A Question of Love by Antonia Hodgson

‘Why don’t you write romance novels?’ the woman in the audience asked. She sounded reproachful. It was perfectly obvious that I had chosen the wrong genre. What was the matter with me? 

The audience Q&A is my favourite part of an event. The tone is more conversational, the questions more unpredictable. I gave a lecture at a prestigious history festival once (terrifying) and a man put up his hand to complain that I had not talked enough about syphilis. I do apologise, sir. 

In this case – a library talk – I explained that I had enormous respect for the genre. (Back when I was a publisher, I was lucky enough to work with Nora Roberts, the certified Goddess of Romantic Suspense.) I might explore other genres one day – I was a huge fan of SFF, for instance. But, for now, I was happy writing historical thrillers. Did this answer her question? Not really. 

‘I just think,’ she muttered, unappeased, ‘you should write romance.’

Well, I hate disappointing people, most of all readers who make the effort to come to library events. And – joking aside – it’s good to ask yourself from time to time, why am I writing this book, in particular? Why this genre? What exactly am I doing…? 

The truth is, although my novels are not romances in the strict sense, they are concerned with love and connection. Writing a series has given me the space to explore my characters’ longterm relationships – with family, with friends, and with lovers. Those relationships have transformed them over time, just as much as the troubles they have faced. 

From my first book, The Devil in the Marshalsea, to my fourth, The Silver Collar, I have been writing about two people who fall in love, and how that love deepens in the midst of danger, persecution and loss. 

We first meet Tom Hawkins in a crowded coffeehouse, celebrating a large gambling win. He seems happy, but in reality, he is lost and alone. Disowned by his family and swiftly betrayed by his ‘friends’, he is thrown into a debtors’ prison – locked in a cell with a murderer. 

It is here, at the lowest point of his life, that he meets Kitty Sparks. It takes him a while to recognise her qualities and even longer to realise he is in love with her. (But then Tom is, as Kitty often observes, ‘an idiot’.) He only realises how much he needs her when he believes she is dead. 

At the end of the book, I had to make a choice about their relationship. They meet up in the same coffeehouse where we found Tom at the beginning. I could have left things open – will they, won’t they?

I adore a bit of UST (unresolved sexual tension), as they call it in TV. Mulder and Scully. Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. It works brilliantly when it feels convincing, as in these examples. In the case of Tom and Kitty, given the nature of their characters (impatient, expressive), and what they had been through (hell), it felt more natural that they would jump on each other. Which they did, and continue to do, as often as possible.

That’s not to say they live happily ever after. At the end of The Devil in the Marshalsea, Kitty comes into a large inheritance. By book two, The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, she has built a thriving business. Tom, by comparison, is a reckless gambler, who has already thrown away one fortune. This causes tensions between them. Kitty refuses to marry Tom, as that would mean surrendering her business and her fortune to him. These questions of power and trust are both specific to the period, and also, I think, universal. 

At the beginning of The Silver Collar, Tom and Kitty have a terrible row, but they recover from it. It’s when Kitty starts hiding things from Tom that they really struggle. Her deception – although well meant – puts their relationship and ultimately their lives in danger. What they don’t realise is that someone is working behind the scenes to pull them apart. And that this is just the beginning of a very dark act of revenge. 

The Silver Collar is a historical thriller. (Sorry, lady in the library.) But it is also a story of love in many forms, good and bad. At the same talk, I rather flippantly told the audience that I couldn’t imagine writing a book without a murder in it. I’m not sure that’s true. But a novel without love at its heart? Now that would be impossible. 

The Silver Collar by Antonia Hodgson (Published by Hodder and Stoughton) Autumn, 1728.

Life is good for Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks. The Cocked Pistol, Kitty's wickedly disreputable bookshop, is a roaring success. Tom's celebrity as 'Half-Hanged Hawkins', the man who survived the gallows, is also proving useful. Their happiness proves short-lived. When Tom is set upon by a street gang, he discovers there's a price on his head. Who on earth could want him dead - and why? With the help of his ward, Sam Fleet, and Sam's underworld connections, Tom's investigation leads to a fine house in Jermyn Street, the elegant, enigmatic Lady Vanhook and an escaped slave by the name of Jeremiah Patience. But for Tom and Kitty, discovering the truth is only the beginning of the nightmare.

ITV to Adapt Falco Novels for Television

©Lindsey Davis

Great news for lovers of historical crime fiction and specifically those who love their historical crime fiction set during the Roman Empire.

According to Deadline.com Lindsey Davis’s series of Falco novels are being adapted for television by Mammoth Screen who were the producers of “Victoria”.  

Originally pitched to the BBC the series has now been moved to ITV as is being overseen by the Polly Hill who is the head of drama.  More information can be found here.

Lindsey Davis is the author of 20 novels featuring fictional Roman private detective, reluctant imperial agent and sometime poet Marcus Didius Falco.   The first book in the series Silver Pigs was published 30 years ago in 1989.  The last book to (directly) feature Marcus Didius Falco is Nemesis which was published in 2010.   Falco does crop up in the new series Falco: The Next Generation which features Marcus Didius Falco's adopted daughter, Flavia Albia.  The first book in the series is The Ides of April which was published in 2013.

The 1983 film Age of Treason which featured Bryan Brown as Marcus Didius Falco was based on the first book Silver Pigs.  However it has been disowned by Lindsey Davis on her website as it  "It departed from everything that I think makes the books special."  It bore little relation to the book, jettisoning most of the plot and characters.

The Problem with DNA – 5 historical crime reads

Author Rebecca Alexander writes historical crime fiction as well as fantasy novels.  A Shroud of Leaves is the second book to feature Archaeologist Sage Westfield.  Here she suggests some brilliant historical crime novels.

 Writing crime novels has recently become harder. In the twenty-first century CCTV cameras watch every high street and business. DNA, blood spatter, fibre and hair analysis have become great forensic tools to solve murders.  Before the 1990s these technologies were in their infancy. Few people carried a mobile phone, even less a camera everywhere they went. Crime investigations were based on interviews, careful observation of the scene of crime and the accumulation of evidence. Setting a crime mystery in the pre-DNA days makes the investigation more difficult to solve, but relies on talking to real suspects. When I started writing about an archaeologist who solves a crime in 1580 in A Baby’s Bones, I had even less sources to rely on as all the suspects were long dead. In the sequel, A Shroud of Leaves, Sage Westfield has a direct comparison between modern forensic methods in investigating a contemporary crime, and the limited evidence available in 1992 and 1913.

 I’m not alone in setting crime novels in the pre-technological past. I can suggest a few brilliant reads for more crime novels set in history:

 SJ Parris’s Giordano Bruno series of books (Conspiracy from 2017 is the latest) are set around the 1580s. The books are full of treasonable or heretical plots and horrible murders, and a host of spies and double agents form Bruno’s circle. Bruno, an ex-priest and on the run from the Inquisition, uses his knowledge of people to solve the crimes. Everyone has secrets, everyone is a suspect. 

Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea gives us an unusual investigator. In 1727 Tom Hawkins is imprisoned for a debt of ten pounds. Tom fights to be released if he can solve a murder committed inside the chaotic, squalid prison. Well researched, the book shows a society devastated by financial collapse, gambling, exploitation and amorality. Tom, the central character, is our eyes and ears and the prison is as strange and terrifying a place for him as it seems to us. Almost every character is a rogue, including Tom, yet many are likeable, making a living as best they can. This is not a cosy, period drama, this is fast and dramatic with great characters as he solves the crime.

Kate Summerscale’s, The Suspicions of Mr Whicheror The Murder at Road HillHouse is a Victorian murder based on a true story. Summerscale evokes the difficulties of weaving together testimony from family members and servants. No-one dare tell the whole truth, the reader is left as frustrated as Detective Whicher by the divisions of class and education. She never lets us forget the three year old victim, his throat cut, in the servants’ privy.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is also based on a true crime, this time from Canada in 1843.  The story of sixteen year old Irish maid Grace Marks, who was convicted of killing her employer (and by implication, his mistress), Alias Grace explores her internal world through the efforts of an early American psychiatrist. Dr Simon Jordan is beguiled by Grace as he is repelled by her crime and the violence of her abusive captivity. The reader is left to weigh the evidence as it’s exposed, much like at the trial, in a mess of half-truths, lies and inexpert evidence.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project is a ‘found history’, with witness statements from all parts of the examination (each with their prejudices and lies) including those of the prime suspect’s father, the prison doctor and his own journal. The seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae is from the remotest part of the west coast of Scotland and is accused of three violent deaths. He is also suspected of ‘moral imbecility’ or madness, and the novel is written so convincingly as a family history it seems real. It asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect throughout, as well as exploring the murders themselves. Like Alias Grace, it asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect, as well as exploring Roddy’s relationship with the victims.

From police surgeons photographing the eyes of Jack the Ripper’s victims in 1888 to modern DNA phenotype profiles that can ‘read’ DNA to produce a portrait, scientists have been pushing technology forward to solve crime using evidence rather than flawed witness statements. As a writer, I love those unreliable witnesses and misleading statements. Sage Westfield will keep investigating historical crimes through archaeology because like a lot of us, she is deeply curious about human motivations – even if they end in murder.

A Shroud of Leaves by Rebecca Alexander (£8.99, Titan Books) Out Now

"The victim had been buried in a carved hollow in the grass and shrouded in fallen leaves..." Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl's body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago - but her body was never found. The police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned but never charged. But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound - and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse - she discovers the story of another mysterious disappearance over a hundred years ago. Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.