Shrewsbury and the CWA conference

I've just returned from Shrewsbury after an exhilarating weekend. It was the CWA's annual conference, an event I've rarely missed over the past thirty years. The setting was lovely - the ancient town is crammed with history and interest, and the Lion Hotel, whose previous guests have included Darwin, de Quincey and Paganini, was a splendidly historic venue.

The speakers included the legendary investigative psychologist David Canter, author of the Gold Dagger-winning Criminal Shadows, who shared many insights about the pros and cons of offender profiling. A psychiatrist explored the way that her discipline can contribute to cutting edge fiction. A forensic expert cleverly updated us on latest forensic techniques, and how they might be used in solving The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. There were talks about Ellis Peters, and about marketing books in the modern age. A leading scientific advisor to government was the after dinner speaker. And there was much more besides...

Quite a bit of alcohol was quaffed, and we also had a visit to Tanners' ancient wine cellars, again fascinating and historic. A ghost tour around the town was followed by a trip to the castle and the amazing public library, where an extremely old building which once housed Shrewsbury School has been cleverly integrated into a modern facility. I've never seen a library like it. There was also a book-signing at Waterstones.

It was great fun to catch up with old friends and also to meet many of the CWA's newer members, such as playwright Derek Webb, novelists Stephen Norman and Jo Summers, and human rights campaigner Stephen Jakobi. Great credit goes to Cilla Masters for organising things with such verve, and to Dea Parkin for all her support work. As for the CWA's AGM, it was a well-attended forum for lively debate and some very good exchanges of ideas for the future. And the upshot is that I've been re-elected as Chair of the CWA for a further (and definitely, definitely final) twelve-month term. It's a great honour to lead such a thriving and fun organisation. 

Three New Books

Today I'd like to draw your attention to three very varied new books which, taken together, should appeal to a wide range of tastes. The first is a collection of short stories, The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11, edtied by Maxim Jakubowski and published by Robinson. It's dedicated to the late Bob Barnard and Nick Robinson, and contains a very wide range of stories, including one by me. More famous contributors include Lee Child, Val McDermid, Alexander McCall Smith and Simon Kernick. Maxim is a very widely read fellow, and I've enjoyed devouring his collections for many years. If you like short stories, it's a terrific compilation.

I've been singing the praises of Priscilla Masters for about fifteen years now. She is an under-rated writer of traditional mysteries, and her latest,The Devil's Chair, has just been published by Severn House. Cilla is best known for her books about Joanna Piercy, but this is an entry in her equally appealing series featuring Martha Gunn, who is a coroner. The setting is Shropshire, and I think it's fair to say that Cilla evokes the mysterious atmosphere of that green and pleasant, yet sometimes eerie county better than any other crime writer with the distinguished exception of Ellis Peters. Cilla has beaten me to it in retiring completely from her day job, and I hope this means that we'll see even more of her fiction in the future.

Finally, a first novel by a writer whom, unlike Maxim and Cilla, I've never met. The Vistiors, by Simon Sylvester, is published by Quercus and is set on a remote Scottish island called Bancree. Why are some people mysteriously disappearing from Bancree? This is a book which doesn't really fit into the conventional pigeon-hole of detective fiction, but it's nicely written, and reflects the vogue for books set on Scottish islands, a fashion perhaps inspired by the great success of Ann Cleeves and Peter May. I think Simon Sylvester will be a name to watch in years to come.

Zoe Sharp and Priscilla Masters

Two crime writers who are friends of mine have published books recently, and I'd like to give each of them a mention. I've known Priscilla Masters for more than a decade now, and have fond memories of sharing a number of library events with her, two in Lancashire and one in the West Midlands. She's a very entertaining speaker, and though I didn't know her well that time we did our first gig together, she instantly put me at my ease. It's great fun appearing with her, because she is so good at keeping an audience interested and amused. Most recently, she was a very popular after dinner speaker at the St Hilda's conference in August.

Her latest novel, published by Severn House, is The Final Curtain. It's another entry in the long-running series featuring DI Joanna Piercy, and opens with her return to work after her honeymoon. As usual, the Staffordshire setting adds a realistic and appealing background to a story which opens with some apparently insignificant complaints from a woman who used to appear in a television soap opera. A review on the back cover compares Cilla with her friend and mine, Kate Ellis, and I think it's a good comparison.

Cilla works within the field of the police procedural and whodunit, whereas Zoe Sharp is more often associated with the thriller genre, in view of the success of her books about Charlie Fox, who is definitely someone you mess with at your peril. Zoe's another entertaining speaker, whose fields of expertise cover such diverse subjects as guns, motor bikes, and photography.

Zoe has also become something of a guru in the field of self-publishing, and she's brought out her latest, The Blood Whisperer (excellent title, wish I'd thought of it first!) via the imprint of Murderati Ink. The book is available as an ebook, but having received a trade paperback edition, I am pleased to confirm that it's attractively produced (not something that can always be taken for granted with these ventures.) This book is Zoe's first stand-alone thriller, and introduces London crime scene specialist Kelly Jacks. Zoe's a pacy writer (her short stories, one or two of which I've included in anthologies I've edited, are also very entertaining), and I'm confident this intriguing change of direction will further expand her considerable fan base.

New Books

Today I’d like to highlight a range of newly published books, one by a good friend, and a couple by relative newcomers whom I’ve never met. What they all have in common is readability.

Smoke Alarm, by the consistent (and consistently under-estimated) Priscilla Masters, is the fourth entry in her series featuring Shrewsbury-based coroner Martha Gunn. Once again, it benefits from a setting in Shropshire, a county Cilla knows just as well as Ellis Peters did. The mystery revolves around a fire, the work of an arsonist, that results in three deaths. As the author explains in an afterword, a real-life tragedy provided the seed for the narrative, but the story itself is very much a work of fiction.

Devoured, by D.E. Meredith, is interesting on two levels. First, the story – set in Victorian London and the era when forensic science began to develop – has a number of appealing features and is clearly the product of extensive research. Professor Hatton is asked for help by Inspector Adams of Scotland Yard when the body of Lady Bessingham, a noted collector at a time when specimen-hunting is all the rage, is found in her home in Nightingale Walk – surrounded by fossils and tribal masks. A creepily memorable crime scene. 

Second, I’d like to highlight Allison and Busby's presentation of this hardback edition. The binding, with a map of Victorian London, is attractive, and I suspect this book is a good example of the way forward for hardback fiction in the era of the ebook. Ebooks pose, as we all know, a threat to conventional books, but I don’t believe for one moment that the book will disappear. Mass market paperbacks may not sell as easily, but there may well be a resurgence of interest in hardback editions that are attractively bound, as lovely things to own. I’ve heard a number of publishers express this view, and I think there’s something in it. 

Finally, Baptism by Max Kinnings (Quercus) is a chunky, action-based thriller, and a paperback original. The author is a lecturer in creative writing from Brunel University, and I gather that he wrote a couple of novels a decade or so ago, but this book represents a fresh start. The opening pages supply plentiful ingredients for dramatic action. A monk is murdered in North Wales; a family is held hostage in Wimbledon; a Tube train stands in a tunnel, its passengers trapped and helpless. Thus is the scene set for blind DCI Ed Mallory, the Met’s top hostage negotiator, to take a bow. Kinnings’ storyline, and writing style, are very different from Meredith’s, but they are both very promising writers, and I would like to think they will enjoy careers as long and satisfying as Cilla Masters’.

A Velvet Scream - review

Priscilla Masters has featured in this blog several times before. She’s possibly a little less well known than other friends of mine of roughly the same generation- the likes of Ann Cleeves, Kate Ellis and Cath Staincliffe spring to mind – but she’s a consistent and entertaining writer, and her latest book, A Velvet Scream, marks the return of her premier series character, DI Joanna Piercy. It is, in fact, Joanna’s tenth appearance.

One of the strengths of Cilla’s books is that they have a distinctive sense of place – her territory is the Shropshire/Staffordshire border, where she has lived for many years. It’s not a famous or even unusually dramatic part of the country, although Ellis Peters set her Cadfael stories not far away, but it’s certainly attractive and interesting area, and this book evokes the local scene well.

A teenage girl is found in a bad way in the snow outside a nightclub in Leek. It seems a rapist is at work in the quiet town. Joanna is called in, but the girl’s story appears to have a number of holes. A comparable case that occurred six months earlier comes to light, serving to complicate the picture. The solution to the mystery makes good use of the author’s medical knowledge – she continues to work as a part-time nurse.

In some ways, Cilla Masters’ novels remind me of many that appeared under that long-established and highly successful imprint, Collins Crime Club. They are short, snappy and full of believable characters - not just Joanna, but the supporting cast as well. So many bestsellers today are twice as long – but that doesn’t mean they are twice as good. Life is short, and I have to say that a book like this one, that I can read reasonably quickly, has a lot to commend it. But it’s not just a question of length and concision. A Velvet Scream is not just a good title, it is a good book.

Frozen Charlotte

The work of a coroner is sensitive, socially important, and often challenging. It is also, to my way of thinking, absolutely fascinating. A great many crime writers have, over the years, featured coroners and inquests in their work, and I did myself in Waterloo Sunset, the most recent Harry Devlin novel. I was given a great deal of help with my research by two Liverpool-based coroners, and talking to them left me in considerable admiration at the way in which they did their work. Dealing with the bereaved is never easy, and it seems to me but one of the most important personal qualities that any corner can have is a strong sense of empathy.

There is no doubt that Priscilla Masters' regular character, the Shropshire coroner Martha Gunn, has the necessary attributes, and they are called upon again in her third and latest outing, Frozen Charlotte. This novel opens in striking fashion, with the arrival of a woman at the Accident and Emergency department of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital one cold winter's night. The woman brings with her a baby, but when a nurse takes a look, she shocked and revolted to find that the child is mummified.

From this chilling beginning, Priscilla Masters fashions another of her well-constructed mysteries. As ever with this author, the characters are carefully delineated, and Martha's personal life again features significantly, but without detracting from the development of the story. The believability of the background derives from Priscilla Masters' knowledge of her subject. She happens to work part-time as a nurse at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and in an author's note at the end of the book, she describes how she first encountered the porcelain dolls known as Frozen Charlottes.

With this book, Cilla Masters has moved to a new publisher, Severn House, but as usual she has produced an entertaining and highly readable mystery. I've mentioned before, but possibly should declare again, that Cilla is a friend of mine, but I really do think that she is an under-estimated writer, and I very much hope that this book brings her the wider recognition her novels deserve.

Following the Detectives in Shropshire

Maxim Jakubowski’s book Following the Detectives should appear later this year, and as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve contributed a couple of essays to it. By coincidence, over the past two week-ends, I’ve revisited the scenes of crime fiction that I’ve discussed in Maxim’s book.

On the way down to the CWA conference in Abergavenny, we drove through Shropshire, one of the greenest and pleasantest of counties. Ellis Peters, a native Salopian, was passionate about Shropshire, and that passion accounts for a good deal of the success of her books, both those featuring Brother Cadfael, and the others, mainly featuring various members of the Felse family.

A writer of note who has lived in Shropshire for a number of years is Priscilla Masters, and she too has sometimes set her work in the county. Like Peters, Cilla Masters has an empathy with the English countryside that shines through in her writing.

The photos were taken in Bridgnorth, one of Shropshire’s attractive and historic towns. I was fascinated to learn that the wall of Bridgnorth’s ruined castle leans at n even more dizzying angle than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Take My Breath Away

I’m truly thrilled to have received a contract for the publication in the United States of Take My Breath Away, which appeared in the UK back in 2002. It’s a book which I’m very proud of, although it’s only fair to admit that it attracted much less attention than my other books.

The idea behind the story was one I was (and am) truly passionate about. It represents a complete break from the Harry Devlin series, even though the setting is a law firm – a glitzy outfit called Creed, based in the heart of London. The first chapter is set at a posh reception organised by a headhunter, and the opening line is: ‘The dead woman smiled.’ Some people whose judgement I respect have said the first chapter is one of the best things I’ve ever written, and the story that develops from there is quite elaborate, following the twin journeys of true crime writer Nic Gabriel, and a mysterious young woman who calls herself Roxanne Wake.

One of the background elements of the book is that there is a vein of political satire. Creed is a very ‘New Labour’ firm, and some of the dialogue of the senior partner, Will Janus, owes much to the inspiration of Tony Blair. I was pleased with the way this worked, but it didn’t seem to be noticed by the critics (except the perceptive Mat Coward, who has long been very supportive of my work – perhaps his insight into left-wing politics explains how he latched on to the political bits more readily than others.) Maybe it was too deeply buried in the text for most people to see it, I’m not sure. But I still think it works, although of course the story can be read as a psychological suspense novel, with various elements of mystery, without any regard to the political dimension.

I left open the possibility that Nic Gabriel might one day return. This may still happen, though I decided to strike out in a new direction with the Lake District Mysteries, and their much greater success means I’ll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future. Oddly enough, those people who did read Take My Breath Away tended to like it a lot. Trouble was, there weren’t enough of them! They included Priscilla Masters, who was kind enough to feature the book in a novel of her own. I’m absolutely delighted the book is to have a new lease of life.

Grave Stones

It’s been a bumper year for Priscilla Masters, who has in a short space of time had two very different books published by Allison & Busby. I covered Buried in Clay in this blog a while back – it is a novel, essentially, of romantic suspense, rather different from her other work, no doubt because the original version was written quite some time ago.

When Cilla and I met at the St Hilda’s conference, she told me about her latest book, Grave Stones, and naturally I was eager to lay my hands on it – all the more so since it features Cilla’s most enduring character, DI Joanna Piercy. Joanna is one of the most human and likeable cops around, very credibly portrayed. At the start of this novel, she’s sunning herself on holiday in a bikini, at the end she is choosing what to wear for her wedding to the traditionally inclined Matthew. In between, she has to solve a pleasingly contrived mystery puzzle.

Jakob Grimshaw, a Staffordshire moorland farmer, is found with the back of his skull battered by a copestone taken from the wall marking the boundary between his land and Kathleen Weston’s. Grimshaw had recently raised funds by selling off land for housing development, and (as so often happens) this had caused a good deal of angst. Could resentment of Grimshaw explain why someone wanted him dead?

In fact, the solution is pretty intricate, and there is an appealing, and all too credible, ambiguity about one aspect of exactly what happened. But quite apart from the whodunit plot, readers will enjoy Priscilla Masters’ portrayal of the Staffordshire countryside, in particular in and around the town of Leek. It’s an area that she knows very well indeed, and her love of the landscape shines through. She understands what makes rural communities tick, and also the threats that they face in 21st century Britain. This is a novel with a number of agreeable ingredients which I hope will combine to earn it a great deal of acclaim.

Back from Oxford

On a sunny summer day, Oxford is a truly idyllic place, and the St Hilda’s conference was blessed with wonderful weather from Friday to Sunday. I’ve been to the conference(which has been running now for 16 years) a couple of times before, but this was definitely the best yet in my experience. Everything about it seemed right.

I’ll be blogging about it in more detail shortly, but first I want to pay tribute to some of the people who made it such a great event. Eileen Roberts, from St Hilda’s, works closely with Kate Charles to make sure that everyone, from regular attendees to newcomers, feels welcome. And Natasha Cooper (or N.J. Cooper – she assures us that the ‘J’ stands for Jezebel…) was a terrific chairman, who also delivered a marvellous paper, ‘Behind the Mask’, which had a genuine element of poignancy.

Cilla Masters gave a very good after dinner speech on Friday, while the legendary Colin Dexter spoke, again with poignancy, on Saturday evening, a memorable occasion.

I also had a chance to look round the city. Hence the photos of the dreaming spires among other scenes.

Coroners

Coroners play an important part in many crime novels – just how many, I discovered some years back, when I was asked to contribute an essay on coroners and medical examiners to the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. Since I wrote that essay, there has been no let-up in the flow of stories featuring coroners – in fact, they seem increasingly to be taking centre stage.

Priscilla Masters has, for instance, created a likeable coroner, Martha Gunn, who features in one of her detective series. And a coroner called Ceri Hussain is one of the main characters in my latest Harry Devlin novel, Waterloo Sunset. When researching for that book, I received a great deal of help from the Liverpool City Coroner, Andre Rebello, and from a part-time coroner, Jean Harkin, and what I learned left me full of admiration for the work that good coroners do.

A recent big seller is M.R. Hall’s The Coroner, which introduces a new series character, Jenny Cooper. Matthew Hall proved to be an articulate panellist when we met at Crimefest recently. He is a former lawyer who has written extensively for television, and his experience is evident in the way he builds the suspense in a story which sees Jenny investigating the deaths of two young people, and finding that a conspiracy connects them.

Jenny has a history of depression, and I found this an extremely interesting aspect to the story, especially as I’ve known a number of friends suffer from this sometimes devastating condition. I have to say I didn’t find Jenny consistently sympathetic in the early chapters, and I certainly didn’t approve of her lying about her medical history in order to get the job – that isn’t something that any coroner should do, whatever the mitigating circumstances. But my reservations faded as the book wore on, and they didn’t stop me enjoying the accomplishment wit which Matthew fashioned the ingredients of the thriller, while paving the way for future entries in the Jenny Cooper series.

Buried in Clay

Priscilla Masters’ versatility as a crime writer is demonstrated by her latest novel, Buried in Clay. I first came across her work when her first Joanna Piercy novel was published, and after we got to know each other, we did a few library events together, which I found highly enjoyable. Over the years, I’ve read almost all of her books, including a children’s story she published before becoming a novelist (the tale is set at Biddulph Grange, a National Trust property which boasts one of the most fascinating gardens I’ve ever visited), but this book strikes me as rather different from its predecessors. In essence, it’s a venture into the field of romantic suspense.

In a note at the start of the book, Cilla explains that she started writing the story in the 1980s, at a time when she was running an antiques business specialising in Staffordshire pottery and period furniture. Travelling in Cheshire, her eye was caught by a 16th century black-and-white house called Hall o’th’Wood: old black-and-white houses are relatively plentiful in the county and I share Cilla’s enthusiasm for them. Musing about the house’s history, she developed an idea for a novel, although it was never published.

Years later, when Cilla was being published by Allison & Busby (who also publish my Lake District Mysteries) she was asked about her early writing and was encouraged, although the original manuscript was lost, to re-write the story of Hall o’th’Wood.


Buried in Clay is the result, and very readable it is too. I’ll be reviewing it for Tangled Web UK, but suffice to say that the blend of history and contemporary suspense is handled in an accomplished fashion and the rural setting is beautifully evoked.