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

 

 

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

Shortlist for Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and McDermid Debut Novel announced

SHORTLISTS FOR THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2025 AND McDERMID DEBUT AWARD REVEALED

Celebrating the very best in crime fiction from new discoveries and superstars of the genre 

Festival Dates: 17 – 20 July 2025

www.harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com

#TheakstonsAwards #TheakstonsCrime

Thursday 5 June 2025: Harrogate International Festivals has announced the shortlists for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious crime fiction award, and the McDermid Debut Award for new writers. The winners of both awards will be revealed on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Thursday 17 July.  

The six books shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025, now in its twenty-first year, showcase outstanding storytelling, with some of the most innovative and exciting writers in the UK, Chris Brookmyre, M.W. Craven, Elly Griffiths, Abir Mukherjee, Marie Tierney and Chris Whitaker, competing for the coveted award. The winner, who receives £3,000 and a handmade, engraved oak beer cask provided by T&R Theakston Ltd, will be selected by a panel of seven expert judges, with the public vote representing the eighth judge. Readers are now invited to vote for their favourite book to win at www.harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com.   

Stunning debut novel Deadly Animals by rising starcMarie Tierney, a thriller centred on a roadkill obsessed teenager’s daring quest to unravel the truth behind the string of chilling deaths plaguing her Birmingham community, which won the inaugural McDermid Debut Award in 2024, is shortlisted alongside books by five highly established writers.

Three former winners are in contention for the award, including 2017 champion Chris Brookmyre who is nominated for his innovative thriller, The Cracked Mirror, which sees a hard-bitten homicide detective and an old lady who has solved multiple murders in her sleepy village crack an impossible case. 2021 winner Chris Whitaker is shortlisted for All the Colours of the Dark, a million-copy US-set bestseller exploring the aftermath of a childhood kidnapping that reverberates through the generations, alongside 2023 champion M.W. Craven, nominated for The Mercy Chair, the mesmerising sixth book in the bestselling Washington Poe series, set in Cumbria, where Poe and Tilly face brutal killings that push them to the edges of justice and morality.

Highly commended in 2023, Elly Griffiths receives an impressive seventh shortlisting for The Last Word, a twisty cosy crime murder mystery set at a sinister writers' retreat where two amateur sleuths join forces with detective Harbinder Kaur to investigate the suspicious death of an author. An alumni of the Festival’s celebrated ‘New Blood’ panel supporting fresh talent, Abir Mukherjee is shortlisted for Hunted, a race-against-the-clock thriller about two parents desperately tracking down their children who are suspected of terrorist atrocities.

The full Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025 Shortlist (in alphabetical order by surname) is: 

The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown Book Group, Abacus) 

The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven (Little, Brown Book Group, Constable) 

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths (Quercus Books, Quercus Fiction) 

Hunted by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage; Harvill Secker) 

Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney (Bonnier Books, Zaffre) 

All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Orion, Orion Fiction) 

Commenting on the shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025, Simon Theakston, Chairman of T&R Theakston, said: 

“Congratulations to all of the highly talented writers shortlisted for this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. The six thrilling, chilling and hugely entertaining novels on our shortlist highlight the exceptional depth and range of British crime fiction and offer something for every crime fiction fan. We urge readers to get involved and vote for their favourite novels to win the Award - and the iconic beer cask trophy - so have your say today!” 

The shortlist for the McDermid Debut Award, named in recognition of world-famous crime writer Val McDermid, now in its second year, showcases six ‘exciting fresh voices,’ with race, class, the abuse of power and lived experience of disability amongst the topical themes explored across a range of subgenres including psychological thrillers, contemporary country house mysteries, detective fiction and spy thrillers. The award has quickly established a successful track record for discovering emerging talent as inaugural winner, Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, has been shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025

Acclaimed broadcaster Louise Minchin is shortlisted for Agatha Christie inspired crime novel Isolation Island, set on a remote Scottish island where ten strangers take part in a gruelling reality TV show which turns deadly once a body is discovered. Another shortlisted novel with a Christie-inspired setting is I Died At Fallow Hall by Bonnie Burke-Patel, a contemporary country house mystery exploring identity, family, race and gender, as dark secrets from the past are unravelled after a young woman’s body is found in a flower bed. 

Featuring an unforgettable female protagonist, Nilesha Chauvet’s post-Me Too thriller Her Two Lives, about a woman who runs a care home by day and hunts down the men who prey on young girls by night, is written with deep psychological insight. Sick to Death by former NHS nurse, Chris Bridges explores the marginalised perspective of a disabled woman who, fed up of being underestimated, becomes a force to be reckoned with when she targets the person standing in the way of her dreams.

Smashing outmoded stereotypes is also a central theme of Sean Watkin’s thriller Black Water Rising, featuring a gay detective out to prove he’s more than just a diversity hire by finding a killer on the loose in Liverpool. Completing the shortlist is A Reluctant Spy by Scottish writer David Goodman, a topical story of mercenaries, greed and corruption about a tech executive forced to act as a trained espionage operative in order to avert a global conflict.

Honouring internationally bestselling crime writer, Val McDermid, who helped to co-found the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2003 and whose dedication to fostering new voices in crime fiction is legendary, this new Award seeks to continue her legacy, celebrating and platforming the best debut crime writers in the UK. The shortlist was selected by a panel of established crime and thriller writers and the winner will be decided by a panel of expert judges, without a public vote. All shortlisted authors receive a full weekend pass to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and the Winner will receive a £500 cash prize. 

Val McDermid said: 

“If, like me, you love reading, you’re always on the lookout for exciting fresh voices. And you need look no further than this talented selection of debut authors who will thrill, excite and intrigue you. Happy Reading!”

The full McDermid Debut Award 2024 shortlist (in alphabetical order by surname) is:  

Sick to Death by Chris Bridges (Avon, Harper Collins)  

I Died at Fallow Hall by Bonnie Burke-Patel (No Exit Press, Bedford Square)  

Her Two Lives by Nilesha Chauvet (Faber & Faber)  

A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman (Headline)  

Isolation Island by Louise Minchin (Headline, Headline Fiction)  

Black Water Rising by Sean Watkin (Canelo)  

Sharon Canavar, Chief Executive of Harrogate International Festivals, said:

“We’re delighted to finally reveal the shortlists for this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the McDermid Debut Award, celebrating new talent. It’s exciting to see such a wide range of sub-genres represented across the shortlists, and timely themes tackled with such originality and insight. We are looking forward to celebrating all of these incredible shortlisted writers and their brilliant books at what promises to be an unmissable awards ceremony on the opening night of the Festival.”