Sausage Hall

My blog tour is more than half way through now. I’d like to thank all the bloggers and everyone who has read their posts and sent comments. Both the reviews and the comments have been delightful – I am hugely appreciative and grateful. Thank you!

I’m now looking forward to the last three posts. The tour finishes on 30^th November – a fitting date, as winter starts ‘officially’ the next day. I’m sure the generous and perspicacious posts will encourage more readers to snuggle down with DI Yates in the cold, dark evenings!

Special thanks to Anne Cater, who pulled the whole thing together. I have loved working with her – she is down-to-earth, determined and efficient and she has a fine sense of humour. If you are looking for someone to organise a blog tour, I wholeheartedly recommend her.

When I was a child, the motor car was the ultimate status symbol. Families aspired to own one and felt they had ‘arrived’ when the car did, however shabby or humble it might be.

Our next-door neighbours, Harry and Eileen Daff, were the first in our street to bring home a car. Theirs was a forties Morris with running boards which looked as if it belonged on a film set, but that made it yet more glamorous in the eyes of the local children. The Daffs went out for Sunday afternoon rides in their car. Mrs Daff – ‘Auntie Eileen’ – was always promising to take me, too, but the invitation never materialised.

My father acquired our first car about three years afterwards, when I was nine. It was a two-door Ford Popular which we nicknamed ‘Hetty’. I can remember the registration number: it was HDO 734. Hetty, like the Daffs’ Morris, was not only second-hand but practically vintage. My father had saved hard to afford her and had still needed a loan from my miserly – but loaded – Great Uncle David to complete the purchase.

Great Uncle David lived – indeed, spent his every waking moment – working in the convenience shop in Westlode Street which he had inherited from his parents despite being their youngest son, presumably because he had scoliosis and was considered ‘delicate’. My paternal grandmother kept house for him. They were only a short bike ride away.

My mother’s mother, however, was the paid companion of a very old lady and lived in Sutterton, nine miles distant, which meant that in pre-Hetty days visits had to be accomplished by bus. It was usually she who visited us, invariably spending the morning of her day off shopping in Spalding and then walking to ours for lunch. Post-Hetty, we were able to make more frequent visits to Sutterton. However, I was still sometimes allowed to travel there alone on the bus. It was nearly always on a damp, foggy day when the sun never broke through the Fenland mists.

The house she lived in was the house I have called Sausage Hall in The Sandringham Mystery. It was a big, gloomy red-brick house in considerable need of repair. Sometimes she occupied the breakfast room when she had visitors, but her natural habitat was the kitchen with its adjoining scullery, in both of which roaring fires were kept burning night and day throughout the winter months. The kitchen fire had a built-in oven in which she would bake perfect cakes. Lunch would be tinned tomato soup and bread, followed by a big hunk of cake. Cherry cake was my favourite.

Her employer’s name was Mrs James. My grandmother always referred to her as ‘the old girl’. Mrs James’s first name was Florence and she was one of a large family of sisters, the Hoyles, who had been brought up in Spalding in extreme poverty. One of the sisters still lived in what could only be described as a hovel in Water Lane and occasionally, after one of my visits to Sutterton, I would be sent round with cake or chicken. Miss Hoyle never invited me in. She would open the door a few inches, her sallow face and thin grey hair barely distinguishable from the shadows of the lightless cavern behind her, and reach out a scrawny hand to take what I had brought, barely muttering her thanks before she shut the door again.

My grandmother, also the eldest of a large family of sisters, despised the Hoyles. Mrs James was not exempt. My grandmother’s father had been a farm manager, employed by a local magnate. He was a respectable, hard-working man of some substance in the community, unlike the allegedly feckless Mr Hoyle. According to my grandmother, Florence had ensnared Mr James with her pretty face, but that did not excuse her humble beginnings.

Florence, long widowed, had taken to her bed, for no other apparent reason than that she was tired of the effort of getting up every day. My grandmother delivered all her meals to her bedroom and sometimes sat there with her. When I visited I was expected to call in to see her before my departure. I never knew what to say. She would extend a plump, soft white hand from beneath the bedclothes and offer it to me. I’d shake it solemnly. Once, when I’d been reading a Regency novel, I held it to my lips and kissed it. She was momentarily surprised – I saw the gleam of interest in her eyes before her spirit died again.

Mrs James’s sons, both middle-aged gentlemen farmers, also performed duty visits. My grandmother and I were expected to call them ‘Mr Gordon’ and ‘Mr Jack’. In The Sandringham Mystery, Kevan de Vries, head of the de Vries empire, has his staff call him ‘Mr Kevan’. I lifted the idea from my experience of the two James brothers. I was about nine when I met them and could identify condescension when I encountered it.

Hetty broadened our horizons immeasurably. Instead of going out for bike rides at weekends, we drove to local beauty spots – Bourne Woods, the river at Wansford, Barnack – and sometimes on nice days even further afield, to Hunstanton, Skegness and Sandringham.

Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate, consists of many acres of forest, most of which were already open to the public, though the house itself wasn’t. It was possible to visit the church. Both local people and visitors would wait outside the wall beyond the churchyard for glimpses of the royal family when they were in residence. I saw Princess Margaret once. She had the most astonishing violet-blue eyes.

I associate Sandringham particularly with the clear bright cold of Easter holidays and the drowsy late-summer warmth of blackberrying. The blackberries there were enormous and my brother and I would scratch the skin on our arms to ribbons trying to reach the best ones. Parts of the woods were deciduous, but the blackberries seemed to flourish in the areas where the pine trees grew, planted in squares and divided up by trails (‘rides’).  When I was writing The Sandringham Mystery, I remembered vividly a clearing in the woods that had been made by the crossroads of two trails. In the novel, it is here that the body of a young girl is discovered, the start of a police investigation that not only reveals why she was murdered, but also uncovers some other terrible murders that took place in the past, in Sausage Hall itself. The Sandringham Mystery is published by Bloodhound Books today. I hope you will enjoy it.

De Vries, my latest novel, is published today. It makes a more tentative entry into the world than my other books, emerging cautiously, like us, as the lockdown restrictions are gradually relaxed… and I  must say I can’t wait to visit some bookshops next week! Not being able to go to bookshops and talk to booksellers has been one of the greatest privations of this latest lockdown – for thousands of others, I know, as well as for me. Unlike all my other books, therefore, De Vries cannot be launched in a bookshop. However, Carla Green and Alison Swainson at BBC Radio Lincolnshire have kindly offered De Vries a virtual book launch on the Carla Green programme today. If you are able to, please tune in at 15.10, with your glasses charged! There are some library and bookshop events planned for later in the year and I’ll keep everyone posted.

De Vries has already been blessed by several kind and perspicacious reviewers who read it ahead of publication date. I include some of their reviews in this post. I’d like to thank you, Stacey, Mickey and Jane, for taking the time and the trouble to write such brilliant reviews. I appreciate them hugely.

I also include some photos of the Sakura (cherry) blossom, sent to me by my friend and colleague Katsunori Iino, who lives in Shiga, Japan. The ancient Japanese Hanami ritual celebrates the fleeting beauty of this blossom of a species of ornamental cherry. The ancient Japanese sages compared the precious short-lived splendour of these flowers with life itself and believed both should be enjoyed to the full before they slip away. I hope they’ll bring the readers of this blog some calm and joy as we all begin to embrace life to the full once more – and we shall, I’m sure, still find plenty of time to read!

Reviews of De Vries

From Stacey Haber:

I loved this book. A quick read and intriguing from start to finish.

It’s not your typical murder mystery in that it doesn’t open with a dead body and the central character sleuth. It opens with a mystery, just not the one we’re expecting. If you’ve not read its predecessor Sausage Hall, then you’re greeted with a man who knows he’s at risk and in a place he shouldn’t be. You are immediately propelled to the edge of your seat and the tension of a good mystery stays with you from page one. If you have read Sausage Hall, then the mysteries of ‘why’ and ‘why now’ are all the more present and shocking. 

The web of characters in this story resonates with purpose. The introduction of the many characters takes the time deserved and the unfolding of the story is like a film camera slowing pulling back to reveal that web. It’s a glorious reveal in slow motion with rich detail and intrigue.

When the protagonist and side kick DI Tim Yates and DS Juliet Armstrong finally appear, it’s a relief; a relief that things will all become clear soon and that the characters that we care about have a chance of a resolution, even if not a happy ending. Yates and Armstrong are wonderfully pragmatic and determined. Armstrong in particular has a mind that is a joy to follow and an instinct for detail that would be lost on anyone else.

Can’t wait for the next instalment in the DI Yates series.

From Mickey Corrigan:

Hijinks at Sausage Hall: De Vries by Christina James

When Kevan de Vries returns to the family home in Sutterton, South Lincolnshire, he knows he is taking a huge risk. He’s wanted by the local police for questioning in the disappearance of his former employee, a man accused of running of a child trafficking ring. De Vries’ attorney, the manipulative Ms Jean Rook, has power of attorney in more ways than the usual. And there are some ghosts he must confront. His dead wife, for one. The missing trafficker. Not to mention some hundred-year-old skeletons the police dug up in the cellar.

There’s much at stake, but de Vries is bored living on the lam in St. Lucia, idling his time while avoiding extradition and waiting for his son Archie’s school recess. Thus, his return to ‘Laurieston House’ (which the locals call ‘Sausage Hall’, in reference to the butcher who went bankrupt building it) and the dangers it represents, the demons he must face. He’s also on a quest. Not to clear his name, but to discover its secrets. His birth certificate lists his father as “unknown” and de Vries is determined to fill in the blanks.

Agnes Price is worried about one of her young students from the seasonal workers’ camp. Mirela Sala is underfed, underdressed, and bears other signs of abuse when Agnes takes her under her wing. But Mirela’s scary “uncle” takes offense, which leads to violence and threats of more. Already stressed from a previous run-in with a stalker, Agnes struggles to maintain her composure while distracting herself with a project for the local Archeological Society. That’s where de Vries meets her – and rather quickly falls for her.

DI Yates and DS Armstrong, the likeable cops involved in the child trafficking bust, are back on the job. (If you are a Christina James fan, you will recognize these characters from the DI Yates series.) Drawn in by the possibility that de Vries is hiding out at Sausage Hall, they launch another one of their intuition based investigations, only to get sidetracked when a townswoman goes missing.

Will de Vries solve his paternity mystery before the law finds him? Will he be able to explain his legal troubles to Agnes? Is the child trafficker dead—or still in business? What will the Archeological Society dig up? And where did those old skeletons at Sausage Hall come from? Are there more?

Enquiring minds must find out, which is why I couldn’t stop reading. I greatly admire a writer who can lure me in with an addictive plot and make me fall in love with a motley group of well-drawn characters as she fits all the puzzle pieces together. I won’t say more as I don’t want to spoil your read. It’s a fun one by a master storyteller.

From Jane Barber:

Kevan De Vries has spent seven years living in St Lucia and has decided to return to his home in Sutterton. The police are still interested in questioning him about his business manager’s disappearance and involvement in  criminal activity. Kevan would prefer not to answer their questions so decides to travel incognito.

He needs to spend time at his old family home of ‘Sausage Hall’ to try and find out any information about his father. His mother and grandfather never would answer his questions.

Sausage Hall has a lot of secrets – is it about to divulge some more? And what connection is there with the crimes that DI Yates and his team are investigating?

I had wondered what had happened to Kevan De Vries – this time he is the one looking for answers and finding himself attracting unwanted attention. I liked the different narratives of de Vries and the police and found myself hoping he escaped safely back to St Lucia.

The local Lincolnshire settings are so well described and enhance the story so well. I can visualise all the places mentioned.

An excellent read.

Thank you once again, Stacey, Mickey and Jane, for such perceptive and tantalising reviews. I very much appreciate them.

May I wish everyone a rapid escape from the restrictions that the pandemic continues to impose and enduring good health and happiness thereafter.

This is the third in the series of posts about De Vries.  It explores the role of ‘Sausage Hall’ in the novel, particularly whether the house itself can have influenced the course of events that take place.

Buildings fascinate because they are so much part of the era in which they were built – which means that, to a greater or lesser extent, almost everyone lives within some construct of the past. Buildings are also the backdrop to the events that take place within them. Can they remember these events, perhaps even absorb some quintessential miasma from them? It hardly seems fanciful to think so – such a belief is sometimes even embraced by officialdom. Thus, Gloucestershire Council in 1996, shortly after the conviction of Fred and Rosemary West, razed to the ground 25 Cromwell Street, scene of many horrific murders, ostensibly to stop souvenir hunters but also because its continued existence gave local people ‘the creeps’; and the council house where Myra Hindley lived with her grandmother and Ian Brady, where they murdered Edward Evans, was also demolished, though, curiously, only twenty-two years after Hindley and Brady were imprisoned. Manchester Council eventually found it impossible to let the house because successive tenants complained of a ‘dreadful sense of brooding’ there. Imagination or fact?

As a child, I visited Hardwick Hall – built by Bess of Hardwick, the ancestress of the Dukes of Devonshire – before it was taken over by the National Trust. Despite the famous adage ‘Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall’, the house at that time was dark and chilly and neither very clean nor in a good state of repair. There weren’t many visitors on that day – I think it was in early spring, probably just after the house had been opened up after the winter – and I was dawdling behind my parents. They had disappeared beyond the top of the shallow-stepped stone staircase that led to the first floor by the time I began to climb it myself. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that I was quite alone. I carried on up the steps – I was looking to my right at a large faded tapestry on the wall, apparently woven in greys and browns – when something brushed against my shoulder and my leg. It was soft, a fabric of some kind. In less than a second it had passed me. When I looked back at the foot of the staircase again, I caught a glimpse of a woman in a long, dark dress smartly walking away. Although subsequently no-one believed me, I was convinced that I had seen Bess herself. Had some essence of her survived, fostered perhaps by the sheer force of her personality? Had her spirit been left free to roam when her descendants decamped to the even grander house they built at Chatsworth? Since the National Trust took over the property, I have visited the house several more times, but never again felt any inkling of an uncanny presence there. Is that because in the process of undertaking much necessary restoration work, the National Trust has ‘sanitised’ it? (Like every other NT house, it now has a tea-room, a gift shop, cordons to keep you off the furniture and attendants everywhere.) Or is it because children really can see and feel almost imperceptible elemental forces that adults can no longer detect? I still don’t believe I imagined the whole thing.

When Kevan de Vries leaves Sutterton in a hurry at the end of Sausage Hall, he has come to detest the house, the location of some of the unhappiest events in his life. Even more sinisterly, he has discovered that it was the scene of much evil-doing in the past. Yet when he returns to it incognito seven years later, as well as his quest to discover his father’s identity it is the house itself that draws him. His fascination is in part empirical: he knows there is a large number of papers and artefacts stored within the house that are likely to yield clues about his paternity. But there is more to it than that: at some level, he feels that the house, scene of his childhood, youth and married years, carries a part of himself, however much he may have tried to deny it during his exile in St Lucia.

Perhaps that is the great collective secret shared by all buildings once they have been inhabited: like light years, they don’t just exist in the present, but within a continuum reaching right back to their foundation. They face both forwards and backwards: they absorb and are shaped by the loves, fears and hatreds of those who have occupied them. They have characters, sometimes charming, sometimes terrible. As they grow older, their personality changes: they possess their own powerful kind of DNA, incremental rather than fixed. They become companions, not just enclosures of living space. Kevan de Vries is the central human character in De Vries; but in every step he takes he is shadowed, perhaps even influenced, by Sausage Hall.

De Vries, the ninth DI Yates novel, will be published soon. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is the sequel to Sausage Hall, although each can be read independently of the other.

De Vries sets out to explore several themes: Why do some people become obsessed with discovering the truth about who their parents are, even at the risk of putting themselves in danger or losing their liberty? Can murder sometimes be justified? And, perhaps a little more whimsically, can buildings hide secrets and even, in certain contexts, develop personalities of their own?

In a future post, I’ll take a closer look at the mystery of parentage. For now, I’d like to consider the second of these themes. Wishing to find out more about whether murder can ever be excused, I looked up the term ‘justifiable homicide’. Unsurprisingly, I discovered that in different countries there is quite a range of legislation ‘allowing’ murder (i.e., not prosecuting the perpetrator). Internationally, the most frequently invoked law is one that absolves the murderer of blame if s/he killed while fearing for her or his own life, or the life of someone else in the immediate vicinity.  In other words, the murder has been committed in self-defence. However, the precise definition of what legally constitutes self-defence is often unclear. For example, English law allows someone to exert only ‘reasonable force’ when defending property from an intruder, even if the intruder is trespassing in the middle of the night and the householder claims that s/he was terrified. The well-publicised case of Tony Martin, who shot dead a teenage boy and injured his twenty-nine-year-old burglar companion when they broke into his remote farmhouse in the early hours of one morning in the year 2000, remains controversial. Martin was convicted of murder, later downgraded to manslaughter. He served three years in prison before being released. Twenty years on, public opinion is still divided on whether he should have been convicted at all, but his conviction was the result of careful application of the law. The plea of self-defence therefore seems to depend on a number of factors, including the circumstances of death, how the law may or should be interpreted, the verdict of the jury if the perpetrator is taken to court and, finally, the views of the presiding judge.

Some countries allow or condone types of killing that others would not hesitate to regard as murder. Abortion and euthanasia are allowed by some western jurisdictions, condemned as murder by others. So-called ‘honour-killings’, while they may still be against the law, may attract lower sentences than other kinds of homicide in the countries where they are most commonly practised. (I take a closer look at honour killings in Rooted in Dishonour.) Perpetrators of ‘crimes of passion’ – i.e., murders committed in the heat of the moment, usually against a partner or spouse who has been caught ‘cheating’ or his or her lover – may sometimes be judged leniently, even sympathetically, especially in Latin countries, and a much-reduced sentence consequently handed down.

Whatever one’s stance on this, the logic that dictates that not all murders are equal when it comes to assigning culpability is not hard to understand, even though it is often controversial. But what if the murderer were under no particular pressure when s/he committed the murder? Would it make any difference to the degree of culpability in terms of, say, such a (possibly extenuating?) circumstance as being unexpectedly accosted – perhaps at home – by someone who might not have been at that moment an obvious direct threat, but who had previously inflicted personal – or close-to-personal – harm on him or her? And what if the victim were a totally reprehensible character with no counterbalancing virtues whatsoever? Could the case ever be made for letting the murderer of such a person go scot free, with his or her crime condoned or even tacitly approved by the authorities?

That was the conundrum I had to address when I started to write De Vries.

De Vries is the sequel to Sausage Hall, the third in the DI Yates series and among the most popular. It will be published in March. It is indelibly etched on my memory as having been written during the first year of COVID. I’m sure many other writers will have particular memories of what they wrote in 2020.

Readers of Sausage Hall have been asking for a sequel ever since it appeared in 2014. I have found their enthusiasm uplifting and should like to take the opportunity to thank them for it.  As soon as Sausage Hall was published, I knew I would write its sequel one day, because the story of Kevan de Vries is far from finished when it ends. Seven years after the curtain went down on de Vries, now exiled to his luxury home in Marigot Bay, it seemed the time was ripe, not least because the seven-year gap features strongly in the plot and is instrumental in deciding de Vries’ fate.

All the DI Yates novels prior to De Vries are standalone. Although the same central characters appear in all of them and some of the minor characters feature in more than one, De Vries was my first attempt at writing a novel whose plot depended on the plot of an earlier book. After giving this a great deal of thought, I decided that I wanted De Vries to work as a standalone novel as well as a sequel – I always feel those authors who expect their readers to read novels 1 – 8 in order to understand novel 9 are cheating. This presented some interesting challenges which I hope I have managed to address successfully, mainly through the use of ‘need-to-know’ tasters. There are snippets of information about what happened in Sausage Hall dotted throughout De Vries – enough, I hope, not to fox or bore the reader – without spoiling Sausage Hall for those who come to it afterwards.

I’ve previously told readers of this blog how my eagle-eyed daughter-in-law picks me up on discrepancies of fact and characterisation between the novels. Spotting and eliminating such errors seemed even more vital this time. She and my editor both re-read Sausage Hall before embarking upon De Vries and I re-read it several times myself – the first time I have read one of my novels all the way through again after it was published.

As it happens, I remembered the plot and characters of Sausage Hall quite accurately, more so, perhaps than some of the more recent DI Yates novels. Nevertheless, re-reading it was an unusual experience because it also reminded me vividly of the specific occasions on which I worked on certain chapters. For example, it was during one of many court adjournments when I was doing jury service at Sheffield Crown Court that I read of the links to Lincolnshire of a famous historical character that gave me the idea for the sub-plot; I was on holiday in Germany when I started writing about Florence Hoyle’s journal. The German holiday house was on a farm in the Munsterland and I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, the brilliant sunshine streaming through the open door. (Less edifyingly, I was also eating banana cake.)

De Vries himself is one of the most complex characters I have tried to create. He’s not exactly likeable, but he is charismatic; the reader feels sympathy for him because he’s suffered more than his fair share of misfortune – but he brought much of it on himself. Is he a murderer, or has he been framed? I won’t say any more, because I don’t want to spoil it if you’re interested!

I don’t have the finished jacket for De Vries yet, but I will post it on this blog as soon as I can. I’m thrilled with it – it’s an original sketch by Sophie Ground, a very talented artist friend and daughter of my friend Madelaine, herself also an accomplished artist.

I’m also delighted that all the Yates novels except Almost Love – which I’m rewriting; it will be back again in the autumn – are now published by QuoScript, a vibrant new publisher specialising in crime and YA fiction.

I may not have the jacket yet, but I can share the blurb from the back cover.  I hope you find it intriguing!

Wealthy businessman Kevan de Vries returns to the UK after an enforced absence, travelling incognito and taking up residence at ‘Sausage Hall’, his ancestral home in Sutterton – secretly, because he must evade being questioned by DI Yates about the disappearance of Tony Sentance seven years previously. Sentance’s sister Carole persistently lobbies the police to have her brother declared dead so she can inherit his estate. She believes de Vries murdered Tony.

De Vries knows he risks imprisonment by coming home, but he’s obsessed with learning his father’s identity, never disclosed by his mother.

Agnes Price, a young primary teacher, becomes increasingly concerned about the welfare of one of the children in her class. Leonard Curry, a schools attendance officer, is sent to investigate, but is attacked. Someone frightens Agnes when she is walking home one night. Shortly afterwards, Audrey Furby, Curry’s niece, disappears… 

De Vries is the sequel to Sausage Hall; each novel can be read independently of the other.

Saturday was a clear, crisp, cold day after many days of rain and muggy warmth. It felt like a proper winter’s day, of the best possible kind!

Before it was quite light, I was heading for Stamford – one of my favourite places – for a signing session in Walkers Bookshop, at the heart of the town. First stop, however, was the George, Stamford’s splendid old coaching inn – for coffee and pastries in front of its roaring open fire!

I am very happy to be able to say that Walkers is an extremely successful bookshop. The period after Christmas is a notoriously slack time for bookselling – as for all types of retail activity – but on Saturday, Walkers was clearly thriving, with a constant flow of people, many of whom engaged me in conversation and not a few of whom bought Chasing Hares or one of the other Yates novels (In the Family and Sausage Hall seem to be the perennial favourites).

I was particularly smitten by the little girl who told me she wanted to be an author and an illustrator! And also delighted – and very honoured – that Rex Sly, whose books about the fen country I have long been consulting when carrying out my research, came in to meet me.  We had a long conversation about writing. Himself a Lincolnshire farmer – he lives in the farmhouse in which he was born – Rex told me that at one stage his family’s problems with hare coursers had become so grave that they considered moving out and finding somewhere else to live.

Many thanks indeed to Jenny Pugh and all the staff at Walkers for arranging the session and making me as welcome as always – and for providing tea and other comforts!

After a quick lunch and a brief exploration of Stamford – it has an amazing ironmonger’s which always draws my husband like a magnet – it was on to the library, where Jane Barber, one of the librarians and an old school friend, had again used her fertile imagination to plan an event, this time a murder mystery event that she called ‘Tea and Murder’. She and her colleagues expended a great deal of energy and time on this and they – and I – were rewarded by its being a hugely successful event. They attracted a very large audience, some of whom I had already met last spring at the first DI Yates event in Stamford Library.

I talked about how I had come to write Chasing Hares – not forgetting to mention the large part played by my friends Madelaine, Marc, Anthony and Marcus and by South Lincs police, all of whom had a significant hand in creating the plot – and read aloud the first chapter. We then had a lively discussion about how to plan a murder. I said that although the characters in my novels are all (except one) fictional, or at most composites of several people I have known, the plots are often inspired by real-life crime. For example, the plot of Fair of Face draws heavily on the White House Farm murders (a version of which is now being televised) and Chasing Hares is in part the product of a great deal of research about hare coursing. We talked about the perfect crime being one which was never discovered – which doesn’t work in fiction, for obvious reasons – but how some novelists have got round this by allowing the murderer not to be caught (Patricia Highsmith, in the Ripley novels) or by using the device of the unreliable narrator (probably started by Agatha Christie, when she wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). In my own Sausage Hall, Kevan de Vries appears to get away with murder – but watch this space! Kevan will return in my next book – to be called, simply, de Vries – and he may not be so lucky next time.

Then there were (delicious!) cakes and tea.

All this was a prelude to a murder mystery for which Jane had set the scene. She had even produced an actual body – the ‘body in the library’! The audience worked in groups, each group to decide who the victim was, who the murderer and what the motive. Each suggestion was more ingenious than the last: it was impossible to award a prize for the best one!

The whole evening was very light-hearted, relaxing and entertaining and the audience at Stamford has become one of my great favourites. I’d like to thank everyone who came to the event for turning out on a Saturday (and also a cold evening), some travelling from quite a long way away. And very sincere thanks to Jane Barber and her colleagues for all their hard work and for pulling off another triumphant event – Jane’s inspirational activity and her sensitive management of it were indeed wonderful to see. 😊

Gentleman Jack is launched!  Thank you to all those who helped.

Gentleman Jack, the seventh novel in the DI Yates series – and the first about a serial killer – was published on October 15^th 2018. This is a round-up of the events and some of the reviews I’ve been lucky to have received since.

On October 15^th, Bookmark in Spalding – always a staunch and much-appreciated supporter of my novels – gave me a signing session.

On the 17^th, I had a very lively interview with David Harding-Price at Radio Lincoln City.

Then it was back to Spalding for an event in the library on the afternoon of the 18^th and to give a talk at Bookmark that evening. Both talks featured serial killing and how I have tackled the subject. At these events, I was delighted to meet so many friendly faces, both those well known to me and some new ones.  A very happy direct outcome of the Bookmark occasion was that I was able to meet an old schoolfriend whom I last saw before I was married; I was also reconnected with two other friends from Spalding High School. I was also privileged to be supported in the evening by the current owners of the real Sausage Hall and their daughter.

My sincere thanks to Sam and Sarah at Bookmark  and Sharman in the library, not forgetting all their colleagues for making these events a success.

On October 19^th, I was interviewed by BBC Radio Lincolnshire’s Carla Green, who was as generous as always with her time and praise. (Then I went to India for five days – the day job intervened.)

On my return, Walkers Books of Stamford provided their usual impeccable hospitality with a signing session – this has become an annual event – and, as always, I enjoyed talking to their customers, who included some of the people I met at the Stamford Academy Literary Festival last June.  A big thank you, therefore, to Jenny and Linda at Walkers.

Meanwhile, Emma Dowson, Salt’s PR Manager, had organised the best blog roll I’ve ever had the good fortune to experience. I’d like to thank all the bloggers for their very generous reviews, and for publishing several articles they requested from me as guest posts on their blogs.  Zoe Myall, of the Spalding Gazette, wrote a brilliant review of Gentleman Jack and I’d very much like to thank her, too.

My final event before Christmas was, if not the most ambitious, certainly the quirkiest. I am a frequent visitor to Papworth Everard, in Cambridgeshire, as I have family living there, one of whom told me that a micro-brewery had recently opened in the village and that it sold a beer called ‘Mad Jack’ – not quite ‘Gentleman Jack’, but near enough! The micro-brewery is situated outside Papworth, but its products are sold in a coffee shop there that doubles as a bar and gin palace in the evenings – it’s called ‘The Courtyard’.

(As one of my readers said – ‘Crime and gin – what more could anyone want?’) I happened to pop in for a casual gin and met Chris Jones, the proprietor of both bar/gin palace and brewery, who told me that he had been thinking of holding some events there. One gin led to another and we agreed to collaborate to provide a crime evening with a focus on the DI Yates books… and with liquid refreshment! It proved a winning combination! 😉

I made many new friends there and was also supported by several long-standing ones. Much gratitude to the captive audience of locals who’d only dropped by for a drink but nevertheless joined in, one of whom even called up his wife, a book enthusiast, to bring her down! I was also staggered that one member of the group had bought and read In the Family in advance of the session – much appreciated, Nathalie! I also particularly enjoyed having the opportunity to meet and chat to the members of the Papworth Reading Group. Huge thanks to Chris Jones and his long-suffering staff, who cheerfully waited for us to leave some time after closing time. You, Chris, will be pleased to know that Mad Jack is now being celebrated far beyond Papworth!

I do have one more piece of news, but I’ll save that for another post. For now, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped Gentleman Jack to meet the world, including the many people whose names I have not been able to mention in this short post.

And if your library, bookshop or reading group is looking for someone to talk crime, killers and bodies, you know where to come!

Celebrating in 2016 its 140 years of selling books in Cambridge, Heffers is one of the nation’s great classic bookshops, a national treasure.  It’s always been a privilege to visit it.  Even better, from my point of view, it’s home to Richard Reynolds, perhaps the country’s best-known crime bookselling connoisseur.  I first met Richard five or six years ago, when he had just embarked on a crime classic reprint venture.  No doubt owing to Richard’s influence, classic crime is now big business: there are several excellent imprints, including the British Library’s own.

Richard is interested in all types of crime fiction, modern as well as classic, and I’m very proud to say that not only does he stock the DI Yates novels but he also invited me for a signing session on Saturday as part of the Cambridge Literary Festival.  There was a wonderful buzz in the shop, which was packed with people shopping all the time I was there.

I had a glorious three hours, talking to old friends and many new acquaintances.  I can’t begin to tell them how much I appreciate that most bought Rooted in Dishonour.  There were lots of sales of the other books in the DI Yates series, too.

I’d like to thank Richard and his colleagues for great hospitality and for extending a very generous invitation to me to return to the shop again as soon as I am ready.  Perhaps they should be careful what they wish for: I might turn up again next week!

You might like to share in some of the highlights of my day there with the photographs below:

 

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.