The Locked Cabin

I've edited more than my fair share of anthologies - around forty - but there are two British anthologists who were putting together fascinating crime collections long before I started and who continue to do excellent work in the field. They are Mike Ashley and Maxim Jakubowski, two men whose remarkably wide knowledge of popular fiction extends far beyond the crime genre. Both of them have both been kind enough, over the years, to include occasional stories of mine in their books.

My latest short story is "The Locked Cabin", and it kicks off Maxim's new anthology, The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths, published by Mango. The book is another entry in a series of collections Maxim has been putting together, which also includes a set of Extraordinary Historical Mysteries, to which I contributed "The Sound of Secrecy".

There's no doubt where the inspiration for this particular story came from. When I was wandering around the Queen Mary 2 last year, I read with great interest the wall panels detailing the illustrious history of the original Queen Mary, and one particular anecdote from the 30s sparked an idea in my mind. When I went on a second crossing on the ship, I gave the idea further thought and realised that it could make an interesting variation on the concept of the locked room mystery. So, not an entirely typical locked room riddle by any means, but a spin on the idea that appealed to me. When I arrived back in Britain, I set about writing the story.

There are some very interesting contributors to this volume, including a number of good friends of mine such as Christine Poulson, Amy Myers, Jane Finnis, Len Tyler, and Paul Charles, all of whom have a track record of successful short story writing. In recent times, I've also got to know David Quantick, who has enjoyed great success in TV with shows like The Thick of It and is now pursuing a long-standing interest in crime fiction. There's a good deal of variety in this book - it's by no means a conventional collection of stories in the John Dickson Carr vein - and quite a bit of experimentation. I'm glad to be part of it.

A Macavity and more...

I've returned from a week in St Petersburg - the Florida version, rather than the Russian one - which was the venue for this year's Bouchercon. And I am in exuberant mood, because not only did the past few days see the publication (in the UK, but not as yet in the US) of Gallows Court, and a gratifying flow of wonderful reviews, but I also managed to win a Macavity award, presented on behalf of Mystery Readers International.

My plan was always to combine Bouchercon with sight-seeing, and to hope that no hurricanes struck. There were plenty of rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning, but apart from getting caught briefly in one downpour, the weather was mainly sunny and humid. I liked St Petersburg, which has a rather nice tourist trolley bus called the Downtown Looper, and I was hugely impressed by the Dali Museum. As anyone who has read Gallows Court will be aware, there is a modern art ingredient lurking in the background of the story, and my visit also gave me a few ideas for the book's sequel (because there will be one!) relating to surrealism and Dali's early work. There are hidden meanings in his pictures, just as there are in a good crime story.

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books has been nominated for five major awards, which is highly gratifying, but such is the strength of competition this year that I thought it unlikely that the book would win anything; so to receive the Macavity for best non-fiction book at the Bouchercon opening ceremony was a real bonus, all the more delightful for being so unexpected. And on the same day that Gallows Court came out, too!

As ever, the chance to meet up with old friends was a major highlight of the convention. Lunch one day with Paul Charles and on another with Ragnar Jonasson offered a great chance to catch up, and the same was true of several dinners with a host of lovely people, including Art Taylor, Bruce Coffin, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Kathy Boon Reel, Alan Orloff, Shelly Dickson Carr, Gigi Pandian, and Elly Griffiths. And it's always good to meet nice people for the first time, including Lesley Thomson, a fellow Head of Zeus author, Zack Urlocker, and Christina Kovac.

I did a couple of panels, and in the bookroom I somehow managed to restrict myself to buying only three vintage books, but they were good finds, and you'll be hearing more about them at a later date. On the tourist trail, an absolute highlight was a sunset cruise, catching glimpses of dolphins and soaking up the scenery. And the long flights gave me the chance to read seven books and watch four films, including the excellent On Chesil Beach. All in all, it was a wonderful time and I felt not only exuberant but also very fortunate.

It's Always Handy to Have Another Hat - Paul Charles on the Writing Life

Pursuing this blog's interest in the writing life, I'm delighted to host a guest blog from Paul Charles, author of the Christy Kennedy series and a number of other highly enjoyable novels. His theme is one familiar to many writers - that of combining another job with that of authorship. It's not always easy, but the question of how to strike the right balance is, I think, of real interest. Over to you, Paul:

"Recently I bumped into a mate of mine, Martin Edwards, in the USA. Martin’s from Liverpool and I’m an Ulsterman currently exiled in London and our paths crossed in Bethesda, MD, USA at the annual Malice Domestic Crime Writers convention. Martin was on his award-collecting tour and I was out promoting my latest Inspector Starrett mystery, St Ernan’s Blues. It’s always great to see Martin but it’s somehow different when you meet up with a mate by accident on foreign soil. I suppose it’s due to the fact that the time and the connection are more precious or something. Anyway we ensured we’d time for a quick lunch and a catch up chat.

Apart from being crime writers the other thing we share (as Martin reminded me) is that we both have twin careers. He’s a successful solicitor and I’m very fortunate to be an agent in the music business. As Martin pointed out in a recent blog, the other hat we wear has certainly helped us both in various ways with our crime-writing careers.

Also having another “job,” as it were, certainly helps me in my writing in that it permits me to move amongst people unnoticed, while allowing me to observe people in their normal environment to my heart’s content. I’ve always felt that being a celebrity writer must compromise writers somewhat. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that when such a writer enters a room, it’s a bit like a TV camera entering a room. Everyone is very conscious there is a camera – or a famous writer - present and so, without even knowing it, they put on a face, even an accent sometime, and you lose the sense of the real them, of their spirit.  I enjoy nothing more than sitting in a restaurant, or a hotel lobby, or an airport terminal, drinking in the rich cast of characters and dialogue and, when I’m not close enough to overhear their conversations, trying to imagine, from their body language, what they are saying.

One of my favourite such scenes was one Saturday morning I was sitting in a Helsinki hotel lobby, minding my own (and other people’s) business when a group of glamorous and giggly septuagenarian ladies congregated on the nearby sofas. They were all dressed in various pastoral colours, with pumps (gutties rather than trainers) and bobby socks. With their energy, enthusiasm, obvious love of life, not to mention, their air of devilment it would have been very easy to have mistaken them for a bunch of teenagers were it not for the 70 years of Finnish weather they’d endured. I obviously hadn’t a clue what they were talking about but (even without subtitles) it was one of the most enjoyable foreign “movies” I’ve ever seen.

Another enjoyable hotel scene I recall is a Liverpool one. I was in Liverpool for an Elvis Costello concert and staying at the very famous and still extremely elegant Adelphi Hotel. I spent a few hours drinking endless cups of tea (I’ll also confess to eating a few scones) while these wonderful scenarios unfolded before me.  I used some of those scenes pretty much as they happened in The First of The True Believers – my Beatle themed novel.  

The Adelphi is also a hotel I imagine Harry Devlin infrequently visiting. Harry Devlin is one of Martin Edwards’ great characters – coincidently Harry is also a Liverpool solicitor. I’ve always been a big fan of the Harry Devlin series and was very happy to hear over my lunch with Martin that it may not be as long as I first feared until Mr Devlin makes a return. I’ve always felt the Harry Devlin series of books are perfect for the small screen and I’m hoping that the next time Martin and I bump into each other again on foreign soil we’ll be discussing, over our lunch, the success of Harry Devlin on TV.."

Edgar, Agatha, Poirot - and good company

"And then he woke up, and he realised it had all been a dream."

I've arrived back home after a week in the United States that had an extremely dream-like quality about it. It's twenty-five years since my first novel was published, and I've had many great times since then (plus occasional setbacks) but this past week has been, by far, the best of my crime writing life.

In that time, I've received the Edgar award and the Agatha award, been named on the shortlist of a third award (the HRF Keating award), and heard it announced that I'm to receive the Poirot award at Malice Domestic next year. Add to that a proposed translation of The Golden Age of Murder into Japanese, and a series of highly enjoyable encounters with crime writing (and reading) friends old and new, and you can perhaps understand why I'm feeling extraordinarily happy- and grateful - right now.

I'd booked for Malice Domestic 28 long before The Golden Age of Murder was shortlisted for the Agathas, so when the book also turned up on the Edgars shortlist, it made sense to fit in my first trip to New York for almost twenty years. I flew into Washington DC to settle into the convention hotel and spend a little quality time with one or two good friends before taking a train to New York and checking into the Grand Hyatt -immediately bumping into Steve Steinbock, crime reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. EQMM were holding a reception prior to the Edgars ceremony, and Steve and I went along there together, and chatted with the likes of Otto Penzler, of Mysterious Bookstore fame, and John Pugmire of Locked Room International.

Then it was back to the Grand Hyatt, and the very lavish and prestigious banquet (sharing a tale with that fantastic writer Sara Paretsky) and awards ceremony. I'm not a believer in writing acceptance speeches in advance of knowing whether one has anything to accept. My approach is simply to improvise if I get lucky, or to have a few more drinks if I don't. Anyway, this time, despite the quality of the other books on the shortlist, by Frederick Forsyth among others, my name came out of the envelope. It was for me an utterly memorable occasion, and  astonishingly, I even managed not to drop the Edgar statuette. (The photo at the top of this post was taken by Donna Andrews; the envelope is the one that Toni P. Kelner opened when making the announcement).

Next morning I headed back to DC, and just about managed to arrive in time for my first panel - I was moderating an appreciation of the life and work of Sarah Caudwell. Doug Greene of Crippen &  Landru, Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press, and Katherine Hall Page (who received the convention's lifetime achievement award) were ideal panellists, fluent and knowledgeable. Barbara made the point that Sarah became inhibited after winning the Anthony Award, and never published another novel in her lifetime; something I didn't know (and probably didn't want to hear the day after winning an award myself!)

After the opening ceremonies, it was time for dinner with Doug and his wife, Steve, John, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Dirda, and two distinguished American academics and writers, Elaine and English Showalter (who also happen to be former owners of my son's flat!). The conversation was spellbinding, and I had a great night. This was swiftly followed by a 9 am Saturday morning panel at which I met two of my fellow nominees, one of whom was Kate White, former editor of Cosmopolitan. (The fact that my book was the only common factor in the Edgar and Agatha shortlists illustrates the vastly increased popularity and quality of writing about the genre over the past few years; there are a lot of good books in this category now.)

I also heard about the Keating shortlist just before meeting up with Paul Charles for lunch. I first met Paul at the Philadelphia Bouchercon many moons ago, but it was almost a decade since we'd last met in person - though he helped, in his capacity as a leading music agent, to persuade Ray Davies to let me quote some lines from his classic pop song in the most recent Harry Devlin novel, Waterloo Sunset. Among other things, we talked about the challenge of "hanging on in there" as a midlist writer, something we've both tried our utmost to do over the years, and we agreed that we'd been very fortunate to have a second income stream other than writing, which has at least enabled us to write what we believe works best, rather than simply to chase the market. I hope to feature Paul on this blog before long.

Then came a reception followed by the Agatha awards ceremony, and I had the pleasure of hosting a table featuring some of my favourite partners in crime, such as Kathryn Leigh Scott, Steve, John, Josh Pachter, Joni Langevoort, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Charles and Caroline Todd. Lots of entertaining conversation before the announcement of the Agatha awards. After another acceptance speech (when I drew a spur of the moment comparison between Malice and that early-established social network, the Detection Club) I had the pleasure of hearing the announcement that next year the convention will mark my contribution to the genre with a Poirot Award. Suffice to say, it was another wonderful night.

Sunday morning brought brunch with a small group of us - including Art Taylor, a notable exponent of the short story who has now turned to writing novels with equal success, and has won Agathas in each of the last three years - hosted by Janet Hutchings, editor of EQMM, After spending ages working out how to ship my awards back to the UK, I interviewed another of the weekend's honorees, Doug Greene, about his long career, which includes a definitive biography of John Dickson Carr, among much else.

In the audience, incidentally, was Shelly Dickson Carr, grand-daughter of the master of the locked room mystery and herself an author of note. It was a real pleasure to meet her (and thanks to her for the photo with Doug and me, below). The "Agathas tea", as usual. concluded a truly fantastic convention. My admiration for the work done by Verena Rose and her colleagues on the Malice board increases the more I learn about what they do. To take just one example, they have over the years raised a total of over $200,000 for charitable causes. Wow.

That evening I had dinner and a few drinks with Doug and Sandi Greene, and we had the chance to reflect together on a wonderful few days. It's almost a cliche to say that the writer's life is a solitary one, and sometimes a lonely one, and to some extent there's truth in the old saying. But as I've tried many times to illustrate on this blog, a writer's life can be greatly enhanced by the social side of things - and in the world of crime writing, that social dimension is hugely enjoyable. Every writer experiences setbacks from time to time, and I know plenty of gifted authors who have lost heart; something that I find deeply regrettable. I spent a lot of time with some marvellous people during my few days in the States, and I returned home reflecting that the successes that have come my way of late owe a great deal to the generosity and support of others, especially when times have been challenging. The crime writing and reading community is highly cohesive, and it is one I'm truly proud to belong to.

















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