2019: Publications

It doesn't feel like it, but this year I didn't bring out either a brand new novel or a new non-fiction book. There was, however, a lot to celebrate in publication terms, starting with the UK paperback edition of Gallows Court, which was nominated for the eDunnit award and longlisted for the Historical Dagger, and subsequently published in the US, with sought-after starred reviews in Publishers' Weekly and Booklist. At the moment, the book is part of the December Kindle Deal promotion and all in all it's been my most successful novel to date. Next year will see the publication of the sequel to Gallows Court, a book I spent the first half of 2019 writing, Mortmain Hall.

Writing intros for the British Library kept me quite busy. In addition I edited two anthologies for the British Library's Crime Classics series. Deep Waters gathered 'mysteries on the waves' while The Measure of Malice was a collection of scientific mysteries. I've been pleasantly surprised by the success of the themed anthologies I've put together for the BL. In sales terms the figures are startling, while the books have introduced some interesting writers to a new generation of crime fans.

I wrote a handful of short stories during the year, some of which will come out in 2020. "The Girl on the Bandwagon", a satire on so-called domestic noir, was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It's a story I enjoyed writing enormously. "The Sound of Secrecy" appeared in Maxim Jakubowski's anthology of historical mysteries, while "The Cap of Liberty", set in the first part of the 19th century, was included in Ra Page's book Resist, a collection of stories about protest. And I was thrilled that last year's "Strangers in a Pub" was shortlisted for the Short Story Dagger. Those four stories constitute a very diverse bunch indeed in terms of subject matter and style, and their range illustrates what I love about the short story form - its boundless possibilities.

In terms of non-fiction, I contributed various pieces to blogs and online forums, as well as a longish essay about Dr Harold Shipman, "The First of Criminals", which appeared in Mitzi Szereto's anthology of true crime essays. I also wrote an essay which is to be a chapter in an academic book, on "Plotting". This was a fascinating exercise to undertake, although the nature of academic writing, with its emphasis on footnotes and bibliographic references, doesn't greatly appeal to me. My preference when writing non-fiction is to tell a story, uncluttered by minutiae. And that's where my focus will be in future. More on that subject another day... 

"The Cap of Liberty"

My latest short story, "The Cap of Liberty", has just been published, and it's safe to say that it's a bit different. For a start, it's accompanied by an academic essay written by Professor Robert Poole and exploring the factual background to the story. And it's appearing in an anthology just published by Comma Press, and edited by Ra Page, called Resist. The sub-title is: Stories of Uprising. I was commissioned to write a work of fiction connected to the Peterloo Massacre, which occurred two hundred years ago last August.

Those who know me may well think that I'm an unlikely contributor to an anthology of fiction about protest, a book with subjects ranging from the distant past (Boudica's Rising) to the recent present (Grenfell). The fact is that I'm seldom seen on marches or waving banners, far less glueing myself to anything (except by accident) but I was pleased to be asked to take part. I've had a connection with Comma Press for a long time now, getting on for fifteen years, and they are an admirable independent outfit, based in Manchester, and dedicated to producing high quality books at the cutting edge of contemporary literature. They are (I quote from their very interesting website) a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to promoting new writing, with an emphasis on the short story, and committed to a spirit of risk-taking and challenging publishing, free of the commercial pressures on mainstream houses, and they aim "to put the short story at the heart of contemporary narrative culture". Words to savour. I've always regarded these aims not just as worthy but truly admirable.

A long time ago I had a short story published in a Comma publication of Liverpudlian fiction edited by Tane Vayu, and this led to a couple of CWA anthologies which I edited for them: I.D.: Crimes of Identity and M.O.:Crimes of Practice . Suffice to say that contributors included Mick Herron and Sarah Hillary, then relatively unknown and now superstars of the crime genre. More recently I contributed an essay about Sherlock Holmes short stories to Morphologies, another very interesting Comma Press book.
 
For those interested in how a story of this kind gets written, let me quote from Ra Page's original brief: "I would love to see what a no-holds-barred crime/detective story dealing with a historical protest might look like. Especially a protest like Peterloo. Of course, you might want to set the bulk of the story in the aftermath of the event (or even much later down the line), and then reveal aspects of the massacre through the backstories. That's up to you. I realise there weren't detectives or even police officers in 1819; it was all magistrates and soldiers, agent provocateurs and debt-bonded 'spies'. But I'd be super-excited to see what you did with it. 

Anyway, you can take any approach: exactly how the protest intersects with your story is up to you. You can set your story slap bang in the middle of Peterloo, or you can have Peterloo in the recent (or even distant) background, as long as it was eventually revealed (or some aspect of it) by the story."

I thought long and hard about whether to accept this invitation, partly because I do have quite a lot of projects going on at present, and partly because I knew it would require a good deal of work, not only in terms of practical research but also thinking myself into the right mindset for the story. But I love Ra's enthusiasm and commitment, and so I said yes. He'd arranged for me to talk to Robert Poole, an expert on Peterloo, and I found our conversations and his writings on the subject very helpful. I decided to set my story in the 1830s, so that it became a sort of "cold case" narrative. Once I'd figured out a way in to the material -  always so important when one tries something different - I went on a research trip to find out more about my chosen protagonist (a person from real life who has, in fact, appeared once before in my fiction).

The result was "The Cap of Liberty". It is in essence a story about both justice and injustice, which are key themes of so many crime stories and pretty much all of my own fiction. I'm glad that it's now seen the light of day and I hope the book will be a big success for Comma.