The Crooked Shore in paperback and ebook

 

The elegant UK paperback edition of The Crooked Shore has just been published by Allison & Busby and I had a chance to celebrate this pleasing milestone last night, by giving my first library talk since before the pandemic changed the world. The venue was Barnton Library, in Northwich, a few yards from the house of one of my great friends from schooldays, Andrew Golding, whose home I visited many times, and who sadly died far too young. 

I've been delighted by reaction to The Crooked Shore from reviewers and readers alike. This is my first Lake District Cold Case Mystery for six years, and just as The Dungeon House was a bit of a departure within the series, so - even more so - is this novel. Last night I was discussing the craft of crime writing and explaining why I believe that, even within a series which has been running for years, it's desirable and rewarding to keep trying new things. It keeps me fresh as a writer and I hope that readers find it adds to the enjoyment.

The danger with any series is that, even if it begins brilliantly, it can become a bit stale and formulaic. Ever since Conan Doyle tried to kill of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, there have been cases of writers becoming bored and frustrated with series characters. I'm glad to say that has never happened to me and I guess part of the reason is that I write quite a varied mix of things, as well as trying to ring the changes while working on existing projects.

Because of a million other projects, I haven't got round to updating the reviews page on my website as regards The Crooked Shore, but here is some of that reaction I mentioned:

‘Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett's latest cold case involves the disappearance of a waitress from Bowness more than 20 years ago. The man charged with her murder was found not guilty but committed suicide thereafter. Now, on the anniversary of his death, his son has gone and done the same thing: walked out into Morecambe Bay and drowned himself. Meanwhile, the real killer is planning more midsummer mischief. This is the eighth of Martin Edwards's Lake District novels. As always a satisfying mystery is played out with lashings of local colour and history. Favourite line: "Through the trees peeped the dome of the eighteenth-century Round House, mocked by Wordsworth as a ‘tea canister in a shop window’”.’

Mark Sanderson, The Times Crime Club

                       

'A splendidly imaginative plot will have you guessing and gasping until the very end.’

Mat Coward, Morning Star

‘Well-drawn characters…Readers old and new will be well served by The Crooked Shore, which delivers twists and turns against an evocative backdrop of the Furness Peninsula…The Lakeland feel is heightened throughout with fun, fictionalised locales…Martin is something of a crime writer’s crime writer. Plaudits from Lee Child, Peter Robinson, and Ann Cleeves testify to the esteem he’s held in by his peers. The Crooked Shore is playful, creative, and solid storytelling from a writer in tight control of his material.

Will Smith, Cumbria Life Book of the Month

‘One of Martin’s strengths is that even when writing a series of books, he never seems content to write the same book twice, and there is a central idea in The Crooked Shore that I am not convinced that I’ve seen before. For a long time reading the book, I wasn’t convinced of what direction the plot was moving in…All in all, this is an engrossing read with some very clever ideas running through it…an excellent novel, one of the very best in the series to date, and easily one of the best police procedural (which is sort of is) that I’ve read in a very long time.’

Steve Barge, In Search of the Classic Mystery 

‘There is a splendidly labyrinthine plot and a great cast of characters, many with secrets in their past….I raced through this book and enjoyed it enormously. There were points where I thought I knew where things were going, but I was wrong-footed at pretty much every turn and the end came as a complete surprise. All this and a visit to the Lake District. What more could you ask for? Except, of course, for the next instalment.’

Christine Poulson, A Reading Life

Looking Back at 2021

Thanks so much to you, the readers of my blog, for following my posts during the past twelve months. 2021 has been a strange year for almost all of us. On Christmas Eve, I was taking my daily walk (something I've done ritualistically for the past two years, even before the pandemic struck) ruminating on an irritating email when I bumped into a couple I've known for around 25 years. The husband, who is about my age, told me he's suffering from a brain tumour. The courage he's showing made me feel remorseful about my grumpy reaction to that email. A reminder that it's so important to concentrate on appreciating the good things in life while one can. And despite being unable, again, to see many friends in person, there have at least been plenty of those good things over the past year.

This year saw the UK publication of The Crooked Shore, the eighth Lake District Mystery, but the first for six years. The break seems to have done me good - the reviews in The Times and elsewhere have been terrific, which is especially rewarding given that this book is rather different in some ways from its predecessors. I hope this augurs well for the book's US publication next summer, under a different title.

This time last year, I never anticipated being commissioned by Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookshop to write a Bibliomystery for him. The result was The Traitor, a novella which was great fun to write (while visits to Llandudno and Shropshire in the first half of the year provided me with some of the settings). It introduces a 'book detective', Benny Morgan, who may return in the future. I don't have any specific ideas for Benny just yet, but he's a character with, I feel, plenty of potential. And I just heard from Otto this week that the story is shortly to be released on audio.

In terms of anthologies, I edited Many Deadly Return, celebrating Murder Squad's 21st anniversary, and including three stories of mine. The book's launch in Whitley Bay (see the photo above) was memorable, as well as providing a good reason for a few days in the north east. There were also two British Library collections, Guilty Creatures and Murder by the Book. Lee Child picked 'The Locked Cabin' for inclusion in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021, while 'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' featured in Daggers Drawn. 

Howdunit won one crime writing award (the CrimeFest HRF Keating Award) and was nominated for five others, four of them in the US. This was a source of huge pride, both personally and on behalf of the Detection Club members who contributed to the book, even though the pandemic meant that I didn't attend a single awards ceremony in person. Over the year I published getting on for twenty introductions to various books and numerous articles, including 'Death by Chocolate', commissioned by Slightly Foxed, who also invited me to speak at their Readers' Day, where I had the pleasure of sharing a bill with Michael Palin. Other subjects I wrote about included Josephine Tey (CrimeReads) and Mary Kelly and CHB Kitchin (CADS) as well as aspects of crime writing craft and my own work. 

No overseas travel again this year. Not to worry: I took the decision after the very first lockdown to take any opportunities that were presented for travel within Britain and I found these trips extremely thereapeutic and rewarding in all sorts of ways. Quite apart from the trip to Northumberland and its environs, I spent time in North Wales, the Wye Valley, Harrogate, Ely and the Fens, the Lake District and Derbyshire. There were lovely boat trips in Ely, at Symonds Yat, and around the Farne Islands, plus a steam railway journey through eastern Kent.

This year, unlike last, I also managed to take part in live festivals - at Buxton, Rye (see the photo below with Elly Griffiths, Andrew Wilson, Nicola Upson and John Case), and Torquay - as well as a good many that were online only. The podcasts and online events were many and varied, including Alibis in the Archive (with the brilliant musician and writer Rupert Holmes among the guest speakers) and an interview by Lucinda Hawksley, as well as a writers' workshop for Wirral Libraries.

 

My interest in workshops was one of the catalysts for Crafting Crime, the online course I've set up with Dea Parkin and her editorial consultancy Fiction Feedback, which recently went live. We've been really pleased by the initial take-up of and reaction to the course and we'll be promoting it more extensively in the coming months. 

The longest holiday of the year was spent in the south, with trips to places as different as the ossuary at Hythe and the shoreline at Porlock Weir, enjoyed in lovely weather. A fantastic trip, even if I did under-estimate how long it would take to drive from Rye to Torquay... 

It also proved possible to host a couple of meals for the Detection Club. We broke with tradition by having a marvellous lunch at Balliol College, Oxford (see the photo close to the top and the pic with Peter Lovesey below), whose Master, Dame Helen Ghosh joined us and gave an impromptu speech. Dinner at the Ritz in October was great fun, as was spending time in the bar with lovely new members Lynne Truss and Chris Fowler (photo above). The dinner also gave me a chance to meet in person Simon Dinsdale, Kevin Durjan, and Giles Ramsey, with whom I've done several weeks of online lecturing on 'the Art of the Whodunit' during the pandemic.  

Plenty to celebrate, then, and plenty to remember fondly - many reasons to feel thankful. And I am. 

A return visit to The Crooked Shore

A full day trip to the Lake District - at long last! I was glad to take advantage of a fairly positive weather forecast to take another look at one of my favourite areas in the world, and some of the settings for The Crooked Shore. I have a vivid memory of the day I discovered the tiny village of Aldingham on the south coast of Cumbria and realised that it would make a perfect setting for the story I had in mind. I made a few changes, transplating a manor-converted-into-flats from north Wales to Cumbria, and introducing a few topographical changes, but Aldingham was certainly inspirational and it was good to go back.

I also took a quick look at Bowness, home to Kingsley Melton, who plays such a key part in the story, and also the place where Ramona Smith was last seen more than twenty years before the action of the story begins. After that, we drove through Ambleside to Grasmere for lunch at the Swan, where a few years ago I had the pleasure of giving a talk to a group of American visitors which included my dear friends Caroline and Charles Todd, who were researching for one of their own novels.

A walk into Grasmere village naturally took me to Sam Read's brilliant bookshop. There was a long queue outside, so I didn't go in, as independent shops need all the customers they can get without being interrupted, but it was heart-warming to see so many people so eager to look for books. And very gratifying to see The Crooked Shore in the window!

After that, a lovely trip over the dramatic Kirkstone Path to Ullswater, where the events of The Frozen Shroud take place, and Pooley Bridge - and my first sight of the new bridge, built after floods destroyed the old one. I was startled to realise that it's more than six years since I was last there on a research trip, but again it was good to see how busy everywhere was and I hope this means that the economic impact of the pandemic is being mitigated to some extent. It will be a while before I write another Lake District book, since I have a contract to produce two more Rachel Savernakes, but this trip was a reminder of what  a gorgeous and inspirational part of the world it is. Great to be back, and a great way to celebrate the new book, which incidentally has been Cumbria Life's book of the month. 

Murder by the Book - publication week!

It seems like only yesterday that The Crooked Shore was published. I'll be talking more about my new novel shortly, but this month, I'm in the unusual and fortunate position of having two anthologies to celebrate. Later in August, the Murder Squad collection Many Deadly Returns will be published by Seven House, and I'll be launching the book along with my Murder Squad colleagues at Forum Books in Ann Cleeves' home town of Whitley Bay. 

But this week sees the appearance of another British Library Crime Classics anthology. Murder by the Book is sub-titled 'Mysteries for Bibliophiles' and I gather that advance sales have been extremely good (which is always nice to hear). So much so that there is already a possibility that I might be putting together a second book on a related theme, though nothing is yet settled. 

Again, I'm scheduled to do a bookshop event - this time at Toppings in Ely, later in the month. So if you're in that area, do check out the Toppings website for details. It's so good to be getting back into bookshops - I've missed them very much during the lockdowns. And I'm enjoying the chance to get around the country as well, which is genuine compensation for those cancelled overseas trips (for instance, I decided some time ago, with great regret, not to travel to New Orleans for Bouchercon, and now sadly the whole live event has been cancelled). 

As you can gather from this spate of publications, I have at least been able to keep busy with writing projects during the past eighteen months and in many ways the time has flown by. During that time I've also signed a contract to write two more Rachel Savernake books. One of them, Blackstone Fell, is already written. And before long it will be time to start on the fourth in the series. Meanwhile, there is a further project that has kept me occupied, and that will be announced shortly...

Lockdown Musings

The virus is still very much with us, but at least there are signs that British society is taking tentative steps back to some semblance of normality. And I'm continuing to do what I can to make good use of the time that I'd normally be devoting to events, festivals, and travel.

At present I'm working on revisions to the new Lake District Mystery, The Crooked Shore. I'm still reluctant to travel to the Lakes to do a final bit of scene-checking, but the book is now getting into reasonably good shape ahead of being sent to the editor. This one is rather different from earlier books in the series, with more emphasis on psychological suspense.

I've also been working on a couple of non-fiction projects, one of them speculative at present. More about these at a later date.

In the meantime, I've been doing what I can in terms of promotion, most recently on Monday, a Facebook Live chat with Mitzi Szereto about my essay on Dr Harold Shipman, the serial killer, "The First of Criminals": https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=269733067694694

And last but by no means least, I've been thrilled by a review of Mortmain Hall by A.N. Wilson, of all people. The Booker Prize-nominated author describes the book as: "an ingenious modern 'take' on the classic whodunnit...It's a winning formula...A whole page would not give me space to explain the intricacy of this story. A tangle of satisfying clues and a pleasing denouement in the classic Christie manner". Very pleased with that!

The Mysteries of Lockdown

We're living in extraordinary times right now, encountering situations that none of us could have dreamed of a few short months ago. Writing and reading offer a very welcome form of escapism for many of us, and I'm not planning to write extensively about my experiences of lockdown or indeed to keep a lockdown diary. But among other things, this blog is about one person's take on the writing life and it wouldn't make much sense to ignore something as significant as the impact on lockdown.

Fortunately, I and my family have so far kept well, and when one sees the problems being experienced in some places, any difficulties I've encountered are really of little consequence. The biggest downside in terms of my writing life, apart from not being able to meet friends, has been that I'd arranged a very busy year of events and travel, and pretty much everything has fallen by the wayside.

But there have been upsides - including a chance to reflect on the simple pleasures of nature, as with the rainbow over Lymm Dam, above. I'd been acutely conscious that, because of all my commitments, I would struggle to meet my various writing deadlines. When it began to seem likely that there would be some kind of lockdown, I resolved to try to treat the problem as an opportunity. So, among other things, it's been possible to complete work on the proofs of the next CWA anthology, Vintage Crimes, and the Detection Club's hefty book about the art and craft of crime writing, Howdunit. The publication of Howdunit has, however, been delayed from June to September.

Given that there was to be no launch of Mortmain Hall or promotional events, I've also done my best to pursue opportunities to promote the book online. The big challenge has been to cope with unfamiliar technology - BeLive, Zoom, Facebook Live, and so on, and that hasn't been easy for a dinosaur like me. But I've been hugely gratified by the response to the book so far. The latest lovely review is by Lynne Patrick for Mystery People:  https://promotingcrime.blogspot.com/2020/05/mortmain-hall-by-martin-edwards.html"
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The biggest task was to crack on with the next Lake District Mystery. It's hard to credit that it's five years since The Dungeon House was published - so much has happened since I finished writing that one. The basic idea for the new book, The Crooked Shore, has been spinning around in my head for a long time, but some key ingredients only came to me late last year - including the setting (the top photo gives a clue as to how I solved this riddle). I felt I had a great concept but something was missing before then. Once I started writing it in December and I've finished the first draft. It took 137 days to write the book, the fastest I've ever completed a novel. I'll take another look at it soon to do some further revision, but I'm very pleased to have got to this stage and I'm pretty happy with the story. Certainly I feel that it's up to the standards of the earlier books in the series. And so, for all the drawbacks of lockdown, for me there have certainly been compensations.

The Coffin Trail and the Lake District Mysteries

The Coffin Trail is available today as an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal for a modest 98p - a price which I hope will tempt you if you haven't already read it! (The offer isn't available in the US, I'm afraid.) And this reminds me that I ought to give an update on progress with the Lake District Mysteries. In case you're wondering - I'm writing a new one right now!

The Coffin Trail is the first book in the series and when I went back to it to refresh my memory about a number of details, I was startled to realise that I wrote it seventeen years ago; it was then published in 2004 and shortlisted for the Theakston's Prize for best crime novel of the year. Since the other shortlisted novels were by Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Susan Hill, Stephen Booth, and Lindsey Ashford, it was a truly memorable experience.

When I wrote The Coffin Trail, I intended that it should be the first in a series. That said, I didn't anticipate the direction my career would take in the ensuing years; if you'd told me what would happen, I doubt I'd have believed you. But because I write for the long term, there were ingredients of that first story which I intended would gain greater significance in subsequent books.

The first of those ingredients concerned the garden of Tarn Cottage, which becomes relevant in the second book in the series, The Cipher Garden. The second ingredient - well, I'll leave you to figure it out. Suffice to say that, at long last, I've picked up those early threads in the new book, The Crooked Shore. And readers will therefore encounter the resolution of a mystery they might not even be aware was bubbling under the surface...

I'm hoping that within a week or so, I will have completed the first draft, with a view to the book being published next year. It's been fascinating to return to the Lakes, after a break of several years while I've focused on Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall, among other projects. And I hope that today's deal will introduce a few more readers to the delights of the Lakes as well as the tangled lives of the lead characters, Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind.