Our Christmas Mystery Novella

If you enjoy curling up by the fireside with a seasonal mystery, you might like to try our Inspector Abbs novella A Christmas Malice. Set in 1873 during a Victorian country Christmas in Norfolk, our introspective sleuth has a dark puzzle to be solved.  

Several readers have asked if the setting is based on a real Norfolk village. Aylmer is completely fictional though the descriptions of the railway line across the empty Fens, an ancient flint church and carrstone cottages fit the real area of beautiful West Norfolk. The towns of King’s Lynn and Hunstanton featured are described as befits their fascinating history.

In the way of any large British county, there are several Norfolks. The saltmarshes, the Broads and the Brecks, to name just three areas are very different from one another. Our story is set on the edge of another, the Norfolk Fens or Fenland. Norfolk is famed for its spectacular wide skies where a fairly flat landscape allows the traveller to see long vistas for miles in every direction. We use fairly advisedly because Norfolk isn’t as pancake flat as is often said. Much of the landscape has gentle undulations and many a fetching slope topped with an old copse or church tower.

On the western edge of the county the Fens (a local word meaning marshland) reach into Norfolk, though their greater part lies in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and the lost county of Huntingdonshire. Flat, few trees, remote and haunting. An empty landscape of long, straight rivers and dykes. Historically a land of windmills, pumping houses, wildfowling and eels. A place of refuge for monks and rebels, the most famous being Hereward the Wake. Cromwell too was a Fenlander. Artificially drained by Dutchmen in the 17th century, the Fens are the lowest-lying land in England and have some of the most fertile soil.

Border places are intriguing, having a face in two directions. A Christmas Maliceis set in a village with the Fens starting at its back and a more pastoral landscape on the other side towards the North Sea, then known as the German Ocean. Our Inspector Josiah Abbs is a Norfolk man, living in Devon when the story begins. He comes to spend Christmas with his widowed sister Hetty. Although they grew up on an estate where their father was head gardener, this lonely part of the county is unknown to him. Abbs has only a few days to resolve the mystery, preferably without ruining his sister’s Christmas.

It was an interesting challenge to write a novella-length story (33,000 words) where our detective is alone, without the help of his sergeant or the resources of his county force. Fortunately he does find an ally in the village policeman.

Inspector Abbs and Sergeant Reeve formed an unlikely partnership in our novel A Seaside Mourning, set in Devon in 1873.

It’s available now on Kindle and in paperback if you are looking for a stocking-filler. Just click on the link below to order: 

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Finding Novel Locations

We’ve been in York, searching out locations for the third William Quest novel. Interesting to walk around a city getting atmosphere for an historical thriller set in 1854. As an historical location, York is easier than most. Such a lot survives, compared to other places in Britain.

York Minster

In the first two books The Shadow of William Quest and Deadly Quest, my hero is mostly adventuring in London – a place which has changed a great deal since the mid-Victorian period. But the Victorian elements can still be sought out even there, though they are few and far between. I’ve spent such a lot of years studying Victorian London that it seems very familiar to me. Indeed, modern London seems strange whenever I’m there.

York is a joy. Although there has been modern development and new shop fascias, many of the streets would still be recognisable to a man from 1854. In my book, William Quest has never been to York before, so he’s lost one of the great advantages he’s had while  carrying out his often dubious activities in London – which he knows like the back of his hand.

For anyone who’s never encountered William Quest, he’s a mysterious figure, usually armed with a pistol and a swordstick, who rights wrongs, defends the weak against the strong, fights corruptions and has his own occasional vigilante methods of dealing with wrongdoers.

Grape Lane

 

But in this book he’s having to take on the role of detective as well, solving a puzzle that has baffled the citizens of York…

And it means peril, high adventure and a sinister conspiracy….

Having spent the past couple of months writing the third Quest (no title as yet), it’s great to revisit familiar old haunts in York – though I confess to spending a lot of time in bookshops. York has some great second-hand bookshops!

 

 

 

We go to York quite often and always do a lot of walking around the streets, but I felt I was at the point in the novel where I wanted to see again some of the places I’d mentioned in the chapters written so far. There is one particular street, Tanner Row, which appears in the book and which I didn’t really know at all  – an important street leading to what was once York’s original railway station. The one someone like Quest would have used in 1854.

This original railway station was within the city walls, the present station, though Victorian and magnificent is outside the walls. Much of the old station still exists, though it’s been revamped as offices for the city council.

Tanner Row

Nearer to the Minster, we walked the streets where the mystery occurs which provides my novel with its plot – the area around Stonegate and Grape Lane. I know these streets very well, but it was valuable to stroll through them with my characters in mind. It’s the little details that make the difference when you are imagining fictional characters in a real landscape.

Most of my novels are set in real places. I often get ideas for stories by just going for a walk. The whole story-line of my 1930’s Scottish novel Balmoral Kill changed when I walked around Loch Muick in the Highlands. You could re-enact the final duel in that novel across a real landscape if you wanted.

The Old Railway Station

I find as a writer that just going out for a walk is the greatest source of inspiration.

Some areas of York have changed since the 1850s. The streets known as the Water Lanes, down on the River Ouse, were a rookery at that time.  In the 1870s a new road, Clifford Street, was driven through and much of the rest redeveloped. It’s still Victorian and charming to walk through, but not quite the setting Quest would have known.

On the city walls

Much the same happened in London. Jacob’s Island, where my book Deadly Quest comes to an end, was a much viler rookery than the Water Lanes. Charles Dickens used it for the ending of Oliver Twist, where it is Fagin’s final lair. Today Jacob’s Island is full of very expensive luxury apartments. If the ghosts of the poor devils who lived in the diseased original Island could come back and see it, I do wonder what they would think?

I came back from York enthused by what I’d seen. The visit spurred me on to finish the book. I hope it will be out at the turn of the year.

Though I still don’t have a title!

If you haven’t read the first two William Quest novels, there are links below. Both are available in paperback and on Kindle – and there’s a free Kindle App available for your Smartphones if you like to read on the move.

 

 

 

 

The Third William Quest Novel

I’m now writing the third book featuring my series character William Quest, which hopefully will be out at the end of the year. Quest will find himself a long way from London fighting against new enemies and even greater dangers in York, one of England’s oldest cities.

York Minster which plays a significant part in the new Quest novel

In the London novels (see below) Quest had the advantage over his enemies of knowing every street and alley. But York is new to him, so he’s disadvantaged from the start. And it is in York’s winding medieval streets and snickets that he faces a particular and menacing foe.

As York is one of our favourite places, I’m very much enjoying setting a book there. It’s a wonderful setting for a mystery adventure.

If you haven’t read the first two books in the series, do please click on the links. They’re both out in paperback and on the Kindle eBook reader for your smartphone, Kindle or laptop – just download the free app when you order the books. And if you have read the books and enjoyed them, I’d really appreciate it if you would leave a quick review on the Amazon sales pages.

Leaving reviews helps all Indie Authors stay in business and keep writing. 

Please do tell your friends and fellow readers. Word of mouth is the very best form of advertising.

 

 

Talking about the Penny Dreadful…

A big thank you to American crime writer Marni Graff, who features me today as a guest blogger on her splendid crime writing blog auntiemwrites

I’m talking about my new book Deadly Quest and how the writers of today might learn from the writers of Penny Dreadfuls in Victorian times.

Do visit and follow Marni’s blog which is always full of fascinating news about crime writing, book reviews etc.

Thank you Marni!

Click on the link below to visit Marni’s site.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/5968535/posts/1205250119

Hide In The Dark by Frances Noyes Hart

An American seasonal mystery this week, published in 1929 and set a year earlier on Hallowe’en. Hide In The Dark is the first novel I’ve read by Frances Noyes Hart (1890-1943) and I enjoyed it enormously.

Thirteen people are gathered at Lady Court, an old house, some forty miles south of Washington. The house has been owned by the family of their hostess, Lindy, for over two hundred years, though not lived in – except by a servant – for the last fifty. Lady Court is supposedly haunted by an ancestor who committed murder.

Eleven of the characters are old college friends, a group who called themselves ‘The Mad March Hares,’ the remaining two are spouses. The group haven’t been all together for nearly a decade. They’re still haunted by the suicide of their twelfth friend, Sunny, who drowned herself when she was nineteen.

The novel begins as they arrive for a Hallowe’en house-party. The idea is to recall happy occasions spent there many years ago. They bring hampers of food for three days and the caretaker servant has been sent away. As night falls, Lindy recounts the story of the murder for the benefit of their new guests. In the best tradition of Hallowe’en tales, the weather worsens with lashing rain and a great storm. A river floods, sweeping away a bridge and cutting off the house. They find the telephone is no longer working.

The group play traditional games such as ‘apple-bobbing’ and ‘flour and ring’. Over the course of the evening, old friends catch up, secrets are disclosed, hidden enmities surface. The author does a wonderful job of building a darkening atmosphere beneath the high jinks and a sense of growing danger. This culminates at midnight when they play ‘hide in the dark,’ – more often known as ‘sardines’ in the U.K – and one of them is murdered.

Unable to get help, the friends question one another and try to work out whodunit. It turns out that several had a motive to kill the victim.

Hide In The Dark is beautifully written. Initially, I wondered if thirteen suspects might be a lot to get straight but soon found the author created clearly delineated characters. They are very believable of their period, it was easy to get to know them and care what happens. Frances Noyes Hart also included a cast list, a popular device in Golden Age fiction.

The novel has a lot of quick-fire dialogue and I kept ‘seeing’ the scenes as a black and white film, the sort that would star Bette Davis and George Brent, say. I think Hitchcock might have enjoyed directing this. It has a well-crafted blend of fun and malice.

Hide In The Dark builds to an abrupt, though very satisfying conclusion. It’s been an interesting change to read an American take on a classic mystery plot and I look forward to trying more from Frances Noyes Hart.

 

 

Join us on Goodreads

We are now playing a more active role on our Goodreads page.

You’ll find a list of all our books there, plus information on what we’re reading.

There’ll be giveaways of signed copies of our paperbacks coming up, plus publishing and writing news.

The page also gives you an opportunity to ask us questions about our work.

So just click on the Goodreads site at http://www.goodreads.com type in John Bainbridge in the Search. There are several other John Bainbridge’s so enter one of our book titles as well, say Wolfshead, or A Seaside Mourning etc.

If you like, please join us on the Goodreads page as a friend…

Here’s the page address again – http://www.goodreads.com