, the series in a way is that story, about how Britain cheered up after WWII). She’s resourceful, moral, clear-sighted and sexy. She also dresses very well. Nothing like me. 

Highland Fling by Sara Sheridan.

Scottish Highlands, 1958, Britain is awash in Cold War anxiety as Mirabelle Bevan heads for the Highlands on a holiday to visit Superintendent Alan McGregor's family. More glamorous than she expected, the Robertsons welcome her with open arms and an array of cocktails, but she has scarcely arrived when the body of an American fashion buyer turns up brutally murdered, plunging the local village into disarray and sending shockwaves around the close, Highland community. Mirabelle can't resist investigating, but what she finds lays the limitations of her feelings for McGregor bare and calls into question the loyalties of all those around her from the Robertson's housekeeper Mrs Gillies to the family of the dead woman. What started as a relaxing break in scenic surroundings soon spirals into a week fraught with danger. As the press descend on the Robertson's Highland estate, it rapidly becomes clear that things are not as black and as they first appeared and Mirabelle can't count on anyone . . .

In The Spotlight: Vaseem Khan

Name: Vaseem Khan

Job: Author

Website:-www.vaseemkhan.com

Twitter: @VaseemKhanUK

Vaseem Khan is the author of the bestselling Baby Ganesh Agency series featuring Indian detective Ashwin Chopra and his baby elephant sidekick. The first book in the series, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, was a Times bestseller and a Waterstones Paperback of the Year. The second won the Shamus Award in the US. In 2018, he was awarded the Eastern Eye Arts, Culture and Theatre Award for Literature. Vaseem was born in London, but spent a decade working in India. 

Current book?

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. This book won the Pulitzer Prize and you can see why. A satirical masterpiece, written with verve, flair and extraordinary skill, the novel follows a Vietnamese double-agent forced to flee Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, and finding that life in 1970s America is not quite what he has been led to believe. The book slaughters both American and Vietnamese cultural icons, exposing the hypocrisy and lies that characterise that turbulent time in the history of the two nations. Wickedly funny. (Also I have crippling literary pretensions, and love high quality literary fiction.

Favourite book?

Snow Falling on Cedars. A historical crime novel written to a literary standard, this book examines the murder of an American on a small fishing island by a Japanese local. The plot is complicated by the fact that both men grew up as friends before becoming enemies when WW2 broke out and Japanese Americans found themselves placed into internment camps. 

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why?

Sauron (a.k.a the Dark Lord) from Lord of the Rings. I’ve always wondered why he was so angry. I think all he really needed was a cuddle and a decent curry. It would also be nice to have Bernie Gunther at the table. I am a recent convert to these WW2 Germany-set crime novels by Phillip Kerr. Bernie Gunther is brilliantly drawn, a cynical, hardboiled detective, harking back to the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (I love Sam Spade and Phillip Marlow – especially as played by Humphrey Bogart). He is part of the German machine, often morally compromised, yet at the same time contemptuous of its hateful rhetoric and actions. He’d be a good laugh I reckon.

How do you relax?

I play cricket. Badly. Also planning complex murders is very relaxing, I’ve found.

What book do you wish you had written and why?

Presumed Innocent. Lawyer Scott Turow’s debut was one of the great crime novels of the last century, rightly selling millions of copies and inspiring a fantastic Harrison Ford film. I enjoyed the novel, principally because I love Turow’s precise, lyrically formal prose. Each sentence is like finely spun wool. And that killer twist at the end!

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

Murder a few people. Because authenticity has suddenly become everything in publishing. It’s all about proving that you have the right to write something… (rolls eyes, sighs loudly, makes a rude noise)

How would you describe your series character?

Inspector Chopra made his debut in The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra the first book of the Baby Ganesh Agency series. The book went on to become a Times bestseller and set the foundation for the series. Chopra is forced into retirement from the Mumbai Police Force in his late forties but cannot seem to let go of his desire to see justice done in a country where, frankly, if you have wealth and influence you can get away with anything – up to and including murder. A thoroughly decent man, one who believes in old-fashioned policing, and an even older-fashioned moral incorruptibility, he slogs his way through murders, robberies and kidnappings in one of the world’s most colourful cities – all with a baby elephant in tow. The relationship between Chopra and this unusual sidekick (Ganesha) allows me to weave in some gentle humour in between the gritty depictions of modern Mumbai and various dark crimes.

Bad Day at the Vulture Club, the latest book in the Baby Ganesh Agency series, focuses on the murder of a wealthy Parsee in Mumbai's notorious Towers of Silence where the Parsee dead are left to be eaten by vultures. Vaseem’s next book (out in August 2020) will be the start of a new series. Midnight at Malabar House, set in 1950 in Bombay, introduces Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, as she attempts to unravel the murder of a prominent British diplomat. 

Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan (Published by Hodder & Stoughton) Out Now

Bombay, New Year's Eve, 1949. As India celebrates the arrival of a momentous new decade, Inspector Persis Wadia stands vigil in the basement of Malabar House, home to the city's most unwanted unit of police officers. Six months after joining the force she remains India's first female police detective, mistrusted, sidelined and now consigned to the midnight shift. And so, when the phone rings to report the murder of prominent English diplomat Sir James Herriot, the country's most sensational case falls into her lap. As 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world's largest republic, Persis, accompanied by Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, finds herself investigating a case that is becoming more political by the second. Navigating a country and society in turmoil, Persis, smart, stubborn and untested in the crucible of male hostility that surrounds her, must find a way to solve the murder - whatever the cost.

In The Spotlight: Andrew Wilson

Name: Andrew Wilson

Job: Author and journalist

Website: https://www.andrewwilsonauthor.co.uk

Twitter: @andrewwilsonaw

Introduction:

Andrew Wilson is an award winning journalist and author. He is the author on books on Patricia Highsmith, Harold Robbins, Sylvia Plath and Alexander McQueen. In 2003 he won both an Edgar® Award and a Lambda Award for his biography Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. He has also written a series of novels featuring Agatha Christie as a character. These include: - Talent for Murder, about the real-life disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 (2017), A Different Kind of Evil (2018), Death in a Desert Land (2019). His most recently published book is I saw Him Die (August 2020)

Current book?

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. I’ve been seeing the hype about it for the last six months — Stephen King called it ‘a package of dynamite’. I’m always a bit wary of books that come with an extraordinary level of pre-publication buzz, but at the moment — I’m 150 pages in — I’m hooked. 

Favourite book? 

So difficult to choose, but I would have to go for either The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (see below) or The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. I like to think that I’ve learnt something from these two very different crime writers. 

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why?

I’d love to have Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple over and quiz them about their differing investigative methods. I wonder if they’d get on? 

How do you relax?

I read - of course - and I go on long walks. I’m lucky enough to live in South Devon, and I can walk to the sea from my house. It’s magical at all times, but I’ve never been more grateful for it than this year.

What book do you wish you had written and why?

Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd because of its technical achievement and the audacious, jaw-dropping moment when the identity of the murderer is revealed. No wonder Christie’s book from 1926 is regularly voted the best crime novel of the twentieth century.

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

When I was writing Beautiful Shadow, the first biography of Patricia Highsmith, I was astounded to learn how heavily she was edited. One of her editors, Joan Kahn, was particularly tough with her and some of her novels were rejected out of hand. You need a tough skin to survive. 

I’d also flag up that wonderful piece of advice from Stephen King: tell the story!

How would you describe your series character?

Agatha Christie is the central character in all four novels: A Talent for Murder, about her famous 1926 disappearance; A Different Kind of Evil; Death in a Desert Land; and the new one, I Saw Him Die. 

Agatha uses her skills as a novelist to investigate deaths for the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is an acute observer, she has an eye for detail, she’s a wonderful listener. But she’s sharp as a tack, cool under pressure, and, as you’d expert from the world’s bestselling crime writer, she is expert at picking up hidden clues. 

When people think of Agatha they often see her as an elderly woman. But at the beginning of my series she is only 36. She’s lost her mother, her first marriage is breaking down, she’s emotionally distraught and she’s at the lowest ebb of her life. We follow her through the next four years of her life, and we see her grow in onfidence.

Information about 202o St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book tckets can be found here.

St Hilda's Virtual Crime Fiction, 14/15 August - now bookable

The suspense is finally over. Booking for the 2020 Virtual Crime Fiction Event is open!

The Committee, our Hon Fellows-in-Crime, and I, are delighted to report that all the speakers planned for 2020 will be joining us for this live virtual event running from Friday evening through to Saturday evening.

Our theme remains ‘All Our Yesterdays’: historical crime fiction.
Find yourself unleashed upon the London of the Swinging Sixties, the winding backstreets of 1950s Bombay, the gin shops and brothels of Georgian London, and backstage on Brighton pier - all in pursuit of Murder.

 We shall we have the traditional Guest Of Honour session and the dramatic Whodunnit, both courtesy of Andrew Taylor, without whom no historical crime fiction event would be complete.

Whodunnit: The Murder Of Lucy Ackroyd 
is a chillingly implausible tale set in Oxford.
The hideous murder of a literary novelist takes place in a former women’s
college located in the academic badlands beyond Magdalen Bridge.
Starring: Chief Inspector Andrew Taylor, Val McDermid, Sarah Hilary,
Abir Mukherjee, and Mick Herron.
(And yours truly as the Senior Tutor, 'a woman of strong but warped passions'.)

So, please, head over to the website, peruse the programme, the speakers and
their subjects, both fresh meat and usual suspects.

We look forward to seeing you.

Breaking News from St Hilda's Crime

Dear Friends,

I am sad to announce that College events are now cancelled up to September. It’s a disappointment not to be celebrating another Crime Fiction Weekend with you all, but safety remains paramount. All ticket bookings will be refunded automatically, but for accommodation refunds please email Sarah Brett in the Conference Office ( sarah.brett@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk ) We ask for your patience during this process as College staff are working remotely.

In true St Hilda's spirit, however, we carry on!

We are delighted to announce that we are working hard to ensure our virtual doors are wide open with live broadcasts, Q&As, lectures, entertainment, and a packed Crime Fiction Festival.

Crime Fiction Festival

15 August

‘All Our Yesterdays’: historical crime fiction

Details will soon follow for a stellar virtual event with live sessions, Q&As,
 lectures, competitions, reading room, virtual goodie bags, and, of course,
the Whodunnit.
We hope will be able to provide an event as near to the content and atmosphere of the ‘real' thing.
Participating authors already confirmed include:
Val McDermid, Mick Herron, Sarah Hilary, Jill Dawson, Tom Wood, Mary Paulson Ellis, Anna Mazzola, Andrew Wilson, Sara Sheridan, Vassem Khan,
and Andrew Taylor.
(In association with Blackwell’s Bookshop)
As well as our e-newsletters and social media channels, the Crime Fiction Weekend page will be regularly updated with news and content.
So stay at home and watch this space.

Do contact me directly with any questions triona.adams@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk or 01865 276867 and follow us on twitter @hildascrime

Best wishes from the committee:
Triona Adams, Val McDermid, Mick Herron, Jean Harker, Alison Joseph,

Jake Kerridge and Sarah Hilary

Andrew Wilson at St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend 2020

St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend is thrilled to be welcoming award-winning author and biographer Andrew Wilson who will be the After-Dinner Speaker on Friday 14 August 2020

Andrew Wilson’s most recent book is Death In A Desert Land. (Simon and Schuster)

I'm Mrs Christie. I think you are expecting me...  Baghdad, 1928. Agatha leaves England for the far-flung destination, determined to investigate an unresolved mystery: two year ago, the explorer and the writer Gertrude Bell died there from a drugs overdose. At the time, the authorities believed that Bell had taken her own life, but a letter now unearthed reveals she was afraid someone wants to kill her...  In her letter, Bell suggests that if she were to die the best place to look for her murderer would be Ur, the archaeological site in ancient Mesopotamia famous for its Great Death Pit.  But as Agatha stealthily begins to look into the death of Gertrude Bell, she soon discovers the mission is not without its risks. And she has to use all her skills to try and outwit a killer who is determined to stay hidden among the desert sands...

The new book featuring Agatha Christie as a sleuth I Saw Him Die will be published in May 2020. 

More information about the weekend can be found here.