The author cleverly dates the
investigation right up to Christmas Day and a bit like an Advent Calender it is
impossible to ignore! Some of the plot requires an element of suspension
of disbelief but on the whole I found the story engaging and very well
constructed.
We are left wondering what will be the next step in Tom's private
life..... I especially liked the author's dedication of this book to the
NHS.
------
Reviewer: Toni Russell
So said the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Whether or not he had also been notified by his publisher that there was no budget to market his recently published novel is unknown. But that’s where I found myself last year.
All of my novels had, to date, been historical crime fiction. I have long been a reader of historical fiction which had influenced my choice of genre, but I also enjoy a relaxing contemporary cosy crime read. I’d never tried my hand at writing it, but how hard could it be?
Actually, there was a lot more to consider than I first thought. Let’s take a look at just a few things I came across. Do note however that these are my personal views and not everyone will agree. Let’s begin though with the easy bits, the constants.
The tense used will be whatever suits the writer. I much prefer reading and writing novels written in the third person, despite the fact that writing in the first person is easier (in my opinion).
Motives for murder aren’t going to change, -money, love, lust, power etc remain constant.
Whether you are a planner or a “pantser” as a writer isn’t going to change. I definitely prefer to plan out my storylines, but I will amend the plan as I progress. Here though, we do come to a slight difference. In an historical novel a change of direction can lead you into areas that may tie you into avenues of extra research which you hadn’t anticipated. I don’t feel that there’s quite that risk with a contemporary cosy crime novel.
That’s not to say that there aren’t any areas of research which need to be delved into. Because clearly there are. In fact, too many to list fully, but the obvious ones include forensics, modern firearms, narcotics, police procedures, to name but a few. Having friends to call upon to get “inside advice” on some of these (thanks Matt Johnson) is
invaluable.
But where do the difficulties lie? Some real differences between historical crime fiction and contemporary cosy crime? Here are three examples: -
Anachronisms
Readers of historical fiction want authenticity. Not just the obvious no-no’s of ancient Romans eating tomatoes, but you can be picked up on getting the brand name of an alcoholic beverage being a few years too early (yes, it happened). So, a thorough knowledge of all aspects of the era is highly desirable. However, do tread carefully when entering the world of contemporary fiction. Because there are equivalent traps there. What you might describe as being a highly desirable phone stolen from a victim might be obsolete by the time the book is published. The tech world changes so fast that you could be left with egg on your face. Even with language, don’t go anywhere near “youth speak”. Your peng heroine will soon become leng (speak to anyone under 25 for an
explanation).
Writing Style
Cosy Crime is not a place to explore the human condition with the central character fighting inner demons. Nor is it the place to wax lyrical about the scenery and the wonders of nature. It’s not that cosy crime writers can’t do this, the point is that it isn’t required. The pace has to be a tad quicker than other forms, giving an entertaining and relaxing read. There is a fine balance to be struck to find the right blend of depth and detail. I found the switch of style to be challenging.
Tropes
Without doubt, the hardest thing to get my head around when getting to grips with the genre. You see, I like reading cosy crime, but I like watching cosy TV crime even more so, despite the fact that many of them are frankly quite ridiculous.
Often you find the same type of characters. The one policeman in particular who is stupid and bullish. Inevitably they arrest the wrong man. There’s the Chief Inspector who in real life would be sat behind a desk all day, but who finds time to tramp around the countryside doing the job of a detective sergeant, the single forensic expert, who does the work of a dozen people, the DNA results that come back in a matter of hours, the arrogant aristocrat etc etc.
But squaring Leslie the reader with Leslie the author was really difficult. I like to think I’ve managed to keep on the side of those cosy crime writers who do try and stick as close to reality as the flow of the novel permits.
Has my change of genre worked? Well, I do hope so.
“This thoroughly enjoyable book is the best yet in Scase’s ‘Inspector Chard’ series… Scase deploys his knowledge of the police service at the time with remarkable skill, weaving the tension between innovation and accepted practice into the story smoothly. Taking South Wales in a time of change as the background for a ripping yarn may have been done before but seldom as well and with less preaching.”
Myfanwy Alexander, Nation.Cymru
Leslie Scase is a former Customs and Excise officer, born and educated in south Wales but now living in Shropshire. He is a member of the Crime Writers Association and of the Crime Cymru writers collective.
The Inspector Chard Mysteries, are crime thrillers set in the heyday of Victorian Britain.
Flames of Anarchy published in May 2024, is the fourth novel in the Inspector Chard Mysteries series.
Leslie regularly gives talks on crime in the late Victorian period, has appeared at many literary festivals and been interviewed on BBC radio. His interests include military history, fly fishing, cooking, real ale, football and
rugby union.
A Gentleman’s Murder is set in 1924.
He currently lives in Montreal, Canada
Lizzie: Hello Christopher, thank you for taking the time to chat with Mystery People. It is clear from your bio that your interest is in the Golden Age era. What sparked your interest in that particular period in history?
Christopher: Thanks for having me, Lizzie! I grew fond of the “fair play” aspect of Golden Age mysteries from the moment I picked up my first Agatha Christie, and when I thought to write one of my own, it just seemed natural to use the same settings. It was only later, as I did more research into that era, and discovered how much more there was to be discovered under the superficial layer of jazz music and post-war hedonism, that an actual interest in the period took hold.
Lizzie: A Pretender’s Murder also contains tales of wartime espionage. Is this also part of the fascination of the period?
Christopher: To be honest? Not especially. But I must admit that I’ve only just scratched the surface of this particular aspect of the setting, so who knows where I’ll stand on the subject as I learn more. I will say that the sheer nebulousness of military intelligence, the fact that so much has to be veiled in secrecy, offers a wide scope for imagination.
Lizzie: In between the first and second books featuring Eric Peterkin, you wrote Unnatural Ends. I particularly liked ‘that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder! At this time had you in mind to do a second book featuring Eric Peterkin?
Christopher: Yes, the intention was always to produce a second Eric Peterkin mystery. Unnatural Ends was originally intended to be a short novella for something my publisher had planned for Hallowe’en. If you’ve read it, however, you know it’s absolutely not a “short novella”. That thing outgrew its original purpose and became a full-blown novel in its own right.
Lizzie: Do you have the whole book planned out when you settle down to write, or does it change during the writing process, or does it pan out exactly as you have originally planned?
Christopher: I do plan a bit, but not in very much detail, certainly not all the way through. I’ll plan perhaps a quarter of it, write that, readjust my plan if anything didn’t work out as expected, and then try to think about what happens next. The thing about mysteries in particular is that they’re telling two different stories at the same time: there’s the deeper story about how and why the crime happened; and then there’s the surface-level story about how your detective unearths the deeper story. When people talk about planning a mystery story, they nearly always mean the surface-level story. But I find it’s more important to plan out the deeper story instead because that’s the foundation that everything else is built on.
Lizzie: Do you have a favourite part of the writing process?
Christopher: I love going over the completed product and polishing it to a shine! There’s less anxiety, because the book is essentially done, and there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing things get better.
Lizzie: Do you write for a certain number of hours each day, or set yourself a target of x number of words?
Christopher: I have no discipline whatsoever. I sit myself down at the beginning of the day, and I try to write around my distractions. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. And then, at the end of the day, I count the words I’ve written and tell myself how I could have done so much better. One day, I shall be the sort of person who can name a target and hit it within an allotted time, but I’m not there yet.
Lizzie: Who are the authors whose work you enjoy and why?
Christopher: Christie goes without saying: she wrote the sort of mysteries I aspire to write myself. I love Anthony Trollope’s narrative voice, which I’ve seen described as “third person omniscient and chatty”. Eric Peterkin’s hometown being “Barchester” is a direct reference to Trollope’s Barsetshire series. And I greatly admire how Terry Pratchett mixes wisdom and compassion into his humour.
Lizzie: What particularly attracted you to move to Canada?
Christopher : I was seventeen when that happened and can’t really take credit for the choice. In a large part, it was because I already had family in this part of the world. Perhaps the question is more about whether I’d still choose Canada today, and the answer is yes. I actually enjoy the climate, even the winter. The one thing I don’t love is how hard it is to get my hands on a proper jar of Bovril; but as my old boss once told me, “If that’s what they’re choosing to complain about, then we’re doing really good.”
Thank you for chatting with us, Christopher.
Bloody Scotland is the big crime-writing festival with the intimate vibe of a small one. The largest of its three venues, the Albert Halls, holds more than 700 people and the queues of avid crime fiction fans snake round the block for the big names but everyone is so friendly that you’d be forgiven that you were in a low-key festival in a small town.
And Bloody Scotland is super-friendly to debut authors like me. The festival runs an initiative called Crime in the Spotlight, where a lucky group of debut and new writers are given three minutes to showcase their work just before the household names - who the audience has really come to see - take to the stage.
I was doubly lucky. Not only was I given a coveted Spotlight place, but I was scheduled to take to the stage before a sold-out audience on the Saturday evening who had come to see crime-writing royalty:
Sir Ian Rankin, and the guest programmer for this year’s festival, was interviewing Kathy Reichs.
And as a scientist, she’s always been careful not to blind the readers of her murder mysteries with too much of it.
“The solutions are science driven but you have to keep the science brief,” she explained. “You want to keep it jargon-free. You have to keep it entertaining.”
And it’s worked: her list of Brennan thrillers will stretch to 28 when the latest comes out in a few weeks.
Thanks to the sell-out crowd that Kathy - who was absolutely charming - was able to attract, my appearance in Crime in the Spotlight couldn’t have gone much better. The audience were warm and welcoming, Waterstones sold out of every copy of Deadly Protocol they had and could have sold more.
In Nordic Chills and Thrills, I asked three Nordic Noir writers the obvious question: just why have crime thrillers set in that part of the world become so popular?
L-R Johana Gustawsson, Thomas Enger and Karin Smirnoff
in Nordic Chills and Thrills
Johana Gustawsson put it down to the fact that the Nordic countries are so quiet – the perfect atmosphere for a crime thriller.
“The landscape is beautiful and, at the same time, you have that silence beneath,” she said.
Fellow panellist Thomas Enger, with whom Johana is collaborating on a new Nordic Noir series, put it down to the winters.
“We don’t see the light for three months,” he said. “That’s not normal for people.”
And what about the woman who has inherited the crown of Nordic Noir? Karen Smirnoff was chosen by the family of the late Stieg Larsson to continue his Millennium series and her latest in the series,
The Girl with Ice in Her Veins, has just been published.
She said the rest of the world has got it all wrong about Scandinavia, particularly her home country of Sweden. “People have an idea of Sweden [today] that was the Sweden of the 1960s,” she said. “Rich with no violence.” It’s not like that any longer. Today’s Sweden is more violent and more crime-ridden - perfect for crime writers, of course.
What’s not so perfect is being lumbered with a character you don’t like but Karen revealed that this happened to her when she took over the Millennium series. She loves writing about Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant and uncompromising protagonist that makes the Millennium books so special. But she’s is not so keen on the other main character, journalist Kalle Blomkvist.
Fortunately, the three occupants of the same stage a few hours later had no such problems. All were intimately connected with one of the most well-loved detectives to grace crime fiction over the last four decades –
Det Insp John Rebus.
L-R Sir Ian Rankin, Gray O'Brien and James
MacPherson in A Puzzle of Rebuses
James MacPherson said reading the audio books is the hardest acting job he’s ever done because he has to adopt a different voice for each character. But when he picked up a new Rebus novel, he said “within on page I’m back in…the voices just come to me.”
Gray O’Brien revealed that he’d never read a Rebus book before playing the character. But that wasn’t a problem because the detective on stage is very different from the one in the books.
“There wasn’t any baggage,” he said. “The Rebus in the stage play is a much lighter character. This was a fresh take on Rebus.”
Ian Rankin told the audience that it was a miracle Rebus survived at all beyond the first book. “He was shot and killed at the end of the first draft,” he explained. “I didn’t realise you could write about the same character in book after book.”
But now there have been 25 full-length thrillers, plus short stories, stage plays and even a graphic novel featuring Rebus, and his creator told the audience he never tires of writing about him.
“The reason I keep writing about this guy is that I still don’t know what makes him tick,” he said.
But for how much will Rebus be around for? He’s now in his eighties and one worried member of the audience pleaded: “Don’t kill him off!”
The king of cosy crime wasn’t in Stirling this year, but his first lieutenant was.
The Rev Richard Coles has moved from pop star, as a keyboard player for The Communards, to Church of England vicar to contestant on
Strictly Come Dancing.
Now he’s a best-selling cosy crime author, with amateur sleuth Canon Daniel Clement as his main protagonist.
“I try never to write something that I don’t know about, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write about a priest,” he told Ian Rankin – by this time working overtime as interviewer in yet another session.
And Rankin couldn’t resist coaxing a confession out of Bloody Scotland’s priest-in-residence.
“Have you ever had a parishioner who’s got on your nerves, and you’ve killed him off?” Rankin asked.
“Yes,” was the reply.
And the creator of music-mad DI Rebus had another question up his sleeve.
“No chance of the Communards getting back together?”
“No,” was the very firm reply.
