10.05am-10.50am
The first panel was the intriguing question,
Deceit or Cheat: Does the writer have to play fair with the reader?
Discussing this topic were authors, see photo above,
Peter Tickler (moderator), Jeff Dowson and Pete Adams,
local Portsmouth scribe
Pete Adams asked if there should there be a death or a body in the opening of your crime novel?
He certainly thought so, but others argued the toss.
He threw in Elmore Leonard’s
‘Ten Rules for Writing’
to provoke some reaction.
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid detailed
descriptions of characters.
3. Minimise the use of
exclamation points
(2 or 3 per novel!)
I am not sure there wasconsensus on any of this, thought they did almost all agree on rule
10: Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.
The main difficulty was in defining what those parts might be.
In the end, Peter opened it up to the audience to have their say
10.50am-11.40
The creator of Geraldine Steel talked about writing the bestselling series, of which the19th title, Final Term, has recently been published.
She also told us about her exciting new ‘hot off the press’ series, starting with Barking up the Right Tree,
published 6 March 2023.
Leigh explained how Poppy, a little rescue dog adopted by Leigh’s daughter, helped Leigh to overcome her fear of dogs and inspired her new series.
whose latest series is
Linda talks about what inspired her to address that part of Holmes’ life, and how she is exploring it. I found her journey to this new series absolutely fascinating and felt I couldn’t hope to do justice to the voyage she took tounderstand Sherlock Holmes. She describes him as a mystifying and fascinating eccentric.
So I asked her to share her experience with us in her own words. Click here to read the full article. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
Photographs by Garry Stratmann
11.45am-1.00pm - Guests of Honour.
Judith Cutler & Edward Marston
Judith opened the session saying, ‘We are going to do something we have never done in public before, well she added, ‘not sitting down’. Everyone sat up with rapt attention. ‘We always stand to do these talks,’ she said…..Ha!
Edward, who was born and brought up in South Wales and has been a full-time writer for over thirty years, talked about the number of books he had written which is well over 100. And not all crime fiction, he said he was equally at home writing children’s books.
Edward asked Judith how did she get started. She said that she was always a reader and constantly at the local library. The librarian had a rule that if she took out a fiction book she also had to take out a non-fiction book. Which is how she came to be an expert on cricket.
Asked how he started Edward said he was 10 years-old when he joined the library, and the first books he read were by P.G. Wodehouse. He went on to say that he has over the years worked in radio, film, television and the theatre.
He told a couple of interesting tales about his early life when he lived in a less than salubrious area, where a young boy he knew came home from school one day and took an axe to his father, and when the mother tried to intervene he hit her too. His second tale concerned Leslie Grantham who played Dirty Den in East Enders, and who had served 14 years in prison. No wonder he went on to write crime fiction.
Judith was born and bred in the Midlands. She initially got a job in local government but found it boring. I think that may have been noticed that as she was told that she was not suited to local government as she kept making her own decisions. She was for a time an English lecturer at a college of further education. She taught Creative Writing at Birmingham University, and has run occasional writing course elsewhere (from a maximum security prison to an idyllic Greek island). She started writing seriously when she was ill in bed with chicken pox. The first book she wrote was Dying Fall, the first book in the Sophie Rivers series. Set in her birth place of Birmingham, which she says is the most wonderful delightful city, and which is where most of her novels are set. She has eight series.
Between them Judith and Edward told many amusing stories of their writing lives, particularly the golfing stories, which I cannot do justice to here. However, they do many talks at libraries, and if they are advertised to be in a library near you, I urge you to go along and enjoy. Check out their websites.
http://www.judithcutler.co.uk
www.edwardmarston.com
‘Don’t Kill the Cat!’ A discussion about animals in crime fiction.
Leigh Russell, Carol Westron (moderator), and Charlie Cochrane.
Carol gave a brief summary of the role of animals in Victorian and Golden Age detective fiction, starting with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures Silver Blaze and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Agatha Christie’s use of animals in Dumb Witness, A Murder is Announced and Tommy and Tuppence’s dog, Hannibal were discussed. This was followed by mentions of G.K. Chesterton’s The Oracle of the Dog; Ngaio Marsh’s Scales of Justice; Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar; Dorothy L. Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise and her short stories Talboys and Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz. It was then observed that while Edmund Crispin stuck to the title of the panel, he contravened its spirit: he liked cats so they thrive in his stories, but dogs never survive, as in The Moving Toyshop and Love Lies Bleeding, although in Buried For Pleasure the ‘non-doing pig’ does make it to the last chapter before the roof literally falls on him.
Then the panel discussed what they thought that animals bring to a crime fiction novel and whether animals have become a more pervasive presence, especially in cosy crime? They agreed that animals did appear more frequently in contemporary fiction and agreed that animals often produced the feel-good, ‘Ah, how sweet!’ effect, so that the animals often became many readers’ favourite characters. Everyone agreed that animals were useful as a device to move the plot forward and as a recipient of confidences when the human characters were in need of someone to talk to. One of the most important roles for animals was to show the characters of the humans around them by the way those people treated them. The whole panel was in agreement that animals should be realistically portrayed and that they needed to be fed, cleaned up after, given a warm place to sleep, companionship, and in the case of dogs, regularly walked. Leigh explained how hard her protagonist found it in Barking Up the Right Tree when she inherited Poppy, a little rescue dog. Emily wanted to do the right thing but she had never owned a dog before and was dismayed at how demanding it could be.
Each panellist was then asked to talk about their favourite animals in crime fiction novels and also about books/series they would recommend that are strongly animal themed.
Charlie spoke with great enthusiasm about Vaseem Khan's Baby Ganesh detective agency series and observed that it shouldn’t work because the idea should be cloying, but somehow it does work. This opinion was wholeheartedly shared by Leigh and Carol. Charlie also spoke about Michael Bond’s bloodhound, Pommes Frites, who like his master, Monsieur Pamplemousse, is retired from the police. Pommes Frites has a nose and palate of great discernment, and is described by an acquaintance as looking like ‘a roll-top desk on wheels’.
Carol spoke about Mary Stewart, a 20th century author whose books show the increasing move towards including animals in crime fiction. Madam, Will You Walk? contains a loyal, much-loved mongrel dog. Thunder on the Right has a vicious guard dog and a spirited stallion, the latter provides an opportunity for the hero to show that he is not as meek and quiet as he first appears. The Ivy Tree also has horsemanship running through this book and a spirited horse is the means of retribution in the last chapter. Carol especially recommended The Gabriel Hounds, in which the heroine, Christy, suspects something strange is going on when she senses a cat in her great aunt’s room, an antipathy that they have always shared. The book also contains two magnificent hounds, a handsome stallion and a very special little dog. Last but by no means least, Airs Above the Ground features the world famous ~Lipizzaner stallions and a moving description of the return of a stolen stallion to the place where he belongs.
In contemporary fiction, mention was made of Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series and of Diamond’s cat, Raffles, a feline of character who was based on Lovesey’s own cat. Also mentioned was Garth Stein’s Art of Racing in the Rain. Recently published, Sniff Them Out, Brownlow by Judy Upton is about a rescue dog who is part of a detective partnership that locates pets that have been lost or stolen.
The panel spoke briefly about the anthropomorphic use of animals as the narrator, which has always been popular for children’s books but far less so in adult fiction.
Charlie described War Horse and Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition as great examples of the animal as narrator, even if they're not a cosy mystery. Both show how well it comes across if in the hands of a highly skilled author. This inspired Carol to praise the enchanting Gaspard the Fox series by Zeb Soames, this is likely to become a young children’s classic but is even further from crime fiction than Charlie’s recommendations.
However, at question time, Lizzie Sirett recalled the panellists to the business in hand by reminding them of the Suzette Hill series in which Maurice the cat and Bouncer the dog are the main narrators.
To finish up, each panellist was asked to talk about their own books that feature animals and the challenges this involved. Charlie spoke about Campbell, the large Newfoundland dog in the Lindenshaw series. Campbell is owned by the books’ central protagonists and Charlie described how hard it was to ignore the instinct to never kill off a much-loved pet and accept that he cannot live forever. On a lighter note, Carol described the animals owned by the residents of the Clayfield Senior Citizens’ Estate in The Curse of the Concrete Griffin, with a special mention for Tiglath Pileser the Third (Tiggy), the cat who, without compromising his feline character, helped to foil a murderer.
2.50pm-3.00pm - Quiz results announced by Peter Tickler
3.00pm - Carol Westron: ‘Georgette Heyer: Romance versus Mystery.’
Carol considered whether some of the Georgian & Regency novels of Georgette Heyer qualify as early examples of Historical Crime Fiction.
The definition of a historical novel is reasonably simple: it’s set in a context that is recognisable, although, as with all fiction, there can be a slight twisting of facts, like inventing a house or village that didn’t exist and populating it with fictional characters. The main rule of thumb for a historical novel is that it should be set at least fifty years before the time the author is writing it. Therefore, Georgette Heyer’s detective stories, usually featuring Scotland Yard detectives Hannasyde and Hemingway, which were written in the 1930s and 40s, may seem like historical stories to us, but they are contemporary stories set in or near the time she was writing them.
The historical novels that Heyer wrote between the 1920s and the 1970s are set in the late 18th century and early 19th century and, apart from a couple of novels with a straight historical theme, they are classified as Romances. For the majority of these novels this definition is fair enough, they are as light as the elegant muslins Heyer’s Regency heroines wear and it is evident from the outset who is destined for a fairytale ending. However, the books are lifted from the commonplace by their sparkling wit and the immaculate research and knowledge of the period, which gives settings and dialogue authenticity.
It is quite common for Heyer’s heroines to share centre stage in the action, as in The Reluctant Widow (1946) in which well-born but penniless Elinor Rochdale allows herself to be persuaded to marry a dying ne’er-do-well. A widow within hours of becoming a wife, Elinor moves into her late husband’s dilapidated country house. She is resigned to coping with mice and disintegrating furniture but when ‘French agents walk in and out at will, shooting at anyone who dares to say them nay,’ she is naturally afraid. However, the realisation that the house contains a stolen secret memorandum which, if it falls into enemy hands, could lead to the defeat of Wellington’s army in the Peninsular, causes Elinor to decide that she must stay in the house, even at the risk of her own life.
Many of Heyer’s Regency Romances are what they appear to be at first glance, lively romantic comedies, but even when they are mainly romance some have a glistening thread of crime that runs through them, adding weight and power to the whole. Regency Buck (1935) is the story of Judith and Peregrine Taverner, a wealthy brother and sister who are visiting London for the first time and trying to establish themselves in the top echelons of society. However, running through the book, alongside descriptions of balls and noble suitors and visits to the Prince Regent’s holiday palace in Brighton, is the question of whether somebody is trying to kill Peregrine in order to gain control of his immense fortune.
The Foundling (1948) is undeniably a coming-of-age story in early 19th century dress, but when the young Duke of Sale fights clear of his dictatorial guardian and the mollycoddling servants who have known him all his life, he plunges into a world of kidnapping and blackmail. He has to survive by using his own wits, foiling his captors and burning down his prison to escape, as he attempts to rescue the beautiful, naïve foundling, Belinda, from the scoundrel who is using her as a honey-trap.
The darkest of Heyer’s Regency novels is Cousin Kate (1968), published towards the end of her life, in which she steps out of her increasingly formulaic style to write a story that is centred on mental illness. Kate Malvern is an orphan who has to support herself by working as a governess. Having lost her last position, Kate is forced to accept the hospitality of her old nurse, even though she hates to impose on her. Because of this she is delighted when her Aunt Minerva, who had been estranged from Kate’s father, seeks her out and invites her to live with her. At first Kate is so grateful that she is eager to do anything she can to repay her aunt’s kindness, including being a companion for her handsome but moody cousin, Torquil, who is a few years younger than Kate and who seems to have no friends of his own age. However, Aunt Minerva’s demands include something that Kate cannot consent to, at which point she realises how isolated and vulnerable she has become. In my opinion, this book is less successful than Heyer’s lively historical mysteries. Her depiction of mental illness is clumsy and the attempts to fit a dark psychological crime story with a tragic end into her usual formula just doesn’t work. It lacks depth and compassion without retaining her usual sparkle and wit.
Let’s go back to something a lot more fun, moving backwards in time from Regency to Georgian England, and also back in Heyer’s chronology to some of her earliest novels.
The powder, paint, wigs and elaborate fashions of the Georgian era are especially useful for cross-dressing adventures, notably The Masqueraders (1928), which is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. Robin
Tremaine fought on the Jacobite side and is in danger of arrest and execution, so he and his sister, Prudence, swap identities: she poses as a young man and Robin is dressed as a beautiful young woman. Robin and Prudence have exchanged identities many times before as they pursued the careers of adventurers throughout Europe, when they followed the lead of their charismatic father, whom they refer to as the Old Gentleman. In this lively adventure, Robin and Prudence engage in sword fights and foil kidnappers and blackmailers, as they wait to discover whether their father’s claim to being the heir to the late Viscount Barham is valid and they can turn respectable and settle down, and, of course, marry the people they have fallen in love with.
These Old Shades (1926) also has a cross-dressing heroine. Leonie has been forced to dress and act like a boy by her boorish brother who runs a cheap tavern in the backstreets of Paris and she has almost forgotten she is a girl. When the Duke of Avon encounters her, he sees her resemblance to an old enemy and seizes his opportunity to get revenge. He buys Leonie and makes her his page, displaying her throughout Paris under his enemy’s nose. His actions place Leonie in great danger and, as the villain grows increasingly desperate, the second half of the book is a fast-moving adventure, involving abduction, attempted murder and blackmail.
Now for the early novel that most helps to sustain my argument that some of Georgette Heyer’s historical novels should be shelved in detective fiction as well as romance.
A contemporary review of The Talisman Ring made the following observation: ‘Substitute gangsters for smugglers and this witty book might hold its own among the best of modern detective stories in ingenuity and surpass the majority in probability.’ (John O’London’s Weekly.)
By the way, for those of you who like a touch of Gothic, Heyer has a lot of fun furnishing the houses in her novels with secret passages and, if the house is too humble to fit in a priest’s hole, she can always resort to a creepy echoing cavern.
The question remains, why isn’t Heyer included under the category of historical detective fiction? I can’t give a definitive answer, but I suspect that it’s simply because, when Heyer was writing her liveliest and best books, it wasn’t a widely recognised subgenre.
Of course, there were examples of historical detective fiction around in the early 20th century. The short stories written between 1911 and 1928 by the American author Melville Davisson Post and featuring small town sleuth Uncle Abner are acknowledged as the first historical detective stories. And in 1944 Agatha Christie published the first full-length historical whodunnit, Death Comes As the End, which is set in Ancient Egypt. This was followed by John Dickson Carr’s The Bride of Newgate in 1950, the second full-length historical detective novel.
Despite these outliers, historical detective novels weren’t really a popular thing until 1970 when Peter Lovesey won a competition to publish Wobble To Death, the first novel to feature the Victorian detective Sergeant Cribb and the historical detective fiction series was born.
Although Lovesey’s Victorian detective continued to flourish, as did Elizabeth Peters’ lady archaeologist detective, Amelia Peabody, the historical detective novel was still unusual.
This changed in 1977 with Ellis Peters’ first Brother Cadfael novel, A Morbid Taste for Bones. Medieval murder mysteries were made even more popular by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in 1980.
However, none of this was relevant to the promotion of Georgette Heyer’s books because she died in 1974. In the end, it all comes down to branding. Heyer was a businesswoman. She was in it for the money and she was aware that many people who bought her books wanted ‘the mixture as before’ and over the fifty years she was writing her books did become increasingly formulaic.
It is over 100 years since Heyer’s first book was published. So, readers who enjoy light-hearted, historical mysteries could try a few of Heyer’s and maybe consider mentally rebranding them.
3.30pm-4.50pm - Expert Witness: Nick Pamment on Wildlife Crime
 |
| Photograph by Garry Stratmann |
Nick started by apologising for lowering the mood of the audience after the laughter and good humour of the Animals in Crime Fiction panel. His talk was not funny, but it was interesting and enlightening.
Nick began by giving us some truly appalling statistics, such as that every 15-20 minutes an African elephant is slaughtered and that the harmless, defenceless pangolin is being brought close to extinction. In the UK there is significant persecution of birds of prey, both by gamekeepers whose job involves preserving game birds for
shooting and also by falcon chicks being smuggled to the Middle East to be reared and cross-bred by wealthy
falconry enthusiasts. Illegal ‘sports’ such as hare coursing and badger baiting are tied in with organised crime and involve gambling and money laundering and all the intimidation and violence that this leads to.
Nick’s talk was illustrated by an excellent PowerPoint presentation, and he pointed out that animal suffering and the danger of making several species extinct were important issues for any thinking person but also this could
destroy the balance of nature and impact human health. Throughout the presentation he made it clear that wildlife crime has a great deal to interest crime fiction writers and readers. In fact, he even showed us how to get a
poacher’s fingerprint from the scale of a pangolin!
A couple of writers told Carol afterwards how interesting it was and how they would use some of the information in their work, and would contact Nick for advice as he said he was happy to talk to anyone who wanted to consult him.
Huge thanks to Carol Westron for organising such an interesting and varied day.
And thank you to all the speakers who took part.
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