A Very British Murder - BBC Four

A Very British Murder began on BBC Four last night and offered a fascinating parallel with a storyline in one of my own novels. BBC Four is a home for informative and engaging documentaries and is one of my favourite channels - I'm currently enjoying a terrific series presented by Neil Brand on the subject of movie soundtracks. Brand is an engaging character, and so is Lucy Worsley, the presenter here. I've not come across her previously, but she proved to be a confident and charismatic performer, and a quick internet research revealed that she is a historian, curator and experienced presenter and writer.

This documentary focused on a number of notable murder cases in the nineteenth century, and my attention was immediately grabbed by a familiar scene - Grasmere. Yep, it turned out that Lucy Worsley's starting point was Thomas De Quincey's thoughts on murder as a fine art - that is, exactly the same as Daniel Kind's starting point for his book The Hell Within, which features in The Serpent Pool. In my novel, Daniel is writing a history of murder much along the lines of Lucy Worsley's, and there's a connection with the murder plot in the novel.. Spooky...

Lucy Worsley, like Daniel Kind, is an Oxford-educated academic historian who like Daniel has made a name in television, but I think it's fair to say that she performs on screen with even more gusto than Daniel would be likely to manage, joining in bloodthirsty Victorian bar songs, and co-performing a melodrama on stage. She comes over as a fun person, as Neil Brand does when he plays piano and explains the secrets of John Barry's genius. And that feeling of empathy helps strengthen the appeal of a programme of this sort..

Her accounts of the murder cases  such as the Ratcliff Highway murders, the Red Barn murder, the Bermondsey Horror were sound if inevitably concise. The narrative was along the same lines as the approach of Judith Flanders in her very well-researched The Invention of Murder, so I wasn't surprised to see Judith Flanders named as a consultant when the credits rolled. All in all, an agreeable hour's viewing, with the added bonus for me of  a vivid realisation of what Daniel Kind might have made of his research for his fictional masterpiece. If only he had he not become disillusioned with telly and downshifted to the Lake District....

Plot, Pace and Information

Every now and then in this blog, I touch on an issue concerning the writing of crime fiction, and I’ve been interested to see how many comments some of these posts have prompted. One example was when I asked about the gruesomeness of some modern crime fiction. And another came last Monday, with my post ‘Too Much Information?’

These are topics that intrigue me, though I don’t think there are simple answers to the questions I have posed, and I’m glad that you seem to have found them interesting too. Many readers, it seems, are fascinated by the craft of writing, and give it a lot of thought.

A number of comments on ‘Too Much Information?’ made the point that the key issue is that of balance, and I agree. If background information slows down the development of the story, that’s a drawback. But background information conveyed subtly can add a layer of interest to the book, and can also, sometimes, reflect some of the key themes.

If I were to choose an example from my own work, it might be The Serpent Pool. There’s quite a bit of stuff in there about Thomas De Quincey, which (I like to think) is interesting in its own right. But it’s also intended to cast some light on the plot, both in relation to the role that Daniel Kind plays in unravelling the central mystery, and in conveying ideas about motivation to murder.

Books that have a historical setting tend, by definition, to include a good deal of information about past times. Ellis Peters’ books about Brother Cadfael provide a classic example. And when I wrote Dancing for the Hangman, I tried to integrate historical background with the depiction of Crippen as a credible, if by no means wholly likeable, character. The pace of modern life is one of the reasons why a novel set today can seldom afford to become bogged down with an excess of background detail. But provided that detail is relevant and interesting, it can certainly add to reader enjoyment.

Original Sins?

I’m hoping to conclude a deal shortly that will result in two new Crime Writerss’ Association anthologies, under my editorship. The last CWA anthology, M.O.: crimes of method, appeared almost two years ago, and although family and work issues have limited the time I have available for progressing the anthology since then, I’m delighted that a new project is about to take shape.

A number of Dagger-winning authors are already on board, and I’ve already received a brand new story from one of them. I can’t say too much about it just at the moment, but it’s a characteristically witty and clever piece of work from a great entertainer. If other submissions reach the same standard, the book will be marvellous.

One of the great pleasures of editing such a book is the chance to see new work by very good writers before anyone else – a privilege that I value. One tricky task, though, is coming up with a suitable title. My current idea is Original Sins, but if anyone has a great alternative suggestion, (or an idea for the title of the companion volume) I’d be very glad to hear it!

Meanwhile, there has been more lovely reaction to The Serpent Pool. The book, and I, were featured in ‘The Westmorland Gazette’, the Cumbrian newspaper that Thomas De Quincey himself once edited. And further generous reviews have appeared in Shots Magazine and elsewhere, and have included a truly gratifying one from the very prestigious The Literary Review. Here is an extract:

‘Interesting titbits about a former local resident, Thomas De Quincey, skilled evocation of landscape, and a clever plot add up to an excellent read.’

The First Verdict

Whenever one produces a new book, inevitably one awaits the verdict of readers and reviewers with a mixture of hope and trepidation. It's important, I think, for an author to retain belief in his or her book even if it is not widely appreciated to begin with - but of course, it's much more pleasurable if the early reaction is positive.

I have high hopes of The Serpent Pool, because although I struggled over it at first, later on it felt as though the plot strands had come together in just the way I'd hoped when I started out on chapter one. And the response of my agent and various publishers has been extremely encouraging. Even so, that is no guarantee of good reviews (or any reviews, these days.)

So I'm glad to say that Booklist has given the novel the thumbs-up in advance of publication, and I'm so pleased and relieved that I can't resist recording David Pitt's assessment in full:

'Book lovers, especially fans of nineteenth-century writer and opium addict Thomas de Quincey, will enjoy the latest Lake District mystery. DCI Hannah Scarlett reopens another cold case, this one involving the drowning death, seven years ago, of a young woman. But Hannah is distracted by her personal life, especially by her rocky relationship with book dealer Marc Amos, who is himself rather upset over the death of one his best customers (whose murder-by-fire opens the novel). Meanwhile, Hannah’s friend and sometime sidekick, historian Daniel Kind, is deep into a new book on de Quincey (who was among the first writers to consider murder as the basis of a literary art form), but he, too, soon becomes distracted: his sister thinks she has accidentally killed her lover, who also happens to be a book collector. In his usual leisurely but always compelling way, Edwards pulls together these various plot threads, rewarding the patient reader with a story that is complex and intellectually stimulating. Certainly the most labyrinthine of the Lake District novels, but perhaps also the best.'