The World's First Crazy Golf Cosy Crime? by Glenda Young

My new cosy crime, Foul Play at the Seaview Hotel is set in the Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough, a place I adore.  My cosy crime series was shortlisted with Richard Osman and Val McDermid for Best New Crime Series in the category of New Kid on the Block at the Dead Good Reader Awards 2022 at Harrogate crime festival.

The book stars a team of obsessive crazy golfers who arrive in town to play a crazy golf tournament. They’re dressed in matching tracksuits. The team captain is Olga, she’s ex-military and keeps her team in order. Olga tells anyone who’ll listen that she aims to win the tournament by fair means or foul … then the rival team captain is murdered. 

When writing this book, I wanted to include a scene set on the Central Tramway funicular. It was built in 1881, making it one of the oldest cliff railways running in the UK.

Although the funicular cars appear to travel slowly up and down the hill, at the moment they pass, it’s a ‘blink and you miss it’ moment if you’re inside the cars.  I wanted a scene where the amateur sleuth, hotel landlady Helen Dexter, was in the funicular car going and in the other was the murderer coming down. The idea was that Helen would spot the murderer and yell the immortal line “Stop that Funicular!”

But first I had to research to discover how much Helen could see of the murderer at the moment when the cars pass. Could she see the murderer’s face as the cars trundled past each other, or just the colour of their jacket, for instance? What if the murderer was sitting down in the car, what could she see of them then?

My husband Barry, always willing to help with research, especially when it involves being bribed with a few pints at his favourite pub in Scarborough (The North Riding), went to the bottom of the hill and entered the funicular. I entered the car at the top, notebook in hand. An employee of the Central Tramway was intrigued and offered to stop the funicular mid-flight for me to research. I still can’t believe this happened!  What a privilege it was to have the cars stopped just so I could make notes for my book. I can’t thank Central Tramway enough.  

Since that day, I’ve become good friends with the staff. So much so that they’re now selling my cosy crimes from their merchandise stall. And I’m planning to hold the paperback book launch in December with them too.  All being well, it’ll be held on Saturday 9 December and if you’re in Scarborough, it’d be great to see you there.

Foul Play at Seaview Hotel by Glenda Young (Headline Publishing) Out Now

In the charming Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough, a killer game is being played . . .  Helen Dexter is enjoying the new four-star status of the Seaview Hotel. But she begins to wonder if this accolade is cursed when a series of disasters strike. It starts when a crazy golf team arrive to play in a Scarborough tournament. Their odd behaviour heightens when the rival team captain turns up. Yet, there's worse to come for Helen when one of the guests is murdered playing crazy golf. Then the Seaview's prize-winning cook Jean quits, leaving Helen devastated. And so, as Helen's fiftieth birthday approaches, the last thing she's in the mood for is a celebration. However, mysterious invitations arrive to a party that Helen doesn't want. Can Helen unmask the crazy golf killer, save the reputation of the Seaview, win Jean back and solve the mystery of the party invitations? With her rescue greyhound Suki by her side, Helen Dexter is on the case.

Visit Glenda’s website at glendayoungbooks.com

You can also find Glenda Young on X and on Instagram @flaming_nora. You can also find her on Facebook.

Performing the Perfect Crime

 

My second cosy crime CURTAIN CALL AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL launches in ebook, hardback and audiobook on May 12 2022 (paperback coming in October). 

It’s another fun, cosy crime set in Scarborough and published by Headline. It stars an acting troupe who arrive at the Seaview Hotel to rehearse a play they hope will save a much-loved local theatre. There’s a lot riding on this play. However, the leading lady is a diva, the playwright is highly strung and tensions in the troupe run high. When one of the actors is found dead on the beach, landlady Helen Dexter sets out to solve the crime. And just when Helen thinks things can’t get any worse after one of her guests is murdered, the hotel inspector arrives! 

It's the second in the series of my cosy crimes, the first one being MURDER AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL which stars 12 Elvis impersonators (called Twelvis!) and one is found dead with his blue suede shoes missing. I’ve already written about MURDER AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL here on the Shots Blog. 

So, now that CURTAIN CALL AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL is released, it means I’ve now written two cosy crimes about people pretending to be someone else, whether actors of Elvis impersonators. It’s started me wondering what it is about the role of performance I enjoy so much and why it lends itself to writing crime. Whether it’s actors in a play or singers pretending to be the king of rock and roll, there’s something I find appealing in pretending and faking. Not in real life, I must stress, but in fiction. In the real world I prefer an honest, straightforward kind of life but in fiction, well, I’m all for smokescreens and people who aren’t what they seem. And what better way to disguise what your motives are for doing something horrid than by protecting yourself behind the job that you do?

It all happens in CURTAIN CALL AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL. So, settle into your favourite chair with a bag of popcorn, put your feet up and enjoy the performance!

Curtain Call at the Seaview Hotel by Glenda Young is published by Headline on May 12 in ebook, hardback and audiobook. It is released in paperback in August 2022.

Helen Dexter has started a new chapter in her life as sole proprietor of the Seaview Hotel. But things take a dramatic turn when an acting troupe book into the hotel to rehearse a play they hope will save a much-loved theatre from being closed down. Helen immediately picks up on tension between the actors, but there is worse to come when the charismatic leading lady is found dead. With so much at stake, it's clear the show must go on. Helen is roped into helping the troupe with their performance, giving her ample opportunity to discover who wanted their diva dead. However, the murder is not the only thing on Helen's mind. She's receiving threatening phone calls, her car is vandalised - and she's just learned of an impending visit from a hotel inspector which could change the fortunes of the Seaview Hotel. With her trusty greyhound Suki by her side, Helen is determined to uncover the identity of the killer - even if it means she has to give the performance of her life.

You can watch a very short teaser video of Curtain Call at the Seaview Hotel below

Find out more about Glenda Young on her website at http://glendayoungbooks.com 
Follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/flaming_nora 
You can also find her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/GlendaYoungAuthor

From Coalmining to Crime By Glenda Young

My debut cosy crime MURDER AT THE SEAVIEW HOTEL launches on August 5, 2021 and is published by Headline in ebook, hardback and audiobook (the paperback is coming out in November). It’s set in the seaside town of Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast and is about a group of twelve Elvis impersonators, called Twelvis. When a Twelvis member is murdered with his blue suede shoes stolen, Helen Dexter, landlady of the Seaview Hotel, is on the case to solve the crime, with the help of her rescue greyhound, Suki. The book is the first in a series of three signed up by Headline, all set at the Seaview Hotel starring Helen Dexter and Suki.

It’s the first time I’ve had a crime novel published, but not the first time I’ve written crime. I’ve been successful with short stories in the past which have included murder and mystery, death and deceit, fakers and fraud. Those stories have won competitions or been placed in anthologies. However, it’s not my first time as a novelist. I’ve already written six historical sagas which are published by Headline and there’s another two sagas in the pipeline. These historical books are set in a coalmining village in the northeast, in 1919. It’s the same village as the one I grew up in. I was always aware of its coalmining past and it’s been illuminating researching the place I thought I knew/ The sagas are dark and gritty and they all star young women whom I chuck everything and the kitchen sink at. Oh, those poor girls! My debut saga even includes a murder, and there are villains and ne’er-do-wells in all of my books, a dark streak runs through them all. So why have I started writing cosy crimes?

Well, I haven’t switched to cosy crimes at the expense of my sagas. I’m writing both genres alternately, using my real name for both. I haven’t chosen a pseudonym as some authors do. I’m proud of my name, it makes me unique, one thing I can call my own. I first pitched the idea of the cosy crime to my agent, Caroline Sheldon of Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency in the first lockdown of 2020. I had so much time on my hands then, with nothing else to do after I’d turned in the saga I was writing for Headline months ahead of schedule. My agent loved the crime synopsis I’d sent her and encouraged me to write a couple of chapters to ensure I could successfully turn my hand to a new genre after writing sagas for a few years. The sample chapters went down a storm with my agent, who encouraged me to write the full novel. 

As the book is about twelve Elvis impersonators, I based each chapter on the title of an Elvis song. And each morning, when I sat down to write, the first thing I did was listen to that chapter’s song online. It got me in the right mood for writing, it set the right tone for the book which is frothy and fast moving, uplifting and fun, albeit with a murder involved. There are red herrings galore, jokes a-plenty, lots of fantastic characters and a very strong storyline. I chose to set the story in Scarborough, my favourite place in the world, my happy place, the town where I spent many happy holidays as a I child, the town where I was married over ten years ago. 

Writing about Scarborough and Elvis, listening to his upbeat music daily was the perfect way to help me through the first lockdown. I couldn’t wait to begin writing each day, transporting myself in my head to the seaside and into my story with Helen and her friends, her dog, and twelve Elvis impersonators. I’ve even created a playlist so you can sing along as you read the book. 

I hope that enjoy reading Murder at the Seaview Hotel as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

Murder at the Seaview Hotel by Glenda Young is published by Headline on August 5 in ebook, hardback and audiobook. It is released in paperback in November 2021. 

In the charming Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough, a murder is nothing to sing about... After the death of her husband Tom, Helen Dexter is contemplating her future as the now-sole proprietor of the Seaview hotel. There's an offer from a hotel chain developer to consider, but also a booking from a group of twelve Elvis impersonators, a singing troupe called Twelvis. Tom loved Elvis and for Helen this is a sign that she should stay. But the series of mysterious events which follow, suggests that the developer is not going to give up easily. Then, shortly after Twelvis arrive, one of the group disappears. His body is found floating in a lake, with his blue suede shoes missing. Could the two be connected? With the reputation of the Seaview on the line, Helen isn't going to wait for the murderer to strike again. With her trusty greyhound Suki by her side, she decides to find out more about her guests and who wanted to make sure this Elvis never sang again.

The Playlist is at Spotify and YouTube.

A teaser video for the book can be watched below. 

Find out more about Glenda Young on her website.

Follow her on Twitter @flaming_nora.  You can also find her on Facebook.

Astounding secret link Bronte Sisters & Dracula unearthed

I made a startling discovery last week in a dank dungeon in Scarborough’s abandoned Victorian prison.  In a slender folder labelled ‘Correspondence’ I found a cache of a dozen letters from 1878, the year the prison closed, between Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula, and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Wyatt, the last governor of the prison. 

Put together with a handful of letters in the same folder between the Governor and Richard Stout, the town’s Chief of Constabulary, they tell an extraordinary true crime story and overturn all conventional theories about the creation of Stoker’s 1897 novel. 

They also shine a disturbing light on Anne Bronte, who died of consumption in Scarborough in 1849 and was buried by her sister Charlotte in the town’s St Mary’s churchyard.

The folder was on a shelf crammed with files in a cell in the basement of the prison.  Heather French, my co-director of the Scarborough Book Festival, Books By The Beach, had insisted we got to know the venue in advance of the festival events we’re holding there.  Heather doesn’t do what she calls ‘fusty dusty’ so she moved along. Me, I like fusty-dusty.

In the first letter Bram Stoker was thanking Lieutenant-Colonel Wyatt for a dinner that took place in the Governor’s residence in a gateway tower of the prison.  The dinner was also attended by Wybert Reeve, the owner of the town’s Georgian Theatre Royal.

I was familiar with Stoker’s association with Whitby in the early 1890s but not that he had visited Scarborough so early.  I discovered later that he was on honeymoon in the town in 1878 and that his father-in-law, Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe, had provided a letter of introduction to Lieutenant-Colonel Wyatt, with whom he had served in the Crimea.  I also discovered that Stoker knew Wybert Reeve from the occasions when he brought the actor Henry Irving north to perform at the Theatre Royal. 

In this first letter Stoker expressed gratitude for  ‘the astounding stories’ Wyatt had told him ‘of the town and the gaol’s inmates’.  As I read through the dozen letters I realised just how astounding these stories were. 

I had always understood Stoker had been inspired to write Dracula by tales he was told in the 1880s and 1890s about the Carpathian mountains by Hungarian writer and traveller, Armin Vambery.  However, the letters made it apparent that inspiration had come in 1878 and from real people and events in Scarborough.

Of the people, one of only twelve female prisoners in Wyatt’s jail was a Mina Harker, the name Stoker used for the woman with whom Dracula becomes obsessed.  Another prisoner was a John Retford, who was kept in a cell away from the other prisoners because of his disruptive behaviour.  Aside from a similar name, Retford shared with the novel’s Renfield a diet of flies, spiders and birds eaten raw.  

The real events, discussed in three letters from Richard Stout, the Chief of Constabulary, were as macabre as Stoker’s novel.  The letters refer to decades of inexplicable disappearances and attacks on the vulnerable in Scarborough old town and around the harbour.  In each case the victim was bitten in the neck.  Rumours were rife of a pale woman descending from a churchyard near the castle to stalk her prey. 

The police had been slow to make a link between the different attacks because of the time span but had cottoned on in 1878.  Only two weeks before the dinner the woman had been sighted down by the harbour in the middle of the night.  Police had trailed her back to St Mary’s graveyard.  According to Stout, at first dawn the woman had been ‘dealt with in the recommended manner’. 

Stout didn’t name her but described a woman in her late twenties who had ‘apparently’ died of consumption in 1849.  (He wondered if her coughing up blood before her ‘death’ had a more hideous cause than the illness.)

Obviously my first thought was Anne Bronte.  The date, the graveyard and the illness all fit.  But this was a bombshell that would horrify the legion of Bronte Sister fans around the world.  I left messages with the Bronte Museum in Haworth and the Bronte Society.  My calls were not returned.

I began to wonder about the real causes of Bramwell and Emily Bronte’s deaths in Haworth in 1847.  I pondered over why Charlotte insisted on  taking Anne eighty miles away from her home to Scarborough when Anne was apparently near death; why Charlotte insisted Anne be buried in Scarborough and not back in Haworth where the rest of the family was buried; and I wondered why, after Anne’s ‘death’ she refused to allow republication of Anne’s 1847 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

But I’ve decided it’s not my job to speculate.  The only way to quell the uproar that will follow the publication of the letters is the opening of Anne Bronte’s grave in St Mary’s churchyard.  An exhumation isn’t necessary – lifting the coffin lid would suffice.  After all, a stake through the heart is difficult to miss.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and...Crime. (The Iceman Cometh.)

I’m not entirely sure how I got involved co-running the new Scarborough Book Festival, Books By The Beach.  My big mouth, I expect.  I’d been hosting events at the Library Service’s Literature Festival (note the distinction) in the town for years so when the Library decided it couldn’t carry on the local paper emailed me for a comment.

I thought I said something innocuous about what a shame it was.  The headline in the Scarborough News a couple of days later blared: ‘Festival favourite host to save scrapped Festival’.  That would be me, then.

I got together with Heather French, the librarian who had been programming the Literature Festival for the past seven years, to create Books By The Beach, the new festival.  She worked really hard, off the clock, to put a programme together, whilst I took all the credit.  Worked for me.

Scarborough has always got good audiences for crime writers.  Mr Rankin, Ms McDermid, Ms Mina, Ms Welch and Mr McBride have all made the trip south from Scotland.  Ms Ann Cleeves, Mr Peter James, Mr David Hewson, Mr Mark Billingham, Mr Simon Kernick, Mr Lee Child and many others have also been there.

But this was a new festival.  We needed a crime writer who’d not been to Scarborough before.  (Plus none of these writers were available.  Except that the wonderful Mark Billingham is driving up especially to interview his mate, rock journo Mark Ellen, then driving straight back south again.)

 

 

Enter Jo Nesbo.  Let me rephrase that: ENTER JO NESBO.  The festival was running 24-27 April.  I knew from Bethan Jones, Jo’s magnificent PR at his UK publisher, that he had his new novel, The Son, out in April.  Any chance Jo could come to Scarborough?  Sorry, Bethan said, he doesn’t get in until 28 April.  Did I say the Festival ended 27 April, Bethan?  My mistake.  I meant 28^th… or 29^th… or – can we just do Nesbo Time?

Anyway, The Iceman Cometh.  Jo was up for it (maybe it was an ancestral thing: the Vikings used to live in Scarborough and nearby Jorvik/York for a hundred years or so) so we had our top of the bill (and a longer festival). 

We lined up some spy guys – Jim ‘Today’ Naughtie with his debut novel, Charles Cumming with his seventh and ex-head of Special Branch, Roger Pearce.  We tried for Ben McIntyre and his book on Kim Philby but got slapped down pretty quickly.

(I’m not saying this is Ben but some people have long enough memories to recall that movie An American Werewolf in London and get frightened at the thought of going to Yorkshire.  You can pitch All Creatures Great and Small as much as you want, they just see fog-shrouded moors with throat-ripping creatures waiting to pounce.  Frankly, so do I, but then I’m from Lancashire, the land of milk and honey.)

We had Mark Lawson until he dropped out for ‘personal reasons’, which always sounds a bit odd so we got paranoid about that until he dropped out of everything for ‘personal reasons’ and then we hoped he was going to be okay.  We even forgave him utterly that our brochure was at the printer and we had six hours to find someone else to take his place.

We’ve got two fine crime writers doing unusual things.  (No, not together, scandal-mongers.)  Lynn Shepherd (A Treacherous Likeness, Tom-All-Alone’s) is giving a talk at our Gothic literary dinner in the 1840s town hall about Dracula. (He landed in nearby Whitby when he came over from Transylvania.)  Sherlock Holmes expert, David Stuart Davies, is telling ghost stories in the company of movie star Greta Scacchi (no less) in the town’s abandoned Victorian prison.  Spooookie.

We’ve also got one-man crime and film encyclopaedia, Barry Forshaw, talking about British Gothic Cinema over lunch. (We’re prepared for unfinished meals.)

I’m running a crime-writing workshop in that very same prison.  I’m planning to lock participants in the cells to write.  (I’m funny that way – and isn’t that what public liability insurance was invented for?)

 

Check out the programme at www.booksbythebeach.co.ukwww.booksbythebeach.co.uk.  Follow us on Twitter on @scarboroughbook. We’re on Facebook too.  And come to see Jo and our other writers.  (High speed trains to York then 40 minutes cross-country to the coast.) There are no werewolves in Yorkshire, I promise.  Vampires, now, that’s something else again.