Interview: Lizzie Sirett in Conversation with Christopher Huang

 Christopher Huang was born in Singapore.

He graduated from McGill University with a degree in architecture and spent ten years working at the firm where he had interned.
During all this time nurturing his passion for English mystery fiction. He always believed that when he retired, he would pen his own mystery novels.
Then when he was forty, he thought why not try to achieve his dream now.  Attracted to the golden Age of Whodunnits, his first book,

 A Gentleman’s Murder is set in 1924.

He currently lives in Montreal, Canada

Christopher Huang

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:              In your first book, A Gentleman’s Murder you introduced us to Lieutenant Eric Peterkin. Is he based on anyone you knew or purely from your Imagination?
Christopher:   The wonderful thing about inspiration is that the end product may be vastly different from the original spark of an idea. Eric Peterkin’s inspirational spark was Reepicheep from C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Since then, Eric has developed enough to be his own original character and not just “Reepicheep in human form”, but two key similarities remain: Eric is fascinated by notions of chivalrous nobility, and he feels a need to prove himself to a society that’s inclined to dismiss him. (I don’t believe Lewis ever intended Reepicheep to be about standing up to prejudice, but when Reepicheep talks about small creatures having to “guard their dignity” against those who “weigh worth by inches”, I don’t really see how else to describe it.)

Lizzie:             Your second book featuring Eric Peterkin, A Pretender’s Murder is soon to be published Can you tell us about this book?
Christopher:   A Pretender’s Murder concerns the murder of a popular, charismatic old man who lost all four sons to the Great War, and whose family now consists primarily of his four widowed daughters-in-law. That interbellum era was a time of great societal change, and a big part of that was in how people at home, women in particular, had to adapt to their losses. Things at home don’t stand still just because you’re off fighting a war, and the time apart is fertile ground for all sorts of secrets to take root.

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.