Dark Brilliance: Agatha Christie, poisonous plants and murder mysteries By Daniel Pembrey

Agatha Christie lived close to Chelsea Physic Garden during the 1920s and 1930s and was almost certainly a regular visitor, so it seemed fitting that it should host the above-named event on Tuesday, 2^nd February. It didn’t disappoint.

   Chelsea Physic Garden almost certainly counted Agatha Christie as a regular visitor

The speakers tried not to be too over-awed by the real star of the show, who couldn’t be there in person but who is now estimated to have sold nearly four billion copies of her novels. Christie was discussed in depth by novelists Rebecca Chance and Helen Smith, as well as scientist Kathryn Harkup whose book A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie was recently published by Bloomsbury.

“It's always great to talk Christie and poisons but it's even better when you have such enthusiastic and knowledgeable fellow panel members,” said Kathryn Harkup. “The audience were brilliant and came up with some very intriguing questions. A great night all round.”

(The following day, Kathryn was nominated for a prestigious Agatha Award in the Best Nonfiction category.)

A full house for the panel that featured Rebecca Chance, Kathryn Harkup and Helen Smith

Rebecca Chance made wide-ranging use of her knowledge of Golden Age detective fiction, showing how inventively Christie deployed poisons. “The audience was very enthusiastic and curious about the twin subjects of Christie and poison, with a sidebar to other Golden Age authors,” commented Rebecca. “We could have talked all night!” Rebecca also paid tribute to current leaders in the genre such as Val McDermid, whose Beneath the Bleeding got a prominent mention.

Taking a cue from Christie’s founding role in the Detection Club, Helen Smith talked about starting up BritCrime, the popular crime author collective. The panel was honoured that Jane Isaac, a BritCime author, had travelled from Northamptonshire to be there.

Helen Smith also emphasised the importance of settings in both Christie’s stories and her own. “The Chelsea Physic Garden was the perfect location to discuss Agatha Christie and poisons,” she said. “I'm always looking for inspiration for inventive ways to murder people in my Emily Castles mystery series. Poison is a very useful murder weapon because there's no need for physical strength to administer it, so its use casts suspicion on the widest number of suspects. The lively discussion generated plenty of ideas for future books.” 

The speakers agreed that central to Christie’s enduring appeal was her plotting, but also noted both the darkness of her writing and, contrastingly, her sense of humour. The audience asked plenty of questions at the end, particularly on the relative advantages of different poisons. A gastronomic theme emerged. How much garlic does it take to kill someone? What about potatoes? 

A full twenty minutes of audience Q&A followed … and! … Rebecca Chance found her light

With that in mind, the panel members retired to a local pub afterwards. Curiously, the private dining room that they were shown into bore a striking resemblance to the set of And Then There Were None …Thankfully the food at The Coopers Arms was excellent and everyone returned home safely.

It was a magical and authentic evening, the more so as Abi Onatade (@Abi_Spks), Caroline Raeburn (@RaeburnCaroline), Claudia Clare (@ClaudiaCeramics), Ian Patrick (@imdambassador), Jeanette Hewitt (@jmhewitt), Joy Kluver (@JoyKluver) and No Exit Press were there too. Here’s hoping for other such events, soon!

Daniel Pembrey moderated this event, which forms part of an ongoing series, the next one being a Salon littéraire at the Luxembourg Embassy in London on May 12^th featuring the (currently) Luxembourg-based crime writer Ruth Dugdall.

Old Unreliable by Carol Goodman

Today’s guest blog is by Carol Goodman who is talking about the unreliable narrator.  She is the bestselling author of fourteen novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages which sold more than 160,000 copies and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. She has been nominated for the Simon & Schuster-Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Nero Wolfe Award, the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and more. She lives in the Hudson Valley and teaches creative writing at The New School and SUNY New Paltz.

Hello.  It’s me, your old friend.  What you don’t remember me?  We went to high school together.  I lent you my copy of Catcher in the Rye.  You lent me your copy of I Am the Cheese and then I spoiled the ending for you.  Or maybe we met at a party.  You don’t remember?  You had had a few—and so, come to think of it, had I.  I don’t remember much of what happened after that.  I may have hit something on the way home but I’m pretty sure it was a deer.  Or perhaps you remember me from that old book by Nabokov, the one in which that saucy little girl seduces me!  What?  You don’t believe a 12-year-old girl could seduce an old charmer like me?  Well just listen, and I’ll show you how it’s done.

Some have accused me of lying but I maintain that only the unimaginative look at my talents so basely.  Perhaps I embellish, but who doesn’t?  Who would you rather listen to—a slave to the truth or a born storyteller who knows how to convey the essence of the truth? What would Don Quixote be without his dragons to slay?  After all, everything is subjective.  We all have our biases, our blind spots, our secrets. Who’s to say that my version of the truth isn’t as valid as yours?  Like my friends Tom Sawyer, Holden Caulfield or Forrest Gump, I may just not understand everything I see, but I’ve got an inventive way of putting it.  Or I may be suffering from some traumatic incident—the death of a spouse, horror on the battlefield, a history of child abuse—that causes me to evade certain facts.  Perhaps I’m a soldier suffering PTSD who can’t admit his best buddy is dead, or a diffident butler who doesn’t want to face his master’s pro-Hitler leanings, or an amnesiac who doesn’t want to remember that he killed his wife.  Can you blame us?  Haven’t you ever pushed some uncomfortable truth to the rear of your mind in order to get on with it?  Or had a few too many drinks to make it through the day?  That doesn’t make us crazy, although between you and me and that figure in the wallpaper over there, I may be.  In fact, if you look closely at my stationery, you’ll see I’m writing this from a mental hospital, but they say I’ll get out soon and who’s to say just when I started going crazy or when I started getting better?

Besides, if I’m crazy, what about the rest of you phonies?  You act like you’re looking for the truth, but I’ve never enjoyed such popularity!  Since a certain “girl” (talk about embellishment!) burst on the scene I am in high demand.  I am entertaining!  I keep you guessing until the last page and, as I think you’re beginning to see, we’re not so different you and I.  You envy my ability to shape the truth and suspect I hold the key to figuring out the world around you.  Because, let’s face it, who can you trust these days?  Politicians?  The banks?  The media?  Your neighbors?  Your best friend?  Your husband?  Your wife?  As my good friend Tom Sawyer once said, “I never seen anybody but lied one time or another.”  

Far better to get used to it.  Learn to spot the exaggeration, the delusion, the evasion, the misunderstanding, the lie.  I can teach you all that and give you a good time along the way.  I promise it won’t be dull.  Trust me.  

Books (and two films) mentioned and alluded to: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, River Road by Carol Goodman,  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov,  Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Forrest Gump, Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Memento, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

River Road by Carol Goodman (Titan Books) is out now £7.99

She came out of nowhere - Nan Lewis—a creative writing professor at a college in upstate New York—is driving home from a faculty holiday party after finding out she’s been denied tenure. On her way, she hits a deer, but when she gets out of her car to look for it, the deer is nowhere to be found. Eager to get home and out of the oncoming snowstorm, Nan is forced to leave her car at the bottom of her snowy driveway to wait out the longest night of the year—and the lowest point of her life…The next morning, Nan is woken up by a police officer at her door with terrible news—one of her students, Leia Dawson, was killed in a hit-and-run on River Road the night before. And because of the damage to her car, Nan is a suspect. In the days following the accident, Nan is shunned by the same community that rallied around her when her own daughter was killed in an eerily similar accident six years prior. When Nan begins finding disturbing tokens that recall the death of her daughter, Nan suspects that the two accidents are connected.  As she digs further, she discovers that everyone around her, including Leia, is hiding secrets. But can she uncover them, clear her name, and figure out who really killed Leia before her reputation is destroyed for good?

You can find more information about Carol Goodman on her website and you can follow her on Twitter @C_Goodmania and on Facebook.

2015 Agatha Award Nominations

The 2015 Agatha Award nominations have been announced by Malice Domestic and the winners will be announced at the 2015 Agatha Awards banquet to be held on Saturday, 30 April 2016.

Best Contemporary Novel:
Burned Bridges by Annette Dashofy (Henery Press)
Long Upon the Land by Margaret Maron (Grand Central Publishing)
The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson (Midnight Ink)
Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
What You See by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Forge Books)

Best Historical Novel:
Malice at the Palace by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
The Masque of a Murderer by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur Books)
Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante by Susan Elia Macneal (Bantam)
Murder on Amsterdam Avenue by Victoria Thompson (Berkley)

Best First Novel:
Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman by Tessa Arlen (Minotaur Books)
Macdeath by Cindy Brown (Henery Press)
Plantation Shudders by Ellen Byron (Crooked Lane Books)
Just Killing Time by Julianne Holmes (Berkley)
On the Road with Del and Louise by Art Taylor (Henery Press)

Best Nonfiction:
The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes by Zack Dundas (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury USA)
Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northeast Ohio by Jane Ann Turzillo (Arcadia Publishing)
The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook: Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For, by  Kate White (Editor), Harlan Coben (Contributor) and Gillian Flynn (Contributor) (Quirk Books)

Best Short Story:
“A Year Without Santa Claus?” by Barb Goffman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2015)
“A Questionable Death” by Edith Maxwell, History & Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)
“A Killing at the Beausoleil” by Terrie Farley Moran (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Nov. 2015)
“Suffer the Poor” by Harriette Sackler, History & Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)
“A Joy Forever” by B.K. Stevens (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March 2015)

Best Children’s/Young Adult:

Pieces and Players by Blue Balliett (Scholastic Press)
Need by Joelle Charbonneau (HMH Books for Young Readers)
Andi Unstoppable by Amanda Flower (Zonderkidz)
Woof by Spencer Quinn (Scholastic Press)
Fighting Chance: A Martial Arts Mystery by B.K. Stevens (Poisoned Pen Press)

Congratulations to all the nominees.

A Question of Choice: Sean Penn, El Chapo and Fever City’s gangsters By Tim Baker

Tim Baker’s highly-anticipated debut thriller, FEVER CITY, has several real-life gangsters

as characters. Here Tim reflects on the challenge of portraying mobsters without glorifying them.

The recent debate over Sean Penn’s interview with Public Enemy Número Uno, Joaquín Guzmán Loera - ‘El Chapo’, raises once again a familiar but uncomfortable question: why is the general public so fascinated with murderous criminals?

It was a question I posed to myself on numerous occasions when I was writing my thriller, FEVER CITY.

Whether they’re real life killers like Pablo Escobar, Al Capone, or the Kray Twins, or fictional ones, like Don Corleone, Hannibal Lecter and Tony Soprano, everyone loves a murderer. Our collective imagination seems to enjoy dwelling on that bloody borderland between murder and majesty – where real-life criminal power lies.

Criminality and power are at the heart of my novel, which mixes fictitious characters with ones inspired by historical figures, including gangsters Johnny Roselli and his boss, Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana.

This sinister duo controlled organised crime in the 1950s and 1960s in Chicago, Las Vegas and LA. Giancana had come to power on the wave of vicious racial attacks in Chicago’s South Side, and both men were behind various contract killings, robberies and outrageous casino rackets.

Their reputation as hard men caught the attention of CIA, who specially recruited them into a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro (Perhaps that detail puts into perspective Sean Penn’s little dalliance with El Chapo).

It was because of the CIA connection that both Roselli and Giancana found their way into my novel. I knew their presence in the narrative was not gratuitous, but still it felt uncomfortable having them on board.

How do you write about vicious criminals without glorifying them, even inadvertently?  Because many people seek to do exactly that, by comparing cold-blooded criminals to rebels persecuted by an unjust state. It’s the Sheriff of Nottingham defence – no matter how bad the outlaw may appear, the Law is ten times worse.

Even an intelligent film-maker like Sean Penn had fallen for this, going so far as to compare ‘El Chapo’ to Robin Hood in his article for Rolling Stone.

Strangely enough, I had decided to go this route myself, only in FEVER CITY, it is Roselli who compares himself to Robin Hood. And in the context of what is about to happen – a murder – it’s absurd.

That became my weapon to keep any latent admiration for the criminal characters at bay – absurdity. I decided to show the criminals for who they really were: brutal, vain and very, very stupid.

Just like El Chapo.

Gangsters, like dictators, can withstand almost any form of attack – except for ridicule. For savage, mocking humour.

This tends to destroy them because their vision of themselves is so preposterously self-inflated, that there is never any room for reflection, let alone introspection.  The pen is mightier than the sword… If it’s dipped in satire.

Which brings us back to the question: why did Sean Penn agree to interview the most wanted fugitive in the world, however brutal, vain and stupid El Chapo might be?

The answer could be surprisingly simple: Penn didn’t see a subject for an article, he saw a potential role.

After all, Penn was nominated for an Oscar for playing another real-life murderer in Dead Man Walking. He won an Oscar by playing a victim of crime: murdered Gay activist, Harvey Milk. He won his first Oscar for his greatest role – that of Boston gangster Jimmy Markum in Mystic River. Crime’s been good to him.

Even his worst performance, as real life gangster Mickey Cohen, was so extreme, so Grand-Guignol, that it has entered into legend for its outré excess. There are no puny failures. Only grand failures.

So it should come as no surprise that Penn gravitated to a criminal monster. Monsters are always more interesting than monks. Unless you’re playing a criminal monk like Rasputin.

Luckily for writers, we have far greater choices when we’re searching for characters; we’re not looking for roles, we’re looking for universes...

FEVER CITY: A Thriller (Faber & Faber) is out 21 January, £12.99. @TimBakerWrites

Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America's richest and most hated man. Hastings, a mob hit man in search of redemption, is also on the trail. But a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza soon ensnares both men. Decades later in Dallas, Alston's son stumbles across evidence from JFK conspiracy buffs that just might link his father to the shot heard round the world.