On 19th August 2009, an audience of a hundred people came to Ludlow Castle in Shropshire to hear the above authors talk about their books.
Andrew Taylor first of all talked about a book he started and then abandoned as it wasn’t working. He then talked about how
he starts to write, and what triggered him to write a Victorian murder case, basing it on the Moat Farm Murder which had fascinated him as a child.
Marcia Tally lives in Maryland, near Washington DC. She has eight novels set in Maryland featuring Hannah Ives, recovering from breast cancer. Hannah is very much part of and active in her community. She also extolled her love of the Bahamas which she discovered when her husband took a sabbatical and they embarked on a trip in a sale boat.
Suzette Hill was a teacher of English literature who never had any thoughts of writing a novel. She daydreamed of a sleek cat sunning itself on a high gate post and Maurice the cat was born, along with a ragamuffin dog and their life with an Anglican vicar. She said that she started a short story but it grew when Bouncer (the dog) found ‘the leg’ and she had to keep writing to find out ‘whose leg it was’.
Laura Wilson, after recovering from Andrew saying he had abandoned his recent book which had driven everything out of her head, got herself together and talked about her first book, A Little Death, in which she had three dead bodies in a house, but
didn’t realise she was writing a crime novel. More recently she has started a series with Stratton’s War which starts in 1940 and finishes in the 1960s.
Kate Charles’ latest book Deep Waters came into her mind when she was seeing stories about celebrities Jade and Jordan. Why, she asks, are we so fascinated by celebrities? The press make ordinary people into celebrities and then turn on them. What is it about our culture that allows this to happen? The obsession the public have with celebrities has almost replaced religion.
Natasha Cooper talked about why people cross the line and actually kill. She spoke about her protagonist Trish Maguire who in her last book took silk, and has now got her life sorted, got a good job, live in lover and her half brother – who wants a happy sleuth with it all worked out! She has now started a new series featuring Karen Taylor who is conducting a series of interviews on people suffering from Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder. The new book is entitled No Escape and a review of this book can be found on page 8.
Martin Edwards is a crime writer and by day a solicitor. He talked about the part that always fascinates the reader (well, it does me): how do we write? Martin says he always knows what the ending is and always starts with the motive – he says he couldn’t write a novel without knowing what the ending is. He has also finished a book for the late Bill Knox; he had notes but the challenge was to solve someone else’s mystery. The test is ‘can you spot the join’? Recently he went back to his first protagonist – solicitor Harry Devlin – and Waterloo Sunset came out last year. He says Harry’s life is nothing like his. His most recent series features historian Daniel Kind and is set in the Lake District. The latest title is The Serpent Pool.
Phil Rickman says he spent ten years developing his series. He talked about the frustration of not being able to get on with what he wanted to write when his publisher asked for a standalone book that was to be a historical. He said that he found difficulties in writing a book set in Elizabethan times.
Thanks to Kate Charles for the organisation, and to Stanton of Castle Bookshop, Ludlow, for hosting the event in association with the Mystery Women group.
Left to right: Phil Rickman, Martin Edwards, Natasha Cooper, Kate Charles
Hidden behind Kate is Laura Wilson, next Suzette Hill, Marcia Talley
and Andrew Taylor