CFP Neo-Victorian Criminalities, Detection, and Punishment

CFP Neo-Victorian Criminalities, Detection, 

and Punishment

University of Wolverhampton, 23rd-24th June 2025

Keynote speakers: Professor Claire Nally, Lee Jackson, and Nat Reeve

Organisers: Dr Helen Davies, University of Wolverhampton, and Dr Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz, University of Malaga

The contemporary fascination with Victorian criminalities and the popularity of the detection genre within Neo-Victorianism necessitates close critical attention. In particular, neo-Victorian literary and visual representations of criminals, murderers, serial killers, etc. as well as of sleuths raises ethical issues connected with the avidity of audiences for sensation and drama.

The neo-Victorian city becomes the scenario both of petty crimes and dreadful killings that are shaped by current perceptions of the Victorians and our own cultural context. The city is the place where identities become changeable, and choices can have deadly consequences. In this context, the question of ethics comes to the fore as revealing the identity of criminals and victims and dealing with issues connected with the dark side of society can be questionable and exploitative, especially when discussing the Victorian past.

At the same time, we need to explore the intersection of crime and detective fiction in connection with gender, ethnicity, class and disability, together with the LGTBQI+ community; certain groups were more likely to be criminalised in the Victorian era, with a troubling legacy in terms of contemporary social and cultural attitudes. Therefore, establishing the boundaries between historical crime and fictional crime and identity politics in neo-Victorianism become essential in the representation of both criminals and victims as well as sleuths in popular genres such as crime fiction and detection.

This event will run over two days, with public engagement events on 24th featuring Lee Jackson and Nat Reeve.

We invite contributions that include but are not limited to the following topics in relation to Neo-Victorian representations of crime:

-Historical crime versus fictional crime

-Neo-Victorian sensationalism and detection

-The aesthetics and ethics of crime 

-Detection, crime and identity politics

-Gender and detection

-Crime and ethnicity

-Crime and class 

-Crime and Disability

-LBTBQI+ sleuth identities

-LBTBQI+ criminals and victims

-Neo-Victorian remediations of past crimes

Please send a c. 250 word abstract for 20 min papers and c. 100 word biography toneovictoriancrimes@gmail.com by 14th March 2025.

The Age of Curiosity by Leonora Nattrass

It was Christmas 2022, and I was between projects, whiling away the holiday by mulling over my favourite Georgian romantic poets, and wondering if some episode in their often eccentric lives might provide a spark for my next historical mystery.

Modern biographies are all very well, but the most fun and detailed accounts are often contained in older ones, usually heavier on narrative and lighter on analysis. Accordingly, I was sitting in the festive kitchen, idly reading Alexander Gilchrist’s 1880 Life of William Blake, when I first came across the extraordinary story of seventeen-year-old Blake’s involvement with Westminster Abbey. 

Blake, then apprenticed to an engraver in London, was sent to the abbey to make sketches of the tombs and monuments for a forthcoming book. “From 1773, the Gothic monuments were for years his daily companions,” Gilchrist says. “Shut up alone with these solemn memorials of far-off centuries, the spirit of the past became his familiar companion.” 

This seemed very romantic – and nicely humanised by the fact that he often got locked in when the vergers forgot about him. I could already easily imagine strange goings on between the hundreds of eerie carved figures which crowd the abbey. 

But then, reading on, the plot thickened. 

In 1774, members of the London Society of Antiquaries appeared at the abbey, with permission from the king to open the tomb of Edward I, “Longshanks”, of Braveheart fame. The tyrant who threw his son’s lover bodily out of a window, sent Mel Gibson to be disembowelled, and pinched the Stone of Scone. (Other accounts of his character are available.) 

Edward’s tomb was of special interest to the antiquaries, since his will had ordained that after his death (in 1307) his tomb should be regularly opened and his body embalmed so that it might accompany any future English army against the Scots. This task had apparently been faithfully performed throughout the medieval period but the custom had been forgotten during the English Civil War and Commonwealth. 

When Longshanks’ tomb was opened, the antiquaries were delighted to find the still-robed, well-preserved mummy holding replicas of Edward the Confessor’s coronation sceptres which Cromwell had melted down a century earlier.

“I cannot help hoping that Blake (unseen) assisted at the ceremony,” Gilchrist ended his account of this little episode. 

By now, I certainly hoped so too, and only a brief recce on Google revealed that Gilchrist had missed out the best bit: Blake hadn’t just been present; he’d actually been roped in to sketch the mummified body of the king for posterity! 

What could be more fabulous than Westminster Abbey, the Society of Antiquaries, medieval mummies, and William Blake all together? 

The Society of Antiquaries was the archaeological equivalent of the Royal Society for scientists. Its members were very eager to find physical evidence for old historical accounts, some of which read like outrageous fiction to us today. The earth had been created at twelve noon, on the 23 October 4004 BC for instance; and Britain’s origin story involved exiled warriors from Troy fighting giants and tossing them off the cliffs at Totnes. 

The driving force behind the Society’s request to open the tomb was the elderly Joseph Ayloffe, who went on to write the official account of the event, ably assisted by (among others) fellow antiquarian, Daines Barrington. 

Barrington was a member of the Royal Society as well as the Antiquaries and, with the characteristic chutzpah of the times, was a prolific author on a remarkable variety of topics: childhood prodigies (how created?); bird song (a language?); and the possibility of reaching the North Pole (James Cook was to be roped in). With such eclectic expertise, opening the tomb of an ancient king wasn’t going to faze him!

Nowadays such an undertaking would doubtless be hedged about with safeguards and sucked-teeth warnings, but they were an intrepid lot in those days. And even a hundred years later, the Dean of the Abbey cheerfully dug up dozens of tombs on the flimsiest of pretexts. Such irreverence in such a reverent place seemed even riper for murder and mayhem. 

I was lucky enough to see the Abbey accounts for 1774, with all the names of the gardeners, vergers and other abbey servants of that year neatly inscribed beside their wages. Their names make it to the novel, but my badly behaved clergymen are all fictional, along with the outrageous, murderous consequences of what Gilchrist calls that “highly interesting bit of antiquarian sacrilege.”

Bells of Westminster by Leonora Nattrass (Profile Books) Out Now 

London, 1774. The opening of a royal tomb will end in murder...Susan Bell spends her days within the confines of Westminster Abbey, one of many who live in the grounds of the ancient building. Her father, the kindly but foolish Dean of Westminster, is always busy keeping the many canons and vergers in check, when not being romantically pursued by forceful widows. Life at the abbey is uneventful, even after the unwelcome arrival of Susan's cousin Lindley and his unusual scientific demonstrations. That is until the Society of Antiquaries come armed with a letter from King George III. They wish to open the tomb of Edward I, each to investigate their own academic interests - whether it be rumours of the royal body's embalmment, an obsession with Arthurian legends or even a supposed Roman temple to Apollo beneath the abbey's undercroft. However, as the Society prepares to open the tomb, a ghostly figure is seen walking the abbey cloisters, wearing the crown and shroud of the dead king. There is further uproar when one of the Antiquaries is found viciously murdered, and the corpse of Edward I is stolen. With her father's position under threat from the scandal, Susan feels bound to investigate these strange occurrences. Could one of the Society members be harbouring a murderous secret? Or is one of the abbey's own a killer?

More information about Leonora Natrass can be found here.

She can also be found on X @LeonoraNattrass and on instagram @leonoranattrass.

D V Bishop on keeping an ongoing series fresh

How does a writer keep an ongoing series of novels fresh when their publisher is eager for a new book each year? I’ve been pondering this lately, despite the fact it’s early in my crime writing career to fret about such challenges. After all, the latest Cesare Aldo novel A Divine Fury (out June 20th) is only the fourth in my series of Renaissance Florence thrillers.

Compare that to other authors and you’ll see I am just getting started. Ian Rankin publishes his twenty-fifth Rebus novel later this year, while Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti mysteries set in Venice now number more than thirty. And then there are the many, many Maigret tales by the masterful Georges Simenon...

Nonetheless, when A Divine Fury comes out, I’ll be finishing a draft of my fifth Aldo noel, and be thinking ahead to number six. Publish a new book every year and they soon mount up, regardless of whether that book emerges in spring [the season for debuts and those building a readership], sets forth in summer [holiday reads and mid-list favourites], or arrives in autumn [home to bestsellers and old favourites].

Like many crime writers, I have a morbid dread of repeating myself. [I also have an abiding fear that my latest book will not be the equal of my last, but I suspect this is true of almost every author, regardless of genre.] There are only so many ways to solve a murder in 1539 when facial recognition, DNA, CCTV and fingerprints are still centuries in the future.

Still, a fear of repetition didn’t stop me from wanting to write a crime series. Why? Because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. You could blame a childhood devouring the Famous Five, the Hardy Boys and other mysteries for younger readers. But I suspect the real culprit is the US cop drama Hill Street Blues which I grew up watching it in New Zealand.

I loved the show’s ongoing, character-led storylines and its then-unconventional approach to the police procedural. UK shows such as Bergerac and The Gentle Touch were no match for that. Even muscular series like The Professionals focused on standalone tales, whereas Hill Street Blues was far more novelistic.

That struck a chord with me, and inspired much of my own writing ever since. For example, I write a Warhammer fantasy novel called A Murder in Marienburg that was a thinly disguised homage to Hill Street Blues. Yes, the occasional elf wandered past in the background, but it was still a police procedural, albeit with spells and swords. 

Even when I was writing for the BBC medical drama series Doctors, I was still telling mystery stories, except they were solved by physicians rather than police. Finally, in 2017 I realised the stories I really wanted to tell were about crimes, the people who investigated them, and the consequences of transgressions against the law.

Keeping my Cesare Aldo historical thrillers fresh wasn’t a problem for the initial books; if anything, I worried about them being too varied. The first, City of Vengeance, is a conspiracy thriller in which all of Florence is under threat. By comparison, my second novel The Darkest Sin is a closed circle mystery set in a convent, making it a smaller scale story.

Happily, the story swerve didn’t alienate reader and The Darkest Sin went on to the CWA’s Historical Dagger. After that I decided each new Aldo novel should focus on a different kind of crime or employ a fresh sub-genre to keep myself and my readers on our toes. So, the third book, Ritual of Fire, features vendetta killings with each victim being burned alive.

Aldo book four, A Divine Fury, introduces a serial killer. Of course, nobody calls the killer that because such a description belongs to the 20th Century, not 1539. A Divine Fury also has exorcists, causing a dangerous collision of faith and fatalities. As Aldo tells his colleague Carlo Strocchi, investigating a murder that involves the church never ends well in Florence.

Looking ahead, next year’s book is an Ocean’s Eleven-esque caper in Renaissance Venice. After that Aldo is likely to face a Gothic mystery in book six. Sales shall determine whether he gets a seventh outing, but I’m open to suggestions for new sub-genres…

A Divine Fury by D V Bishop. (Pan Macmillian) Out Now

Florence. Autumn, 1539. A religious serial killer is haunting Florence and only Cesare Aldo can stop them. Cesare Aldo was once an officer for the city’s most feared criminal court. Following a period of exile, he is back – but demoted to night patrol, when only the drunk and the dangerous roam the streets. Chasing a suspect in the rain, Aldo discovers a horrifying scene beneath Michelangelo’s statue of David. Lifeless eyes gaze from the face of a man whose body has been posed as if crucified. It’s clear the killer had religious motives. When more bodies appear, Aldo believes an unholy murderer is stalking the citizens of Florence. Watching. Hunting. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike again . . .

Find out more about D. V. Bishop at his website: https://dvbishop.com/ 

Subscribe to his weekly author newsletter here: https://dvbishop.substack.com/ 

My inspiration for The Good Death, by S.D Sykes

 

‘Good’ and ‘Death’ are not words that we necessarily associate with one another, are they? In fact, there was something about the awkward juxtaposition of these two words that almost shocked me when I first came across this term. But it was once an expression that was all-too familiar to people. In fact, it was once profoundly important to society. 

But let me rewind a little. I’m the author of a series of historical crime novels, set in 14th century Kent and which follow the exploits of my protagonist – a young nobleman called Oswald de Lacy – the ‘spare’ who unexpectedly becomes head of his family when his older brothers die of plague. My latest novel ‘The Good Death’ centres around a death-bed confession that Oswald makes to his dying mother – a confession that tells the story of a murder investigation that Oswald undertook as a novice monk (before he was called upon to become Lord Somershill) and finally reveals the truth behind a very dark and long-hidden family secret.

So, what was a ‘good death?’ And why did it matter so much in the past – especially to the people of the Middle Ages? In essence, it was the belief that the soul should be prepared for the afterlife in the days and hours before death, to make sure that the sufferer’s passage through Purgatory would be quick, and that the gates of Heaven would be open upon arrival. As such, there was a strict set of religious rituals undertaken during these last hours, and in particular the administering of the sacraments of Confession, Communion and Anointing. If these rituals were properly observed, then the person could be said to have achieved a ‘good death.’ But the opposite is also true – in an age where superstition and fear prevailed to die without a ‘good death’ was a truly terrifying prospect. 

One of the most important aspects of this ritual, was the idea that you must use these hours to completely and utterly forgive those who might have harmed you in this life. In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, it was important for the dying person to ‘forgive those who have trespassed against us.’ For me, this particular concept was irresistible, as it sets up all sorts of scintillating possibilities. In such circumstances, what secrets and indiscretions might others confess to, and then ask their dying relative to forgive? After all, there is little to lose and everything to gain in this scenario… for both parties. The confessor will be unburdening a secret before it’s too late, and the sufferer will achieve another point towards their ‘good death’. … as long as they can find it in their hearts to forgive, that is. And of course, if they can’t forgive the sinner, then they have only doomed themselves to eternal damnation – or an eternity in Purgatory at the very least.

I guess, in our more secular world, we might find this obsession with the rituals of the death-bed a little quaint? If we think about the concept of a ‘good death’ then it’s probably in the context of a quick and painless exit from this world, rather than any particular concerns about our eternal soul. That’s if we think about death at all. Because I think we’re pretty good at ignoring death in our modern world. I say this, even in the aftermath of this last year, when the Covid 19 pandemic has been raging. Despite this experience, I think that we are still determined ‘death ignorers’, if not exactly ‘death deniers.’ 

But the average person in the Middle Ages could be neither. Death was a constant companion throughout their lives, in a world where life expectancy was short, child mortality was high, and there was little in the way of effective medicine – for even the most basic of illnesses. This is not to mention the many plagues and pandemics that swept through society at regular intervals (not the 100 year gap that we might expect.) And when a person died, their body was not spirited away to a funeral parlour, never to be seen again. Instead it was washed and prepared for death by the family themselves, before it was proudly put on display, for everybody to visit – until it was finally buried in the ground of the local church, where the grave would be visible every time the surviving family attended weekly communion. 

Under these circumstances, I think it’s very easy to understand our ancestors’ preoccupation with a good death, and the importance of following the rules. In his book, The Black Death, John Hatcher tells us that, ‘In the later Middle Ages the deathbed was commonly portrayed as a battlefield where the forces of good and evil, mercy and condemnation, fought over the soul of the dying.’ I hope to have given a true flavour of this ‘battlefield’ in my novel, and to have fully explored the fall-out of the death-bed confessional!

The Good Death by S D Sykes ( Hodder and Stoughton) Out Now

1370. Oswald de Lacy was not always Lord of the Manor, or even meant to be. The third son, he was sent off to become a novice monk. Now, with winter closing in on Somershill, his wife flirting with their houseguest, his sister sniping from the sidelines and his mother still ruling his life even from her deathbed, Oswald is forced to confront the secret that has haunted him ever since those days in the monastery. 1349. Sent to gather herbs in the forest by his tutor, Brother Peter, 18-year-old Oswald encounters a terrified girl, who runs into the swollen river and drowns. In her village, he discovers that she is only one of many poor young women who have disappeared, with no-one in authority caring enough to investigate. Convinced the girls are dead, Oswald turns to the village women for help in finding the murderer - in particular to the beautiful Maud Woodstock, who provokes feelings in Oswald that no monk should entertain. Soon, however, another killer stalks the land. Plague has come and the monastery is locked against it. Brother Peter insists that Oswald should forget his quest. But Oswald will not stop until he has discovered the shocking truth, which will echo down the years to a letter, clutched in his dying mother's hand.

More information about S D Sykes and the Oswald de Lacy series can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @SD_Sykes

In the Shadow of Sherlock by Mick Finlay

 

The Arrowood series is very much inspired by Sherlock Holmes. The idea for the character of my detective, William Arrowood, came to me while I was reading the Holmes stories one day. I began to wonder how other private detectives might have felt about Sherlock if they were trying to earn a crust in London at the same time as him. There really were both male and female consulting detectives working in Victorian London at the time, people such as Paddington Pollaky, Charles Field and Kate Easton. While most private detective work involved collecting evidence for divorce cases, other more interesting tasks were also done, such as Pollaky’s work collecting evidence of Confederate arms shipments. Putting myself in these early sleuths’ shoes, I thought I might be a little envious, perhaps even bitter, about the success of a Sherlock Holmes-type character. I might even doubt his methods. It was that thought that led to the creation of Arrowood. 

Because he’s a rival to Holmes, I needed him to be a very different type of man. In contrast to Holmes, he’s overweight with no interest in sports, a bit of a coward, a glutton, and also an emotional man. He lives among a ‘modern’ extended family which grows from book to book and overcrowds his home. And rather than relying on forensic evidence, he devours Victorian books on psychology and personality and tries to apply those ideas to his crimes. 

Sherlock is alive and working in the same city as Arrowood, although in the first four books he never actually appears. He sends Arrowood a couple of telegrams, his cases make newspaper headlines, and Arrowood tries unsuccessfully to visit him, but we never see him. Readers often ask me if they’ll ever meet, but so far I’ve avoided writing scenes where Sherlock actually appears. Although there are some fantastic authors publishing books featuring Sherlock, I didn’t feel I could take Doyle’s character and write him myself. It was a personal decision, and I certainly don’t think it’s wrong to do, but so far I haven’t felt comfortable enough to do it. Partly because I wanted my novels to be filled with my own characters, but also because I didn’t want the ghost of Conan Doyle to judge me for overstepping. And I do feel him sometimes, breathing heavily behind me as I tap away at my keyboard.

I love the Sherlock stories. The secondary characters are a joy, and Holmes’s sense of humour, particularly in how he teases Watson and the police, is great fun. The stories are incredibly well-formed, and Holmes himself is a complex man of weaknesses as well as strengths. I’m a huge fan. That said, Conan Doyle was a man of his time, and we get a good sense of him through his letters, collected in a fascinating volume by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley. The Holmes stories reflect who Doyle was and the tastes of the audience at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Reflecting the beliefs and attitudes of polite society, there are places that Doyle wouldn’t go in the Sherlock stories, and places that many modern readers might wish he hadn’t. For example, while Doyle deals with the British empire mainly through backstories of adventure and intrigue, he doesn’t deal with the plight of colonised peoples. And while Jack the Ripper killed at least five women in 1888, and the first Holmes story was published in 1887, Holmes never takes up a similar case of serial killing. Holmes also has some rather sexist views about women, and Doyle’s description of non-white characters are often stereotypical and racist (although the Adventure of the Yellow Face is a good counter). When I started writing Arrowood books, I wanted to portray a more realistic London than we see in the Holmes stories, one where we see disability, the Irish question, crimes against women, racism and the appalling poverty up close. It’s here where I feel I need to step out of Sherlock’s shadow, and try to get closer to what life was like in those days. The Arrowood books aren’t preachy, they’re character- and plot-driven, but they don’t hide the bad stuff. And as to whether Arrowood and Sherlock will ever meet, well, if I can ever shake that sense of Doyle’s ghost watching me, it might just happen. 

Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders by Mick Finlay (Harper Collins) Out Now

London Society takes their problems to Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else goes to Arrowood. Nowhere to hide. London, 1896. As winter grips the city, a group of African travellers seek sanctuary inside the walls of the Quaker Meeting House. They are being hunted by a ruthless showman, who is forcing them to perform in his ethnic exhibition in the London Aquarium. Nowhere to turn. Private investigator William Arrowood and his assistant Barnett agree to help the travellers avoid capture. But when they arrive at the Meeting House, they find a scene of devastation. Two people have been murdered and the others have fled into the night. Nowhere to run. The hunt for the real killer leads Arrowood into the dark heart of Victorian London. A shadowy world of freak shows, violence and betrayal, where there are no good choices and only the slimmest chance of survival...

In The Spotlight - Philip Gooden

 

Name :- Philip Gooden

Job :- Author

Twitter :- @PhilipGooden

Introduction :- 

In addition to being the author of two historical crime novels (one under the name of Philipa Morgan) Philip Gooden is also the author of a number of books on language. His most recent book is Bad Words (2019)

Current book?

Operation Fortitude by Joshua Levine. It’s background reading for my St Hilda’s talk on J.C.Masterman, who was an Oxford academic and author of detective stories. During World War Two John Masterman ran the Double XX Committee, which produced propaganda and misleading information, mostly by using Nazi agents in Britain who’d been turned. It’s an astonishing fact that from very early in the war there wasn’t a single German spy who hadn’t been captured or - more usefully - ‘persuaded’ into being a double agent.

Favourite book?

Plenty of them. But Dickens’s Great Expectations, perhaps. The story of Pip from child to adult, learning often uncomfortable things about himself as he rises up through Victorian society. The point near the end when Pip finally acknowledges the debt he owes to the convict Magwitch is a real lump-in-the-throat moment.

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why? 

Sticking with literary classics, how about Jane Austen‘s Emma? Lovable, infuriating, talkative. Pair her with Jack Reacher to see how long he could hold out and stay saying nothing.

How do you relax?

The usual, walking, reading, seeing people (and having a drink).

What book do you wish you had written and why?

John Fowles’s The Magus. It gets a bit pretentious and obscure towards the end but the journey there is wonderful: sea, sun and seduction on a Greek island, and everything controlled by a mysterious, sinister story-teller.

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

A piece of advice a friend gave me when I was dithering about writing something. ‘Well, if you don’t do it, no one else will.’ It’s true. Whatever you write, good, bad or indifferent, can only come from you. So, if you don’t do it...

How would you describe your series characters Nick Revill and Geoffrey Chaucer?

Nick is an enthusiastic young player who joins Shakespeare’s company at the Globe Theatre around the time they’re putting on Hamlet, a play about murder. And naturally Nick tumbles into one actual murder after another in Sleep of Death and the books that follow. Geoffrey Chaucer was real, of course, even if not that much is known about the life of the author of the Canterbury Tales. But he carried out diplomatic missions on behalf of Edward III in France and Italy and elsewhere, missions in which I get him mixed up with murder and mystery as well.

Information about 2021 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book tckets can be found here.

A Q& A with Laura Shepherd Robinson

 

Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the author of the award-winning debut novel Blood & Sugar which won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown and the Specsaver’s Debut Crime Novel award, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, and a Guardian and Telegraph novel of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the Sapere Historical Dagger. Her latest novel is Daughters of the Night which is out now. 

Ayo:    Congratulations on Daughters of the Night, can I though ask you first a question about your debut novel Blood & Sugar which made so many end of the year lists (including mine) and was nominated for numerous awards and won the HWA Debut Crown along with the Specsaver’s Debut Crime novel Waard?  How surprised were you with the reception of Blood & Sugar?

Laura:-           It was lovely that so many people appreciated Harry and Tad and the world I built for them. Slavery is such an important part of our history, and people are really beginning to appreciate that. I wanted to bring that subject to life in a crime novel and hopefully take it to new readers – I didn’t really have any expectations beyond that. To win two prizes and be a Waterstones Thriller of the Month was beyond anything I’d ever dared hope.  

Ayo:-  Why write about Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           My first book involved the crew of a slaving ship and so naturally a lot of the characters were men. This time I wanted to redress the balance by focusing on women and the struggles they faced in Georgian England. The Daughters of Night in the title is a reference to prostitution – the victim and several of the characters work in the London sex trade – but it also refers to the Furies in Greek mythology, who were the daughters of Nyx, the Goddess of Night. They were women demons or goddesses, who pursued the perpetrators of unpunished crimes, often against women. Vengeance is a big theme of the book.

Ayo:-  Is Daughters of the Night a direct sequel to Blood & Sugar?  If not, what made you decide to write about a different character from Blood & Sugar?

Laura:-           It is not a sequel as such, but it takes place in the same world and the books complement one another. My main character, Caro, is the wife of Harry Corsham, the main character of Blood & Sugar. They have a rather strange, troubled marriage, which my readers have already seen from his perspective. I wanted to show her side of the story!

Ayo:-  Are you planning on writing about any of the characters in Blood & Sugar and Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           I am currently writing a standalone book that is set in 1740. But I would love to return to the world of Harry and Caro and I know exactly where I want to take them!

Ayo:-  You clearly did a lot of research for Blood & Sugar.  Did any of the research that you did for your debut novel spill over into Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           Definitely! The general way of life in the 18^th century, the geography of London at the time, as well as many more precise historical details. I have a document where I put any brilliant details I come across – if I can’t use them in my current novel, I save them for the future.

Ayo:-  What did you find out that shocked/surprised you when you were doing your research for Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           That 1 in 5 female Londoners participated in the sex trade at some point in their lives. The line between vice and virtue was much more blurred than people often assume. Women moved in and out of prostitution as their economic circumstances changed.

Ayo:-  What was it about value (which is an essential theme in the book) that fascinated you so much?

Laura:-           The commoditisation of women’s bodies is as old as time. The book explores different aspects of the sex trade, but also how women were depicted in art, and the legal and economic constraints placed on them in marriage. All the woman in the book struggle against a system that valued them only in terms of the men who desired them. Plus ça change.

Ayo:-  How did it make the crime more compelling?

Lucy Loveless, the prostitute whose murder is the central mystery of the book, was killed in part because she asserted the value of women’s lives and would not be silent. Caro, although of an entirely different economic and social status, in turn asserts the value of Lucy’s life. She refuses to stop her investigation, whatever the cost.

Ayo:-  Daughters of the Night has two timelines, was this intentional

Laura:-           Originally the book only had one. It wasn’t quite working, and adding the backstory was the missing piece. It was important to me that the victims in the book were depicted as women with agency and ambition and friendships, rather than dead, faceless sex workers. That’s all there in the backstory, as well as many clues to the mystery in the present.

Ayo:-  Where did you get your interest in history and historical crime fiction from?

Laura:-           Both my parents were very interested in history. As a child, I loved Joan Aitken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase series and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Although I studied politics at university, I did courses on the 18^th century as a subsidiary subject. Then I fell in love with Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost, and that was when the idea of writing a historical novel came to me. I didn’t get around to it for over ten years, but eventually I did something about it!

Ayo:-  Do you have a favourite period in history? If so which period and why?

Laura:-           The 18^th century obviously! It is the period that shaped so much that is familiar to us today: liberal values, art and architecture. But it was also very different to our society and much more brutal. I’m thinking of slavery, blood sports, the lack of women’s rights, crime and punishment, poverty. It’s an interesting juxtaposition and one that to me felt perfect for writing crime. 

Ayo:-  How has the lockdown affected your writing?

Laura:-           For the first six weeks it felt scary and confusing and I couldn’t write at all. Luckily I was between books, so I used it to take a break. I didn’t force it, I read some novels, and generally had a nice time with my husband. Then I woke up one morning filled with a fierce urge to write again, and I haven’t looked back!

Ayo:-  How do you write? Do you prefer writing in silence or do you have music on in the background? If you do have music on what type of music does it tend to be?

Laura:-           Absolute silence.

Ayo:-  What is the more important for you characterisation or plot or do you try and have a happy medium between the two?

Laura:-           I think they flow out of one another. Story is always king, but a good story needs both plot and character. I start from what I need my characters to do in the plot, and then construct a living breathing person who can credibly perform that role. And naturally, of course, sometimes they take on a life of their own, and I change the plot to better suit their personality.

Ayo:-  Do you plot before-hand or do you just let the writing flow?

Laura:-           I am a huge planner. I write 30k word plot plans before I start writing. Lots of things change as I go along, but the fundamental structure, the beginning and end, and major plot points rarely do. 

Ayo:-  What are you working on at the moment and can you tell us about it?

Laura:-           It’s called The Square of Sevens. It’s set in 1740 and is more of a feminist Dickensian mystery than a straight crime novel. The book’s heroine is called Red. She tells fortunes with playing cards and her method of fortune-telling informs the structure of the book. I can’t say too much more about it at the moment, but I am absolutely loving writing it.

Ayo:-  With the lockdown festivals and events have had to be either cancelled or moved online.  What have you missed the most due to the lockdown?

Laura:-           Seeing my lovely writer friends and having fun at book launches and festivals. Writers are such solitary creatures, and we need to come out of our caves from time to time to stop us going mad. Zoom has been a life-saver in this respect – imagine doing this in the 18^th century!

Ayo:-  What do you do to relax?

Laura:-           Mostly the usual boring things. Dinner parties, TV, wasting too much time on Twitter. Oh, and we like to play bridge – another thing we’ve been unable to do. We’ve been filling the gap with jigsaws and Lego. 

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Daughters of the Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Published by Pan Macmillan) out now.

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thief taker Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives. But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro's own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous, than she can know. 

More information about Laura and her books can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @LauraSRobinson.

The Shots review of Daughters of the Night can be read here.