The Earth Weighs Heavily by Alison Joseph

 

credit - Adrian Pope

If you ask a writer ‘when did you decide to become a writer’ you will almost certainly get some kind of mumbled answer about ‘it not really being a decision’- ‘it kind of happened’- ‘I was the sort of kid who sat in a corner in the classroom watching people…’

Or perhaps that’s just me.

But it did just kind of happen. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t tell stories. And then gradually it morphed from a thing I just did, to a thing I might do for a living. There followed short stories, and radio plays. And then came Sister Agnes.

At the time I was doing a lot of adaptation for BBC Radio Drama, and a lot of it was crime fiction. I began to think about writing a detective. I knew I wanted her to be female. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to do justice to a police procedural. But, I wondered, how to write an amateur detective in this age of police expertise, where she has no access to all the tools of police investigations – all the forensic know-how, CCTV footage, mobile phone records. I had also worked out that my detective needed to be in some way set apart from ordinary life, and also not burdened by family, partners, offspring…

A nun, I thought. That solves all those problems.

And so Sister Agnes came into being.

At the time I didn’t know much about nuns. My school was the local comprehensive, and we weren’t a religious family. 

Over the years, I’ve come to learn a lot about religious orders, both closed, and open like Agnes’s. But what I hadn’t predicted was that a literary device for a contemporary amateur detective would become so much more. For Sister Agnes there is the eternal question – how to continue in a faith that preaches forgiveness and redemption when all around her, in urban London, in the world, there is suffering and violence and harm.

The new novel is called The Earth Weighs Heavy. It is about death, of course. Mysterious, or criminal, or in one case just of old age. It is about refugees and exile and how people, uprooted from their home because it’s no longer safe, fight so hard to get somewhere else, to load the cart and start again; and continue to have hope, because once that’s gone you might as well be dead.

The story starts with bones revealed in the convent cellar. Agnes has been working at the charity’s base at the Calais refugee camps, but she’s been ordered to return – and now finds herself at the heart of a possible crime scene.

Meanwhile, her friend Athena has a brush with magic, which raises the question, when does a belief in magic crunch up against religious faith - or is it all the same? As Athena says, quoting her new young magician friend, people who have a sense of wonder are special people. But it’s Agnes, who, in spite of her religious faith, is determinedly rational, and who sticks with the evidence – and so finds herself investigating the story of the bones in the cellar.

It is also, I realise now, a love letter to London. It’s my hometown, born and bred, but like all Londoners, at some point we came here and stayed. The Romans created London as a huge, crowded, chaotic trading city, and even now I sometimes sense the Roman streets beneath. Throughout the centuries, people have ended up as Londoners: sometimes coerced, sometimes welcomed; sometimes, just loading the cart and starting again.

The Earth Weighs Heavy by Alison Joseph ( Joffe Books) Out Now.

Meet Sister Agnes. She's not your typical nun. She loves killer heels, sipping prosecco - and solving baffling mysteries . . . Now an acclaimed BBC Radio Crime series, starring Anne-Marie Duff. Hackney convent - home to Agnes and her sisters - may be a house of God. But what's buried beneath is anything but saintly. After days of brutal storms and lashing rain, the convent's crumbling cellar gives up a terrible secret. The skeleton of a woman. Her identity is a puzzle the police can't solve. Not without a helping hand from sleuthing Sister Agnes. But her search for answers, deep in the convent's chequered past, only leads to more questions. Late one night, Agnes is woken by a gunshot - and the fear that history is about to repeat itself. Someone under this roof knows more than they're saying. And they'll stop at nothing to keep their secrets.

Winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2024 announced

 

Joffe Books is delighted to announce the winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2024: Rupa Mahadevan, for her addictive and atmospheric psychological thriller, The Goddess of Death. She receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize and a £25,000 audiobook deal from Audible for the first book. This is Britain’s biggest crime prize.

The Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour was established in 2021 to actively seek out writers from communities that are underrepresented in crime fiction and support them in building sustainable careers, while simultaneously discovering brilliant new talent to join our bestselling list.

This year, submissions included gritty police procedurals, classic cosy crime whodunnits and ambitious sci-fi thrillers. 

The judges, including A.A. Chaudhuri, bestselling author of She’s Mine, literary agent Gyamfia Osei from Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Emma Grundy Haigh, former editorial director at Joffe Books and Jasmine Callaghan, commissioning editor, considered each manuscript in terms of both the strength of the writing and marketability. The judges unanimously awarded the Joffe Books Prize 2024 to Rupa Mahadevan.

From the judges: “This is a tense, fast-paced psychological thriller, with overlapping layers of intrigue and flawed narrators — all of whom have secrets. The eerie setting is fantastic and really adds to the undercurrent of unease and build-up of suspense. A truly gripping thriller with a fresh edge that sets it apart.”

Rupa Mahadevan grew up on the southern coast of India and has called Scotland home for over 15 years. She currently lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two children. When she is not grappling with Excel in her day job, she loves to read and dream up stories of her own. Her passion for becoming a published author is one step closer thanks to Joffe's Books and their commitment to promoting underrepresented authors.

Rupa says: “Winning the Joffe Books Prize is an absolute dream come true. As a writer, especially a writer of colour, it’s so easy to let insecurities take over. This win has given the writer in me the biggest validation, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’m deeply honoured and thrilled to be working with Joffe Books, whose dedication to promoting underrepresented voices has made this incredible milestone possible.”

Jasmine Callaghan says: “It has been such an honour to have had the opportunity to read the fantastic submissions from so many amazingly talented writers. From the get-go, Rupa’s gripping psychological thriller stood out for its strong hook, tension-filled narrative and unreliable, well-nuanced cast of characters, and the judges’ decision was unanimous. Congratulations, Rupa!”

The synopsis reads: “A reunion of friends during the Hindu Dolls festival on the stormy island of Oban, Scotland, takes a deadly turn when a stabbed doll is found under a goddess statue. Leela (An outsider who has recently married a member of the group) is sure it foretells death.”

A Poisoned Chalice: The new Sister Agnes story

Sister Agnes, for those that don’t know her, is a nun; contemporary, in an open order, based in South London.  She is a detective. And, in the archetypal mode of the amateur detective, she finds herself on the outside of things, privy to people’s secrets. In the words of a lovely police officer who has helped me on and off with my research, ‘There’s always someone who knows more than we do.’

In the time of Sherlock Holmes, it was easier for an amateur sleuth to know more than the police.  But now, with CCTV, mobile phone tracking, and highly developed forensic science, the expertise of the amateur detective is distilled into that one central point: being the repository of other people’s secrets.  And, as Sister Agnes works in a hostel for homeless young people, that is exactly what she is.

The new novel starts with a young woman appearing on the hostel doorstep asking if they’ve seen her husband, a young man on the wrong side of the law who has now gone missing. This one simple event widens out into a much bigger mystery, concerning a medieval silver cup known as the Judas chalice, a priceless, possibly stolen, artefact belonging to one of the old catholic families. It is extremely rare due to its depiction of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, the thirteenth apostle – so rare, in fact, that someone is prepared to kill for it.

I’ve always liked the classic detective structure – an all-knowing central character through which the story is told, with a Marple or a Maigret or a Marlowe at the heart of it. It allows a three-way relationship between author, reader and detective, all sharing the fun of engaging with the story together. The challenge is to make sure the reveal comes as a surprise while at the same time allowing the reader to walk hand in hand with the detective in solving the mystery.

But I also try, in my work, to bear witness to the harm that humans do.  People look at Golden Age crime fiction and make the mistake of seeing it as lightweight, as a historical romp in the company of Sayers, Allingham, Christie et al.  But as far she was concerned, Agatha Christie was writing The Modern Novel. And, having lived through a world war, she needed to talk about human pain, human damage, in a very particular way.   For some time, I have circled the idea that as a nun, Sister Agnes will at some point have to tackle the harm of which the church itself is capable, where its huge and powerful influence collides with its dangerous obsession with sex, shame and sin.

Sister Agnes, like many fictional detectives, is a person of contradictions. She has religious faith and yet is constantly beset by doubt; she accepts the unsolvable mystery of a God, and yet the mystery of a killing on her doorstep is there to be solved with careful attention to evidence, to science, to reason.

This new novel, A Poisoned Chalice, is the first of two brand new Sister Agnes novels

A Poisoned Chalice is the eighth in the new series published by Joffe, (with seven of the earlier novels republished under new names).  It has been a delight to be back with her, and also with her two best friends, Athena and Father Julius, who accompany her through the story in their own particular ways, Athena with shopping, clothes, cake and fizzy wine – and Julius with his own particular and difficult challenge.

The problem of evil may be preached from a pulpit, but what happens if that evil is within the church, rather than something external to be fought by the might of the faithful? And how does someone of faith continue within a structure that is so warped, so potentially malign?

Sister Agnes, walking the streets of South London, will find herself wrestling with all these questions.

 A Poisoned Chalice by Alison Joseph (Joffe Books) Out Now

Meet Sister Agnes. She’s not your typical nun. She loves killer shoes, sipping prosecco — and solving mysteries . . . A holy grail . . . or a poisoned chalice?
Agnes has never met Jay Sorrell. But she knows his type. Tall, dark and dangerously magnetic. A Catholic boy turned petty criminal, he’s not one to play by the rules. Now he’s vanished, leaving his wife to hunt for him at Agnes’s homeless shelter. But the search ends in tragedy. Late one night, Agnes wakes to the sound of sirens — and the acrid smell of smoke. St Bruno’s church is burning. Agnes races to the scene, in time to see a body being pulled from the smoking ruins. This is no random John Doe. It’s Jay. Whoever lit the fatal match must have known . . . Down in the ruined crypt, a safe gapes open. Was this the hiding place of the fabled Judas chalice? A priceless heirloom that’s been missing for decades. Some would kill to lay hands on this prize. And if Jay happened to be standing in the way of that . . . ? Agnes won’t stop until she uncovers the truth about Jay’s death and the missing treasure. But once she’s sipped from this deadly cup, there’s no going back . . 

You can find more about Alison Joseph and her books on her website. You can also follow her on X @AlisonJoseph1

Photograph of Alison Joseph ©Hugo Glendinning

The Joffe Books Prize

 

BRITAIN’S BIGGEST CRIME PRIZE SEARCHES FOR THE NEXT BESTSELLING WRITER OF COLOUR.

The Joffe Books Prize is looking for a talented new crime fiction writer of colour, with one of the UK’s largest literary prizes for the winner.

This year the Joffe Books Prize judging panel includes A.A. Chaudhuri, bestselling author of She’s Mine, and literary agent Gyamfia Osei from Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

The prize invites submissions from un-agented authors from Black, Asian, Indigenous and minority ethnic backgrounds writing in crime fiction genres including: electrifying psychological thrillers, cosy mysteries, gritty police procedurals, twisty chillers, unputdownable suspense mysteries and shocking domestic noirs.

The winner will be offered a prize package consisting of a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize, and a £25,000 audiobook offer from Audible for the first book.

The submission period ends at midnight on 30 September 2024.

HOW TO ENTER

Entrants are invited to submit their full-length manuscript, written in English, along with a synopsis of the book and author biography, to prize@joffebooks.com.

This prize is open to UK residents and British citizens (including those living abroad) only. The opening date for entries is 15 May 2024. The competition closes 30 September 2024, 23.59 GMT. No entries received outside this period will be accepted.

The full Terms & Conditions can be found on our website: www.joffebooks.com/terms-and-conditions

ABOUT THE PRIZE

The winner will be offered a prize package consisting of the following: a two-book publishing contract with Joffe Books on its standard author agreement terms; a £1,000 cash prize; a two-year membership to the Society of Authors; a £25,000 audiobook contract with Audible for the first book. The prize is a package and can only be accepted in its entirety.

The prize will be offered to the selected winner. Joffe Books may choose an alternative winner if acceptance is not confirmed within one week.

Northumberland-based Christie J. Newport won the inaugural prize in 2021, followed by Sam Genever in 2022 and Renita D’Silva in 2023. Christie’s winning entry and debut novel, The Raven’s Mark, is available online and in all good bookshops now!

 THE JUDGES

The 2024 judges are A.A. Chaudhuri, Gyamfia Osei, Emma Grundy Haigh, Jasmine Callaghan, Jasper Joffe and Kate Lyall Grant. The winner of the competition will be selected by these judges based on the quality and commercial potential of the work.

A.A. CHAUDHURI, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SHE’S MINE: “I am so incredibly thrilled and honoured to be a Judge on the Joffe Books Prize Panel. Since its inception in 2021 this fantastic competition, which continues to go from strength to strength, has allowed a plethora of exceptionally talented writers of colour in the crime fiction genre to shine through, and I’m beyond excited to be a part of that process this year.”

GYAMFIA OSEI, LITERARY AGENT: “I'm delighted to be judging the Joffe Books Prize this year alongside A.A. Chaudhuri and Emma Grundy Haigh. The cohort of writers were brilliant last year so I can't wait to dive into the 2024 entries!”

EMMA GRUNDY HAIGH, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR AT JOFFE BOOKS: “The Joffe Books Prize, now in its fourth year, just keeps going from strength to strength. The prize is dedicated to amplifying #ownvoices and publishing truly excellent crime fiction. With Audible’s involvement, it is also the largest prize package for crime fiction in the UK. We have great plans for this year and the addition of Jasmine Callaghan as one of the judges is just the start!”

JASMINE CALLAGHAN, PROJECT EDITOR AT JOFFE BOOKS: “I couldn’t be more excited to join the panel of the Joffe Books Prize. I feel honoured to be taking part in the competition, which is actively addressing the lack of diversity in publishing and amplifying underrepresented voices with real passion. I know this is going to be the best year yet.”

ABOUT A.A. CHAUDHURI

A.A. Chaudhuri is a former City lawyer, turned thriller writer. She is the author of The Scribe and The Abduction, featuring feisty lawyer Maddy Kramer. Her first highly acclaimed psychological thriller, She’s Mine, was named the L.J. Ross Book Club pick of the month. Alex lives in Surrey with her family. Besides being an avid crime fiction reader, she enjoys fitness, films, anything Italian and a good margarita!

ABOUT GYAMFIA OSEI

Gyamfia Osei represents an array of brilliant authors writing across adult and children's books, including Dean Atta, Busayo Mataluko and Frances Mensah Williams. She is a keen advocate of commercial fiction and, in the crime and mystery space, particularly loves cosy crime, domestic suspense and thrillers with a strong romantic thread. She is always looking for well-plotted, fast-paced narratives with authentic characters who lodge themselves in her mind long after she’s finished reading.

ABOUT JOFFE BOOKS

Joffe Books is one of the UK’s leading independent publishers of excellent commercial fiction, especially crime and mystery fiction. Joffe Books is renowned for working closely with authors from across the world to create fantastic books and turning them into bestsellers. Since 2014, Joffe Books has published more than 500 books by more than 70 authors and has sold over 10 million books. The publisher’s roster of award-winning authors and New York Times, USA Today and Amazon bestsellers includes Joy Ellis, Faith Martin, Robert Goddard, Rick Mofina, Volker Kutscher, Simon Brett and Stella Cameron. Joffe Books won Trade Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards in 2023 and was a finalist for Publisher of the Year at the Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards 2023 and shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2024 for the fifth year in a row.

While Joffe Books maintains open submissions for all authors, this competition is designed to offer an opportunity to Black, Asian and minority ethnic writers, who are particularly underrepresented in crime fiction publishing.

The Joffe Book Prize 2022 Shortlist announced.

 

Joffe Books have announced the shortlist for the Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour 2022! The second Joffe Books Prize received a flood of fantastic entrants. Completely anonymised for judging, the pool of scripts covered the gamut of gritty police procedurals to wrenching domestic suspense, evocative historical mysteries to page-turning cosies. 

Out of the longlist of twenty, five really stood out, forming the official shortlist:

The Labelled Bones by FQ Yeoh

Everyone Is Going To Know by Kingsley Pearson

The Smiling Mandarin by Mai Le Dinh

Red Obsession by Rose Lorimer

Savage Territory by Sam Genever

The winner will be announced in January 2023.

PRESS RELEASE: JOFFE BOOKS ACQUIRES OSTARA PUBLISHING

Jasper Joffe, CEO of leading independent publisher Joffe Books, has acquired Ostara Publishing from previous owner Andrew Cocks for an undisclosed sum. 

Joffe Books will be taking over the Ostara list of approximately 120 titles. They will publish new editions in late 2022 and 2023, with Joffe’s laser-like focus on marketing and design relaunching the books to a whole new gamut of readers.

Award-winning crime writer, former Ostara consultant editor and Shots columnist Mike Ripley has been approached to write new introductions to the Ostara Classics. 

Kate Lyall Grant, Joffe Books Publishing Director: “Ostara has a well-deserved reputation for the superlative quality of its crime list, and with Joffe Books’ commercial success and expertise in the digital market, we think this is the perfect fit to reach a widespread new readership for these fantastic books. We will be staying true to the spirit of Ostara, and keeping the Ostara name, branding the books as ‘Joffe Books presents Ostara Classics.”

Andrew Cocks: ‘Regrettably I am no longer in a position to publish new books and give my existing titles the attention they deserve in an fast-developing publishing environment. I am delighted to have found in Joffe Books a kindred spirit to take over the Ostara list of authors and truly believe that Joffe will give the Ostara authors the opportunity to reach new readers and prosper. It has been a privilege to have been involved with all these books and I could not have wished for a better home for them.’

In 2019, Joffe Books acquired the Robert Hale backlist from Crowood Press, reissuing and revitalizing the sales of authors including Roger Silverwood, Frances Lloyd, David Hodges and Bill Kitson. These authors’ books now regularly feature in the Top 100 UK Kindle chart. The overall sales of ex-Hale titles have increased over tenfold since the acquisition.

About Joffe Books

Founded in 2014, Joffe Books is proud of its history of innovative publishing. Thanks to the unflagging passion and dedication brought by everyone in Team Joffe, we have built a reputation for crafting great books for readers, long-term relationships with authors and agents, and fleet-footed marketing. We are now the largest independent publisher of e-books in the UK. In 2021, Joffe sold over 3 million books across crime, mystery, thriller, romance and historical fiction (and another 6 million through Kindle Unlimited). Joffe was shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The Joffe Books Prize aims to increase the diversity of voices in crime writing. 

www.joffebooks.com

For more info contact Ostara@joffebooks.com

 

Hey! My Characters Have Hijacked my Book! by Joy Ellis

 

And I thought I was in charge... after all, they are only fictional people, creations born in my mind, and given life only in the pages of a book. Of course I should have known this wasn’t quite the case, when I woke one morning to hear a voice in my head saying, ‘I’m DI Nikki Galena, and it’s about time you got your arse into gear and wrote my story!’ Her words, not mine!

I grabbed my notebook and wrote down the name. Nothing else, just the name. Whatever I was working on at the time was put on the back burner, because Nikki had arrived, fully formed; an angry detective inspector, with one heck of a backstory. That was the beginning of the Fen Series. Book One, Crime on the Fens, and at the time I had no clue that nine years later, I would be writing Book Thirteen, and Nikki would still be digging me in the ribs, and telling me to type faster as she had a whole lot more to say.

This particular protagonist caused me to look at characters in general in a very different way. I also started to realise that no matter how carefully you described them, your readers ‘saw’ them in a very personal light, and that was often something completely opposite to your own vision of them. I had written several books before, and always tried to paint a clear picture of each character, but when it came to Nikki, I knew that I wanted her to belong the readers, and be whatever they wanted her to be. So I never described her at all. No hair colour, no colour of her eyes, nothing. The strangest thing was, although I knew everything about her; her history, background, childhood, what she liked to eat, things she hated, phobias, what she kept in the glove compartment of her car, and how she would react in any given situation... every single thing I knew was built around her emotions, her reactions and her attitude, but I never once saw her face. Thirteen books down the line, and I still haven’t seen her!

Nikki is an enigma, because I have two other series; the DI Jackman and DS Marie Evans series, and the Matt Ballard books, plus one stand-alone novel, twenty six books in all, and every character has a face, except for Nikki Galena. Just for fun, I asked my Facebook followers to ‘cast’ her, should she ever muscle in on the TV scene, and I received back the biggest eclectic mix of women that you could ever imagine. Out of hundreds of suggestions hardly two were the same. Oddly, if I were asked to cast her myself, again it would not be for her physical appearance, (although she would indeed fit very well), I would choose Rosie Marcel. She is one actor who could pull off Nikki’s personality perfectly. Her portrayal of Jac Naylor in Holby City proves that. I have rarely seen anyone do such a brilliant job of peeling back the layers of a desperately complex character.

And the high-jackers? Nikki is possibly the ring-leader, but when it comes to writing the books, all of my characters have the propensity for de-railing my plans. It seems to go like this... 1) I have an idea. 2) I decide which series it would suit best. 3) I write Chapter One, and set the scene. 4) I introduce the crime and sometimes the antagonist(s). 5) I begin to realise that the direction I was taking is veering slightly, as one or more of my characters are not responding to instruction. 6) I remonstrate, explain my reasoning, cajole, not quite but almost beg that they follow the plan. 7) They refuse, then Nikki, or Joseph, or Matt, or Jackman, or Marie, or the office cleaner, tells me exactly how the investigation should proceed. 8) I give up and let them write the damned story! 

There have been times, when at the end of a chapter, I think, where the devil did all that come from? It’s like a carefully planned journey, then up pops one of the characters waving a large Diversion sign, and suddenly you are off-road and heading in a completely different direction. 

I know that as an organic writer, or ‘pantser’ as we get affectionately termed, because we do fly by the seat of our pants, we are happy to let the story unfold as we go along. But, just sometimes I’d like it to be my story, not theirs. I can almost see them sitting there smiling smugly, because as usual, when I read it through... they were right!

The Night Thief by Joy Ellis (Out Now) Joffe Books

When everyone is sleeping, he comes into their houses. He takes one thing. A photo of their child. A sinister thief on a power trip or something even darker and more sinister? Detectives Jackman and Evans find themselves on the hunt for a highly unusual burglar who seemingly only steals photographs. But then, late one night, an elderly woman falls to her death after seeing someone in her home. Did she really fall, or was she murdered? And just how many mysterious intruders are there on the Fens? With the body count rising, Jackman and Evans have their work cut out for them to track down the night thief - before it’s too late.

Joy Ellis on Being Shortlisted

After several failed attempts to explain what this shortlisting meant to me, I decided that writing a whole novel was considerably easier! Whatever I said seemed either over the top, or insufficient, and all I wanted to do was tell you how I felt! I’ll try again...

When my publisher, Joffe Books, told me that they had nominated me for The British Book Awards, I was bowled over, and also humbled that they should consider my book, The Patient Man, good enough to put forward. At the time I never really thought any further than that. Some while later I had an email with the header, Top Secret! Intrigued, I read on. We could tell no-one, it was embargoed until an official announcement was made, but I was on the shortlist! Even then it didn’t sink in. I was absolutely delighted, of course, but believed I might be one of many. Then the list was revealed, and I saw six names, Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Lucy Foley, Richard Osman, Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) and me! 

My publishers were over the moon, especially as they had made the shortlist for Independent Publisher of the Year. We were thrilled for each other and when they sent me the photo of the bookstack above, it finally hit home. It’s an image I’ll never forget, those iconic names along with my own. I knew then, that win or lose that Nibbie Award, I was already a winner, just to make the line-up. I could have cried, because the road I travelled to get this far was not exactly smooth.

Very few writers have an easy time getting into print, and I know my story is not unusual, but the ups and downs have been emotional ones, with a lot more downs than ups! Strangely, that is true of most of my life, something I will not bore you with, but it’s been no walk in the park! Anyone who can own a successful florist’s business, attracting some amazing venue work, then see it fail because of a financial crash, and finish up working on a till at Heathrow Airport, has weathered some pretty hefty storms!

But I survived! I found jobs in bookshops and rekindled my love of reading and also of writing. I started with short stories, then attended a Writer’s Course with the legendary Sue Townsend, and knew immediately, I wanted to be a writer. Then, fortuitously, I met my partner, Jacqueline. She was a serving police officer, due for retirement after 30 years’ service, and we decided to move away and start the next stage of our life somewhere new. That is how we came to the Lincolnshire Fenlands. Property was reasonable, and the pace of life slower that anything we’d ever known; it was perfect. Neither of us were of official retiring age, but we hoped that if we were careful, somehow we’d manage, and I would finally have time to write.

And I did! We arrived in the misty Fens in 2000, and I began as soon as we’d unpacked! Unfortunately I got off to a false start, all excited having found an agent who loved my first cross/genre book, but was unable to place it. Back to the drawing board. Wrote a sequel, but no luck there. Ditched them both. Started again, this time with police procedural crime, after all with a highly decorated police officer in house, (Queens Commendation for Bravery, no less!) I knew my research would be correct! Then it began... Submit, Wait, Get rejection letter, Write more... deep breath, and repeat. Well, I repeated this for 12 years, until the first DI Nikki Galena book was published in hardback. I was finally a published author! Sadly, after the second book was published, the short print runs ran out, and in no time, I was an out of print author. We were now coming to the end of 2016, and it was time to draw a line under the dream that never materialised. I’d never given up on anything, but I didn’t want to waste any more of our lives. 

And there the story should have ended, but how’s this for serendipity? The next day I had a call from Jasper Joffe of Joffe Books, a small independent publisher. He’d read my book, and would I consider joining them?

Five years later. 

Joffe Books is now one of the leading Indies, selling over 2.8 million books a year, and Joy Ellis, with 25 books under her belt, has found herself in a bookstack of six books, labelled The British Book Awards!

The Patient Man by Joy Ellis (Joffe Books) Out Now

Serial killer Alistair Ashcroft is back and more terrifying than ever. He sends a sinister warning to DS Marie Evans and breaks into DI Rowan Jackman's uneasy domestic bliss. Now everyone Jackman cares about is in danger. Yet for all Ashcroft's taunts, he is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a seemingly routine break-in at the home of gun-club owner Kenneth Harcourt becomes complicated when the man long held responsible for killing Harcourt's young daughter is shot dead in a car park - by a sniper. A killer is on the loose in the quiet streets of Saltern-le-Fen, and he isn't going to stop. And the sniper, like Ashcroft, takes to taunting the police: they'll never catch him, they need to respect him, they shouldn't be sidetracked looking for their old adversary. Jackman and Evans find themselves in a lethal game of cat-and-mouse, but are they the cats or the mice?

Murder on the Mid list and Before He Kills Again by Margaret Murphy

Flashback to 1999. A conversation with an editor: ‘You get such lovely reviews, Margaret,’ (sigh) ‘It’s a pity they don’t translate into sales.’ I was taken aback; sales weren’t my province – that surely was the publisher’s job? She frowned: ‘Oh, but it doesn’t work like that.’ Clearly, she was right – on that point, at least. Good reviews don’t sell books; marketing and publicity sell books. Yet only a tiny, favoured minority of authors have marketing budgets. 

Not being one of this happy band – and not one to give up easily, either – I decided to try to find a way of building my profile – which meant publicising my own work. But one small voice is easily drowned by the roar of the collective publicity and marketing machines of the mighty publishing houses, who can spend six figure sums promoting their big names. At that point, my advances were under £10 000, so paying for PR wasn’t an option, and shouting about my own books was definitely not going to happen – but talking about other writers I admired – that might be fun. 

The next step was to find a few like-minded colleagues, which proved remarkably easy. At the next meeting of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers Association I approached John Baker, Chaz Brenchley, Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Stuart Pawson and Cath Staincliffe, who all readily agreed, and so Murder Squad was conceived.

We shared ideas and contacts, set up a website, designed and had brochures printed, and emailed or wrote to every library reader development officer and festival we could find across the UK. The response was hugely encouraging, with offers flooding in from festivals, libraries, and bookshops, as well as from journalists interested to hear more about this band of northern crime writers, and we launched in March, year 2000. But the squad met with opposition – even hostility – from a quite unexpected quarter: within the CWA itself. While for many members it was a lightbulb moment, a few criticised Murder Squad as ‘divisive’, and in 2003, one Dagger judge even cited the absence of Squad members from the CWA annual conference as evidence of ‘an unwelcome schism in the membership of the CWA’. The reality was that we promoted the CWA at every event we did, and Martin Edwards had edited the association’s anthologies of short fiction since 1996 — in fact, he was editing a special collection to celebrate the CWA's Golden Jubilee in the ‘year of the schism’! By then, there were five other collectives of crime writers, most of whom were CWA members. A lively and frank exchange of opinion followed, the consensus being that, as the CWA had survived three whole years since the inception of Murder Squad, it was probably over the worst. Indeed, the CWA has thrived, despite the fifth columnists in its midst, and is stronger today than it has ever been. As is Murder Squad.

We could not have imagined that it would run and run. But it did, and here we are celebrating Murder Squad’s 20th anniversary. To date we’ve given hundreds of talks and workshops, published three Murder Squad anthologies (one of which won two awards), gained 20+ prizes – including CWA Daggers, Edgars, Macavitys, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, RTS and Agatha Awards – as well as honorary degrees. Not bad for a bunch of mid-listers who refused to accept the status quo. Sadly, Stuart Pawson died a few years ago and Chaz and John stepped down from the squad, but Kate Ellis and Chris Simms have joined us, and the mutually supportive ethos continues. 

Ann has famously gone on to write two phenomenally successful book series, Vera and Shetland, which are equally successful on TV, while Cath created the highly popular Blue Murder TV series. I went on to Chair the CWA, as did Martin Edwards, and both Martin and Ann Cleeves have been awarded the association’s highest honour: the CWA Diamond Dagger. 

The COVID-19 lockdown has meant we had to cancel parties, discussion panels and workshops across the UK, but we’ve increased our online activity to compensate, with more frequent newsletters and occasional ‘Personal Perspectives’ on writing – do join us at www.murdersquad.co.uk. The squad approaches the next twenty years with the same enthusiasm to reach a wider audience that we began with. In addition to our website and regular newsletters, we’re now on Twitter and Facebook – and we have a new anthology of short stories in the works. Called 21, it will celebrate our 21st anniversary with twenty-one stories – three by each of the current members, and one each from Stuart, Chaz, and John. The anthology will be published in 2021 in both the UK and the US by Severn House. 

Margaret Murphy on her new novel, Before He Kills Again

I started working on this novel over a decade ago. I’d always been fascinated by human psychology, and in 2001-2002, I’d even completed the first year of a degree in the subject at the University of Liverpool. During that time, I was volunteering at a refugee charity as part of my research for a novel and had befriended an asylum seeker. ‘Faith’ (not her real name) often became mute during consultations and interviews, and sometimes even collapsed. But slowly, her story emerged: she had been abducted in her home country, taken across the border into another country, and illegally imprisoned. Over many months she had been repeatedly raped, starved, and tortured. She had been forced to watch as her partner was murdered and had seen her friends mutilated by her captors. The UK government was adamant: there was no such regime in her home country – it was safe for her to return. My own research demonstrated that the British Government’s intelligence was out of date, but it was not accepted as sufficient proof, and it was only the delay in her asylum hearing which allowed time for their intel to catch up. After eighteen months, Faith was granted asylum and was finally able to begin building a new life.

With her permission, I included some of her experiences in See Her Burn, and a year or two later, I was invited to speak to professionals and service users at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust – a mental health trust in London which specialises in talking therapies. The trust wanted to hear about my practical experience of working with a refugee with PTSD. The session was introduced by the Portman Trust’s Clinical Director, psychoanalytic psychotherapist Stanley Ruszczynski. I told him that I wanted to write a novel centred around a psychotherapist, and Stan generously agreed to read and comment on my outline. His insights shaped the novel in such positive ways, and I am deeply grateful for his insights which gave depth and enriched the narrative.

The original version of Before He Kills Again went out (under a different title) to half a dozen editors, who praised it warmly – and rejected unanimously. But the late, great Reginald Hill read an early version of it, and he really liked it; he urged me not to give up on it, even when I found it impossible to place. This year, I rewrote the novel and submitted it to Joffe Books – and they loved it. An object lesson in never giving up on the stories you believe in.

Before He Kills Again is available in Kindle, and will be released in paperback at the end of July and is published by Joffe Books.

To find out more about Margaret’s books, visit www.margaret-murphy.co.uk