Murdle Star Joins CrimeFest Headliners

 

CrimeFest, the UK’s biggest crime fiction convention, has announced a headline 2024 event with the Murdle author, G.T. Karber.

Murdle took the coveted Christmas 2023 number one spot, beating Richard Osman, who called it, “an absolute phenomenon”.

The Arkansas author has staged more than 30 immersive whodunits in the LA area, as the General Secretary of the Hollywood Mystery Society, and will host a special Murdle event on CrimeFest’s opening night.

CrimeFest, sponsored by Specsavers, is hosted from 9 to 12 May 2024 at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel. Up to 150 authors take part, appearing in over 50 panels.

G.T Karber joins featured guests for 2024’s CrimeFest - Laura Lippman, Denise Mina, Lynda Plante and James Lee Burke.

Karber will also take part in a panel on Columbo, alongside fellow aficionados of the iconic TV show, Laura Lippman, and Vaseem Khan, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).

G.T Karber’s third instalment, Murdle: Even More Killer Puzzles is published on 9 May by Souvenir Press.

The fiendishly compulsive mini-mystery puzzles challenge readers to find whodunit, how, where, and why. The new book features the deadly secrets of a mysterious manor, the riddles of a suspiciously orderly science institute and the eerie corridors of a tech billionaire’s island retreat.

Adrian Muller said: “We’re really excited that G.T Karber is coming from Hollywood to open CrimeFest on Thursday night. It promises to be a thrilling, fun, and hugely entertaining evening, and with the many crime authors and readers taking part, it will be intriguing to see who cracks the Murdle code.”

The convention will also feature a homage to PD James, known as the Queen of Crime Fiction, with the award-winning crime writer and lawyer, Frances Fyfield, the Sunday Times chief fiction critic, Peter Kemp, and the author, playwright, and producer, Simon Brett.

The Welsh-Canadian mystery writer Cathy Ace will be the Gala Dinner’s 'Leader of Toasts', toasting the authors nominated for the 2024 CrimeFest awards. Cathy's Cait Morgan Mysteries have been optioned for TV by the production company, Free@Last TV, which is behind the hit series, Agatha Raisin.

The convention was founded in 2008 and features the annual CrimeFest Awards.

Tom Baragwanath on small-town claustrophobia

Some years ago, I moved from a place where it felt like everyone knew me – and I, in turn, felt I knew everyone – to a place where nobody knows me. From small-town New Zealand to Paris, I exchanged bumping into mates on the walk to the supermarket for bread for a thousand incredible boulangeries where not a single soul knew my name. This sudden anonymity was bracing, and a little thrilling. But soon, I found myself craving a little small-town claustrophobia. When nobody in the street knew a thing about me, I wondered what it would be like if everybody knew everything about me.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but this germ of homesickness was ready to sprout into a book: my debut novel Paper Cage. Naturally, I gave my heroine Lorraine Henry an encyclopaedic knowledge of my rural hometown of Masterton. As a file clerk in the police station, Lorraine would know better than anyone the way stories, facts, and gossip all intertwine and coalesce to form a sense of a person: what they’re like, what they do, how far they can be trusted. As far as it’s possible to know a person, Lorraine would know them – or she would think she did. 

Lorraine would have an unerring compass when it came to navigating threats both within the community and outside of it. As the embodiment of small-town collective surveillance, Lorraine would have a sense of the unspoken things lurking between the police reports she’d been writing. Because she’d been watching; because she’d been listening. So when children from marginalised families started going missing, she’d know exactly where to look. 

But because this is small-town New Zealand, Lorraine would quickly run into the emotional miasma that builds up inside so many insular communities. Getting useful information would mean contending with decades-old grievances, obsessions, and spats. It would mean navigating the invisible web of judgement and suspicion, and pulling apart some of the secrets binding people so tight they can barely breathe. 

Working on this novel was more than just a chance to treat my own homesickness – cheaper than a plane trip home, and with a lot less paperwork given the New Zealand government’s near penitential COVID lockdown policy at the time. It was a chance to explore small-town claustrophobia from all sides, and to understand what it is about marginal or forgotten places that writers – especially writers of crime or thriller stories – just can’t seem to escape. 

From Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen to Shelley Burr’s Wake, from True Detective to Fargo, there’s something about tiny communities that lends itself to great stories. For me, it’s the sense of people being so deep in each other’s business: of living, as Lorraine puts it, “cheek-to-jowl”. In a city of millions, it’s easy to disappear into the crowd. In a town of thousands, hundreds, or even dozens, one feels constantly exposed, and constantly judged. And while it’s true that small communities can pull together in miraculous ways to face external threats, it’s just as common for these threats to pit neighbour against neighbour. 

In the vein of the Coen Brothers, I also wanted to showcase the straight-up weirdness of small-town New Zealand. Or rather, I wanted to showcase how our local flavour of weirdness can better illuminate a more universal strangeness. Is it really that odd that the Gull service station in Masterton sells its fried chicken at half-price after midnight, for example? Should it surprise anyone that fights often break out at Featherston’s Underhill Road swimming hole on the hottest days of summer? And isn’t it only natural that gangs of bored kids might spear eels in the gutters with garden forks during a once-in-a-century flood?

I never imagined that by indulging my homesickness and sharing these kinds of hyper-local details I would end up connecting with a global audience of readers. But now that Paper Cage has made its way onto bookshelves around the world, I’ve come to understand that we make sense of ourselves not through sweeping universal stories, but through small ones. 

As I walk the streets of Paris, I find myself still enjoying my mask of relative anonymity. And yet, there’s something about small-town claustrophobia that keeps drawing me back to Masterton, and back into Lorraine’s story. Or maybe it’s only by going back to those streets where my characters feel like they can’t breathe that I’m able to breathe easy.

Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath (John Murray Press)

Masterton, New Zealand may be a small town, but its residents are certainly not united. Old resentments and the simmering tensions of race and culture divide the Maori and white inhabitants, with everyone keeping to their own patch of turf. But when local children start to go missing, vanishing between the cracks, accusations are hurled, and community relations reach boiling point. Caught in the middle is Lorraine Henry. She works as a lowly records clerk at the police station amongst towering piles of paperwork, quietly making connections and remembering things that the cops would rather not. Solving cases is not part of her job, but when her great-nephew is the next to disappear, she must put her skills to the test as she is called in to help, all before time runs out for the children.

 

 

 

Murder on the Menu by Orlando Murrin

© Matt Austin

Having enjoyed a career editing food magazines and writing cookbooks, I imagined that making the transition to writing culinary cosy crime would be a snap. How wrong I was.

Now that Knife Skills For Beginners is finally out – it’s been a long time coming – I’m enjoying a short pause to look back over the experience. Which, in the manner of all good meals, has been a succession of delicious surprises. 

Amuse-bouche

When I was growing up, the family hero was my maternal grandfather, William Skardon, who started life as a copper on the streets of Pimlico, later becoming a detective then crack MI5 interrogator. Among his celebrated successes, he caught and arrested Lord Haw-Haw in Germany, exposed the Portland Spy Ring and extracted a confession from atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. After defecting to Moscow, Philby declared, ‘The only man I feared was Skardon’. The Daily Express called him ‘England’s Most Famous Pipe-Smoker’ and the Sunday Times spent years stalking him in Torquay, in a vain attempt to get him to ditch the dirt on an ex-boss at MI5.

Granddad was forbidden to talk about his exploits as a spycatcher, so he used instead to regale us with stories of gruesome murder cases from his detective years, and the clues and tells that enable him to solve them. Ever since I’ve found whodunits and murder mysteries fascinating and dreamed of writing one of my own.

Starter

I left it late to write my first novel – in my early 60s – but that’s because I was doing other things. I’ve had several careers – restaurant pianist, advertising copywriter, features writer, magazine editor, cookery writer, chef, hotelier – and threw myself into all of them; there simply wasn’t time.

A few years ago, I decided the moment had come and booked myself on an Arvon course taught by Andrew Taylor and Laura Wilson; they were so inspiring. Another turning point was being asked to write a column for Waitrose Weekend newspaper, through which I polished my style and learnt how to make readers laugh. (I hope.)

Main course

Three years ago, I wrote a half novel, then another full one, at which point disaster struck. I’d assumed I’d be spared the horror of the slush pile because I already an agent (for my cookbooks). Imagine my dismay when she announced that for conflict-of-interest reasons, she couldn’t represent my fiction.

I stuck a note on my computer - I AM IN DEADLY EARNEST - then spent fifty days and nights in submission hell, waiting for agents to respond. Finally, I had a glimmer of interest from a couple, followed by a send me the whole manuscript from the most covetable of all, top crime agent Oli Munson at AM Heath. Knife Skills For Beginners is the result.

It’s a culinary cosy crime story set in a posh but shabby-round-the-edges London cookery school, where our hapless hero, Paul, is summoned to teach a course at short notice.

There’s something a bit rum about its proprietor, Rose, to say nothing of the eight eccentric students who gather to learn the finer points of haute cuisine. On the first night something terrible happens, and Paul finds himself embroiled in a grisly crime.

While the police investigate, the students are told to stay on the premises, and Rose - anything rather than offer refunds - insists Paul continue teaching. He uses lessons in bread, pastry and sauce making as covert operations, watching the students for clues whodunit, unaware that meanwhile someone is framing him for murder…

In classic cosy crime tradition, clues and red herrings abound, including six ‘killer’ recipes, which provide hints to the killer’s identity. I should add that these are real recipes, which combine to form a sophisticated dinner party menu. My dearest wish is that a fan somewhere will throw a Knife Skills For Beginners dinner party – minus, of course, the dastardly crime.

Side dish

I’ve heard the publisher-author relationship can be a tricky one, but I have no complaints – quite the opposite. We’re all on the same side: trying to sell books.

Initially I was shocked by the amount of re-writing I was asked to do, and I recall a somewhat embarrassing meltdown when my third set of structural edits came in (I didn’t realise this was normal). I’m now at work on a second Knife Skills Mystery and there’s no question that, with each draft, the book gets better. I’m in total awe of my editor – Finn Cotton at Transworld – who in an odd way reminds me of my grandfather: courteous, patient and charming, but with a deadly eye for detail.

Dessert

My cookbooks have always been well publicised and marketed, but working with Transworld has been whole different experience. A lot of activity seems to happen as if by magic, with no effort on my part, but there’s still social media to manage, proofs to drop, enjoyable articles (such as this) to write, booksellers and reviewers to schmooze, events to be confirmed and diarised… to say nothing of keeping my orlandomurrin.com website up-to-date (with the help of the world’s best web manager, Heather Brown) and begging everyone I know to post reviews on Amazon. True, most of this is optional, but with my publisher evidently pulling out all the stops, I feel I must as well.

This means that – like a Victorian lady – I find the first hour or two of the day is spent answering messages and dealing with ‘stuff.’ I tell myself this is a warm-up exercise before the actual writing of the day begins, but if it expands much further, I will need a personal assistant. (Just joking). 

Petits-fours

The surprises keep on coming, even after launch…

·         How peculiar to find my favourite fountain pen – which has autographed countless cookbooks over the years – can’t be used to sign a novel because the ink runs. (Oh, the days of glossy paper.)

·         How touching to hear my words brought to life as an audiobook. (Warm thanks to Sebastian Humphreys, the man of a thousand voices.)

·         The most amazing thing of all, however, is discussing your story with someone and discovering that it no longer belongs to you – it’s out in the world. (‘You just don’t understand her,’ a fellow author told me about one of my more dislikeable characters; ‘She’s got a heart of gold.’)

Despite everything, I am beyond thrilled to have written something from my imagination which gives people pleasure… If it sounds your sort of thing, I hope you’ll give it a go, and that it will make you SMILE, SALIVATE and SHIVER.

 

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin (Transworld Publishers) Out Now

A recipe for disaster. When chef Paul Delamare takes a job teaching at an exclusive residential cookery school in Belgravia, the only thing he expects his students to murder is his taste buds. But on the first night, the unthinkable happens: someone turns up dead... The school rests on a knife-edge. The police are convinced Paul is the culprit. After all, he’s good with a blade, was first on the scene – and everyone knows it doesn’t take much to push a chef over the edge. To prove his innocence, he must find the killer. Could it be one of his students? Or the owner of the school – a woman with secrets and a murky past? It all boils down to murder. If Paul can’t solve the mystery fast – as well as teach his students how to make a perfect hollandaise sauce – he’ll be next to get the chop.

More information about the author can be found on his website. You can also follow him on X @orlandomurrin on Instagram @orlandomurrinauthor and on Facebook.

 

CFP: Literatures and Laws

 

 

CFP: Literatures and Laws online one-day symposium

A one-day symposium hosted online by Bournemouth University, UK, held on 13th April 2024. 

Department of Humanities & Law, and Narrative, Culture, and Community Research Centre

‘Literatures and Laws' considers law as literature, and law in literature. The first considers how law constructs narratives to make sense of and process non-legal events and experiences. Thus personal experiences of an event or dispute with another have to be translated into their legally relevant features so that a legal narrative can be constructed. Additionally, barristers when presenting a case in court seek to build a narrative to persuade juries. The second explores how law, courtroom spaces and rhetoric, justice, and legal systems and infrastructure (and their associated politics) are represented in (or excluded from) literature.

At a time where legal frameworks and understandings are increasingly contested, it is important that we consider how storytelling enables to the law to operate and how storytelling represents law and affects our understanding of law. An important component of a successful judicial system is the general trust the public have in that system. We want to explore both legal and literary perspectives on how that trust relates to storytelling and fictionality, and how both fictional literature and law construct stories about us as participants within a legal system. 

At Bournemouth University, literature studies and law sit within the same department; inspired by this contiguity, we are inviting research and/or creative papers that explore the ways storytelling and narrative intersect within representations of law, justice, and legal systems. 

Broad themes considered within the symposium, then, may include but are certainly not limited to

• Law and literary genre, for instance papers that focus on representations and significant instances or structures of law and legality in crime and detective fiction, Gothic and historical fiction, procedurals, ecological fiction

• Inventions of law and legal systems in speculative fiction

• Courtroom drama

• Law, politics, and the state in literature

• Historical case studies

• Precedent and storytelling: Cases as links in a storytelling chain

• Lay terminology to legal terminology: Lay and legal understandings

• Genres of law: Conceptualising law as genre

• Storytelling conventions in strands of law: Criminal, civil and human rights

• Fictionality and media framing of law: Sensation, celebrity and perception

  Please submit a 200-word abstract for a 15-minute presentation and a brief biographical note to swalker@bournemouth.ac.uk no later than February 22nd 2024. You may direct general queries to the same address.

  Keynote speakers:

  Professor Hywel Dix (Bournemouth University, NCCR member)

  Hywel is interested in the relationship between culture and social and political change, especially in relation to political devolution in the 4 nations of the UK, as well as autofiction and cultural memory. Recent publications include Compatriots or Competitors: Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish Writing and Brexit in Comparative Contexts (University of Wales Press, 2023). 

  Dr Caroline Derry (Open University)

  Caroline Derry joined the Open University in April 2017. She is a senior lecturer in law, teaching subjects including criminal and evidence law. Her other roles include Law School EDI Champion.  Caroline qualified as a barrister, practising in criminal defence law, and as a solicitor in a large, central London legal aid practice. She then taught for fifteen years at London Metropolitan University, where she was a senior lecturer in criminal and evidence law and gender & law, and course leader for the LLB Law. She has been a visiting lecturer in criminal law at SOAS and at Paris Descartes (Masters in Common Law).

  Symposium organisers

  Dr Rebecca Mills is Senior Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University. Her publications include work on crime and detective fiction, particularly of the interwar era. Please contact Rebecca if you have any questions about developing a literary topic for the symposium: rmills@bournemouth.ac.uk

  Dr Samuel Walker is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bournemouth University. He researches the notion of embodiment in law, and how literature explores our understanding of law and justice. Please contact Sam if you have any questions about developing a topic on law-focused topic for the symposium: swalker@bournemouth.ac.uk

  
  

  
  

Ajay Close on What Doesn't Kill Us.

I was 15 in 1975 when Peter Sutcliffe killed his first victim, and 21 when he was caught in Sheffield, about a mile from my home. My teenage years were coloured by the folk culture that sprang up around the 13 murders: graffiti, urban legends, football terrace chants, sick jokes. A young woman in the north of England who walked home alone at night, I was his target demographic.

 

Although Sutcliffe died in 2020, those years live on in the memories of countless women. Many of us have stories to tell. As a novelist, I often use personal experience as the starting point for my fiction. But fiction inspired by the Sutcliffe case is a sensitive matter. There’s a risk of trampling over private tragedy, or even being accused of exploiting it. These days we see fame as the ultimate prize. A twisted individual like Sutcliffe doesn’t deserve to be remembered. Then there’s the whole question of why – why write about it, why read it? No one wants to pander to the sort of person titillated by attacks on vulnerable women.  

Even that nickname is controversial. In the late 70s the term ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ was everywhere: on television and radio, in newspaper headlines and on newsagents’ bills. Now It’s suspect because of its ‘dark glamour.’ When ITV was making a seven-part drama about the police investigation and the impact of the murders on victims’ families, members of those families lobbied to prevent ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ from appearing in the title. The series was broadcast last autumn as The Long Shadow.

However understandable that decision, I wouldn’t want to see the term added to our list of taboo vocabulary. This is about much more than Peter Sutcliffe. The words ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ are an evocative shorthand for a social history we’re not yet ready to forget.

Millions of women across the north of England lived through the 70s. Plenty of us were enraged by the incompetence of the police, the curfew effectively imposed on single women, the sexist attitudes of the detectives who appeared on the nightly news. (Memories refreshed by the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 and ongoing reports of police abusing their power over women.) Domestic violence was rife. Some wives were so frightened of their husbands they shopped them to the Ripper tip-off line. Any woman who didn’t own a car and couldn’t afford taxis had to make a choice. She could stay in night after night, letting a man she had never met put her under house arrest. Or she could insist on her right to a social life, accepting that walking home alone was akin to playing Russian roulette.

Like most women I knew, I was terrified after dark, constantly looking over my shoulder, suspicious of every man I passed. Writing about that time is a longstanding ambition. I have absolutely zero interest in the psychology of Peter Sutcliffe, but I’m fascinated by how society reacted to his crimes. Sutcliffe was a stick that stirred up a lot of very nasty sediment.

So yes, I’ve written a novel, but no, the killer is not Peter Sutcliffe, and the victims are not ciphers for the women he murdered over those six years. PC Liz Seeley and her superiors are not the actual Ripper Squad detectives, even if the plot borrows aspects of the bungled police investigation. (You couldn’t make it up!) Likewise, the militant separatists who fight back against male supremacy and offer Liz a refuge from her violent boyfriend are not the real Leeds Revolutionary Feminists. What Doesn’t Kill Us is a historical novel set in a very different Britain – but not all the evils it depicts are safely in the past.

What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close (Saraband) Out Now 

A killer stalks the streets of Leeds. Every man is a suspect. Every woman is at risk. But in a house on Cleopatra Street, women are fighting back. It’s the eve of the 1980s. PC Liz Seeley joins the squad investigating the murders. With a violent boyfriend at home and male chauvinist pigs at work, she is drawn to a feminist collective led by the militant and uncompromising Rowena. There she meets Charmaine – young, Black, artistic, and fighting discrimination on two fronts. As the list of victims grows and police fail to catch the killer, women across the north are too terrified to go out after dark. To the feminists, the Butcher is a symptom of wider misogyny. Their anger finds an outlet in violence and Liz is torn between loyalty to them and her duty as a police officer. Which way will she jump? What Doesn’t Kill Us combines the tension of a police procedural with the power and passion of the women’s lib movement. By turns emotional, action-packed and darkly funny, it reveals just how much the world has changed since the 1970s – and how much it hasn’t.

More information about the author can be found on her website . You can also follow her on X at @AjayClose and on FaceBook.

First Blood. Writing your debut crime novel.

 

In-person, at our home in Goldsboro Books 

22b Ship Street Brighton. BN1.

Writers on this intensive course will develop their ideas and their writing craft, hand-in-hand with an understanding of the market and industry trends today. Throughout the course, you’ll learn to stress-test your ideas by pitching them to writers and industry professionals.

The Course

Eight evening sessions (Mondays, 18:30–21:30) in person. April 15th – June 3rd 
Two hour-long, one-to-one sessions with course director P. D. Viner. The first will be scheduled before Monday April 15th to build a personal plan, based upon your experience, and where you are in your writing process

Monday evening sessions will include:

• Crime writing and its subgenres—developing an understanding of the marketplace and where you want to position your novel — with GWA founder P. D. Viner.

• How to develop the hook of your novel, giving it a story structure and a plot that thrills and excites — with top thriller writer Simon Toyne.

• Character development and relationship-building, for creating suspense and incredible twists and turns — with bestselling psych thriller writer Araminta Hall.

• Insight into police procedures and how law enforcement works. Ideas and strategies for developing contemporary crime stories with real-world characters and issue-led storylines — with retired Chief Superintendent and best-seller Graham Bartlett.

• Creating multi-level story-worlds with recurring characters and ensemble casts. From TV writing to gangland thrillers and edgy police procedurals — with hybrid author Susan Wilkins.

• Understanding the agent-author relationship. Considering the wider rights possibilities of your novel (TV, Film, Games etc). How to pitch your idea (and get immediate feedback) — with top agent, and founder of the Capital Crime festival, David Headley.

  For all ability levels. Only 10 spaces available.

£399 (£349 early bird if booked by March 15th)

Application form at our website: https://goldsborowritingacademy.co.uk/courses/

For more information email: phil@goldsborowritingacademy.co.uk

Malice Domestic - 2024 Agatha Award Nominees

 Malice Domestic 36 have announced the nominations for the 2024 Agatha Awards

Congratulations to all the nominated authors.

Call for Chapter Proposals: Golden Age Detection Goes to War

Editors: Dr J.C. Bernthal (Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Suffolk) and Dr Rebecca Mills (Senior Lecturer in Communication and English, Bournemouth University).

Proposal deadline: March 31st 2024

Chapter proposals are invited for an edited collection exploring and evaluating the representation and navigation of war in writing set in, looking back to, and negotiating the parameters of, the Golden Age of detective fiction. Our first co-edited collection Agatha Christie Goes to War (Routledge 2019) explored the structuring principle of war in the work of the ‘Queen of the Golden Age’ Agatha Christie, demonstrating a recurring anxiety regarding war and its aftermath that permeates the idiom and structure of Christie’s work as well as plotting and characterisation; here we intend to follow up this investigation by extending our scope to both the Golden Age and later authors such as Robin Stevens and Catriona McPherson, who explicitly hark back to its conventions but develop more modern thematic approaches, foregrounding themes, issues and anxieties that would then have been subtextual. This will also afford readings of recently rediscovered and republished crime and mystery fiction from the early and mid-twentieth centuries by, for example, Dean Street Press and British Library Classics.

The Golden Age of detective fiction is often held to be a) English-centric, b) situated between the First and Second World Wars and c) focused on puzzles and clues rather than social and cultural reflection and context. Public imagination and academic conversations have started to capture the diverse, often nuanced, and impactful significance of Golden Age detective fiction, but its engagement with war, while richly varied and textured, has not been widely studied. The editors of Golden Age Detection Goes to War, then, envisage a collection of essays in conversation with the work of scholars such as Gill Plain, Alison Light, and Phyllis Lassner, that challenge traditional readings of isolation, escapism, or simple visions of national identity and purpose, and interrogating the role of these popular texts in the study not only of war fronts and battlefields, but also of complex moralities, social and cultural upheaval, trauma, displacement, and individual, national and internationally negotiated identities.

We are particularly interested in feminist, spatial, queer, post-colonial, and sociological readings that contextualise Anglo-centric English Golden Age work within its contemporary literary, political, and social environments; we also encourage interdisciplinary approaches, particularly drawing on cultural history, geography, trauma and memory studies, and the medical humanities.

Our chronological span for the Golden Age here is Agatha Christie’s lifetime (1890 to 1976) in order to include work leading up to the First World War and post-Second World War work that deals with its aftermath and the early Cold War.

Topics might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Detective writers, life writing, and war work
• Codes and coding
• Thrillers and espionage stories with substantial detection elements
• National identities and propaganda -Censorship and ethics
• Individual and/or collective memory and trauma 
• Technologies of war 
• Gender and/or sexuality and war 
• Grief, loss, and bereavement 
• Displacement and exile 
• The Home Front and/or foreign fields
• Social and cultural change during and caused by war 
• War and psychology 
• Underrepresented writers and communities impacted by military conflict 
• Representations of ideologies such as Communism and Nazism 
• Conscientious objection
• Military heroism 
• War and reshaped cartographies 
• Colonial wars and Empire 
• Britain and the European Continent
• Britain’s relationship with its allies 
• Comparative analysis of war in the work of authors from Britain and other countries
• Foreign fields 
• The relationship between detective fiction and other literary modes such as modernism and the middlebrow 
• The relationship between Golden Age detective fiction and other crime narrative modes such as noir and pulp fiction 
• Cinema, radio, theatre, and the Golden Age in wartime 
• Historical detective fiction set in/navigating war and engaging with the conventions of the Golden Age

Authors we are interested in include but are not limited to: 

• Dorothy L. Sayers
• Agatha Christie (if you are planning a proposal on Agatha Christie, we encourage you to take a look at Agatha Christie Goes to War)
• Josephine Tey
• E.C.R Lorac
• J. Jefferson Farjeon
• Gladys Mitchell
• John Dickson Carr
• Nap Lombard
• Celia Fremlin
• Michael Gilbert
• Anthony Gilbert
• Graham Greene
• Elizabeth Bowen
• Ngaio Marsh
• Margery Allingham
• Edmund Crispin

We are also interested in detective fiction from outside England and America that can be situated in conversation with the Golden Age periodization and tropes.

We invite 300-500 word abstracts for contributions of 6,000-8,000 words taking a global and in-depth approach to wars and their traces in early-to-mid-century detective, crime, and mystery fiction, as well as life writing by and about authors in this field, and historical detective fiction written later. Please include a brief biographical note (up to 100 words). 

We have early interest from a major academic publisher.

Please send your proposals and enquiries to goldenagedetectiongoestowar@gmail.com by March 31st 2024.

For further details, see https://jcbernthal.com/2024/01/19/call-for-proposals-golden-age-detection-goes-to-war

February Books from Bookouture.

The Baby Monitor is by Rosie Walker. I’m closing my daughter’s bedroom door after putting her to bed and saying I love her one last time, when I hear the baby monitor crackle to life. The voice sends shockwaves to my core: ‘Your mother doesn’t love you.’ My husband says it’s just exhaustion and I’m hearing things. But he has no idea what that voice is doing to Olivia. He doesn’t see the look in my daughter’s eyes as she pushes me away and says, ‘I want my other mother.’ Then Olivia plunges down the stairs screaming. In my worst nightmares, I never imagined I could come so close to losing my child. As I watch Olivia sleep in a hospital bed, her broken arm in a sling, I decide this has to stop. Someone unscrewed our baby gate from the wall. I know I’ve been unwell in the past, but I’m not making this up. The only people who’ve been inside our house are the ones I thought I could trust. Someone close is watching me, speaking to Olivia and trying to make me look like a bad parent. I don’t care what my husband says. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but my precious child means everything to me. They have no idea how far I’ll go to protect my daughter… 

A missing five-year-old girl is the key to unlocking a detective’s terrifying past. When Detective Billie Ann Wilde receives a desperate call that five-year-old Emma Wilson is missing,she rushes to the family home. But inside the picture-perfect house surrounded by Florida marshlands, she finds no children’s clothes or toys, no photos of the innocent child Emma’s mother Marissa describes. Billie suspects Marissa Wilson is hiding from someone. It’s a race against the clock to find Emma. But Marissa refuses to tell Billie anything about her past, and before long, she also disappears… And then Billie realizes who Marissa is. She’s the ten-year-old girl Billie failed to find in her first ever case fourteen years ago. The leads went cold because Billie made a fatal mistake. As more bodies turn up in the same marshlands, Billie must revisit her past and face up to her demons to find Marissa and her child. But she is unknowingly putting herself in the path of a terrifying serial killer… Don't Let Her Go is by Willow Rose.

The Missing Mother is by Casey Kelleher. I place my tiny, newborn baby in the box. A ‘safe haven’, they call it, for unwanted babies. She’ll be warm, someone will find her soon. She’ll be cared for. But not by me. I will always want her, but I can never be her mother. And she can never know why. Jenna has never truly known who she is or where she came from. Abandoned as a baby, she grew up with a caring adopted family, and never felt the need to know more about her birth parents. Until one night, nearly thirty years later, when she sees a desperate young woman tearfully kiss her little baby, put it gently down in a safe haven box, and walk away. In that moment, Jenna’s mind starts to race. Who could abandon their child like that, and why? She may never find her own parents, but Jenna is determined to uncover the truth behind this baby’s missing mother. Because Jenna has a terrible feeling that she knows who the mother is, and what happened… As Jenna digs deeper she uncovers something – someone – far more dangerous than she ever feared. And the secrets they’re hiding are much bigger than just one night, just one woman, just one baby. But what Jenna hasn’t realised is that they know what she’s doing and they are watching her. Whatever the cost, they’ll do anything to keep Jenna from revealing the truth…

Morgan shivers in the darkness as she walks through the park towards the abandoned building. She sees the body and the blood dripping onto the cold, frosty grass. A beautiful teenage girl is dead. Morgan feels rage build inside of her as she realises who it is…  Arriving at a quiet family home on the outskirts of the Lake District, Detective Morgan Brookes must deliver devastating news to a heartbroken mother. Seeing Lexie’s pink boots against the side of the house, she remembers the girl’s happy face and can’t help but think of her carefree childhood. Three years ago, Morgan saved Lexie from a serial killer, who is now behind bars. But this time, she’s failed to protect her. Certain a new and more terrifying killer is at large, Morgan finds a neighbour who claims a man in a silver car was watching Lexie’s house. Then she discovers that Lexie was meeting other survivors of serial killers at a local victim support group. Another girl, Milly, thinks she has been followed by the same silver car. But just as Morgan rushes to warn the other women, the case takes an even more sinister turn. One of them is found dead, posed in a chair with her hands tied in prayer. Flames engulf the church where the victims usually meet, with several of the others trapped inside. Morgan manages to save the women just in time, but she knows this killer will never give up. To find him, she must relive every terrifying case she’s ever worked on. Somewhere in her history lies the key to saving more lives, but Morgan has no idea that this dangerous individual wants her as his final victim… Save Her Twice is by Helen Phifer.

“My baby! You stole my baby!” Lara Smith is hysterical, her red lipstick smeared. A teddy lies abandoned in the empty crib. But I wasn't hired to look after a baby. I didn’t even know this nursery existed… Lara’s husband calls the police and screams: “The nanny has taken our little girl.” I’m frozen in shock. This is impossible. I was only meant to be looking after the Smiths' nine-year-old twins… I'm certain that earlier this evening when they left for their fancy event—Lara in high heels and a floor-length gown, Corbin in a tux—they never mentioned a baby. And they definitely didn’t show me this nursery room, up in the eaves of their sprawling, beachfront mansion. But their angelic blonde twins are now blinking at me in matching horror, and my heart pounds painfully as handcuffs snap shut around my wrists. As I'm pushed towards the waiting police car, I look back one last time and meet Lara's eyes. Am I imagining the cold calculation in them? I try to swallow my panic. Why was I really hired for this job? And then an even more chilling thought races through my mind. Do Lara and Corbin know who I really am? Because if they do, my life is in terrible danger… The Perfect Nanny is by Shari J Ryan.

Little Witness is by S A Dunphy. They came in the dark. They took her parents. And now she is the only one who can save them. Hidden away in an isolated cabin on the edge of her farm, seven-year-old Aisling Connolly shivers as the cold night air whistles through her thin jacket. It’s been two days since the men came, since her mammy told her to run like she’d never run before, to not look back. She hasn’t seen her parents since. And she’s terrified. But when Aisling is finally found by the police, she knows instinctively she can trust Detective Tessa Burns. A former child-witness herself, Tessa understands what Aisling has been through, and that Aisling must remember everything she can about that terrible, dark night if she’s to save her parents. Something Tessa was unable to do for her own parents all those years ago. As the little girl slowly starts to open up, Tessa uncovers much more than she’d bargained for – another murder, clearly a horrific warning to Aisling not to speak. But time is running out, and any hope of finding Aisling’s parents alive is rapidly fading. And Tessa must do everything in her power to ensure the little girl isn’t next…

Only The Children is by S A Dunphy. The little girl stares up at Tessa, trembling so hard her whole body shakes. Her brothers stand clutching her hands, both pale with shock. ‘They told us not to speak,’ she finally whispers. But the terror in her tear-filled eyes tells Tessa all she needs to know… When a cargo ship runs aground off the Irish coast, the police are horrified to find the captain dead at the helm, the crew missing, and three little red-haired children, terrified but unharmed, locked in the galley kitchen.As an expert detective running a child-centred taskforce, Detective Tessa Burns is called in to lead the case. Despite Tessa’s best efforts, the children won’t reveal a thing – not even their own names. Slowly gaining their trust, Tessa uncovers a deadly secret about their past – and the mystery of their missing parents’ whereabouts – that turns everything she thought she knew on its head. But just as it seems she’s cracked the case, Tessa’s team is attacked one dark night, and the youngest boy is kidnapped yet again. It’s clear the children are still in terrible danger. And when another senseless killing sends shockwaves through her team, Tessa realises the murderer is someone much closer to home than they could have ever imagined. Will she be able to uncover the truth in time, or will it be too late for her, and, most devastating of all, for the children…?

The Patient is by Teri Terry. I feel the steady thump of my new heart beating inside me. The surgeon said everything went well. But I can’t stop thinking about my donor: the girl who was killed. Her death saved my life. But now whoever took hers is coming for mine…  I can’t believe it when I learn my donor’s identity. The attack on Flora was all over the news. From my hospital bed I read every article, obsess over every word and soon I feel like I know her: the beautiful girl with flame-coloured hair, adored by everyone around her. Why would anyone hurt someone so perfect? When Flora’s family reach out to me, I’m unsure. My hands are shaking as I arrive at their grand mansion with its golden stone and sprawling gardens, but they’re warm and welcoming, tears shining in her mother’s eyes as she smiles at me. She even tells me to take anything I want from Flora’s things, as she can’t bear to go through them herself. I run my fingers over the racks of beautiful designer items, carefully choosing outfits in Flora’s signature yellow, the bright colour complementing the new flush in my cheeks. I think of the years I’ve wasted being ill, and the crushing loneliness I thought would never end. I deserve this. But then there’s a violent attack on another patient who received one of Flora’s organs. My heart – Flora’s heart – races dangerously fast. Is it a coincidence? Maybe I’ve made a mistake by stepping into Flora’s life. Has this second chance really saved me? Or has it cost me everything?

In a haunted mansion, ghosts are not the only danger… I’m Rylan Flynn. I hunt for ghosts and restless spirits, and solve the mysteries that make them haunt the living. My ex-boyfriend Declan never believed in my abilities. Now he thinks his home is haunted and he’s pleading for my help. Declan lives in a huge mansion, full of history and secrets. When I arrive at the house, I find a dying woman in the gardens. It seems like the spirit in Declan’s house may be the only witness to a murder. For the first time, Detective Ford Pierce asks for my help. Inside the mansion, we find mysterious locked rooms and shattered windows, but the ghost stays hidden. Why won’t it speak to me? I’m almost ready to give up when my best friend, Mickey, is snatched from her home in the middle of the night. The killer has her, and time is running out. I’ll do anything to bring Mickey back. But will my desperate search for clues uncover the truth, or lead me right into the killer’s hands? The Whisper House is by Dawn Merriman. 

The Wife's Mistake is by Lorna Dounaeva. I have the life I’ve always dreamed of… but how long will it be until the past catches up with me? I can’t believe how far my husband, Hayden, and I have come. I never expected that one day I’d be sipping a steaming coffee over our marble countertop or finishing off a humid summer day with a dip in our sparkling pool. But even though we’re living in paradise, I’ve never felt so distant from my husband. I’m certain he’s hiding something from me. Before, I would have confided in my friends and family but in this new life of ours, I’m terrified to trust anyone… Now, with Hayden out again, my evening is quiet. From our floor-to-ceiling windows, I watch the pool water ripple under the raindrops. But I swear I see movement beyond the garden hedges. I try to shake my fears away, I must be imagining things. That’s what Hayden would say. But then I find the hand-delivered note and my heart pounds in my chest as I scan the neat words. You don’t deserve this life. My blood runs cold. I thought I’d kept all my secrets well hidden, but now as I look out to the still night, I realise it’s only a matter of time until my past catches up with me – a past my husband still has no idea about. I know what I have to do to protect my perfect new life, but those around me have no idea how far I’m willing to go to keep it…

The Custody Battle is by Ellie Monago. “What’s going to happen to me?” my darling girl asks, voice trembling, clutching her favourite teddy bear. I ache as I tell her, “Daddy and I love you more than anything. Nothing is going to change.” If only I had known how wrong I was. I’ve been dreading this moment. Lola’s blue eyes fill with tears as Greg and I explain our separation. We focus on what matters to a ten-year-old: every other weekend, she and her dad will be off having adventures; every morning before school, I’ll still brush her beautiful blonde hair. She will always, alwaysbe the most important thing for us both. But the worst was yet to come. Greg is saying one thing to my face and another to his lawyer. Now he wants full custody. It breaks my heart how Greg is trying to make my own daughter hate me. And he’s determined to dig up dirt on me, to make the court think I’m a terrible mother. And while I do have my own secrets, two can play that game… I never imagined it would come to this. But if exposing Greg’s past is what it takes, I’ll do it. Because if the whole truth comes out, it won’t just mean my little girl is taken from me… Lola will be in danger.

She wakes surrounded by an inky black darkness and can barely breathe. A sack is covering her head, and her hands are tied behind her back. She desperately tries to struggle free as she hears footsteps walking toward her. She silently starts to cry as a chilling voice whispers “It’s time to pay for what you did…”When Detective Amanda Steele is called to the murder scene of a young gas station clerk just before dawn, she assumes it must be a robbery gone tragically wrong. But when she discovers nothing has been stolen, she knows the motive must be far more personal. Watching the security footage, Amanda is shocked to witness the cold-blooded killer not only shoot the clerk dead but abduct a customer. And her heart stops when she recognizes the customer as her former colleague, Katherine Graves. As Amanda breaks the news to Katherine’s heartbroken Aunt May, she vows to do whatever it takes to bring her niece home alive. Desperate for a lead, Amanda and her partner, Trent, search Katherine’s home. Soon, they discover that despite no longer being with the police department, Katherine has a long list of very dangerous enemies. Enemies who have been sending her anonymous letters promising revenge. The more Amanda digs into Katherine’s past, the longer her list of suspects becomes. But when May is sent a ransom demand and a picture of Katherine close to death, Amanda knows time is running out. With only hours left to find Katherine alive, Amanda is prepared to risk everything to keep her promise to May, even her own life… Missing Before Daylight is by Carolyn Arnold. 

On a sunny Friday afternoon, beloved teacher Mrs. Walker and her eight-year-old son wave goodbye to their friends in the school playground. But they never make it home…  It’s only been a week, but the bright little faces at the picture-perfect school I’ve stepped into have captured my heart. Their big doe eyes, their paint-covered fingers and clinging hugs. They’ve been through so much, with their favourite teacher and classmate still missing… I’m doing all I can to help them adjust, but I can’t avoid the swirling rumours that say Cate Walker’s charismatic husband, Oliver – our headteacher – is involved in her disappearance. The thought makes me shudder. But the more I find out about Cate, the more I wonder if she was also hiding a terrible secret… I’m determined to uncover the truth about what really happened. I have to protect these other innocent children from the same fate – it’s my duty as their teacher. That is, until an anonymous note turns up threatening me if I don’t stop looking. Until my home is broken into while I sleep. I know the longer I stay here, the more danger I’m in. But whoever’s trying to scare me doesn’t know who I am – or why I’m really here. Or just how far I’ll go to protect the people I love… The Teacher's Secret is by Lauren North.

Dark Hearts is by D.K.Hood. Under a thick canopy of pine trees, Cassidy Wilder frantically searches for a hiding place. Her breath catches in her mouth as she hears heavy footsteps. She says a silent prayer, but she knows he’s closing in on her. She knows it’s too late… When a robbery at a local store ends with multiple deaths and the abduction of sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Cassidy Wilder, FBI agent Beth Katz and her partner Dax Styles are called in. Visiting Cassidy’s family home just a couple of blocks away from the quiet little store where she went missing, Beth’s heart breaks as she talks to her grieving parents and promises to find their daughter. Looking at CCTV footage, Beth is horrified to see how calm the killer is as he shoots everyone in the store before forcing the terrified Cassidy to follow him into his truck. Then Beth uncovers multiple robberies just like this one, where all witnesses are killed and a young girl is taken. All of the victims are taken at night and found dead the following morning, so Beth knows time is running out to save Cassidy. When Cassidy’s lifeless body is discovered dumped on a busy highway near a patch of forest, Beth is devastated. And as more girls go missing, she fears the murderer is escalating. A breakthrough finally comes when she finds a name written in blood next to one of the bodies. Beth knows she’s close to catching the killer and is determined to stop any more lives from being taken—even if it means serving her own form of justice. Will she be able to resist the urge to take a life herself? Or will she become the killer’s next victim?

Family is everything to Lily Drew and she’s always battled to keep hers together. But following the death of her only daughter, Ruby, and after losing her son, Connor, to a rival firm, Lily feels like everything she’s fought so hard to protect is about to fall apart: and when a turf war between two rival gangs starts on the Drew’s doorstep, Lily must pick a side… The right choice could take the firm to a whole new level and bring her beloved son back into the fold. But get it wrong and her empire could come crashing down, and all of their lives could be in danger. When Lily makes a bold decision and goes up against the most powerful firm in the city, she puts all of her men on the case. But the job goes wrong, and when one of London’s most dangerous crime bosses comes after the family, hellbent on revenge, Lily’s heart pounds. Did she just put everyone she loves in danger? And when the bitter feud ends, what will be left of the Drews? Her Feud is by Emma Tallon. 

His Double Life is by Nicole Trope. Loving father. Loyal husband. Liar?  In our large family home on a peaceful, tree-lined street, I clear away the breakfast things whilst my husband ignores me, his eyes on his phone. Leo comes home from conferences with flowers for me and hugs for our twin ten-year-old boys, but each time I smell an unfamiliar perfume on his shirt. I know all about his affairs and it’s tearing my heart in two. When one of the boys tumbles into the kitchen, full of laughter that he beat his brother in the race home from the park, I smile despite everything. When his brother isn’t right behind him, I start to worry… and then I get a text that makes my blood run cold. If you want your child to come home, your husband needs to tell the truth. Is my husband hiding even darker secrets than his affairs? As I realise his double life has put my children in terrible danger, I make a promise: I will not let my husband’s lies destroy my life. And I will do anything to get my son back…