Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday

Press Release

Internationally-acclaimed author Kate Mosse commissioned to pen short story to celebrate Agatha Christie’s 125^th birthday, for BBC.com Culture

BBC Culture, one of six bespoke feature sections on BBC.com announced its first short story commission today [September 15, 2015]. Written by Kate Mosse, ‘Eleven Days’ celebrates the 125^th anniversary of the birth of Dame Agatha Christie.

Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time and the world’s best-selling mystery writer, as well as Britain’s most popular author.

Kate took her inspiration for the short story from the eleven days in December 1926 when Christie went missing. Her disappearance sparked one of the largest manhunts in history. Kate’s story is about celebrity, about the ways in which writers use their own experiences in their fiction, and an attribute to the Queen of Crime.

A life-long fan of Christie’s work, Kate has revealed in previous interviews that when she is writing, the only author she can read is Agatha Christie;

“All the novels and short story collections, plays, I've read over and over. They've kept me company all my reading, then writing, life, so I was delighted to be asked.  I didn't want to speculate about what might have happened or to put words into Agatha Christie's mouth, so instead I tried to imagine what it might have been like to be involved on the sidelines.”

Available exclusively on bbc.com/culture, the story features bespoke illustrations by Owen Gatley, a freelance illustrator who has previously worked with a variety of international clients, including The New York Times, Adidas, The Guardian, Google, ASOS, GQ and The Independent.

Matthew Anderson, Editor of BBC Culture, says:

“We were looking for a special way to mark the Agatha Christie anniversary in 2015 and what better way than to have Kate Mosse, another internationally best-selling crime writer, re-imagine Christie’s real-life mystery?”

“We’re thrilled Kate agreed to write this thoughtful and original piece for BBC Culture and we’re sure fans across the globe will enjoy reading Kate’s take on those eventful eleven days.”

BBC Culture launched in the spring of 2013 and became available to UK audiences earlier this year.  The site reaches around 3 million unique browsers every month.  It offers fans an alternative lens on global trends across the arts, through a rich mix of videos, images and editorial content from an array of well-known and respected writers and commentators. The story is part of a new series called BBC Britain that was launched across all of the feature sections in June.

Twitter: @BBC_Culture

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Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCCulture

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-Ends-

Contact

For further information contact;

Cassandra Power

Cassandra.power@bbc.com

020 8433 1525 / 07739 300 280

BBC Worldwide Press Office

Hiding for their lives: Why I wrote The Defenceless

Kati Hiekkapelto © Ayo Onatade 2015

Today’s guest blog is by Finnish author Kati Hiekkapelto.  Kati Hiekkapelto is a bestselling author, punk singer, performance artist and special-needs teacher. She lives on an old farm on the island of Hailuoto in Northern Finland with her children and sizeable menagerie. Her debut novel The Hummingbird was shortlisted for the 2015 Petrona Award.  The Defenceless won the top Finnish crime award in 2014.  The Vuoden Johtolanka (Clue) Award is given annually to the best Finnish crime fiction novel by the Dekkariseura (Finnish Crime Society).

One of the primary issues underpinning the plot of The Defenceless is illegal – or, as I prefer to call it, undocumented – migration. ‘Illegals’ are everywhere, and they are often families with small children, moving around Europe, being sent here and there like postcards by government authorities. It is a reality that is not really evident, as we go about our everyday lives. These people are not part of the society; they cannot work, go to school, rent a flat or receive social benefits. If they become ill, they can´t even go to a doctor because they have no ID. But they exist and their ‘illegal’ underground lives, stripped of any basic rights, is actually better than returning to their home countries, where most of them would probably face death. They are hiding for their lives.

In Finland, I am involved in a number refugee causes, and on one occasion I got to know a family in just such a situation. I was writing The Hummingbird when I met a Christian family from Pakistan – a mother, father and two children. They had been in Finland for several years, living in asylum centres. The youngest child was born here and the older was attending school, where he had learned excellent Finnish. And then one day they heard that their application for asylum was declined. The police could turn up at any moment to send them back to Pakistan.

The decision to deport was based on how the Finnish Immigration Service defined the security situation in Pakistan at the time. They decided that it is a safe country – at the very same time that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was advising Finnish people travelling to Pakistan quite the opposite. They reasoned that Pakistan, and especially certain areas of it (my family was from one of these areas), was dangerous to Finnish people but not to a Christian family whose home was occupied by extreme Muslims and whose life was in danger. The father of the family was extremely distressed. He had believed that Christian Europe would understand and help his family, but they didn’t seem to care, or to realise the grave danger that would face them upon their return.

So we were hid this family for a while in Hailuoto, where I live, keeping them underground until their appeal to the higher court was completed, which would give them a legal right to stay until their case was re-examined. In the end, they were lucky. Their appeal was accepted and they were granted permission to stay permanently in Finland.

But these things rarely have a happy ending. Many people are refused, some of them for good reason, of course, but far too many because officers either have no time to research their situation properly or they have incorrect and distorted information about safety in their home countries. I call this a racist immigration policy. Finland is difficult country to get into and it is meant to be so. We simply don´t offer enough asylum. The number of immigrants in Finland is embarrassingly low compared to any other welfare country.

This is how Sammy, one of the main characters in The Defenceless, began to take shape. I wanted to imagine and describe the situation where anything, even a life sentence in prison, would be better than going back home.

I think every writer – and especially a crime writer – is interested in hidden realities, ‘sub’ worlds behind the visible, ‘normal’ daily life we occupy and see. There is so much going on under the surface of our Nordic welfare state, and the average person simply doesn’t realise it. We go to work and to school; we shop and go home to rest and hang out with our families, believing that everything is fine. It’s too easy to close our eyes and turn on the telly. Maybe this is the main reason I want to write about minorities and refugees in my crime novels. I want people to see.

You can find out more about Kati Hiekkapelto and her work on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @HiekkapeltoKati.  You can also find her on Facebook.

The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto is out now (Orenda Books, £8.99)

When an old man is found dead on the road – seemingly run over by a Hungarian au pair – police investigator Anna Fekete is certain that there is more to the incident than meets the eye. As she begins to unravel an increasingly complex case, she’s led on a deadly trail where illegal immigration, drugs and, ultimately, murder threaten not only her beliefs, but her life. Anna’s partner Esko is entrenched in a separate but equally dangerous investigation into the activities of an immigrant gang, where deportation orders and raids cause increasing tension and result in desperate measures by gang members – and the police themselves. Then a bloody knife is found in the snow, and the two cases come together in ways that no one could have predicted. As pressure mounts, it becomes clear that having the law on their side may not be enough for Anna and Esko.

The Ideal Big Brother

James Lovegrove is the New York Times best-selling author of The Age of Odin, the third novel in his critically-acclaimed Pantheon military SF series. He was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 for his novel Days and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004 for his novel Untied Kingdom. He also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes: Gods of War and Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares for Titan Books.

Hercule Poirot is an annoying prig.  Miss Marple is an interfering old busybody.  Father Brown is a pious moralist.  Gideon Fell loves bamboozling others.  Lord Peter Wimsey is a patronising snob.  Inspector Morse is a boorish alcoholic.

Let’s face it, the great fictional detectives are a pretty unpleasant lot, aren’t they?  They’re the sort of people you’d hardly give time to in real life, let alone welcome into your house.  Even Agatha Christie herself tired of her most famous creation, the fastidious little Belgian, and grew to dislike him intensely, once dismissing Poirot as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”.

Sherlock Holmes isn’t much better, to be honest.  He is arrogant.  He is overbearing.  He is condescending to those less clever than him, which is pretty much everyone.  He has the shortest of fuses when it comes to patience, and continually berates and mocks the only man he can call a friend, Dr Watson.

Why is he still such a popular literary figure, then?  Why does he inspire such loyalty and devotion in his fans, worldwide?  Why are they still making movies and TV shows about him, nearly a century and a half after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first dreamed him up?  Why do authors, myself among them, write Holmes pastiches, and why do readers lap them up?  Why is he still the most loved fictional detective of them all?

My theory, for what it’s worth, is that Sherlock Holmes is the ideal big brother.  As we all know, he himself is a younger brother, seven years junior to Mycroft; but he fulfils the role of senior sibling both to Watson and to the reader.

Like a big brother, he is cool (in every sense).  He is that bit smarter.  He leads the way.  He’s the one who gets you into scrapes, and gets you out again.  He’s fit and strong and tall.  You can’t help but look up to him.  You know he’ll look after you.

All of the above mentioned detectives are phenomenally intuitive and intelligent.  They are all firmly on the side of the angels.

What distinguishes Holmes from his peers, however, is the fact that he doesn’t work alone.  He is firmly part of a two-man team.

Yes, Poirot has a sidekick, Captain Hastings.  But Hastings is very much a subordinate.  Poirot never even pretends to treat him as an equal.  In some of the adventures, Hastings doesn’t appear at all.

Miss Marple has a string of young friends and relatives, mostly nephews and nieces, all of whom help her along.  But mostly she does the thinking work by herself.

Father Brown, too, is a loner – although God is his co-pilot.  Gideon Fell has a spouse, which makes him unusual in this context.  But Mrs Fell is never given a forename and barely features in the stories.

As for Wimsey, he has Bunter, his valet.  Bunter helps out in every aspect of his lordship’s life, from preparing meals to getting him dressed, and his skills in the field of photography sometimes come into play.  But all said and done, he remains an inferior, a mere domestic.

Morse, meanwhile, has Sergeant Lewis, who is a capable policeman in his own right.  But Lewis invariably follows Morse’s lead on a case and endures endless belittling and castigation at the other man’s hands.  Rank divides them.

What sets Holmes apart, then, is that he has his “little brother”, Watson, whom he looks upon with exasperated benevolence.  The two share an almost familial bond.  The constant presence of Watson by Holmes’s side humanises him, and dilutes his less appealing qualities.  If someone as straightforward and decent as John Watson can see the good in Sherlock Holmes, then so, by extension, can we.

Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine, Titan Books, £7.99

March 1895. Hilary Term at Oxford. In the newly built extension to the University Galleries, Professor Quantock has put the finishing touches to a wondrous computational device that, he claims, is capable of analytical thought to rival that of the cleverest men alive.  A challenge that Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore.  He and Watson travel to Oxford, where a battle of wits ensues between  the great detective and his mechanical counterpart as they compete to see which of them can be first to solve a series of crimes. As man and machine vie for supremacy, it becomes clear that the Thinking Engine has its own agenda and Holmes’ and Watson’s lives are on the line as a ghost from the past catches up with them.