The Case of the Mad Doctor by P D Lennon

 Settling down to read Kei Miller’s poetry* one day, it never crossed my mind that the idea for my first historical crime novel lay within his acclaimed verses. An eighteenth-century serial killer? In Jamaica?

As a crime fiction writer, this was a real “Whoa!” moment. This piece of Jamaican legend had managed to evade me. How? I do not know. I re-read page 47 about five times, intrigued by the knowledge that in or around 1760, a Scotsman sailed silvery blue oceans to the tropical climes of Jamaica for a new life and brought violence. He could have brought tartan, a few kilts or shawls to show off, but no. True, a great majority of Europeans also came to kill, but they had navies and the blessing of queen or king and country. Scottish immigrant Doctor Lewis Hutchinson had no navy, just cruel intent and ammunition. Bows, arrows, muskets and plenty of lead balls.

For years, I delayed writing about Doctor Hutchinson (referred to as ‘Hutchison’ in some journals) because information about his early life is quite scant. Believed to be born in the year 1732, he was twenty-eight when he left Scotland for Jamaica. Where he obtained medical training is unknown. His name is nowhere to be found in the register of Edinburgh physicians, nor was he a student or graduate of Edinburgh Medical School. Where he lived in Scotland or what informed his decision to leave that country is also a mystery.

Although Hutchinson’s infamy is rooted in Jamaican crimes, I do wonder if he was always a brutish fellow who fled Scotland to avoid law enforcers. He settled in Pedro, St Ann, a tiny remote district on the island and built a home boldly titled Edinburgh Castle. Before long he was accused of stealing cattle to start a cattle business - the first sign of his descent into lawlessness. His encore was to launch a vicious assault upon his neighbour, Dr Jonathan Hutton, of such severity that the victim returned to England for a trepanning operation. This was a mere taster of what Hutchinson could do. A lot more evil was concealed up his ruffled cuff sleeves.

Somehow, someway, this mysterious character belonged in a story. What I had to do was work out a structure, and that evaded me for some time until I saw an article about a book called Black Tudors. I liked the idea of gainfully employed Black people in King Henry VIII’s time and wanted to write about a clever Black man. After all, literature has to find space for a different type of hero. They can’t all be Tom Holland lookalikes. King Henry’s Tudor era was sixteenth century. Doctor Hutchinson’s reign of terror came much later in the Georgian era. A light bulb went off. I decided that my tale would be about a smart Black Georgian, a fictional hero to take down the Mad Doctor. Originally entitled The Adventures Of Isaiah Ollenu, it was later changed to The Case of the Mad Doctor in consultation with my astute editor, Craig Lye.

The desolate district of Pedro would have been too restrictive as a setting for the entire book. Instead, much of the island is on show. Spanish Town (St Jago de la Vega), St Catherine, was the capital city and features prominently throughout. A few of the imposing buildings from that era still exist in Spanish Town square, some as ruins, others as local government facilities. The populous and popular Kingston gets a look in too, as does Montego Bay where a magnificent ball is held. Determined to include Jamaican folklore - as not many books do - I added elements of magical realism in the tale, including African mermaids and a rolling calf. Yes, Jamaica’s most terrifying four-legged duppy gets a whole scene to run riot.

Despair can be a close companion when conducting research into what was a barbarous time for people in Africa, the West Indies and the Americas, but creating art through pain is something that writers of dark fiction must get used to.

In the colonial era, unimaginable cruelty was inflicted upon human beings, enslaved and forced to work in degrading conditions to ensure Europe grew wealthy. Doctor Hutchinson ran a sugar plantation and owned enslaved Africans. While we do not know much about their lives, they deserve a voice and were given one.

Combining fiction with dark fact to produce entertainment is a delicate task. Early on, I realised that the only way to write the tale without falling into depression was to include a good dose of humour, which tone is set from chapter one. Whether you chose to root for the good guys or the bad guy, I hope you savour the antics of the very different characters.

 

The Case of the Mad Doctor by P D Lennon (Canelo Press) Out Now.

Inspired by the true story of Jamaica’s first serial killer. Jamaica, 1772. Caribbean jewel, or a killer's playground? On the island of Jamaica, people have started disappearing without trace. Have they run away, trying to start new lives in the British colony under assumed names, or is something darker afoot? Some of the missing had taken out large life insurance policies before leaving England, and so word of the vanishings reaches Bristol when relatives try to collect their pay outs. With suspicion of a grand fraud in the air, ambitious Black barrister’s clerk Isaiah Ollenu is thrown together with pious insurance agent Ruben Ashby and ordered to the Caribbean to investigate. But, confronted by prejudice, untoward characters and vengeful spirits, the task may cost this unlikely duo more than either man is willing to pay…

P D Lennon can be found on X @PaulaDL16 and on Instagram @pauladl16

*Kei Miller - The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, Carcanet Press.

Was Shakespeare a Spy? By Howard Linskey

The man at the heart of my Elizabethan murder mystery was a writer and an actor but was he also a spy?

William Shakespeare was a playwright, the world’s most famous in fact, and he was also an actor who appeared in his own plays and others. That is a matter of record. We also know that he was a businessman, a shareholder in a theatrical company and the Globe theatre and had investments in all manner of things, including land. He may even have been a money lender. But was he also a spy? 

The premise of my new novel, ‘A Serpent In The Garden’, is that Will Shakespeare is called upon to investigate the mystery of a woman’s suspicious death, in exchange for patronage. He is still a young man at this point and has only written one play, Henry the 6th. That was a small success, but now Will is struggling to write that difficult second play, and the Earl of Southampton is dangling the promise of financial support in exchange for more than just poetry. His cousin is the first reported victim of an outbreak of plague that hit London in 1592, claiming thousands of lives, but the Earl does not believe it, and asks Will to find out what really happened to Lady Celia. 

When the Queen’s spymaster, Robert Cecil, learns of this, he orders Will to spy on his new patron and report back to him. Will soon realises how dangerous it is to have two masters in Elizabethan England, especially when they are the most powerful men in the realm. 

The plot of my book does draw upon the truth, though I am not claiming Shakespeare was a Tudor James Bond. Back then, he might very well have been called upon to report on people to powerful men at court, since many others were given similar tasks, whether they liked it or not. Shakespeare’s most famous patron was the young, handsome and very rich, Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. Will dedicated sonnets to him, including ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, using such flowery prose some have suggested they must have been lovers, though flattering dedications to a patron were fully expected, no matter how chaste the relationship. 

The Earl of Southampton had a very powerful enemy at Elizabeth’s court. Sir Robert Cecil took over the role of her principal advisor from his father, William and became spymaster for both Elizabeth and her successor, King James the 1st. He even uncovered the Gunpowder Plot. Back in Shakespeare’s time, he would have known that the Earl of Southampton, a lover of plays and poetry, was looking favourably on Will and might be about to give him patronage. Crucially, the Earl was also a Catholic in a Protestant land and suspected of conspiring against the Queen. Later, in 1601, he would join the Essex Rebellion against her, and be sentenced to life imprisonment, though he was eventually released by King James. Perhaps more importantly, the two men hated one another. Wriothesley was ward to Cecil’s father as a child, and they grew up together. Cecil was very short and had a curved back caused by scoliosis. He envied Southampton’s good looks, his vast fortune and, most galling of all, his ability to charm the Queen into becoming her favourite. Southampton also broke off his engagement to Cecil’s niece, humiliating her and, by extension, his family. 

This was a time when plots against Elizabeth the 1st abounded. As a protestant Queen in a religiously divided nation, she was always a target. Catholics still saw her as the illegitimate child of an illegal second marriage, between Henry the 8th and Anne Boleyn. If they needed any further encouragement, the Pope himself declared, in an official Papal Bull to his faithful, that removing and even killing the Queen of England was no crime, since he had already excommunicated her. He was granting Elizabeth’s English Catholic subjects official permission to commit a regicide, blessed by God himself. 

Cecil already had a network of spies everywhere, and he needed them to protect the Queen. Most notably, Christopher Marlowe is believed to have spied for him in the Lowlands, and he was a far more famous and successful playwright than Will Shakespeare at this point. It is usually accepted that Marlowe died in a ‘tavern brawl’ in 1593, but the building was not a tavern and the only other men there were his friends; Skeres, Frizer and Poley, all of whom had links to the criminal world and had worked for Robert Cecil. Poley even played a significant part in the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots, when he acted as a double agent during the Babington Plot of 1586. Significantly, Marlowe was about to be brought before the Privy Council, to be questioned about dangerous heretical writings that would have severely embarrassed Cecil, his former employer. How convenient that he was instead stabbed in the eye, by a supposed friend, just before he had the opportunity to discredit the Queen’s spymaster by association. 

There is another interesting historical slant to this story. When Will Shakespeare left Stratford as a young man, he had little or no money. By 1592, he was an actor who had just been paid the sum of two pounds for his first play. Within a little over a year, he had somehow acquired the enormous sum of fifty pounds. Enough to become a shareholder in a new theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. No one knows how he did this. Many believe the money came from his patron, the Earl, but that is a lot to pay to have sonnets dedicated to you, hence the suspicion that Will might have been Southampton’s lover. In my book, Will hopes to get the money by risking his life to uncover the enormous secret linked to the suspicious death of Lady Celia. 

Revealing anything more would be a spoiler and, like spies everywhere, I reserve the right to keep some secrets. But, if you would like to know what really happened to Celia, and how Will manages to narrowly avoid a gruesome death, at the hands of two of the most powerful men in the realm, you can find the answers between the pages of ‘A Serpent In The Garden’.

A Serpent in the Garden by Howard Linsey. (Canelo) Out Now

London, 1592. 28-year-old William Shakespeare is the rising man of English theatre. But plague has hit the capital, and the playhouses are to be shut. Livelihoods, and lives, are at stake. Lady Celia Vernon is one of the first to perish but did she really die of plague? Her cousin, the Earl of Southampton, orders Will to discover the truth in a London filled with conspirators, cutthroats and traitors. The Queen's spymaster, Robert Cecil, suspects the Earl of treason and orders Will to spy on him in return. Caught between two of the most powerful men in the kingdom, Will cannot possibly serve both masters, and could easily become the next victim of the killer he is trying to catch. With his future, safety and life on the line, Will uncovers a devastating secret, and changes the course of his, and the world’s destiny forever.

J D Kirk on Living with Jack Logan

Officially, it has been just over five years since I first met DCI Jack Logan, the main protagonist of the crime fiction series I write set in the Scottish Highlands.

In that time, as I’ve uncovered some of his many quirks and foibles, I have gradually come to realise something significant - Jack has been hanging around for a long time before then.

I am, by nature, a Very Nice Man. I’m patient. I’m polite. I will try to deescalate confrontation whenever I can. I put it down to parenting, and too many Superman comics as a kid. I was never a Boy Scout – to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t exist in the small Highland town I grew up in - but if I had been, I would have absolutely nailed it.

We all do it to some extent or other – bite our tongues, rather than say out loud what we’re really thinking. I’ve never liked making people feel bad, and, being a six-foot-four Scottish man, am always wary that I could come across as intimidating.

Jack Logan doesn’t bother worrying about these things, though. And he’s six-foot-six.

I’ve written about Jack non-stop for over half a decade now, but I realise that I’ve felt him lurking in the background for most of my adult life.

He was there when I worked in a bar in Fort William, on the day that a group of Buckie Young Farmers kicked off and almost dropped a decorative whisky cast on another customer. I chased all fifteen of them down the street, before common sense kicked in and I raced back to the pub before they realised quite how badly I was outnumbered.

That chase along the High Street, I think, was Jack Logan taking the wheel.

He’s been bubbling below the surface on other occasions, too. When I finally told a self-important manager at the call centre I worked at in my early twenties exactly what I and everyone else in the building thought of his behaviour, that was Jack.

When I explained, quite firmly, to the sketchy landlord of our even sketchier flat that, no, he wouldn’t be getting his rent this month, because one of the rotting windows had fallen out of the frame and smashed on the pavement three floors below, Jack had my back.

The older I get, and the more I write about him, the more alike we become. We’re both equally as tormented by and besotted with our dogs. We’re both a little too partial to a roll and square sausage. We both hate camper van drivers, and face similar difficulties when it comes to getting behind the wheel of a Ford Fiesta. 

We’re the same age, too, although I like to think I look younger.

On a more fundamental level, I believe we share the same moral compass. The only difference being that Jack is much more ready and willing to stab people in the eye with the pointy bit.

But, I’ve come to realise that I’m not only Jack Logan. I’m the other characters, too. 

I share DC Tyler Neish’s inability to get through a day without some sort of personal disaster. I’ve never come close to being hit by a train like he has, but I did once step off a moving bus and get wrapped around a lamp post, then hit on the back of the head by the wing mirror when I stood up.

Like DS Hamza Khaled, I’m the family tech expert, called upon regularly by older relatives to fix their broadband, or their iPads, or to explain why the TV remote isn’t working (the answer inevitably being: ‘Because that’s not the remote, it’s your phone.’)

I share DI Ben Forde’s warmth towards people, Shona Maguire’s love for a Pot Noodle, and DC Sinead Bell’s near-supernatural ability to tolerate idiots.

And, though I’m almost afraid to admit it, I’m disgraced former Det Supt Bob Hoon, too. Bob is just me, but with all the switches that control the friendly, affable parts of my personality flipped in the opposite direction, and the anger dial cranked up to eleven.

Blend all the series’ characters together - heroes and villains alike – and the resulting gloopy mess would, I think, be quite recognisable as their creator. 

Only, you know, you’d have to keep it in a jug.

As I approach fifty, I find both my patience and my ability to suffer fools rapidly dwindling. I honestly don't know if it's an age thing, or if I've just been spending too much time in Logan's company. 

Perhaps it's a bit of both - a perfect storm of middle-aged grumpiness and fictional detective influence. If it's the latter then, with no plans to stop writing the series anytime soon, I've a feeling it's going to make the next few years very interesting. Call centre managers and dodgy landlords, you have been warned... 

But then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, in a world that feels increasingly chaotic, there's something to be said for channelling your inner Jack Logan - standing up for what's right, even if it means ruffling a few feathers along the way. 

A Killer of Influencer by J D Kirk (Canelo) Out Now 

Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers – and families – in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts. And then, the livestreams begin. Broadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival. With each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end – live on camera. As the likes increase and the death toll rises, DCI Jack Logan and his team must traverse both the Scottish wilderness and the darkest corners of the internet to try and save the remaining captives. But how do you catch a killer who is always one click ahead?

More information about J D Kirk and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook and on Instagram @jdkirkbooks

A.A. Chaudhuri on the importance of strong characterisation in the Psychological Thriller genre

There are many reasons why I love the psychological thriller genre. An iconic twist, spine-tingling tension, the classic unreliable narrator, and sinister mind games are just some of its timeless traits that make it such an enthralling, memorable and addictive genre.

But for me, in order for those attributes to flourish and really resonate with readers, it is vital to get the characterisation right. First and foremost, it’s the characters who are driving the plot forward and everything they do and say has an immense bearing on other important aspects like tension and suspense, or even whether a twist is believable. If, as an author, I have not developed my characters enough to make them feel real and believable, then it is unlikely that my readers will be invested in the story. After all, the clue is in the name: ‘psychological’ thriller. Fundamentally, this means that as an author I must step into the shoes of my characters, penetrating their psyches as deeply as possible, and really get to grips with what makes them tick as people. This can either be done through the first- or third-person narrative – I prefer the first person because I find it more effective, but it’s very much the author’s choice. If I have not infiltrated my character’s mindset, then it is unlikely everything else that makes this genre so compelling will fall into place. For example, if my unreliable narrator is bland and one-dimensional, they will not be so intriguing or believable because I have not shown the reader what drives and haunts them, thereby making them unreliable. Likewise, if I have not dropped in subtle clues and insights into my character’s nature or behaviour in the meat of the book, a final twist related to that particular character might not make as much sense, leaving the reader feeling at best deflated, at worst cheated.

Strong characterisation has a knock-on effect on everything we deem essential in a good psychological thriller. Unlike in a straight thriller, where there is often a fair amount of physical conflict, in the psychological thriller we focus on the characters’ inner conflict, their mental mind games with each other, also played out through dialogue. A reader needs to ‘feel’ a character’s tension, to ‘hear’ the fear in their voices, to understand by essentially ‘penetrating’ their brains what is motivating them to behave in the way they do, for all the other core characteristics of the genre to work. It is the characters’ experiences, thoughts, hang-ups, emotions, and actions that are driving the story, rather than physical action, and so the tension we expect from this genre will come from getting inside those characters’ heads and understanding what is at stake for them.

In my new psychological thriller, Under Her Roof, struggling writer – Sebastian - rents a room in the palatial Hampstead mansion of beautiful mysterious widow, Adriana. The rent is ridiculously cheap and despite his misgivings which centre around Adriana’s strange rules and the fact that the previous lodger died under tragic circumstances, Sebastian cannot resist taking her up on her offer. Things soon take an ominous turn for Sebastian when he realises that both he and his landlady are being watched, and that the terrifying situation he finds himself in may be linked to Adriana’s troubled past.

From very early on, the reader is made aware that both landlady and tenant are hiding dark secrets; secrets that haunt and inspire all sorts of negative feelings in them – guilt, fear, shame, to name but a few. We do not know what those secrets are initially, of course, but we know from the negative emotions they feel and from how tormented they are, that they cannot be good. In this way, the tension accelerates and we, the readers, have no idea if we can trust Seb and Adriana who clearly have something to hide and are harbouring such dark emotions. Yet, at the same time, we want to empathise with them because it is clear they have suffered serious injustices in the past and are by no means bad people. In this way, through my characterisation I have hopefully induced both suspicion and empathy on the reader’s part for my characters, making them more intriguing as unreliable narrators. Seb and Adriana do not just share an artistic connection, they are drawn to one another by their mutual loss and grief. Both perfect examples of what we all are as human beings – fallible. Two people with troubled pasts and terrible secrets that haunt and ensnare them in a never-ending cycle of sadness, guilt and fear, but who find themselves at the mercy of another whose intentions remain unclear, but who appears to delight in their inner turmoil, thereby ramping up that sense of dread and tension that makes this genre so addictive!

My books tend to be quite complex, but people are often surprised to hear I am not a meticulous plotter. What I do spend a lot of time on before I start writing, however, is drafting detailed character profiles. For me this is crucial, so that my readers feel able to connect with a character and understand what is driving them. To this end, for me a character’s appearance is the least important consideration. It’s the way they conduct themselves and speak to others, the inner turmoil in their heads, the way something in their childhood impacts them in adulthood, what they might love or fear, excel or perform poorly at, and finally the dark secrets they may be keeping from others and which have a bearing on their behaviour in the present. All these factors have an impact on how a character is perceived in the book, on the reader being able to connect with them, and in driving up that impending sense of dread and nerve-wracking tension we expect from the genre.

In summary, we all love an unreliable narrator, high tension, mind games and a killer twist in our psychological thrillers, but great characterisation is key to these beloved traits falling into place.

Under Her Roof by A A Chaudhuri (Hera/Canelo) Out Now.

It seems too good to be true… When struggling writer Sebastian finds a room to let in a palatial Hampstead residence he cannot believe his luck. The rent is ridiculously cheap, and he immediately feels a connection with his beautiful, widowed landlady, Adriana. It is. Things take a dark turn when he finds out what happened to the last lodger. Could this be why the house is a fortress of security, and why Adriana seems so fragile? Adriana doesn’t want to talk about the death and sadness that seem to follow her wherever she goes, and Sebastian has secrets of his own. Now someone is watching their every move and there is nowhere to hide. This house of light becomes a dark nightmare as the threat ramps up - what does the watcher want? And how far will they go to get it?

More information about A A Chaudhuri can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on “X” @AAChaudhuri and on Facebook and Instagram @aachaudhuri

 

 

Rachel Lynch on writing The Rich

Writing The Rich was a new challenge for me after writing eleven Kelly Porter police procedural books, but that was the point; I wanted to explore a new world. The world of the privileged elite and how they seem to stay out of the crime statistics and tend to be treated differently, even when caught, fascinated me. 

Diving into a new setting in Cambridge, as well as a host of new characters filled me with both excitement and trepidation. I love crafting new personalities for my books, but pulling it off, after the Kelly Porter books achieving such incredible success, was daunting. Writing a psychological thriller, with untrustworthy characters, numerous villains and a flawed hero made me face a new set of rules. In police procedural, good battles evil and the detective solves the riddle in the end; in the world of the psychological thriller, it’s all about the twists and suspense, and I wanted to make The Rich a true whodunnit right to the last page.

Writing crime from the point of view of those involved, rather than a hero trying to do good, was also new. Doctor Alex Moore is a psychologist to the wealthy of Cambridge, and she counsels an array of clients, but her own life isn’t perfect. She has three children, all of whom struggle with their own pressures, and an alcoholic husband. I wanted to make Alex as vulnerable as her clients, because at the end of the day, she’s human too. Simply because she’s a therapist for other people’s problems doesn’t mean she has none of her own. It was important to me that none of my characters were untouched by trauma because I believe it’s more of a reflection of true life.

In exploring the devastating effects of tragedy on people’s lives, I wanted to shine a light on their secrets and how they lie to protect them. As Alex steers her clients through their healing, she doesn’t stay immune to the impact that one’s past has on the present. As all their pasts unravel, it’s soon clear that when a person carries damage around with them, they’ll go to startling lengths to deceive. The plot was a complex one, but I’m used to that with my Kelly books, and I enjoy giving the reader multiple voices to contend with.

There’s often a serious social injustice theme to my writing and the Kelly books handle tough topics such as knife crime, bullying, people trafficking, drug abuse and serious crime. I wanted to be just as robust with The Rich by exposing the glaring discrepancies in the incidence of crime amongst people with adverse childhood experiences. It’s indisputable that you’re far more likely to go to prison, become an addict, fail in school, or have a shorter life expectancy if you have faced several childhood traumas and I wanted to play with the concept that, as a result of this inequity, The Rich could literally get away with murder, because society believes a certain stereotype of a criminal. This is exactly what Doctor Alex exploits in The Rich and her knowledge of the system puts her at the centre of the race to find out who committed a terrible crime.

I must admit I do have a soft spot for the baddies I create. I have fun with all my characters, and I find writing despicable back stories highly entertaining. I hope that if I enjoy the creative process then it will come across in my writing and give my readers a more satisfying and rounded experience. I don’t shy away from hard-hitting subjects and the ending of The Rich is a good example of that. I like to push the limits of what humans will do, and the lengths they will go to avoid exposure. 

It was a fine balance juggling between the two sub-genres when I wrote The Rich. I was completing Kelly Porter book eleven at the time – I’ve just finished editing number twelve – and it was jarring moving between the two. Kelly is a rounded heroine – not perfect – who I’ve been told in reviews is highly relatable. Readers have every right to feel secure when they pick up a Kelly book that she’s going to catch the perpetrators in the end. I find that when psychological thriller fans pick up one of their favourites, they expect something quite different, and the early reviews of The Rich have borne this out. There is common loathing for some of the characters and that is the whole point. It’s not clear who is the perpetrator because they’re all flawed. The detective is inept too, which was difficult for me to craft after writing so many books about Kelly who is a consummate professional. It was hard for me to craft a police officer who is so clearly corruptible, like DS Hunt. Again, that was the point, he is blinded by the status of those he investigates and immediately looks to those with a background he sees as fitting what criminals should look like.

I would like to write more privileged thrillers, and I have plenty of ideas. It’s a well-known fact that, as humans, we judge people within seven seconds of meeting them and much of that assessment balances on appearance, accent, and perceived social status. This is how to get away with murder.

The Rich by Rachel Lynch (Canelo) Out Now

They can buy everything except the truth. Each week, they come to lie on her couch. Carrie, Henry and Grace. They don’t know one another, but Dr Alex knows them all too well. She listens as they reveal their dirtiest little secrets. Then a murderer strikes in their elite neighbourhood. Could her clients hold the answers? As a psychologist, she knows that anyone can be a killer if they’re pushed hard enough. But only some can get away with it.

Rachel Lynch can be found on X at @r_lynchcrime. She can also be found on Facebook.

 

All Good Things Must Come to an End: the Bittersweet Emotions Concluding a Series.

During lockdown, I wrote 50,000 words on a time-jump novel – a love story. It was good, but I had the annoying habit of killing people – too many for a romance, my agent dryly pointed out.

So, the book was a duff, but the characters – grumpy, loner Robin Butler and chatty Freya West – stuck in my head. I returned to my happy place, and started writing a police procedural. I had an idea – that a man would be found dead in a hotel room with all the markers of a tragic accident, but where the cop he was having an affair with suspected more sinister goings-on. That became Last Place You Look – the first in the Butler and West series.

Robin Butler and Freya West have been an absolute joy to write. Some characters arrive fully formed and Robin was exactly that. From the beginning I knew how he would react in any circumstance, down to what he would say and the expression on his face. I even knew what he looked like.

This makes the process of writing a book incredibly easy. Or at least – easier! Half of the battle of a first draft is getting to know the characters. But with Butler and West that was sorted from the off. All I needed was a pesky plot. No mean feat!

There was a downside – they had an incredible amount of backstory. I have spreadsheets detailing mannerisms, descriptions, timelines, ages and murder victims. Exposition can get boring and wordy – necessary for those who hadn’t read the books before but not so much it gives previous plots away. Thank goodness for editors, to give feedback on the worst of this.

But as someone I deeply loved, I had a habit of putting Robin through the worst of situations. He starts the series utterly alone and depressed, and across five books – trying to avoid spoilers – his best friend is arrested for murder, he’s been punched in the face, dumped by his girlfriend, and put into hospital twice.

And that’s not mentioning his long-standing crush on Freya.

From the beginning, Robin and Freya were destined to be together. But, as in all good romances, the path of true love can never run smooth.

Putting a love story into a crime book has met with mixed reviews from readers. Personally, I love it. The best thrillers have an element of romance – the Strike series by Robert Galbraith, Josh and Maeve as written by Jane Casey, Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta and Wesley. It is human to fall in love. We invest our time in these people; we care. 

Even with the best of these novels, a writer can’t keep star-crossed lovers apart forever. I wanted Robin and Freya to fall in love – they deserved their happy ending. But it’s bittersweet. Once together, they can’t work as partners in the police force. So, in my head at least, the series had to end.

Completing that final proofread of Out of the Ashes was, I must confess, a little emotional. The book, and the series, is exactly how I wanted it to be and I have been overjoyed by ever single review and message from readers saying how much they’ve loved it. I will miss Robin. It’s a strange thing to say about a character that exists solely in my own head, but it’s true. If I’d spent as much time thinking about a real man as I have Robin, my husband would have reason to be concerned.

I am excited already about what’s next to come. I have just finished the first book in a new series. Finding the Dead follows PC Lucy Halliday, a police dog handler to her specialist search dog, Moss, as she comes to terms with the disappearance of her husband, eighteen months previously. But when they find a body in the woods, the subsequent murder investigation, under the watchful eye of DI Jack Ellis, gives Lucy pause. All this time, Lucy has suspected her husband is dead. A renowned journalist, he was investigating something new when he went missing. Could this woodland hold the answer?

There are dead bodies, dirty cops, dogs and deception. And a little romance – but not where you might expect it.

As for Butler and West, I still have plans. An idea is growing. So, who knows, they may yet return…

In the meantime, you have Lucy, Jack and Moss to keep you company. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Out of the Ashes by Louisa Scarr (Canelo Press) Out Now.

Stalking. Arson. Murder.Butler and West are back together... and the stakes have never been higher.When an old friend tells DS Freya West that she's being stalked by someone she met online, Freya promises to help. But there are no leads, and the dating site refuses to give up their data. To make matters more complicated, DI Robin Butler is back in town. He's investigating a string of arson attacks that have escalated to murder, and the cases seem to be connected somehow. They're going to need their wits about them... Because this is a killer more devious than any they've hunted before, and he wants to obliterate everything they hold dear.

You can find Louisa Scarr on X @paperclipgirl. And on Instagram @louisascarrwriter and on Facebook.

Investigating Death of a Solicitor by Marion Todd

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Turning a detective novel on its head by having a solicitor as the victim. Yes, it did seem like a good idea.

Then I started to think about the likely evidence – statements from family members, from staff and colleagues, legal associates and of course the clients. And that’s when the good idea suddenly became a bit more complicated.

I mistakenly thought that in the case of a solicitor’s murder, the police would have immediate and unrestricted access to his client files. But, being cautious in nature, I decided to check and thank goodness I did. I could not have been more wrong. 

I had reckoned without what is known as client privilege and The Law Society of Scotland is quite clear on the point. A solicitor has a duty to maintain client confidentiality and that duty does not wane over time; nor, I was dismayed to learn, does it expire if the solicitor dies, even if his death is thought to be suspicious.

I took some time to reflect on how this would affect the plot of my book. Normally I put myself in the detective’s shoes and consider how she would proceed. If the victim had been, say, a recruitment consultant or a marketing specialist my detective would likely have been granted a warrant to search their home and business premises, seizing any documents which could be relevant. But for a solicitor’s murder, a rethink was required.

My initial thought was to have another solicitor working alongside my murder victim – a business partner, perhaps. He or she would be able to judge what information could be given to the police without prejudicing clients’ interests. And then I thought maybe not…

There is a quotation attributed to St Augustine which goes something like, ‘Oh Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.’ It comes into my mind every time I plot a crime novel. I want my detective to solve the mystery, but ‘not yet’. Keeping readers turning pages to find out the truth is, after all, the job of the crime novelist. And thus I realised I had stumbled upon a useful plot device. 

I made my solicitor a sole practitioner with the only staff a receptionist, a paralegal and a trainee who had recently left the firm. Then I introduced a complication in the life of the paralegal and made the trainee temporarily inaccessible (she was off grid, climbing cliffs in the north of Scotland with no mobile reception). Thus, I had created a few more obstacles, delaying the uncovering of evidence.

Then I stepped back and considered what might happen next. How would the police proceed with such a tricky investigation? 

I returned to the Law Society website and learned they would appoint another solicitor to manage the clients’ interests. It seemed reasonable for this to take a few days which would further frustrate my detective.

But, once that solicitor had been appointed, what then? What information would the police be given, and would a warrant be required? It was time for some legal advice.

A fellow author put me in touch with two solicitor friends, Euan and Katie, who kindly agreed to help. Over an exchange of emails they confirmed a warrant would be needed to access any information held about clients. But, they cautioned, if the scope of the warrant was too broad, any evidence found during a search might be challenged by the defence in court and declared inadmissible.

I was briefly tempted to have my detective pursue this course of action, snatching evidence away at the eleventh hour. But it seemed unlikely the police would draw up such a warrant in the circumstances and I do try to be as realistic as possible. So I weighed up how little information they might need. Euan and Katie suggested restricting the terms of the warrant to client contact details only. Keep it specific and narrow, they said, and it’s more likely to be granted.

And so I built my specific and narrow warrant into the plot. I took the paralegal and former trainee out of the picture for a few days, and I put my unfortunate solicitor to death. The book which resulted, A Blind Eye, was a challenge to write but it also gave me great heart, knowing the legal profession protects the interests of its clients with such vigour and integrity. I certainly won’t be murdering another solicitor any time soon!

A Blind Eye by Marion Todd (Published by Canelo) Out Now

Can DI Clare Mackay unravel a dead man's secrets? Harry Richards, a local solicitor, is found in his car, throat slit. DI Clare Mackay is on the case. She soon learns that Harry was not the upstanding man he seemed to be. Finding the killer should be easy. Then the wife of one of Harry's colleagues is discovered dead in her car, and Clare realises there is something more sinister at play... Can she find out who's behind the murders before they turn their attention to her?

More information about Marion Todd and her work can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @MarionETodd and find her on Facebook and on Instagram @mariontoddwriter.

Books to Look Forward to from Canelo

 January 2023

For DCI Gillard, sometimes old sins cast long shadows…Under a motorway flyover lies the body of a young man. Days earlier, he had been involved in an altercation with DCI Craig Gillard’s pregnant partner Sam. Now he’s dead…Meanwhile, something is brewing in the criminal underworld. Whispers of a big job have reached the Met’s Flying Squad. Something is going to be stolen, and soon. Something worth £500m. But what? And where? And how does it relate to the body under the overpass? It should be a simple case: stop the burglary, crack the gang, find the murderer – but for Gillard, once again it’s personal… The Body in The Shadows is by Nick Louth.

The Investigator is by John Sandford. By twenty-four, Letty Davenport has seen more action than most law enforcement professionals. Working a desk job for US Senator Christopher Colles, she’s bored and ready to quit. But when her skills catch Colles’ attention, she is offered a lifeline: real investigative work. Texas oil companies are reporting thefts of crude. Rumour has it that a sinister militia is involved. Who is selling the oil? And what are they doing with the profits? Letty is partnered with a Department of Homeland Security investigator, John Kaiser. When the case turns deadly, they know they're onto something big. The militia has an explosive plan… and the clock is ticking down.

February 2023

A Terrible Village Poisioning is by Hannah Hendy. The local mayor has a dinner date with death…With school out for the summer, Margery and Clementine Butcher-Baker are taking advantage of the break to go on holiday. They plan to explore the village of St-Martins-on-the-Water and rest before the chaos of Mrs Smith's impending hen do. By the end of their first night, the local mayor lies dead on the floor of the hotel restaurant, having been poisoned by his meal. The villagers are convinced: The Poisoner is back. As the residents turn to the duo with suspicion and begin to freeze them out, Margery and Clementine are left with more questions than answers. Everyone is convinced that the pair – and Clementine in particular – are bad news, but why? And as more people in the village start to become unwell, the question remains, is The Poisoner back, or is this the work of a new killer? And will they strike again?

Blood and Fireflies is by B M Howard. A Dark Murder. A secret brought to light … June, 1797. From his headquarters at the Villa Mombello near Milan, the French revolutionary army’s young general, one Napoleon Bonaparte, dictates peace terms to Europe’s monarchies with breath-taking ease and arrogance. But when a series of malicious events at Mombello threaten to set Italy ablaze once again, and talk of a ghoul stalking in the night committing atrocities spreads like wildfire among the assembled guests, Napoleon forces failed magistrate Felix Gracchus out of retirement to solve the puzzling murders. But when a series of malicious events at Mombello threaten to set Italy ablaze once again, and talk of a ghoul stalking in the night committing atrocities spreads like wildfire among the assembled guests, Napoleon forces failed magistrate Felix Gracchus out of retirement to solve the puzzling murders. Gracchus’s unwilling escort in this military world is ambitious but underachieving young cavalry officer Dermide Vanderville. Aided by Napoleon’s unruly tomboy sister Paolette, they set about unravelling the twisted skeins of intrigue and terrible secrets clogging the mansion’s shadowy corridors.

Having just completed a complex recovery assignment, covert salvage specialist Korso is in no mood to take on another job so soon, but he has little choice when he’s contacted by Cole Ashcroft, an ex-colleague who’s calling in a debt. An official at the US Embassy in Bulgaria has approached Cole with a well-paying salvage job, but only if he can persuade Korso to plan the whole operation. A chemist for a pharmaceutical company has secretly developed a revolutionary glaucoma pill, one with an unexpected side effect that could make it the discovery of the century. But the chemist has since been found dead, and the prototypes are missing... Aware that ownership of these pills could shift the balance of military power overnight, the embassy man offers to pay Korso handsomely to locate and recover them using any means necessary. But with a job this big Korso also knows he’ll have to assemble a team to help him, and that brings its own set of problems. Because with potential profits in the billions, can he really trust anyone...? The Prototype is by Jason Dean.

Agent in the Shadows is by Alex Gerlis. There's a traitor in the pack... Who can you trust? The extraordinary final instalment of the Wolf Pack series. June, 1943. In Lyon, the capital of the French resistance, a secret meeting is held under orders from General de Gaulle. The objective is to unite all resistance factions. The future of France is on the line. But when the meeting is raided by the Gestapo under Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon', the plan disintegrates and the leaders are captured. The movement has been betrayed. There is a traitor in Lyon. British undercover agents Jack Miller and Sophia von Naundorf are sent to France. They must find the informer and save the resistance. But the Gestapo is on the hunt. More traitors emerging from the shadows. The net is closing.

March 2023

What The Shadows Hide is by M J Lee. To love and to cherish, till death did them part... Two desiccated bodies are found in each other's arms in the bricked up room of a derelict Victorian warehouse. After six months of work, the police have nothing and Ridpath is finally called in to investigate. Dubbed the Romeo and Juliet murders by the press, so many questions remain unanswered. Who are they? Why were they there? Who killed them? And why was the coroner so keen for him to work on this particular case? Ridpath is plunged into his most difficult investigation yet, in a race against time to discover the truth. Has an unknown serial killer been operating in Manchester for the last twenty years? 

All The Grey Cats is by Craig Thomas. Despite nearing the end of his intelligence career, spymaster Kenneth Aubrey is given yet another critical mission: he must arrange the defection of an East German officer, Kurt Winterbach, who holds important Soviet and East German military secrets. Under Aubrey’s authority, Winterbach is brutally interrogated by British Intelligence, and dies whilst trying to escape. His mother, the vengeful senior KGB officer Brigitte Winterbach, blames Aubrey and seeks retribution, with the power of the Stasi at her disposal. Meanwhile in Nepal, Tim Gardiner,Aubrey’s adoptive son and ex-Ghurkha, finds himself hunted down by an East German wet squad. He knows something he shouldn’t: the KGB are planning a coup in the wake of the death of the king. But what he doesn’t yet know, is that his life is intended to be a forfeit for Kurt Winterbach’s. With Russian war planes poised to invade and riots breaking out as the king approaches his death, Gardiner will be the bait to lure Aubrey into a fateful meeting with Bridgitte Winterbach only hours before the Soviet takeover, in which the future of Nepal hangs explosively in the balance…

April 2023

Welcome to Eldey, an island with deadly secrets. Mona is a carefree artist, staying at The Cloister to work on her illustrations. Beth is the harried mother of a toddler, on the remote Welsh island for a weekend escape with her family. Charlotte wanted a romantic getaway with her husband, not a trip with his troubled teenage stepdaughter. One of them is a serial killer who poisoned four of her friends at her eleventh birthday party. When one of the hotel guests is found dead, it becomes clear to Mallory Dawson – the night manager of the boutique island hotel and former police detective – that The Birthday Girl is among them. Three guests who fit the profile, but which of them would risk everything to kill again? The Birthday Girl is by Sarah Ward.

Dark Angel is by John Sandford. Letty Davenport’s days working a desk job are behind her. Her previous actions at a gunfight in Texas – and her incredible skills with firearms – draw the attention of several branches of the US government, and make her a perfect fit for even more dangerous work. The Department of Homeland Security tasks her with infiltrating a hacker group that is intent on wreaking havoc nationwide. Letty and her reluctant partner from the NSA pose as free-spirited programmers for hire and embark on a cross country road trip to the group’s California headquarters. But soon they begin to suspect that the hackers are not their only enemy. Someone within their own circle may have betrayed them, and has ulterior motives that place their mission – and their lives – in grave danger.

May 2023

A Thief's Justice is by Douglas Skelton. London, 1716. Revenge is a dish best served ice-cold… The city is caught in the vice-like grip of a savage winter. Even the Thames has frozen over. But for Jonas Flynt– thief, gambler, killer – the chilling elements are the least of his worries… Justice Geoffrey Dumont has been found dead at the base of St Paul’s cathedral, and a young male sex-worker, Sam Yates, has been taken into custody for the murder. Yates denies all charges, claiming he had received a message to meet the judge at the exact time of death. The young man is a friend of courtesan Belle St Clair, and she asks Flynt to investigate. As Sam endures the horrors of Newgate prison, they must do everything in their power to uncover the truth and save an innocent life, before the bodies begin to pile up. But time is running out. And the gallows are beckoning...

June 2023

Black Valley Farm is by Sheila Bugler. She tells everyone her name is Clare Brown. She's twenty-seven years old. She's an only child. Her parents were killed in a car crash. She used to have a black cat called Ollie. None of these things are true. Ten years ago, nine people were found dead at Black Valley Farm. The only suspect was never found. Clare has spent a decade living a lie but a new podcast on the murders threatens to bring her carefully built life crashing down. But Clare isn’t the only one hiding something. Somebody knows she’s lying, and they’ll stop at nothing to ensure the truth never comes to light. 

The Expendables by S J A Turney

We’ve all read books or seen movies where we know damned well that the hero will survive and the villain will die a grisly death. After all, that pretty much describes 90% of all books and films. And usually, when the hero does die or the villain does live, it’s expected too. Gladiator had to turn out as it did. Any tale or movie of the life of Julius Caesar us unlikely to throw you an unexpected ending. Angus Donald’s recent ‘The Death of Robin Hood’ might be the most extreme example I can come up with, but it proves the point well. And (at least in literature rather than on screen) Batman’s enemies are always banged up rather than killed. The point is we expect lead characters to survive and villains to die. And usually when that’s not the case, we are led to expect that from the beginning.

Often that’s a thing a writer is comfortable with, because their readers are comfortable with it. And if you’re writing a series (say a run of detective novels) it might give you something of a headache to kill off your detective part way through. On TV this has not always been the case, of course. Taggart without Taggart. From Morse to Lewis. But on the whole it doesn’t work well in book series. Writers don’t like to kill important characters without the readers wanting it.

But sometimes it’s nice to buck the trend. Lord of the Rings threw me my earliest curveball when Boromir took those three arrows to the torso less than a third of the way into the story! Guy Gavriel Kay in ‘A Song for Arbonne’ kills off the character we all spent the book hoping would reconcile with his brother and come back. Darth Vader! Be honest. No one ever wants Darth Vader to die. He’s too cool for that. And on the flip side, James Wilde in his Hereward books actually has Hereward the Wake live through the end of his revolt and go on to whole new adventures where historical record sees him disappear. Go on… kill off the ones they like. You know you want to.

 

Perhaps the best example of that for me is also Star Wars. Because we all know that Boba Fett is the cool customer, and don’t you just wince at the awful decision of George Lucas’s to drop him in the Sarlacc Pit? And that’s why a novel was written around how he got back out. Because that sat so badly with fans.

But the things is that these deaths, especially when carried out in an arbitrary and off-hand fashion, create an atmosphere of tension and the unexpected. When Boromir dies, we spend the rest of the book on edge, aware that Tolkien could very easily kill off another of our faves. In Angus Donald’s Outlaw series, the Sheriff of Nottingham dies less than half way through the saga! And Little John is gone in the penultimate book! (Sorry for the spoiler there.) So that means that no one is truly safe from Donald’s pen. And that makes the series lively and tense. It adds something. Some writers take it to the level of an art form. I write in the historical genre and I do this often. Gordon Doherty and Anthony Riches are both well known for their body counts of principle characters, too. My latest novel (Insurgency) is the fourth in a series of historical fantasy books. And in the first of that series (Interregnum) I kill off a character so important to the plot part way through that I regularly receive emails from readers who are astonished that I did it.

On a similar note, with crime novels, while it’s fascinating to read about a murder and then follow the investigators through the book working out how it was done, it is often so much more exciting to read them when murders continue to happen throughout the book, perhaps becoming a race against the clock, or a race between criminal and investigator.

Expendables, you see? Throw an unexpected death in from time to time and keep the reader edgy and uncertain. It adds so much to the experience.

Insurgency by S J A Turney

For twenty years, civil war has torn the Empire apart, and the once proud soldiers of the Imperial army now fight as hired hands for greedy lords fighting over the remnants of a more glorious time.  Now the Empire is rising again under the benevolent reign of Emperor Kiva the Golden. Meanwhile his younger brother – the gifted warrior Quintillian – has been driven away from the Imperial Palace by an uncontrollable love for the Emperor’s wife Jala. Instead the honourable fighter chooses a life of simplicity as a sword for hire leaving the long legacy of his family behind. But not all ties of loyalty can be escaped and the bonds of family run deep…

Insurgency is published by Canelo, priced at £3.99 as an ebook

More information about SJA Turney can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @SJATurney or find him on Facebook.