Locations

The Pontefract Fleece Force

Saturday November 5^th was a cold, squally day, a fitting atmosphere for Bonfire Night. I was probably feeling the cold more than most, having just returned from some time away on business, first in Quito and then in Charleston, South Carolina (more about both on these pages very soon). The temperature in each of these places was around twenty-five degrees.

I was in Pontefract, a historic Yorkshire town, scene of gruesome murders during the Wars of the Roses and, almost two centuries later, in the English Civil War. Pontefract library is a light and airy building with lots of glass and invitingly-arranged bookshelves that fan out from the centre as well as lining the walls. I’d been very kindly invited by Alison Cassels, the Officer for Reading at Wakefield Library Services, with whom I have several times participated in crime fiction events in West Yorkshire; she had asked me to speak about Rooted in Dishonour, which will be published on 15^th November, read one of the chapters and then host a more general literary event, which included asking the audience to name their favourite novels and take part in a short ‘whodunnit’ play written by Ann Cleeves.

It was a long time since I’d last visited Pontefract Library and I enjoyed going back. A small flock of helmeted sheep occupied the ‘Fleece Station’ and busied itself with a murder scene just outside. The corpse had been already removed, having first been outlined by Eweno Hugh, the soco. I noted the chalked heels and deduced that the victim had been female. I heard that DI Tup, who had been protecting some productive grass from persecution by local thieves, would soon be on the case. I felt quite at home. Furthermore, as the Ann Cleeves playlet was set in Shetland, refreshments included shortbread and Tunnock’s teacakes, a treat that I’ve rarely seen since I worked in Scotland some twenty years ago.

The audience consisted of about twenty-five people, a few of whom I’d already met at events in Wakefield in previous years.  They were truly one of the liveliest, most receptive audiences I’ve ever encountered.  They gave Rooted in Dishonour a wonderful debut and asked so many questions that the event lasted two hours, instead of the hour that had been scheduled. If anyone who came on Saturday is reading this, I’d like to thank you very much indeed.

Huge thanks also to Alison, Lynne, Liz and Lynne and their colleagues, who made me feel as welcome and special as they always do.

Rooted in Dishonour’s launch event will take place at Bookmark in Spalding on Tuesday 15^th November, the publication date; I’ll be signing books in the afternoon and talking about the novel and giving readings in the evening.  More details may be found at http://bookmarkspalding.co.uk/.  On Saturday 19^th November, I’m signing copies of the novel from 11 am – 2 pm at Walker’s Bookshop in Stamford (http://www.walkersbookshops.co.uk/) and on Saturday 26^th November, starting at 12.30 pm,  I have a signing session at Heffer’s Bookshop in Cambridge (http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/stores/heffers), as part of the Cambridge Literary Festival.

With Alison Cassels

I’m also hoping to be able to spend rather more time blogging and catching up with many good friends on the social networks; they have been very, very kind to me on Twitter and Facebook whilst I have been caught up in work. Many sincere thanks to them all.

Ann Arbor is in Michigan, not so very far from Detroit, and currently at about the same point of spring as the Pennines of Yorkshire, with daffodils just beginning to decline from their best, the arrival of swallows and the fresh green of young leaves in sheltered places; a good deal of grass cutting was going on when we were there. The city is home to the main campus of Michigan University and the whole place was filled with graduating students, accompanied for some of the time by, it seemed, more than one generation of family supporters; a good deal of photography was also going on.

When I travelled with Christina to Amsterdam, you may recall that I provided a range of photographs to capture the spirit of that lovely city; she asked me to wander around Ann Arbor and take some pictures to add to the ones she took when she was last there, for she would not, this time, have the leisure to do so herself. (As you can tell, she has also asked me to do a blog post, as she is still very busy!) I didn’t take pictures of the grass cutting, but allowed myself one graduation moment. The rest of the pictures have no particular significance, but US readers of this blog may forgive my including things which to a Brit are strikingly different from back home. The school buses, for example, are perhaps as iconic to us in the UK as London red Routemaster double-decker buses are to the rest of the world (there seemed to be an awful lot of school buses in Ann Arbor, but I then discovered that their depot was just around the corner from our hotel!). Most people appeared to take taxis or drive themselves around town and there were very few pedestrians outside the downtown area; the campus itself, of course, was full of walkers, bikers, monocyclists and skateboarders. Nobody in the hotel could tell me where to catch a bus, but I hopped on and off a few to give my legs a rest (I’m still recuperating after surgery earlier this year.).  The houses were largely clapboard homes, the more modern of them part brick, and, apart from the student-rental homes (typically dilapidated and with piles of garbage on porch and in garden!) were immaculately tended, as were their gardens. Blossom time had arrived to set them off nicely!

One real surprise was that not much has been made of the beautiful River Huron, though I understand that there are places for kayaking now. I had to ask several people before I could find one who knew how to get down to the river; he seemed genuinely astonished that I wanted to go. Another place that I visited was Aunt Agatha’s Raven Award-winning (2014) crime bookshop, which Christina had heard about from one of the regular commenters on this blog, who I think lives not far out of town; she therefore asked me to go and browse, which I duly did, meeting Marty, the knowledgeable and long-serving bookseller there. He didn’t really want his picture taken, but, what the hell! I’m not surprised that the shop has such a reputation – its stock of used and new crime books is extensive. Sadly, I didn’t get to meet the owners, who were out of town. I enjoyed a Notting Hill moment there, by the way, as Marty, in the role of Hugh Grant, dealt with someone who wasn’t grasping too well (in spite of the window image below) that it was a crime and mystery store!

I enjoyed the wildlife, the most ubiquitous of which were American robins (not at all related to the English robin, but more thrush/blackbird in behaviour), the reddish-grey squirrels and Canada geese. In the shrubbery next to the flyover of Eisenhower Parkway, I was pleased to get a close personal view of the quite common northern cardinal, but he flew before I had chance to get the camera out.

I hope that you enjoy the pictures! The little boy in me loved the trucks!

Busy South Main Street

Turbine made from retired canoes

Railroad passenger depot 1887, now a restaurant

Marty at Aunt Agatha’s

Nickels Arcade

Through the university art gallery window

I’ve admired Sue Gee for a long time and was a fan of her work long before she became a Salt author.  When I received my copy of Trio, her latest novel, I therefore knew I was in for a treat, though even I could not have predicted how magnificent a treat it would be!
Trio covers the lives of three generations, but asymmetrically.  Its central characters are Steven Coulter and Margot, his second wife, whom he meets and falls in love with eighteen months after his first wife, Margaret, has died of tuberculosis.  The Steven / Margaret / Margot story is set mainly in the latter half of the 1930s, when the Second World War is looming and the Spanish Civil War has already begun, but it isn’t one of the myriad novels whose subject is primarily how the war and its aftermath affected ordinary lives: there is a little of that, but mainly in the context of how engaging in warfare may be a choice, a buffer used by one of those ordinary lives against personal distress.  The childhood and young adulthood of the middle generation, that of Steven and Margot’s children, is not described directly: the final part of the novel is devoted to Steven’s son’s first lonely Christmas after his wife’s death, and his feelings for his sister, children and grandchildren.  This is set more or less in the present.
The real subjects of Trio are love, sex, grief and death: huge, primeval topics, and ones which most authors struggle to write about convincingly, let alone eloquently.  ‘Bad’ sex scenes in fiction are, of course, notorious and even otherwise very accomplished authors are sometimes guilty of inadvertently creating scenes that are memorable only for their risibility.  But Gee is more than equal to this task: the love scenes between both Steven and Margaret and Steven and Margot are tender and moving.  Gee really comes into her own, however, when she is conveying grief: the sharpness of Steven’s terrible, raw young man’s grief when Margaret dies; the more muted, sad and resigned sorrow of Geoffrey Coulter, Steven’s son, when he is widowed as an old man.
Threading its way through each of the big themes of the novel, music is an ever-present force.  On one level, the trio referred to in the title are Margot and the other two musicians with whom she regularly plays in concerts and recitals.  Gee’s accounts of music and the effect that it has on its listeners are magnificent: Steven comes from a totally non-musical family, and his awakening upon listening to the trio to the power and pleasures of music are masterfully evoked.  In Gee’s hands, music promotes love, awakens desire, assuages grief and dignifies death – even a shocking and violent death.  Music sustains Geoffrey in his sadness, and he is proud that his granddaughter, Evie, also shows signs of musical talent.
I could write more about Trio, but I’m aware of the dangers of slipping into ‘spoiler’ territory.  One last observation: I’m too young to remember the 1930s or the 1940s, but I’m sure that Gee’s portrayal of them is as authentic as I know her depiction of the present to be.  And I love her evocation of the Northumberland landscape, which acts as both a beautiful and a terrible presence in this novel.

Barcelona from the Fundació Joan Miró

Easter crept up on me this year, because I spent the greater part of the week leading up to it doing the day job in Barcelona.  I was last there in November, when the weather was very similar to how it is now (How I envy the Spanish their short, mild winters!). Long-time readers may remember that I wrote of an earlier visit, in April 2013, when I was lucky enough to be there during the St George’s Day bookshop celebrations, the inspiration for our own World Book Day.

As it happened, there were more opportunities for down time in November and so last week’s distinct lack of them may be compensated by a selection of 2015 photographs of one of the world’s most beautiful and interesting cities. They aren’t in any particular order, but reflect visits to Antoni Gaudí’s inspirational work at Casa Batlló,

Casa Batlló at night

Casa Batlló from the Majestic Hotel

Casa Batlló interior, a photographer’s dream

Park Güell

Park Güell: Some of Gaudí’s least-photographed tiles

Park Güell viaducts: perpendiculars not much in Gaudí’s vocab.

Ditto

Park Güell: restoration

Park Güell: women repair, women prune, women dig and plant

Park Güell

Park Güell

Park Güell: denizen

and Palau Güell

Palau Güell rooftop view

Palau Güell: Wooden setts in the entrance hall to soften the sound of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels

Palau Güell: ceiling detail

Palau Güell: interior light

Palau Güell: favoured catenary arch shape for windows

Palau Güell: triple columns for light and support

Palau Güell: carriage exit

and to the Fundació Joan Miró.

Fundació Joan Miró

Fundació Joan Miró

There are some pictures, too, of places I wandered around and the people and animals I saw as I went. There were cats everywhere: scrawny cats crouching in alleyways, suspicious cats craning their necks from the tiled roofs, a family of sleek, well-fed black and white cats living in a courtyard at the university.  Dogs were on and off leash, living happy doggy lives; being an English pointer owner, I was delighted to find a rescued black and white pointer playing on Carmel Hill (Park Güell) with her mum.

Choice!

Predictable, perhaps, but off the beaten tourist track

Echo of Montmartre

Please, Papa!

Nothing mean, here.

Best paws forward

Best paws backward

Parc de Pedralbes: water sculpture

Parc de Pedralbes: tree sculpture

Metro: enjoying Milan Kundera

Metro: The wearable lightness of being – man in hat

Metro: On the other side

The port: view from Montjuïc

Anyway, as I’ve said, this is just a selection, which doesn’t really need much explanation, but I hope you didn’t expect too much in the way of classic views – you can find those in the guide books! Here’s a tourist picture to finish with: woman in Park Güell.

Park Güell: tourist

A view of Seattle

Last week I went to Seattle (on business, though it was very pleasurable) and my husband headed for Lancashire to help Priscilla and Rupert with this year’s crop of lambs, courtesy of Terence the Tup. My one regret was that I had to miss the lambs: Terence has performed particularly spectacularly this time: three of his six ladies have produced two sets of triplets and a set of quads (this, apparently, a one-in-ten-thousand eventuality). There are now thirteen lambs and still counting!

However, Seattle was wonderful. Geographically, it’s unique: an isthmus almost surrounded by sea, lake and tidal rivers. This, the proximity of mountains and the Pacific Ocean serve to make the climate fretful: although it’s mild, each day, I found, brings a series of sunshine and showers, the latter often lasting only a few minutes, but fierce until they peter out. The product: beautiful skyscapes, cloud dotted with mini rainbows to create a sort of celestial rocky road.

Seattle in the rain

Sunday was my only free day. Following the advice of almost everyone, from business acquaintances to the man who sat next to me on the plane to various taxi drivers, I chose to spend most of it at Pike Market.

Built in 1907, this was originally called the ‘hygienic’ market, because horses (and therefore their droppings) were banned. Architecturally, it hasn’t changed much since then. It is a warren of twisting corridors, some ending unexpectedly with huge plate glass windows that provide viewing areas across the water.

The fresh fish stands grab the visitor’s attention first: they’re dramatic, piled high with lobsters, deep sea creatures such as octopi, and the sockeye salmon for which the region is famous.

Further into the market, there are many stalls selling what look like perfect fruit and vegetables and others with more exotic foods such as buffalo. There are vendors of local wines, honey and flowers and also quite a few ‘ordinary’ shops – I discovered a couple of booksellers – and, finally, the craft stalls. The artisanal goods were of exceptional quality, as the pictures illustrate (I bought some presents at these, so won’t describe them in detail).

All the shopkeepers and stall holders were friendly, giving me and other prospective customers the history of how they came to be there, what their goods were made of, how they made them, and, if they were comestibles, providing samples.

In the heart of the market

Seattle sense of humour

I spent most of the day in the market, but I did manage to see a little of the rest of Seattle, too, particularly the student area where my hotel was situated. I was very impressed with the university bookshop, which was sprawling and well-stocked with titles that catered for the local residents as well as students. It also had some very helpful and knowledgeable assistants. Indeed, all of the three bookshops I visited – the two in the market, one bijou, the other quirky, and the university one, which was on a different scale – were independents. Tom Hanks may have put Meg Ryan out of business with his juggernaut bookselling chain, but clearly some independent bookshops still flourish in Seattle!

On a darker note, I was saddened to see the evidence of drug addiction on Seattle’s streets. There was a young man in a filthy sleeping bag lying in one doorway of the large American Apparel shop near the university; another addict, obviously still high, accosted me and my colleagues to ask for a dollar when we left a restaurant on Monday evening. I read in the local paper that there are twice as many people being treated for heroin addiction as alcoholism in Seattle. No different from what can be seen in Britain’s big cities, particularly London, I suppose; what was different was that local people seemed to tolerate it much more. The American Apparel shop assistants, for example, did not try to move on the man in the sleeping bag.

Local law enforcement

Although Seattle is a wealthy city, deriving much of its prosperity from trade with Asia, I also saw evidence of poverty. The post office in the student quarter is a drab and cavernous building, and was staffed only by two exhausted-looking clerks, one male, one female, when I visited to buy stamps. Despite being overworked, they were both gentle and patient with their clients, none of whom appeared to be students and all of very modest means. The man spent a long time helping an old lady to send a parcel; the woman was explaining how to fill in a form to a middle-aged man who had learning difficulties. It struck me that they were serving the community in much the same way that public librarians do in the UK. They were kind – and I saw (and experienced) a great deal of kindness in Seattle.

I’ve given some impressions of Seattle: I’ve no idea what Seattle thought of me. In the market, I think I was probably a bit of a curiosity: several stall holders asked me where I came from. I told a man selling shopping bags, who was so deeply engrossed in a science fiction novel that I had to ask him three times to serve me, that I was a crime writer; he said that was cool, and asked me to sign his SF book, which I duly did, although of course having no right to do so! At the airport when I arrived, the immigration official, who was rather too chatty for me after a fifteen-hour journey, said “Gee, you sound really well-educated!” “Not really,” I answered. “It’s the accent. I’m just British.”

I left Seattle after a visit of only four days, determined to return and spend more time there. Then it was home to more work, bitterly cold winds and some equally exotic tales of sheep!

A couple of Terence’s quads

Last week, the day job took me to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. I didn’t have very much time to explore this city, as, for family reasons, I had to cut my visit as short as possible. These impressions are therefore based on two walks that I made within about a one-mile radius from my hotel, my visit to the (amazing) library at Seoul National University, several evening trips to restaurants and what I could see from two one-hour taxi rides.

Seoul is a massive, sprawling city set within a giant curve of the Han River. If you land at Incheon Airport, the city appears to be ahead to the east and to your left. Gradually, the road sweeps round until you hit the city centre quite suddenly. There is a lot of traffic, with bottlenecks and impatient queues clogging the arterial roads at either end of the day.

The city centre had a slightly odd look when I was there, because many shops and hotels had removed only some of their Christmas decorations. Many still sported Christmas trees (the ones at my hotel were adorned with little placards announcing ‘Danger of Electric Shock’). I’ve no idea why Christmas disappears from Seoul in stages in this way; my Asian colleagues were equally baffled.

Although there are many cars, the streets teem with pedestrians. On the Sunday afternoon, many young people, in particular, were out walking, muffled against the cold (it varied from -1 to -10 degrees) in thick padded clothes. What immediately struck me as a Western observer was how the young women continually try to please their male partners, laughing up into their faces when the latter make jokes and hanging on to their arms as if unable to support themselves. To me, it seemed as if there was something formal, almost ritualistic, about this behaviour. It didn’t appear to be spontaneous.

The crowds on weekdays are quite different. They stream purposefully along the pavements, obviously on their way to work. The main streets are broad, often with traffic islands in the middle. ‘Jay walking’ is strictly not allowed: there are notices banning it. Just a few yards down from my hotel, a policeman with a whistle was stationed near a spot where the pavement narrowed each morning. He blew his whistle and waved a kind of luminous wand (reminiscent of a battery-powered Darth Vader light sabre that my son owned as a child) if anyone stepped off it in an attempt to circumnavigate the throng. In the evening, you see the people surging forth again, sometimes stopping at one of the many street food stands that occupy the lanes and alleys branching off from the main thoroughfares. Some of these alleys and passageways are decorated with murals that celebrate Korea’s ancient past.

Food seems to be the national passion. In the network of streets and alleys that I explored, almost every business was a restaurant, café or bar. Some have fish tanks standing in the street outside, from which you can choose the fish you fancy for dinner. (I assume that, once they’re removed from the tank, they’re taken out of sight to be dispatched.)

As well as these individual premises, there are whole malls devoted to every type of cuisine – in addition to Korean restaurants, there are Japanese sushi bars, Italian pizzeria, Swiss chocolate houses, and even an approximation of a British pub, sporting the sign ‘HAND COOKED DINING PUB’ – though, as I found when my hosts took me to an Italian restaurant, most practise ‘fusion’ cookery.

Whether you order a pizza, spaghetti, pie and peas or a hot chocolate, you’re likely to be offered a dish that, although it resembles its national original, is also redolent of Korean herbs and spices. My favourite restaurant, which I visited on my last evening, was a Korean B-B-Q restaurant. (This is how it is always spelt: these restaurants appear to be nationally celebrated.) It had charcoal braziers set into the tables. Patrons order raw meat from a selection on the menu (my own party chose a mixture of beef and pork), together with a range of salad and sauce accompaniments, and cook their own food. The main course was followed by two kinds of soup, one meat and vegetable based, one fish and seafood based, both very spicy. Koreans usually drink beer with this kind of meal, though there was also a strong white wine on offer (you drink it in sherry-type glasses, in very small quantities, and it tastes a bit like saké).

What else do Koreans like besides food? I was keen to find out so that I could buy presents, but even Koreans were at a loss to tell me. I discovered that Korea is home to a renowned type of ginseng and very good for silk ties. There are whole shops devoted to candles (though, on closer inspection, I found that the candles are imports from New York and Paris) and chemists’ shops, often selling vast ranges of foreign make-up, are popular. Otherwise, the main passions do indeed seem to be food and drink. This impression was borne out by the wares at the airport shops, where I saw very little on display except extensive pyramids of food and alcohol and an impressive range of electronic products. I couldn’t even find postcards, either at the airport or anywhere else.

Would I like to return? As I said at the beginning, my stay was very short and I can’t claim to have formed an accurate opinion of Seoul. I certainly liked the people: they were courteous and fun-loving, hard-working but not over-serious: I’d like to go back to become better acquainted with some of them. But I didn’t find Seoul itself as interesting as some of the other Asian cities I’ve visited. I’d be very happy, though, to be told that I’ve completely missed the point.

Monday was a horrible day in West Yorkshire. Torrential rain and high winds were battering the city when I arrived at Wakefield One for my afternoon of reading and discussion with some of the lovely members of the reading groups run by Alison Cassels. My husband dropped me off opposite the library complex and I got soaked – and nearly blown away – just crossing the road.

Nevertheless, I felt both philosophical and optimistic. As I’ve already noted, every event for The Crossing so far has taken place when the weather outside has been appalling, and every one has been a success. I knew that the gallant and stalwart members of the Wakefield reading groups would not let me down by preferring their firesides to the library.

Alison, as impeccable in the welcome as in the organisation!

Reader, I was not wrong! An extremely lively audience arrived punctually, some having regaled themselves with hot soup in the café to start with, and we all enjoyed a couple of hours of reading, writing and sleuthing, handsomely fortified by the Christmas cake, mince pies and stollen and tea and coffee supplied as generously and thoughtfully as usual by Alison and Lynn.

Lynn, quietly making it all happen (and she tweets!)

After listening to and providing feedback on the readings as only Wakefield audiences know how to do, when invited to take inspiration from the first chapter of The Crossing, each of the group members wrote a short sketch of an event that had happened to them and had stayed with them vividly, one that might be used as the opening scene of a novel. I hope the photographs capture the lively and committed participation that has come to be the hallmark of Wakefield One events: some read their own sketches, others asked their immediate neighbour to read for them. Everyone was spellbound by what was on offer. The accounts were fascinating and included bell-ringing for the first time and soaring unintentionally upwards on the rope, riding to London on The Flying Scotsman, walking to school through the snow in the Arctic winter of 1947 and the tale of how an uncle had pawned his wife’s hard-saved-for furniture to buy a red sports car. Novels in the making, every one – and the quality of the writing was of a very high standard.

The afternoon was rounded off by a quiz prepared by Alison. She’d found the photographs of twenty famous crime writers and asked the group to put names to them while I signed some books. It was a brilliant idea, and quite a hard task: no-one got more than half of the answers correct. (I’m going to ask Alison if she’ll let me have the quiz to post on this blog, as I’m sure some of my readers will enjoy it, too!).

The time slid away very rapidly. Braced by a final cup of tea, we ventured out into the cold again before we were trapped by the notorious end-of-day Wakefield traffic bottlenecks. I’d like to thank everyone who took part: the reading group members for giving me so much support (as they always do; it was also good to see several new faces this time), Alison and Lynn for arranging it all so impeccably, the Wakefield Libraries tweeter who, together with them, ensured that the event gained plenty of publicity, and Richard Knowles of Rickaro Books for supplying copies of The Crossing for sale. I hope to see you all again soon!

Stamford in Lincolnshire bestrides the River Welland (which also flows through the Spalding of the DI Yates books) and marks the ancient ford across the river where the Romans chose to route Ermine Street on its way north. Going there to sign copies of The Crossing, the fourth DI Yates book, seemed very appropriate!
It seems to be a continuing theme of The Crossing events that they are fated to happen in extreme weather. Harlow Carr was squally, Spalding was tempestuous and yesterday Stamford was bitterly cold! The cold hit me as soon as I got up yesterday morning. Venturing out with the dog before dawn, I noticed that a clutch of flowerpots outside the back door seemed to have sprouted a mysterious white substance. Closer inspection revealed it to be snow. Once clear of the parking area in front of my house (treacherous with black ice), I saw that all the rooftops and hedgerows in the village were twinkling with crisp snow.

It’s a two-hour drive to Stamford and, although my husband and I were heading due south, it seemed to get colder as the sun rose higher in the sky. Stamford itself was in the grip of a vicious north wind which, the weather forecast informed us, was blowing straight down from the Arctic. It didn’t seem to deter the citizens of the town: wrapped up in thick coats, hats and scarves, all seemed to be going about their business cheerfully. The Christmas decorations had been put up, most of the shop windows now carried Christmas displays and the cold served only to make the atmosphere more festive.
My destination, Walker’s Bookshop in the town centre, was as warm and welcoming as always. Its Christmas stock had been laid out beautifully and customers came, sometimes in droves, sometimes in flurries, to admire it and to browse and buy. I’d been allocated a table near to the cash desk to sign copies of The Crossing and we did a brisk trade throughout my allotted time there.

I’d like to thank both the people of Stamford and the several visitors to the town whom I met not only for buying the book, but also for the fascinating conversations in which we engaged throughout the day. There was the lady whose father had owned some of the gravel pits that I write about in Almost Love. She told me that when she was a child they’d found many things in the pits, including a mammoth’s tooth (I mention the mammoth’s remains in the book), a pewter salver and several skeletons, some of which had been buried face down, perhaps because they belonged to murderers or suicides. The artefacts had all been given to a local museum, but the bones were removed by police who ‘just put them into bags and carted them away. It was the sixties and seventies. They didn’t bother to reinter them or find out how old they were.’ Shades of Sausage Hall! It is tantalising to think that some may have been the result of more recent murders: if so, the murderer(s) got off scot free! There was another lady from Cornwall who said her neighbour was Dawn French. She asked me about my writing routine. I said that although most of my writing is done in my office, I can also write on trains and in cafes. Dawn, apparently, must have absolute solitude and silence when she writes. Several men made purchases: they tended to be more interested in the series and how the novels relate to each other than more general information about the South Lincolnshire setting or how they came to be written. People of all ages stopped to talk to me. My youngest buyer was still at school. I was delighted that so many young people were interested, including a young woman who would have bought the whole set if we hadn’t run out of Sausage Hall and said, while buying the other three, that she’d order it. Some old friends also made the considerable journey from Nottingham to give their support.
The time flew by, as it always does for me when I’m in a bookshop. I had a truly wonderful day. I’d like to thank Tim Walker and Jenny Pugh for arranging the signing session and Mandy and Karen for looking after me so brilliantly while I was in the shop. It’s a very distinguished bookshop indeed and well worth the short detour off the A1 if you happen to be passing that way.
On the way home, it didn’t seem so cold, but perhaps that was just because I was enveloped in the rosy glow of having been able to meet so many new enthusiasts.

A warm welcome from Christine Hanson, owner of Bookmark

The Crossing seems fated to attract stormy weather! Recently, I described travelling through squalls and heavy rain to reach the pre-launch event at Harlow Carr. Yesterday, the day of the launch proper, a dual event organised by Bookmark in Spalding (Christine and Sam were wonderful as always!) dawned bright and clear, but by the time I’d arrived in Spalding it was starting to rain. The showers rapidly exploded into a torrential downpour which deterred all but the most stalwart shoppers, even though it was market day. By the evening, the rain had slackened but been replaced by gale force winds.

The day-time signing session had been as successful as possible under the circumstances. I enjoyed talking to some interesting people and was fascinated by what they had to say, but I was very nervous about the evening event. Though I knew the shop had sold a lot of tickets, I doubted that many members of my audience would want to venture out. Some, I knew, would have to travel quite a distance to get there.
Inexcusably, considering my antecedents, I had reckoned without the influence of true Lincolnshire grit! Everyone who had bought a ticket showed up, and there were a few on-spec visitors as well. No-one even bothered to mention the weather. The audience was among the best I have ever had: lively, engaged, perceptive and eloquent. Several of them had already bought The Crossing, even though it was first displayed in the shop only on Monday, and many more bought it at the event (and some of my other books, as well). I was impressed by the stamina shown by Peter, a member of Bookmark’s flourishing book club, who had sat down to read The Crossing solidly all day, finally finishing it a couple of hours before the event, so that he could talk about it.

Peter, having read The Crossing in a day!

I was both delighted and grateful to learn that the book club has chosen The Crossing as its next title, apparently the second time it has opted for a DI Yates novel.

A couple of readings

I told them a bit about how I’d come to write the book, especially the real-life event on which the opening chapter is based.

Background to the story of the first chapter

I think I’ve already mentioned it on this blog, but, for new visitors, here are a few details: When my great aunt was the crossing-keeper at a remote hamlet called Sutterton Dowdyke, there was a terrible railway accident. The Peterborough to Skegness train, in heavy fog, ploughed into a lorry standing on the crossing, derailing some of the carriages, which crashed into my great aunt’s tied lodge-house and turned it round on its foundations. She was physically unhurt, but her mind was affected for the rest of her life. In the novel, the accident is the catalyst for the whole chain of events that follows. A strong theme throughout is imprisonment and how a person’s character is affected when completely subjugated to someone else’s will: what integrity compromises must such a prisoner be obliged to make in order to survive?

The Bookmark audience and I talked about this. We also discussed memory, place, old Spalding, what sort of research I carry out when writing the books, books in prisons, other books we like to read and the relationship between fact, memory and fiction. We concluded by discussing significant events in their lives that perhaps they’d like to write about.

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One very enjoyable moment stands out: a question from the floor to put the speaker on the spot! “What do you like to read?” Now I simply can’t resist buying books when I find myself in a bookshop and, since I had my purchases from Bookmark tucked under the table, I enjoyed sharing my tastes with a group of very like-minded people – interaction doesn’t get much better than that.

I’d like to say how grateful I am to everyone who came yesterday evening, both for braving the elements and for all your wonderful contributions to the conversation. And heartfelt thanks, of course, to Christine and Sam.
I shall be popping in to Bookmark briefly again to sign a few more books on 17th December, if any of my readers is interested. If so, I look forward to meeting you then.

Yesterday, I felt amazingly lucky to have been invited to launch The Crossing at the bookshop at Harlow Carr Gardens, near Harrogate in North Yorkshire. (Strictly speaking, it was a pre-launch, my first ever!) I’ve been to Harlow Carr before, but a long time ago, and I think my first visit pre-dated the shop. It’s certainly well-established and flourishing now: it’s one of the loveliest bookshops I’ve visited and, some of its customers told me, undoubtedly the best one in the Harrogate area. Far from hiding its light under a bushel (or perhaps a pergola), it has succeeded in building up a huge clientele from many miles around. If you are ever in the vicinity, it’s well worth making a detour.
Yesterday dawned late. The weather was cold and squally, with sharp downbursts of torrential rain. As I drove further north, fewer and fewer leaves were clinging to the tress, while the roads and pavements were a whirling mass of auburn, chestnut and brown as the less tenacious ones came tumbling down and as rapidly began to disintegrate into sogginess.

My view of patio, gardens and woodland

At Harlow Carr, the rain was thick and steady. The place is in quite a sheltered spot, in a hollow after a hilly climb on winding roads, so the trees that line the walks and the woods that form a backdrop to the formal gardens were still respectably clothed in gold and russet (though a vicious wind in the afternoon dislodged many of their leaves and set them swirling and eddying around the patio outside the shop). The shop itself was a haven of warmth and hospitality. Yesterday marked the launch of its Christmas stock: the bookshelves were heaving with tempting new titles and the rest of the shop was equally festive, a cornucopia of beautiful displays of cards, toiletries, accessories, seasonal decorations and all things Yorkshire.

Isabel, a truly professional bookseller

I was welcomed by Isabel and Nige, who showed me one of the best displays of my books I’ve ever encountered (helped, of course, by the fact that there are now four of them, clad in the distinguished Salt covers designed by Chris Hamilton-Emery, of which I am always so proud). My signing session was scheduled from 13.00 to 16.00 and, as it was already after 12.30, Isabel whisked me and my husband to Betty’s (Yes, Harlow Carr has a Betty’s as well! For the uninitiated, Betty’s tea-rooms are second to none on the planet.) to choose a delicious sandwich lunch. Then it was back to the staff room in the bookshop for a cup of tea. This was actually one of my favourite parts of the day. There are similarities between the staff rooms in bookshops the world over, so new ones are always reminiscent of my bookselling days and whenever I’m invited into one I immediately feel at home.
My three-hour signing stint passed all too rapidly. I met some very nice people and engaged in conversations on a huge variety of topics, from tractor seats to the novels of Peter Robinson and how I schedule my own writing. It was a new kind of audience for me: practical, engaged, leisurely. Almost everyone was wearing wellingtons or hiking boots. Many pushed children in buggies. All were wrapped up in glistening waterproofs against the rain.

The lovely bookshop reading area

And very many people stayed in the shop for long periods of time, some of them upwards of an hour. I don’t think that it was just because they were sheltering from the rain: there is a rich variety of other places within the Harlow Carr complex where they could have done that. They were genuinely interested in (all kinds of) books and writing and also extremely careful when it came to choosing the ones they were going to buy. Every sale was the result of considered deliberation, whether of my books or those of other writers. It made me very proud and appreciative when the choice fell on one of the DI Yates novels!
I loved this shop immediately and appreciated the many kindnesses and efficiencies offered by all of its staff, especially Isabel, who continued to look after me for the whole afternoon until, off duty, I was able to roam the floors and make some purchases of my own. Isabel and Nige said that they’d only just started arranging author events (though you wouldn’t have known it from their professionalism) and kindly offered to keep in touch and invite me again. I shall be there like a shot!
I left one small present of my own: a complete set of the four DI Yates novels for the shop to raffle. Everyone who buys one of my books over the next month will be offered a raffle ticket, and the winner will receive the full set of books after the draw. If you live in Yorkshire or are planning to visit the county between now and the first week in December, perhaps this might provide a further small temptation for you to track down a very great bookshop!