Today’s post is a bit of a self-indulgence. I hope you’ll forgive me, because it is only tangentially related to National Crime Reading Month and crime fiction, or indeed to any of the other topics this blog has covered since 1st June.
Allow me to explain. Since Thursday, I have been travelling north with my husband through the whole length of Scotland, reaching Stirling on Thursday evening and Thurso on Friday. Yesterday, we boarded the ferry for Orkney and reached our holiday house for the week – which is in Stromness – late yesterday afternoon. It has been one of my lifelong ambitions to visit Orkney and it does not disappoint. It is a magical place, palpably the residence still of the ancient, tricky-to-propitiate Norse gods of the old sagas, but with plenty of more recent history to explore and enjoy. Our first evening also gave us a moment of northern summer splendour, too, a sparkling view into space!
Land of very late evening sun… and an odd planet or two…
The gods seemed very close in the early hours of this morning when we got up at 03.40 am to try to watch the rare conjunction of five planets. It was almost daylight and we could see the moon, a fine sliver
in the pearl-grey sky, but unfortunately the fast-scudding clouds soon obliterated it and kept the planets out of view. We braced ourselves to stay outside for fifteen minutes to watch the rising of the chilly dawn and then returned to bed.
Today we have explored Stromness, a venerable port and fishing village.
A part of the port of StromnessAnd the same part from the opposite end!
A warm sun was shining on its mellow grey stones, tempered by a sharp and intermittently buffeting wind. The boats in the harbour gleamed white and blue, the waves turned briskly, flecking the blue-green sea with cream, and the mountains in the distance presided over all with summery bonhomie. (I imagine they loom with a much grimmer aspect in the winter.) People were out strolling on the cobbles or seated at the outdoor cafés drinking coffee. The ferry came and went again. Most of the quaint old shops were open – though the bookshop was closed, a visit to it therefore a treat to be saved for later in the week.
So, what has all this got to do with CRM and writing crime fiction? Well, to be honest, not much – yet. To be even more frank, today’s post is mainly an excuse to show off the wonders of Orkney by posting some nice photographs. But please have patience: I am also on writing alert. I already have a plot in mind and am thinking of ways in which I can make the most of this unique place to set the scene.
Murders in Orkney? I have read of a few, including a relatively recent one which is too harrowing either to discuss here or make use of in a novel. There will soon be a murder or two in Orkney – according to me – but they will not be founded in fact. I do not wish to arouse the wrath of the old Norse gods. I shall leave them to slumber until they themselves choose to wake again and you to stroll with us round Stromness:
In a previous post, I described Agatha Christie as the ‘Queen of Crime’. This post features an interview with Dea Parkin, Secretary of the CWA, and the (often unsung) heroine of crime writers.
Q: Please describe your job. What does it entail? What do you like best about it? What do you find most challenging?
A: I’m the central point of contact for the CWA and co-ordinate all the different elements. I implement strategy decided by the Board and make day-to-day decisions on anything from website copy to competition process for the Debut Dagger and the Margery Allingham Short Mystery competitions. I liaise with members, external organisations and individuals, and the other officers and board members, as well as our hard-working admin and accounts departments. I’m the lead editor of the CRA Newsletter.
I enjoy the communication with our members, helping them with questions, benefit awareness and encouraging them to make the most of their membership. That’s very rewarding and it’s especially good to meet face to face, at the Daggers, Chapter meetings, festivals and above all the annual CWA conference.
I also enjoy encouraging would-be authors through the Debut Dagger competition and overseeing our Criminal Critiques service and carrying the torch for the CWA at events such as CrimeFest and Harrogate. There is a lot about the job I absolutely love!
The most challenging aspect is keeping up with all the emails, especially when there are big projects that need to be seen through, such as organising material for the AGM, proofing Dagger shortlists or writing reports. There is always more to do and my assistant, Fiona Veitch Smith, is invaluable, as is Joint Vice Chair Antony Johnston in particular.
Q: Why did you want the job? What was your inspiration? What was your previous job?
A: Well, I was asked in early 2016 by Martin Edwards, who was Vice-Chair at the time, if I could help out when the former director resigned. I’ve always worked freelance and had capacity at the time, and I’d been an associate member of the CWA through my editorial consultancy since 2012. In a past life, Martin had been a client of the PR firm I freelanced for and he knew a little about my organisational skills as well as my love of writing and editing – skills he thought the CWA might be able to use.
My editing work continues on days when I’m not working for the CWA and until the pandemic I also continued as a copywriter and marketing consultant for private companies. Working in the publishing industry was a dream come true; I feel I have finally found myself in the sphere I wish I’d discovered much earlier in my career.
Q: When you were appointed six years ago, you quickly transformed the CWA, which had perhaps been quite a fractured organisation previously. How did you manage to achieve this, and in so short a period of time?
A: I can take no credit for improvements the CWA has made in the last six or seven years or so. It’s been down to a board, comprising almost all volunteers, appreciating what needed to be done to make the CWA a cohesive and accessible organisation offering many benefits to all members. Membership has shot up since 2010 and it was a matter of putting a structure and people in place who could manage that growth and keep the CWA relevant and useful to authors, enhancing existing benefits such as the social networking through the Chapters and introducing new ones, especially online. This process continues as our dynamic Board find different ways of addressing this central issue, while always bearing in mind our responsibilities to crime writing in general, especially through the Daggers, and our members in particular.
Q: It seems to me that running an organisation for authors who, although they co-operate, are also essentially rivals, must bring its own peculiar difficulties. How do you manage to be equitable?
A: Interestingly, no crime writer I’ve met through the CWA has mentioned viewing their fellow writers as competitors. They generally appreciate that what helps one, helps all and that contributing to the popularity of crime writing, fiction and non-fiction alike, is a good thing for all crime writers. I have personally found the CWA to be a warm, friendly and welcoming organisation and the members delightful. I enjoy reading as many of their books as I possibly can! I encourage everyone to write articles for the CRA Newsletter and blog, and the CWA Debuts web pages, and love to help anyone who submits these or events for the websites. Yet my job is to help all members, whether they’re interested in those opportunities or not, and together with our excellent CWA team I’m very keen on doing exactly that, with everyone offered the same courtesies and friendly service.
Q: What are your future aspirations for the CWA? Where would you like it to be in the next two years? And next five years?
A: I’m not sure this is really for me to say, as it’s more for the board and the members themselves. I’d hope it continues to grow, attracting more members while offering a high quality of service to all. We appointed a PR company a few years ago now, Cause PR, and they have helped us to raise our profile within the industry, together with our hard-working Library Champions and Bookseller Champions. The stronger we are, the more good we can do for more writers.
Q: Are you a crime fan yourself? Do you have favourite crime authors? Outside the crime genre, who are your favourite authors?
A: I am a huge crime fan! However, this is where I prefer to be equitable, as you describe it, and not name any live crime writers. My tastes are very wide; I enjoy everything from historical mysteries to psychological noir, 1930s spy stories to cutting edge cyber thrillers. I enjoy a gentle touch of the supernatural. I grew up reading Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey and Ian Fleming and later Reginald Hill, Ruth Rendell and PD James. Nowadays my favourite-author list would spill over many pages and many CWA members feature there.
Outside crime, I love Hilary Mantel, Maggie O’Farrell, Paul Torday and Joanne Harris. Tolkien has always been a big favourite together with many of the classics, and Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett books also have a space on my furniture and floors. (Bookshelves are inadequate to the book-holding task!) I buy history books and sometimes get round to reading them. Alison Weir and Helen Castor are amazing!
Q: A few personal details. What do you do to relax, apart from reading?
A: I live in Chorley, Lancashire, though I’m from Yorkshire and still get teased, Wars-of-the-Roses style, from friends at both sides of the Pennines. My other work as a developmental and copy editor takes up a lot of time, but I love helping writers to achieve their full potential. For leisure, I both play tennis and watch it on TV, which accounts for almost all my viewing, and I’m secretary of my local drama group. I write poetry, one-act plays and short stories, and struggle with several novels I dare show no one. Beyond tennis and stories, as a history graduate I don’t get more satisfaction than looking round a castle or historic monument, though rambling in the hills is something I could wish I had more time for. Next week I’m walking the Tolkien Trail with a book-loving friend, so that’s a perfect leisure combination!
Q: Do you have a message for struggling new crime writers who are just starting out?
A: Keep going. Take the time to learn your craft and develop a professional business approach too. Above all, enjoy your writing. Keep perspective.
Reading groups are some of an author’s greatest friends. They may be organised by libraries or bookshops, or just set up by like-minded people who want to explore books together. Modern technology means the members no longer have to meet in person, though of course it is much more fun when they do. Deirdre Watchorn tells the story of how her international reading group works.
Q: What inspired you to set up / join your reading group? How many members does it have? Did you all know each other already? Had you belonged to other reading groups previously?
A: The book group idea came from my Czech friend, Katka. Her husband is American and had been running his own book group for about three years… but with men only! Katka decided she would like to be in a book group and the only way to do this was to set one up herself. She then extended the invitation to me and various other women she knew, including a wife of one of the ‘men’s book club’ members (!) who was also jealous of her husband’s book club. None of us had been in groups before and didn’t know what to expect. We had heard stories of the men’s book club – that they stayed up until 4 am in the morning, sometimes discussing very heavy literature and drinking lots. But I don’t think any of us had any expectations in the beginning about what ours would be like.
The reason I joined is that I used to be an avid reader on my daily commute into town when I lived in London. But once I moved to Berlin and gave up work for a few years, I hardly picked up a book. My concentration was in pieces. I was intrigued to see if the book club could reignite my love for reading.
Q: I understand the members live in more than one country. How does the group operate? Do you mostly meet virtually? Do you meet in person?
A: Apart from during the pandemic, we always meet in person in Berlin at least every 4-6 weeks. The group is made up of one Czech, one Belarussian, two Germans and two Brits. We also had an American member, but she moved away from Berlin a few years ago. During lockdown, we continued to run our book groups over Zoom and it usually worked really well! Even our American friend, now living in Brussels, continued to join us for some meetings as a special guest! We have taken short breaks away together, with themed books to match. We have become such good friends over the past seven years. I love my book club!
Q: How do you choose the books you read? Is there consensus on this or do you take turns to choose? Do you ever really dislike the book that has been chosen? If so, do you continue to read it to the end? Do you always choose fiction, or do some of the books you read belong to non-fiction categories? Do you all buy the book selected? If so, is it usually in hard copy format or do you buy ebooks as well?
A: It’s a very democratic process. We each take it in turn to lead the club, in strict rotation! The person leading needs to come up with a list of at least five titles, email them to all members and then the members vote on which one to read. If there is a draw, we take a straw poll on WhatsApp. At the very first meeting we decided we’d read only fiction and we have stuck with that. The only thing we sometimes discuss in advance is what theme the books for the next book club meeting should be. That for me is one of the most exciting parts, deciding on a theme and then seeing which books are put forward.
Yes, we tend buy the books to read, in print, although sometimes we share books between us, especially if they are expensive – i.e., only just published or hard to get hold of in Berlin. One of our members works in a school library so there have been occasions where she has provided the books for us to read, which is helpful! We rarely read ebooks. One of the members will sometimes read one on her phone but I could never do that.
I am known for being the most critical of the books we read! It’s quite rare that I ‘love’ a book we have chosen. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy reading all the books and indeed that for me is the beauty of the group, getting to read things I would never dream of picking up otherwise – classics, for example. I almost always read a book to the end. It’s disrespectful to the author if you don’t. But I am also a very quick reader.
Q: How long do you allow to read a book? Is there a fixed time – e.g., one month – or do you vary it?
A: We aim to hold the group every 4-6 weeks, but it does vary. I’m a very fast reader, some others (no names mentioned!) less so. As many of the group are non-native English speakers, we have a rule that if a book is over 500 pages long, we mention this when making the selection, so people don’t get a nasty surprise when they buy it.
Q: Do you always read books in English, or are some of the books you choose in other languages as well?
A: We have always them in English, even if the books were originally written by German authors or authors from other countries. This means a lot of the titles which are suggested are from US and UK authors, but we are conscious of this and try to internationalise as much as we can.
Q: Is the group’s discussion about the book pretty much spontaneous, or do you suggest themes or topics about the book prior to your discussion? Do you ever use the sets of questions about the book that some authors include – either at the end of the book itself or on their own or their publishers’ websites?
A: We agree never to discuss the book before the meet up, even if we see each other beforehand. The person leading starts the discussion and we go around the table. To be honest, we have never used the questions at the back of the book. I don’t know why! Probably because we have never been short of ideas or things to talk about. Some of us will have done some further research on a topic online, to find out about the author or the story and we bring those discussions into the group. But there is no set format. Some of the group studied literature at university, so it’s always interesting to hear their observations. But my favourite discussions are those that lead into other topics about life, the world and everything. Our first book, The Circle, was very memorable, not because we liked the book all that much, but because it prompted huge debate about social media and the damaging impact it has had on our lives.
Q: Is there one book that stands out above others as the one the whole group really enjoyed?
A: It’s really hard to remember. I know many of us disliked Mood Indigo, a French classic which was just too random to follow. We all enjoyed Station Eleven, a story about the collapse of civilisation and the aftermath. And also the novel Blindness, which we read just before the start of the pandemic. Maybe that’s our book club’s main theme: death and the end of civilisation.
Q: What are your own favourite types of book? Do you like crime or other kinds of genre fiction, or are your tastes more literary?
A: I’m a big fan of contemporary American literature: authors like John Updike, Elizabeth Strout, Anne Tyler, stories with quirky characters in everyday settings. But I like to read a real mix. At the moment, I am reading Elena Ferrante, Damon Galgut and Marion Keyes. I read a lot of crime novels in my twenties and have not felt the urge to return to that genre since. But never say ‘never’.
Q: What advice would you give someone thinking of setting up a reading group? Do you have any advice for authors?
A: Just do it! Don’t mull over the format too much or what titles to read. The group will develop organically, reflecting the membership. But do ensure you do spend time talking about the book at each meeting! I know of book clubs that were more about the wine than the books and unsurprisingly they fizzled out. Talking about the book helps strengthen the relationships between the members, too. In terms of advice for authors, I don’t have any I’m afraid… and I don’t think they need any. Creating these amazing characters and worlds is more than enough for us (thankful) readers.
Readers are, of course, the most important component of an author’s life: without readers there would be no point in writing. There are, however, two kinds of reader. As well as the wonderful readers who pay authors the compliment of spending time on reading their books after publication, most authors also have personal – or test/beta – readers, who read the book on behalf of the author to make sure that it ‘works’.
I’m particularly fortunate in that Annika, my chief test reader, is German. Although she speaks English fluently, it is not her mother tongue. As she says, “I read every word because it’s a foreign language and otherwise I would not understand the full meaning of the sentence.” She proof-reads the books at the same time, and sometimes goes back and reads a passage twice because she has been struck by something odd about it. She checks for inconsistencies in the narrative, often double-checking with other passages in the book she’s reading and in the DI Yates novels that have preceded it. For example, in one of the early books she thought the timescale didn’t work, so she went back and took notes of all the events that were supposed to have taken place within a certain time period, to make sure they were feasible. “The characters did four or five things on a single day, before lunch! I remember thinking they had squeezed an awful lot in.” I altered the timescale of the events she mentions. She adds, however, that there have been occasions when the narrative didn’t seem quite right to her and then when she went back it was actually ok. She also checks practical details – travel arrangements, which flights go from which airports, whether the time it takes to get from A to B is doable.
Her favourite DI Yates novel is Fair of Face – “because it’s so unusual”, but she says she likes all of them, for different reasons. She reads more books in German than in English, because it’s more relaxing for her, but when she reads crime it’s mainly in English, because most crime fiction available in German is translated from English and she would rather read it in the language it’s written in. It takes Annika about two weeks to read one of my books, reading approximately two hours a day. She estimates that she spends about twice as long on them as an English reader would and probably a third more time than if she were just reading them for pleasure.
Annika usually reads the Yates novels in typescript and she checks details in previous novels from the typescripts she worked on originally, because it’s quicker for her. “I often think I should read them in print, to see what you made of my comments! They’re suggestions only, you’re bound not to agree with some.”
I asked her if she learns anything from them – do they, for example, give her a feel for what it’s like to live in Lincolnshire, a county that she doesn’t know well? She says the books do give her an idea of what the area I write about is like, but “I can’t tell if it’s realistic – in that if I went to live there, I don’t know if it would be like that”. (I don’t think it would – on the whole, I don’t write about people with a similar lifestyle to hers.)
She says that all authors should have a test reader to look out for inconsistencies. She adds that I’ve improved – she’s finding fewer mistakes in the more recent novels than in the early ones.
Annika’s own tastes in reading are eclectic. She likes Jan-Philip Sendker, a German author who has described evocatively what it’s like to be a westerner in Asia. “The quality of language when I’m reading in German plays a higher role for me than when I’m reading in English. But I don’t like high-flown or pretentious writing and, generally, not ‘classical’ authors – I don’t like Goethe or Schiller. For this reason, poetry often doesn’t ‘speak’ to me. I liked Der Schwarm, by Frank Schätzing, but I didn’t like his other books nearly as much when I tried them.”
There are exceptions to her preference not to read books in translation. “I really loved The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which I read in German.” That is a point on which Annika and I can agree wholeheartedly!
So, without Annika, I’d miss out on a very shrewd aspect of the editorial process; my editor similarly values the fact that Annika’s unique skills and linguistic viewpoint work in tandem with his scrutiny and together they are a formidable team in support of DI Yates!
This is a classic ‘woman at risk’ crime novel with a great twist at the end. It combines the woman-at-risk sub-genre with a newer trend in crime fiction – the portrayal of protagonists endangered not only by evil adversaries but by having been pushed by circumstance to the farther reaches of civilisation. In this respect it reminds me of Claire Fuller’s Our Endless Numbered Days.
Kate, the heroine, is a woman at war with herself, plagued by self-dislike. It has been triggered partly from the disappearance of her toddler son a few years before the novel begins, forcing her to confront the fact that she was a ‘bad mother’, and partly from much further back in her life, when the child she was babysitting as a teenager died. The boy choked on fruit Kate had assembled to make a smoothie while he was in her care.
Calvin, Kate’s husband, takes her to an expensive – but somewhat tawdry – holiday resort in Costa Rica, for a much-needed break and to try to rekindle romance in their strained marriage. On the flight there they meet an over-friendly couple, Ashby and Bill, who it turns out are staying at the same resort. Kate throws herself enthusiastically into cultivating this new friendship. Calvin is not so sure. Then, after a night of heavy drinking, the nightmare begins. Rebecca, Kate’s sister, comes to her aid, but very soon she, too, becomes a casualty.
The novel explores the themes of redemption and self-respect and how they are connected. It shows how wrong choices can be made, relationships damaged – and, sometimes, lives curtailed – by the reckless behaviour of people who believe they don’t matter. It looks at both selfishness and selflessness from surprising new angles.
I found Rebecca by far the most interesting character in the novel, even though there is much more space devoted to Kate. Rebecca remains enigmatic until the end. The female characters in general are drawn in more detail than the male characters. Ashby Garcia, who turns into Kate’s nemesis, fascinates from the start with her hard glamour. This is the passage which set Kate on her nightmare journey:
The woman had the aisle seat, just like Kate, and so Kate shoved her hand out across the space, ignoring the soft bustle of the other passengers surrounding them. “I’m Kate Whitaker.” Their hand intertwined into a firm handshake. Kate felt a pinch as wedding rings dug into her hands. A stack of Bulgari chokers decorated the woman’s long neck.
“Ashby Garcia.” She flipped her hair over her right shoulder, one shiny curtain of good grooming. “This is my husband, William.”
The passage is understated, but you can just feel that things won’t end well, can’t you?
If you have yet to select books for holiday reading this summer, I can’t recommend The Good Life too highly.
This morning I got up at 4 am, just as the day was dawning, rejoiced in the singing blackbirds, took a quick look at the BBC news – complete with midsummer celebrants at Stonehenge – and spent almost four hours facilitating a webinar featuring librarians from Australia and New Zealand. As you do, when you live at the wrong side of the world. 😉
By 9 am, all the librarians had signed off and I was looking forward to breakfast, but I could see emails in my Outlook and thought I’d read them first. (I can never resist that little yellow envelope symbol – it has encroached on my writing time on more occasions than I can remember.)
And there it was. A message from Hannah, the lovely marketing manager at Bloodhound: I just wanted to pop you over an email to say congratulations on your publication day for The Canal Murders! I hope you are able to find time to celebrate today.
Reader, I had forgotten the publication date of my own novel! Duh!
That doesn’t mean to say that I am not over the moon. I’m humbled, too: everyone at Bloodhound has been beavering away while I have been focusing on the Antipodes. Not that I regret that, but clearly I need to do some serious work on my multi-tasking skills.
As readers of this blog are aware, I have given several library talks recently. It has been striking how often members of the audiences have asked me how I got the idea for a particular book. What was the initial spark that started off the creative process? What triggered the gleam (or grit!) in my eye?
The Canal Murders was inspired by several separate events and discoveries. A few years ago – pre-COVID – I was asked to give a talk at the main library in Lincoln and had time beforehand to explore the beautifully restored waterways in the city. I’m interested in canals – I’ve taken several narrowboat holidays – and have read about the Fossdyke, the ancient canal originally dug by the Romans that connects the River Trent to Lincoln at Torksey; and because I’m interested in canals, I have also read about two murderers, one based in Yorkshire and the other in Greater Manchester, who have made use of the canal network to dispose of the bodies of their victims (I won’t identify them, as I have used aspects of their real-life crimes in the novel and I don’t want to give too much of the plot away). When I was thinking about this novel, I had also been reading about copycat murders and how their seeming lack of motive creates extra obstacles for the police when trying to track down the killer(s). Yet another theme came from some items of farming news in East Anglia at the time, about soil erosion and the need to take proper care of the land. This is also woven in.
The novel has a multi-layered plot, because there are several murders, each featuring a different type of victim. And the sub-plot – in response to requests from readers – focuses on DS Juliet Armstrong’s private life.
I hope that you will think this sounds intriguing. I rarely write about my own books on this blog, but perhaps you will forgive me on this occasion, as The Canal Murders has been published during Crime Reading Month, the focus of all my June 2022 posts, and it’s also been published on Midsummer’s Day. I can think of no more propitious date on which to launch a murder mystery. The gods will surely raise a cheer, awoken from their slumber as they have already been by the votaries at Stonehenge!
More to the point, Hannah has been cheeringThe Canal Murders, too, in her own quiet but indomitable and infinitely more practical way. Thank you, Hannah, for all your inspired work and for being a much better multi-tasker than I am.
As I mentioned on Friday, the talk that I gave at Sleaford Library was the last in my series of six talks about Murder in the Fens, four of which were prepared to celebrate National Crime Reading Month (NCRM). As I don’t like giving the same talk twice – I don’t believe it is ever possible to replicate the momentum if you deliver the same words again – for each of these talks I researched a different Lincolnshire murder that, in the eyes of the police, remains unsolved. This post offers a brief account of each of these ‘murders’ – though I think that only three of them deserve to be so called.
John Bailey was a country doctor who lived in Long Sutton and was murdered in April 1795. On Tuesday 21st April he went to Tydd St Mary, a village about four miles from Long Sutton, to visit a patient. Early the following morning, his horse returned home without him. Following a report by a servant girl that she had seen a man lying in the grass on the side of the road, a group of local residents went to look for Bailey and found him where the girl had indicated. Alive, but with horrific head injuries, he tried to write something in the silty soil, but could not do so and shortly afterwards died. The motive appeared to be theft, though only the doctor’s watch was missing. There was a nationwide search for his killers and several people were arrested, but no charges were brought. Arrests, incidents of mistaken identity and false confessions continued to plague his wife and son for many years afterwards.
In 1979, Gordon Snowden, a sixty-year-old petrol pump attendant at Sutton Bridge Motors, was attacked at 2 am on 17th April. The motive appeared to be robbery – the cash till with all the takings was stolen. The police made no headway with solving the crime and never announced any suspects. No longer even regarded as ‘cold case’, it has now been archived. In other words, however tragic Gordon Snowden’s murder and however outrageous, it has become a statistic. It will never be reopened.
On May 22nd 1934, Mrs Ethel Major, of Kirby-on-Bain, near Horncastle, made her husband Arthur his customary ‘tea’ of corned beef, bread and butter. Shortly afterwards, he became ill and was soon unable to stand or speak. Two days later he had a seizure and died. The police discovered that Ethel had received anonymous letters telling her that her husband was having an affair with Rose Kettleborough, their neighbour. Police eventually concluded that Ethel had poisoned her husband, using as their main source of evidence an anonymous letter from the same person who had written to Ethel about the affair – which might have been Rose Kettleborough herself. Ethel pleaded not guilty to murder, but was hanged on December 19th 1934 by Albert Pierrepoint, the crown executioner famous for the compassion with which he treated convicted prisoners. Ethel Major was the last Lincolnshire woman to be hanged. Today the evidence against her would be deemed insufficient – and there are many people living in the Horncastle area whose ancestors always doubted her guilt. Horncastle people apparently divided into ‘Rose’ and ‘Ethel’ camps – though there was only circumstantial evidence that either was to blame for Arthur’s death.
Beatie Simpson, who was twenty, and a nineteen-year-old girl who was not named by police were both employed at a tobacco factory in Nottingham. In 1922, they travelled to Mablethorpe for a fortnight’s holiday, which they rashly extended by one week, even though they knew this would result in dismissal from their jobs. According to the girl who survived, they made a suicide pact because they could see no way out of their dilemma and both took Lysol while they were still staying in their seaside boarding house, which was owned by a blacksmith and his wife. Beatie Simpson was badly burned in the mouth and stomach by the corrosive liquid, but the doctor who carried out the post-mortem said that it would have been the effects of the poison on her heart and nervous system that killed her. She left a suicide note. It is not clear why the nineteen-year-old girl survived, although when the girls were discovered attempts were made to force them to drink salt water to cause them to vomit, and apparently Beatie’s mouth was clamped so tightly shut that she could not be made to swallow it. The coroner ruled that the girl who did not die was guilty of murder, as suicide was illegal at the time. The logic of this is hard to understand today: the coroner’s rationale was presumably that if a crime had been committed and someone could be made to pay for it, they should. However, the nineteen-year-old girl was eventually acquitted.
Barbara Grice died from a ruptured liver following a trip to Billinghay Feast (a kind of fair held annually near Sleaford) on 17th October 1956. Tantalisingly, I can find nothing more about this crime – I don’t even know why the police classified it as a murder. Was Barbara Grice pushed from one of the fairground rides or attacked by someone? In any event, no one has ever been charged with her murder.
Lastly, a twenty-six-year-old man named Charles Trier died in Gainsborough in 1995 during a game of Russian roulette. The police charged one man with his murder, then released him owing to lack of evidence. From my perspective, this barely counts as an unsolved murder, although it raises some interesting questions: for example, if you play Russian roulette of your own free will and die as a result, is the cause of your death murder, suicide or an over-developed gambling instinct? If you were coerced into playing, that of course is a different matter. Lovers of ‘The Deer Hunter’ will no doubt have a view!
Of these six deaths, I think that only John Bailey’s, Gordon Snowden’s and, probably, Arthur Major’s – although forensic science was not as conclusive in his day as it is now – would today be classified as murders. Beatie Simpson’s suicide certainly would not, unless it could be proved that her faculties were weak and the nineteen-year-old girl had unduly influenced her; the circumstances surrounding Charles Trier’s death are too uncertain to determine whether he pulled the trigger of his own free will; and Barbara Grice’s demise, as I have indicated, remains shrouded in mystery.
Annie Lloyd-Hyde is a poet who has written several humorous and thoughtful books of contemporary verse. However, Girl Good Enough, her most recent book of poems, and Misogyny for Beginners, a collection which is still in draft form, are much more hard-hitting. In them, she explores the related themes of female inequality and male abuse.
Asked why she has chosen these subjects, she says there has been so much in the media recently about the abuse of women and how the police often react to reports of domestic attacks that she felt compelled to write about it. However, she has long been aware of the differences in the way men and women are viewed and how biased male treatment of women can be. “I have always had a great sense of fairness and justice. The way women are routinely treated has always niggled me.”
Annie trained as a primary school teacher and remembers listening to arguments about the inherent differences between girls and boys. Girl Good Enoughis about heightening awareness of sexist behaviour, some of it unconscious, and the nature/nurture conundrum. When she was teaching, she says she consciously tried to approach both sexes in the same way, although she believes teachers can never be sure they have achieved this. She has read about a teacher (based on the Isle of Wight) who was convinced that he taught all his pupils in a scrupulously equal way; however, when he came to analyse his behaviour, he acknowledged that there were some differences in his approach.
Annie grew up in a household of daughters and says that her father supported them completely in their wish to build careers. “He went to university himself and expected us to do the same.” However, her mother didn’t work outside the home until her daughters had left for college. She probably would have liked to, but at the time it was a mark of respectability that middle-class women ‘chose’ to be housewives.
Annie can’t recall extreme instances of discrimination in her own career, though she is sure that unspoken preference was given to male teachers, which discouraged the aspirations of their female counterparts. On one occasion, she applied for a deputy headship and then pulled out because she thought she wouldn’t stand a chance against the male candidates. “Male teachers in primary schools are revered, because they’re in a minority and the view is that boys need male role models.” She perceives a correlation between male over-confidence and female lack of self-esteem and says there are many jobs in which sexual discrimination is much more overt than in teaching.
Misogyny for Beginners is not about the nuances of discrimination which Girl Good Enoughcaptures: it is about the direct and terrifying physical attacks that take place in many homes. One of the poems is dedicated to Sarah Everard. Annie has shown the poems to people who’ve expressed an interest in them and says they strike chords with her readers. Some of the responses have been surprising, even shocking: one woman said that the type of violence described in one poem had happened to her, though she had never discussed it with anyone before. There are women who dread their husbands’ return from football matches; if the husband’s team has lost, he goes home and batters his wife in a fury. Annie is even-handed, however, in her depiction of domestic abuse. One of the poems is about a man suffering from being brutally attacked by his wife. “Men who go to the police to report a violent female are often laughed at, just as women who report their partners are not believed.”
As for what her advice would be to young women trying to make sense of the worlds of the workplace and home they are about to negotiate, Annie says that the sentiments expressed in Girl Good Enough could be their yardstick. “Don’t feel you have to be perfect in everything or have never to say no. Always look for equality – by which I mean, someone to share the tasks fairly.” This is Annie Lloyd-Hyde’s philosophy in a nutshell. She doesn’t believe that women are superior to men, just as she doesn’t believe men are superior to women; nor is she searching for some female-run Nirvana. True equality between the sexes: that is all she asks for.
She has kindly agreed to share drafts of two poems from Misogyny for Beginners with readers of this post:
Kevin Taylor is the Chief Pilot of the Lincolnshire Police Remotely Piloted Air Systems (RPAS) Unit. He has worked as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) flight instructor/assessor, training staff at all levels, from beginners to advanced remote pilots. He specialises in the training of military and emergency services personnel. He has himself flown both manned and unmanned aircraft and is qualified to fly both aeroplanes and helicopters. He has put in more than 1500 flying hours in more than twenty aircraft types. He acts as test pilot for the British Microlight Aircraft Association (BMAA) and the Light Aircraft Association (LAA). This involves testing new lightly manned aircraft. Kevin himself owns a light sport aircraft and flies regularly.
Kev began his career as a radar engineer in the Royal Air Force, then joined the Special Constabulary in 2003. He serves as a Special Sergeant in the Lincolnshire Police RPAS Unit. He has overall responsibility for the safe delivery of RPAS operations, including all aspects of training and safety standards. He is experienced in all the operational areas of police RPASs and has carried out hundreds of live deployments in Search & Rescue, Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear incidents and Offender and Event Crowd Dynamics. He is also experienced in Beyond Visual Line Of Sight flights. He has received multiple commendations for his operational RPAS flying. He has also worked with the UK defence industry to develop autonomous RPASs. He has pioneered police use of RPASs in relation to criminal activities.
I asked Kev to contribute to my series of blog posts to celebrate CRM because Lincolnshire Police have very kindly been following this blog for several years. They also helped to influence the plot for Chasing Hares.
Q: Do police drone pilots train from scratch or have they already been flying drones as a pastime?
A: In Lincolnshire Police, drone pilots are police constables who work mainly as responders and attend a vast array of incidents. If an incident can benefit from the use of a drone, a drone officer will be deployed to assist. A drone is just one of numerous tools available in a police officer’s kit bag and drone flying should be described as a skill, rather than a role. In some ways, it’s like carrying a taser: the training has some similarities. The initial training course consists of five days’ training followed by a practical test which the trainee must pass. Once an officer is trained, s/he must pass an annual requalification test. If prospective drone pilots are already interested in drones before they train, it is useful, but not essential.
Q: What, very briefly, is the history of police drone use in the county? How many officers are involved and how has this field of policing been expanded in Lincolnshire?
A: Lincolnshire Police started its drone journey in March 2017. The first operational flight took place in September of that year. On average there are now 350-400 deployments per year. The target is to have five officers at each of the four main bases: Lincoln, Boston, Grantham and Skegness. Currently there are twelve officers and six more in training.
Q: Would you explain the particular value of drones for police work in a place like Lincolnshire or, indeed, anywhere.
A: Lincolnshire has the perfect landscape for drones. In terms of geographic area the force is one of the largest in England and Wales, covering 2,284 square miles. The population of this area is 736,700. Policing such a large area presents challenges: Lincolnshire has vast areas of open countryside and, as such areas are difficult to search on foot, effective air support is vital. Drones can now play a pivotal role in addressing this challenge. The running cost of a drone is negligible when compared to the other options available, such as crewed helicopters. Drones are also used to manage large events such as Christmas markets and can assist with crowd dynamics, acting as an extension to the CCTV camera network.
Q: What incidents stick out in your mind as memorable examples of success? (Not just nabbing the villain, though that is very interesting, of course; perhaps the successful rescue of someone vulnerable or the way in which a traffic incident has been helped by drones.)
A: There have been many incidents that have resulted in a positive outcome for the whole team. We are not allowed to discuss one of the most unusual ones, owing to reporting restrictions, which is a real shame. All drone pilots will have a personal set of memories of occasions that got their adrenaline pumping; one of my own was using the drone to discover an unconscious male in a ditch following a road traffic collision. It was in early 2018; his was among the first lives to have been reported as saved by a police drone in the UK and this incident alone demonstrates that the investment in drones by Lincolnshire Police was worthwhile.
Q: What do you find particularly frustrating in your line of work?
A: When we first launched the drones initiative there was some scepticism. There was criticism that drones were just glorified toys. However, the clear and powerful images produced by the drones once they became operational soon converted the sceptics to supporters. There aren’t too many frustrations, but it may not be a surprise to hear that if I had better funding I could achieve so much more. That said, the Chief Officer Team has been very supportive of drones and can see they provide value for money. The results speak for themselves, although we can’t always put a financial value on all that we do.
Q: Do you read crime fiction? Would be your advice to a writer like me to up her game in presenting police work?
A: I’m always on the go, so sitting down and reading a book is something I don’t have much time for. I would say that policing is moving with the times and that technology plays a large part in the way criminals operate today, so the police need to use it, too, to keep up. I guess a crime writer would benefit from understanding the technology and tools at the disposal of a current, modern-day police force. Drones constitute just one small part of contemporary technology that benefits the police and public, not only in Lincolnshire, but worldwide. Besides operating drones, we play a considerable role in education and enforcement. Drones technology is constantly evolving and the regulations have also evolved quickly. Lincolnshire is a very RAF-centric county, with a busy airspace, and we contribute to the effort to ensure that all airspace users can share the airspace safely. In July, we’ll be inviting the public to the Lincolnshire Police HQ to learn more about how to fly drones safely and to understand a little more about how we use them.
The first thing that strikes you about Sleaford is that it is a lovely old town with lots of characterful buildings and monuments. I was particularly taken with the Carre’s Hospital Almshouses, also known as the ‘Bedehouses’, off the Market Square in Eastgate and the lovely old redbrick buildings adjacent to the town centre car park. The next thing that strikes you is that it is a town packed with traffic. In every road and small lane, there is a queue of cars – at least, there is at midday on a summer’s afternoon on a Friday! The volume of traffic may explain why Sleaford can also boast an extremely friendly traffic warden who, when we eventually found a baking hot car park quite a long way out of town, directed us to one that was closer to the library.
The library itself is spacious and extremely well kept by Kay and her assistant librarians – I met Angela and June and I know there are others, too. She was also assisted by James, a work experience boy, who told us he had just enjoyed a stellar week in the library. I’m not surprised – Kay and her team thought of everything. They set out tables with lace cloths, served tea and biscuits twice – at the beginning of the talk and before it ended – and gave me a beautiful bunch of flowers before I left. They also secured one of the largest audiences I have had on this series of talks. They told me this had been achieved by putting flyers in the boxes of books they send out to reading groups – a useful tip for other librarians, if any are reading this post.
As always, the members of the audience came from diverse backgrounds and each had an interesting backstory to tell. There was an Australian couple searching for information about the husband’s ancestors; the widow of the former County Archaeologist of Northamptonshire, with whom I had a fascinating exchange about Anglo-Saxon graves that contained valuable grave goods – and the ones that didn’t; a teacher of English literature; and a lady whose parents had known Ethel Major, the last woman to be hanged in Lincolnshire (more about her in a later post) and were adamant that she wasn’t guilty. Various lawyers have recently come to the same conclusion, if more tentatively expressed.
All my audiences have asked different kinds of questions. This audience – made up of avid readers – wanted to know what sparks the idea of a plot in the first place: what triggers the gleam in the author’s eye? I much enjoyed talking with them and was grateful to them all for turning out on such a hot day – it was thirty-one degrees outside, though the library – uniquely among the libraries I have visited – boasted some very effective air conditioning. I was impressed that every person who booked a ticket turned up.
The talk at Sleaford was the last of the series of talks in Lincolnshire libraries arranged to celebrate Crime Readiing Month. I felt that, owing to the amazing efforts of Kay, Angela, June and the rest of the team, the series ended on a real high. Very many thanks to them and to all the wonderful Lincolnshire librarians I have met this June. I am not planning any events for July and August, but I shall be back in the autumn, setting up some writing workshops and giving more talks. I will keep the readers of this blog posted.
And the posts will, of course, continue until the end of the month – possibly beyond, if I can summon up the time! Tomorrow’s post will be by Kev, a Lincolnshire police officer responsible for the drones the police service uses – to catch criminals, of course, but for other purposes, too. Kev has sent me some great photos to accompany it. I think you’ll find it well worth reading.
Christina James, crime novelist 