Why do we keep returning to the Island by Bonnie Burke-Patel

Everything you have with you, already in your heart, arrives with you on the island, and only becomes amplified, greater, in such isolation.

And so the story begins. Eight lonely souls on an island off the English coast; spending Christmas at the house on Saints’ Climb because, whatever their superficial reasons, they have nowhere else to be.

Between a cast of wealthy recluse father and traumatised adult son (George and Xavier Starvely), a taciturn archaeologist (Ryefield), documentary-makers Nathan and Chris, French widower Victor, groundskeeper Rik, and housekeeper Marianne… I’m proud to set my third gothic crime novel somewhere entirely unoriginal. In fact, it was sort of the point.

Whether it’s the Queen of Crime’s unbeatable And Then There Were None, literary gems like Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall, or delightful romps like Louise Minchin’s Isolation Island, the island holds an enduring appeal for reader and writer alike. And when a setting becomes such a cultural artefact, it also becomes self-perpetuating, because nosy writers like me want to know why.

Pull up for my TED Talk, and I’ll tell you why I brought you back to the island…

As a psychology

By its nature, the island is a separate thing. An isolated piece of land, cut off by sea on all sides. And more often than not, in crime fiction, it’s just within view of the mainland’s shore. Tantalisingly close, and when the bodies start dropping, it’s all the more agonising that help is just out of reach. When a storm blows in, the inhabitants of Saints’ Climb could almost reach help if they tried, couldn’t they?

Physically and psychologically, the island acts as a liminal space; land in the water, adjacent to but not part of the main. We see the island from the shore, and we see the mainland from the island. And so the island doubles the psychology of the lonely characters, stranded on their own emotional bits of rock and wondering if there is a way to connect with each other amid the violence.

The specifics of Saints’ Climb as an island were also inspired by that most Freudian pit, childhood. Growing up in the West Country, islands were quite literally on the horizon whenever my family took a jaunt to our local seaside, Weston-super-Mare. A rundown coastal town in the British tradition, I love it with all my heart. Between cold sloppy sandcastles and donkey rides, my three siblings and I would look at the horizon and see two mysterious lumps out at sea - Flat Holm and Steep Holm islands. Only as an adult would I discover their fascinating records as seabird colonies, cholera isolation hospitals, pieces of radio history… As a kid, they stuck in my mind as gothic lacuna just out of reach, and full of magical potential. Anything at all might fill them. Perhaps it’s not surprising that as an adult, they would re-emerge in a novel.

As a writer

Being a writer is about choices - of the infinite possible stories in the universe, you have to choose, winnow, erode all the possibilities until you’re left with the story you want to tell. And because of this immense freedom, I actually find it useful to have a containing framework. Stick eight people on the island. Now some of them have to die without anyone knowing how. Make me work for it. Make me give you something new in a space that’s already a densely populated fictional landscape. How much new ground can I find on a rock?

 And that’s where the literary tradition that might seem like it restricts the writer, opens it up. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is a masterpiece. Her ten victims trapped on the island die off like flies as every possibility evaporates as soon as the reader has thought of it. It has also sold 100 million copies worldwide; commonly cited as the bestselling crime novel of all time. The majority of the readers of We Search the Island for Grace will have read it or seen a TV adaptation… and some still won’t. Now I have the additional challenge of writing a novel for two distinct audiences. Is George Starvely an echo of one of Christie’s characters? What about Ryefield? Marianne? Are these tropes about to be subverted or leaned in to; are they breadcrumbs or traps? Does this still compel a reader who has never touched a Christie in their life?

It’s the author’s joy of never having a singular unitary reader. A book is a new story under every set of eyes that reads it, and all the associations, experiences, and pre-existing knowledge they bring. We’re all our own islands, and we’re all connected by the act of reading.

We Search The Island For Grace by Bonnie Burke-Patel (Bedford Square  Out Now

They gather at Saints’ Climb, the only house on an island off the Somerset coast. Seven men with nowhere else to be at Christmas. Father and son George and Xavier Starvely; James, a taciturn archaeologist uneasy with the living; Victor, a French widower; Rik, the groundskeeper; and Chris and Nathan, the two men who want to make a documentary about this place and its extraordinary collection of medieval art. And the housekeeper Marianne, who seems to find peace in serving. Erected around the stone labyrinth built into the floor by monks, Saints’ Climb is a house heavy with loneliness. Xavier Starvely is a successful academic with a real life elsewhere. Yet he is wracked with guilt over the fragmentary memories of a childhood tragedy, and when his guests arrive on the island for Christmas, the deaths begin afresh. A labyrinth is different from a maze. There are no false turns or dead ends: there is only one winding path, which, followed faithfully, will always lead to the centre. What will each find at the centre of the labyrinth? And can it save them?

 You can find Bonnie Burke-Patel on Instagram @bonnieburkepatel

 

 

Merle Nygate on Why Spy Fiction

The first realistic espionage stories I ever read was Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden short stories. The narrator, a writer, trails around the Italian lakes during inclement weather and visits agents who are supposed to be gathering information or intel as we like to call it now. The agents are feckless; they lie and they cheat and the work itself is tiring and often dull. To me, it felt real. It was real, Maugham was recruited to run agents during World War I.

Later, much later, I read Graham Greene’s The Human Factor and in the author’s notes Greene described how he wanted to write about spies with pensions. Again, that felt real. 

But although I have written multiple genres and mediums, everything from fantasy to factual comedy to drama. I felt unable to peruse ideas o ideas about espionage and betrayal with any semblance of confidence for a long little. I recognise that as a writer you ned to know where you're ready to realise a particular idea, believe that you have the experience and the skills to make what you have in your mind the best it can be. I was determined that if I was going to attempt to write a spy novel it would have to feel and as realistic as the espionage that I admired.

For many years that particular goal seemed a long way off until the ambition was reignited when I read. Tom Rob Smith's Child 44. Child 44 is set in Stalinist Russia and is written from the point of view of a NKVD agent who is morally compromised.

It's a brilliant book. The setting is the miserable post-war deprivation of 1950s Soviet Union. The characters are terrified of who will betray them and they are all desperately trying to survive. When I reached the end of the book, I read the author's biography and was astonished that the author had achieved this level of authenticity solely on the basis of research.

Child 44 was inspirational. 

I now needed a story. 

I decided to write about the Mossad, the Israeli version of MI6 for several reasons. Among them was that while I think The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an almost perfect book and I’m a great admirer of the rest of the Smiley series, I felt that le Carré, in The Little Drummer Girl hadn’t written either Jews or women particularly well and it bothered me. I found the needy and neurotic Charlie irritating and the dour, brooding case officer hard to believe

Another reason for choosing Mossad was cowardice and expediency; I don’t think I could attempt to better what le Carré and Deighton wrote about Cold War British intelligence. Nor what Charles Beaumont does now for MI6 and what David McCloskey and I. S. Berry do for the CIA. There also aren’t many authors writing about the Mossad despite all the mystique about this particular intelligence service.

But I still didn’t have a story.

I read and re-read le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl. Then I moved to The Honourable Schoolboy, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Then Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson series and as I was reading I was trying to identify what it was that I liked about the narratives, why they worked and why they didn’t. I also watched Homeland episodes back-to-back and The Americans. 

It was while I was noodling around on the CIA website looking for reviews of spy fiction books that I saw a mention of a non-fiction book called Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas. 

I have since been told by those who apparently know that there are inaccuracies in the book but there are also plenty of facts. It was my lodestar. I went through the book in forensic detail; marked it up, made detailed notes and I extrapolated the information I needed for a second document. From that document I brainstormed and identified the different types of true stories in espionage. All the facts suggested story ideas. There were disinformation and recruitment operations that had rich story possibilities and, of course, the ubiquitous, ‘find the mole’ story. 

From the list I brainstormed 13 different scenarios ranging from moles, recruitment, assassination and disinformation 

That was the beginning of the Amiram series. After that, of course, it wrote itself!

Merle Nygate’s latest novel, The Protocols of Spying, is out now as a £10.99 paperback from No Exit Press, part of Bedford Square Publishers.

In the aftermath of Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, Mossad's London station chief Eli Amiram is fighting battles on all fronts. When his ambitious rival plans an assassination on British soil - supposedly authorized by Trump supporters - Eli suspects a deeper conspiracy. Meanwhile, British intelligence asset Petra is hunting for redemption. Tasked with recruiting Wasim Al-Arikhi - whose sister she failed to save from becoming a suicide bomber - Petra's drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Can Wasim be trusted or has she become a target? As Eli and Petra's paths converge, they discover that in the shadow world of international espionage, the greatest threats often come from within. They must confront not just their enemies, but their own moral choices. A sophisticated spy thriller that weaves together tradecraft, betrayal and the human cost of intelligence work.

More information about the author and her work can be found on her website. You can find her on Facebook @merle.nygate and on X @merlenygate and on Instagram @mnygate 

To Morrow-on-Sea: Setting Dead As Gold on the Coast

      Morrow is not a glamorous place, and as                 Ophelia reaches the high street, she begins to skirt takeaway bins that have been raided by foxes. Between the pound shop and the shuttered nail bar is a homeless man who has given up asking for change and stares dully at his feet. 

Ophelia has been told that, in summer, tourists return Morrow to something of its former splendour. There are artists, pop-ups, concerts, hash-tags and social media presence. She has been promised it is the next Margate by loyal middle-class locals and she suspects there is a grain of truth in it; the town has declined substantially since her childhood visits, but there are still the bijou spots[…] 

My second crime novel, Dead As Gold, is set in fictional Morrow-on-Sea: a place we have all been, at one time or another. It is the rundown, out-of-season seaside town that everyone has spent a wet and windy day enjoying. In my childhood, this was Weston-super-Mare on the Somerset coast. Usually grey, haunted by shrieking gulls, sandy and uncomfortable; indefinably magical and intrinsically gothic. It stuck in my subconscious and stayed there like the sand carried home in socks. How easy and natural to set a crime novel there.

Adam Conlan, the protagonist of Dead As Gold, has moved his goldsmith’s workshop to Morrow after fathering a child on a one-night stand. Seven years later, his life is calmer, and he has found a measure of peace in co-parenting his son. Yet, by the sea, he still feels alone. Then, damaged writer Ophelia Richards arrives at his door and wants to sell her mother’s gold. Adam receives an animal heart in the post, his studio is robbed, strange faces appear at his window. A body is washed in on the tide. 

Like so many British coastal towns, Weston’s (and Morrow’s) heyday was during the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centuries, as tourists flocked to the fresh air and the sea. As holidaying abroad became more affordable, fortunes dwindled, and so began a slow decline into seasonal work, poverty, poor infrastructure, and blossoming drugs trades. And so, the juxtapositions of Weston and Morrow breathe crime. 

A place that is meant to embody pleasure and fun is also grimy and decaying. What is an escape from everyday life for some is a place where others endure poverty and harsh winters. These are habitations positioned at the edge of the world, liminal, between land and sea. Just the presence of the water lends life-giving and life-taking opportunities. Who hasn’t stood at the tideline and felt the instability of the sand being sucked from under their feet? That half-second panic that we will be pulled away and drowned? The sea has a violence and strength that renders us powerless and echoes the dynamics of a murder. Without spoilers (perhaps just a light tease…), some of the most dramatic moments in Dead As Gold occur next to, or in, the water.

To Morrow-on-Sea, to Morrow-on-Sea

To the gulls with their cries, and the wind whistling free.

The seaside is also the writer’s friend because it is intrinsically sensory and evocative. Everyone can imagine the sounds (gulls, waves, wind, children) and smells (salt, seaweed, chip fat) and touch (gritty sand, cold water, harsh wind) of it. It’s a place that the reader can feel and therefore become immersed in. Ophelia herself is a writer, returning to Morrow to make sense of traumatic events she experienced there as a child, to draw a ‘portrait’ of the place through its characters, folktales, and animals. She can feel Morrow in the way the reader can, and like many readers, it is a repository for her childhood, and all the complex associations that can bring.

The late morning sky is low and heavy, resting its leaden belly on the clifftop where Ophelia walks. The wind is urgent, and she errs away from the edge, where thrift and grass cling on in clumps. From the path, she can still see the sea, making dark laps at itself and the beach, ceaseless, restless, like it had been in her childhood. She thinks of Adam Conlan, living at the edge of the world.

The natural co-existence of murder, mystery, and the sea is demonstrated by the sheer number and quality of classic crime novels you’ll find set on the coast. Consider Poirot’s various adventures (Peril At End House, Evil Under the Sun) or Daphne du Maurier’s OG gothic thriller Rebecca. More recently, Tom Mead’s The House at Devil’s Neck and Louise Minchin’s Isolation Island testify to the enduring appeal of the seaside as a setting for murder; a place where the writer can draw from its drama and power and contrast. And like the tide rolling back in, the more readers return to the setting, the more commissioning editors will keep snapping these books up.

Long live crime novels, and long live the great British seaside

Dead as Gold by Bonnie Burke-Patel (Bedford Square Publishers) Out Now

Adam Conlan has made a new life for himself in Morrow-on-Sea. After a wild youth, the goldsmith had settled down, determined to be around for his young son. But now Ophelia Richards appears at his studio door, asking if he will buy her gold. The writer entices and unsettles him; he sees she is adrift in the same cold pain and loneliness as he is. At the same time, faces begin appearing at the studio window, an unwelcome gift arrives in the post, gold goes missing. Then comes death, then comes Detective Inspector William Kent. Woven through with Morrow’s fairy tales, Dead as Gold is a modern gothic crime novel veined with love, violence, family, and desire. Humans still use fairy tales to explore their deepest truths. So who is a wolf, and who is a sparrow?

You can find Bonnie Burke-Patel on Instagram @bonnieburkepatel

In The St Hilda's Spotlight - Jake Lamar

 Name: Jake Lamar

Job: - Author

Website: https//jakelamar.com

X: @jakelamar

Introduction

Jake Lamar is an author of a memoir, seven novels and numerous essays, reviews, and short stories. His novel The Last Integrationist won France’s Grand Prize for best foreign thriller. His most recent book Viper’s Dream was a New York Times top 4 thriller of the month. It was one of The Guardian’s best thrillers of 2023 and is currently shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger 2024

Current book?

I am writing a crime novel about chess. I describe it as a cross between Stefan Zweig and Chester Himes.

Favourite book?

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Read it when I was fourteen. It was the first time I really understood satire. That Heller could describe the horrors of war in such a darkly humorous way was a revelation for me.

Which two musicians would you invite to dinner and why?

John Lennon and Paul McCartney in their 1966 incarnations. This is the toughest question in the bunch for me. Because some of the musicians I revere most might not make the greatest dinner party company. Billie Holiday would show up hours late. Thelonious Monk would probably just glower benignly, hardly speaking at all. Miles Davis might insult the other guests. Lennon and McCartney might very well insult the other guests but hearing them riff off each other would more than make up for it.

How do you relax?

Just hanging out with Dorli, my partner of 28 years. A very wise, older friend of mine once said: "The most important thing isn't having someone to do something with. It's having someone to do nothing with."

Which book do you wish you had written and why?

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Read it when I was fifteen. An astounding literary feat on so many levels. Veering from tragedy to satire, the novel encompasses the madness of the USA's racial caste system, from the rural South to the urban North. Ellison gave the world a metaphor for social marginalization---invisibility---that resonates with people to this day, as when groups and individuals say they want "to be seen." And, amazingly, in this 500-plus page epic, the reader never learns the name of the first-person narrator.

What would you say to your younger self of you were just starting out as a writer?

Writing and Publishing are two different planets. You will live on Planet Writing. Every once in a while, you will get in your spacecraft and fly over to Planet Publishing. But you will live on Planet Writing. Never let the volatile climate on Planet Publishing negatively impact the atmosphere on Planet Writing.

How would you describe your latest published book?

My friend and colleague David Peace was the first to call Viper's Dream "jazz noir." I think that nails it. The book is a hard-boiled crime novel---in the tradition of Hammett, Chandler, and Himes---set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961.

With A Dance to the Music of Crime: the artful crime to murder being the theme at St Hilda's this year, which are you three favourite albums?

Kind of Blue by Miles Davis

Monk's Dream by Thelonious Monk

Purple Rain by Prince

If you were given the ability to join a band which, would it be and why?

Sly and the Family Stone, circa 1969. The music of my late childhood/early adolescence, naturally. Check them out in the magnificent concert documentary film Summer of Soul. A band made up of men and women, of different ethnic origins, mixing gospel, rhythm-and-blues, jazz and soul, to create the ultimate feel-good Funk.

If you were to re-attend a concert which, would it be and why?

Easiest question in the bunch. Prince: The Fox Theatre; Detroit, Michigan; April 1993. A relatively intimate venue---5,000 seats---not an arena or stadium. His Purple Majesty was at the peak of his powers. The crowd was 75% African American. By the third hour, the place was delirious. Prince screamed from the stage: "I got too many HITS! Y'all can't STAND it!"

What are you looking forward to at St Hilda’s?

The conversations!

  

Viper’s Dream by Jake Lamar (Bedford Square Publishers)

A hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961, Viper's Dream combines elements of the epic Godfather films and the detective novels of Chester Himes to tell the story of one of the most respected and feared Black gangsters in America. At the centre of Viper's Dream is a turbulent love story. And the climax bears an element of Greek tragedy. For the better part of 20 years, Clyde 'The Viper' Morton has been in love with Yolanda 'Yo-Yo' DeVray, a singer of immense talent but a woman consumed by demons. By turns ambitious and self-destructive, conniving and naive, Yo-Yo is a classic femme fatale. She is a bright star in a constellation of compelling characters including the chauffeur-turned-gangster Peewee Robinson, the Jewish kingpin Abraham 'Mr. O' Orlinsky, the heroin dealer West Indian Charlie, the corrupt cop Red Carney, the wife-beating singer Pretty Paul Baxter, the pimp Buttercup Jones and the brutal enforcer Randall Country Johnson. But Viper's Dream has a fast-paced vibe all its own, a story charged with suspense, intrigue and plot twists and spiced with violence and humour. It is also steeped in music. The Viper's story is intertwined with the history of jazz over a quarter century.

Information about 2024 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book tickets can be found here.