Is there still any need to re-read?

It’s an issue which divides the reading community. Personally, I have always relished re-reading my favourite books. As a crime fan, this may seem odd. We already know the resolution to the story, and the twists and turns, so why bother? But as all re-readers know, a second or even third visit to a much loved novel can uncover hidden meanings and complexities that were previously missed. It can be one of reading’s greatest pleasures.

Having said this, it occurred to me today that I haven’t re-read a book in at least a couple of years, when I used to do so regularly. I wondered why. I think the answer is simple. There is now a better range of good books available to readers than there has ever been.

I believe that the habit of re-reading is instilled in the majority of us in childhood. Our first, magical experiences of the written word come from having books read to us by a parent. As all mums and dads quickly discover, babies and toddlers enjoy the same stories bring re-told, over and over again. I’m not sure what psychological or developmental reasons lie behind this phenomenon, but undoubtedly it must be in part that the repetition is comforting to a child. The familiarity of the characters and the cadence of the words themselves confer a sense of security.

My teenage daughter also enjoys re-reading certain books, especially series like Harry Potter. The imaginary worlds and myriad of characters compel a reader to return to it, time and again. This seems to appeal strongly to the burgeoning reader.

Perhaps, as we grow more mature as readers, we gain a sense that time is short and with so many books that we want to devour – from classic literature to the latest release from our favourite crime or Sci-Fi author – we don’t feel we have the luxury to re-visit a book we’ve already read?

But I still recognise the joy of re-reading a favourite title. Some of the early Barbara Vine novels I have read 5 or 6 times. I loved the style of the prose and the unfolding of the intricate stories. These days, I wouldn’t have the patience. Access to social media means that I am fed a rich diet of recommendations from a worldwide reading community. I have discovered some excellent new authors and I hope to find even more.

The growth of Indie authors and publishers on Kindle has meant that new writing talent has never been more affordable. It is easier to give a new writer or series a chance. The second hand book market is also thriving. It is an exciting time to be a reader

So, will I return to the habit of re-reading my favourites? I’m sure that I will. Right now, my TBR pile is dictating my reading habits, making it difficult not to seek out the new. But another by-product of maturing as a reader, is the fact that after a couple of years, I may not be able to remember the plots of the books I’ve read, meaning that a re-visit will become a necessity for me, rather than a rather niche pleasure!

How many great thrillers are set during summer?

The heatwave we are enjoying (or enduring) in the UK right now has got me thinking. The weather is perfect for plonking yourself down in a sun lounger with a great book, or retreating to the shade with a long, cold drink; whichever suits you best! As it happens, my fourth DCI Dani Bevan novel, Dark As Night, is set during a rare Glasgow heatwave. But just how many great crime books take the summer months as their backdrop?
I must admit that the majority of my eighteen novels are set during autumn and winter. These ‘darker’ months just seem to lend themselves better to the creation of atmospheric tension and foreboding which goes hand-in-hand with the mystery genre.
In Dark As Night, the dramatic tension is built instead, by the close humidity of an interminable hot spell accompanied by the ominous sense of a gathering storm. The climax of the story is precipitated by a sudden, violent break in the weather. To make the atmosphere of a thriller right, there would inevitably have to be some dark clouds lurking on the horizon, ready to ruin that clear blue sky.
So,  how many great thrillers have been set during summer? One of my personal favourites is Barbara Vine’s (the pen name of Ruth Rendell) ‘A Fatal Inversion’, where the oppressive heat of a hot summer spent at an old country house in Suffolk is the scene for a tense drama of intrigue and murder. Yet, this particular book is more about psychological twists and turns than it is about true ‘things that go bump in the night’ horror. In this respect, the suffocating heat seems to fit the genre perfectly. Indeed, atmospheric heat has long been used by authors as a shorthand for the presence of an undercurrent of sexual tension, often a key element of the psychological thriller genre, along with the suggestion of manipulation and control. Think of the plays of Tennessee Williams for example.
Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun, use the fierce heat of their tropical  locations to evoke an oppressive atmosphere which facilitates murder. More recent contributions to the ‘heatwave thriller’, include Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry and sections of Helen Fitzgerald’s psychological thriller, The Cry. It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that growing concerns about climate change may be a conscious or even sub-conscious influence upon the growth in popularity of these types of novel.
I believe that ‘summer crime’ can certainly work, although we use the word ‘chilling in conjunction with a great thriller for good reasons. If you really want to put the frighteners on your reader, a book has got to make their ‘blood run cold and this is very rarely achieved by transporting them to a warm, sunny day. But with global temperatures set to rise, perhaps we may have to re-evaluate this assumption.

This week’s Silent Witness; a homage to Barbara Vine

You’ve got to love Silent Witness. Back for it’s eighteenth series and still coming up with strong storylines. This BBC drama has lost its way on occasion, notably in series fifteen and sixteen, when the format was tiring and the writers made up for this with increasingly ludicrous and gory plots. With the arrival of David Caves, as fellow pathologist Jack Hodgson, the programme has reinvigorated itself. What is particularly of note, is the great relationship between the character of Jack and scientist Clarissa Mullary, played by the brilliant Liz Carr. Carr is a stand-up comedian and a campaigner for disabled rights, she is also the only physically disabled actress starring in a prime time British drama. It doesn’t really need to be said that we obviously need more. I’ve always liked the fact that the main actors in this programme always get equal billing and firstly Amanda Burton and now Emilia Fox, are undoubtedly the stars of the show.

This week’s two-parter I particularly enjoyed. It immediately reminded me of Barbara Vine at her very best, even down to the setting of the London Underground, including the focus on a west London Tube stop. The story was reminiscent of a combination of ‘Grasshopper’ and ‘The House of Stairs’, focussing as it did on a pair of young, lost souls who find solace in one another. Only later do we discover that one is using the vulnerability of the other to manipulate them into carrying out their murderous bidding. There was a very atmospheric section at Mornington Crescent, where Nikki fears she is being followed through the empty tunnels, it immediately put me in mind of a similar sequence from the early eighties horror classic, ‘An American Werewolf in London’ which also took great advantage of the inherent spookiness of the London Underground system.
There was also an interesting sub-plot involving a young policeman trying to piece together the events of his father’s death twenty years earlier, only to discover a secret he should never have attempted to uncover.

Unfortunately, this series is running up against Broadchurch on a Monday night, but it is certainly worth setting the recorder for or catching up with on iPlayer. The writing is always interesting and original and the two hour format means it is faster paced than many of its rivals. Silent Witness continues to live on…

A seasonal tribute to one of my favourite authors

The author P.D. James continued writing books well into her nineties but very sadly, passed away earlier this year. She was born in Oxford in 1920 and in the 1950’s and 60’s she worked for the Home Office; firstly in the Police Department and latterly in the Criminal Policy Department. This experience clearly influenced the subject matter of her novels. P.D. James was made a life peer in 1991 and won many awards for her work internationally.
P.D. James is one of my very favourite writers. I’ve read every single one of her books and Adam Dalgliesh remains my preferred protagonist.
During the Christmas holidays, I’ve always loved to cosy up in the evenings with a good book. This year is no different, however, I have found it tricky to unearth a writer whose work I enjoy as much as P.D James and Ruth Rendell. Their styles of writing are similar in many ways and in real life the women were great friends. They are both superb storytellers and their observations on the quirks and eccentricities of human nature have always interested me. P.D James was an educated and clever woman, with a particular insight into the machinations of the British legal and police system. She was one of the first crime writers to emphasise the importance of procedure in her novels and utilised her knowledge of forensic science to great effect.
It was an incredible achievement for her to have written her novels over the space of six decades, writing about subject matter which might very well have been deemed inappropriate for a female author.
Indeed, the novel, ‘An Unsuitable Job For a Woman,’ which introduced the sharp-witted private detective Cordelia Gray, investigated that very concept.
P.D James’ novels have a wonderfully rhythmical style to them. They are full of literary references and reflect the full life that the author herself had lived. It was never any surprise to me that Dalgliesh himself was a published poet, giving him an artistic side to his character that other policeman lacked. This is a concept well-trodden now in crime fiction, but P.D James was one the first to create this kind of three dimensional, intellectual detective, along with the likes of Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham.
Once of the elements I like the most about James’ novels is the atmosphere and the sense of place that she creates. Her mysteries are set in locations spanning the length and breadth of the country. This allowed her to exercise her wonderful descriptive skills. As you read her books, you feel transported to those windswept, usually coastal settings and this was always a significant part of the pleasure in immersing myself in one of her tales.
In recent years, P.D. James set out on something of a departure from her usual genre. Her ‘sequel’ to Jane Austin’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ became an international bestseller. Sceptical at first, I discovered that ‘Death Comes to Pemberley,’ was entirely in keeping with the original, whilst injecting an excellent mystery into the story, adding a dimension that livened up the story in a refreshing way. The television drama based on P.D. James’ book aired last Boxing Day and this year we are noticeably lacking any equivalent.
With the sad passing of this wonderful writer I feel as if we are drifting away from a past era. There certainly are writers still out there who compete very well with these great crime authors, but they are getting harder to find. In fact, I couldn’t really tell you what it is about P.D. James’ prose style that I’ve always enjoyed so much, an element of it is probably nostalgia, having read her books since I was a teenager.
As far as the RetroReview is concerned, we could not have allowed 2014 to reach an end without paying tribute to this wonderful writer who certainly proved that unsuitable or not, she performed the job of creating gripping crime fiction extremely well.

Do we dare to disappoint?

 

I’ve just finished writing my fourth novel. It is currently in the editing phase and we are about to begin designing the dust jacket. It’s a satisfying and exciting time for a writer. To see the final product take shape and to hear people’s feedback is daunting, but at the same time exhilarating.
My books are part of a series. The same characters appear in all of the stories, although each novel will introduce a few more. I enjoy developing the personalities of my key protagonists and showing how their relationships have changed over time. However, as I was finishing this latest instalment, I decided that for my next project it might be the right moment to depart from the pattern. I felt that a stand alone novel would be challenging for me as a writer and provide an interesting diversion, so I set about plotting this new book and even started penning some of the charater profiles.
When I mentioned my plans to members of my immediate family, they looked firstly shocked and then alarmed. They proclaimed that my readers were really enjoying the series so far and would be truly disappointed to discover that my next book wouldn’t have the same characters.
I thought very carefully about this. Some of my favourite writers have written books which run as a series; Agatha Christie, of course, Ruth Rendell and P.D James to name but a few. Each one of those authors has written stand alone novels and introduced new lead characters. But to achieve this switch, they must have had to shoulder the short-term disappointment of their readership. We do our very best, when we are creating a compelling narrative, to ensure that the reader cares about our protagonists. They need to feel empathy for them and yearn to know what happens next in their lives, otherwise the whole process wouldn’t work.
So do we dare to break that pattern? In a market so driven by sales, it is a scary prospect to think we might alienate those very people who have supported us over the years. Yet without taking risks with our writing and endeavouring to break out of the mould every so often, our creativity would surely stagnate and die.
It isn’t an easy question to answer and I am still pondering it. Ultimately, I shall end up doing both; the series will carry on but other books will be written in parallel to them. I can see now, why many authors decided to adopt another pen-name (Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, for example). it gives them a chance to diversify without offending their loyal fans. It is certainly another option to consider.
My advice would be to think carefully when you decide upon the direction of your books. Whether you plan writing a sequel, trilogy or an entire series, what you do now, will undoubtedly guide the direction of your novels for many years to come.

SHOULD NOVELS EXIST IN REAL TIME?

When starting my first book, this was one of the most challenging questions I needed to address.
I knew that my storyline was going to move forwards and backwards in time- linking together events from different periods, but I wanted my narrative to be firmly based in the present day.
So, to achieve this shift in timescales, I divided my book into different sections- providing the reader with the date in which each part was set. However, the majority of the novel was written in the first person- from the perspective of my main protagonist. This may sound unnecessarily complicated, but as writers this can be one of the most tricky aspects to get right. You can often find yourself slipping into the wrong tense if you are not clear from the beginning about the where your novel fits within time itself.
For example, many of the most celebrated novelists use the passage of time as a key feature of their story. Take David Nichols’ novel ‘One Day’, which followed the main characters on the same day each year for two decades and it worked brilliantly. It allowed Nichols to explore the social and political changes over those twenty years and to develop his characters accordingly. It had an immediate appeal to those readers- like myself, who had lived through those very same changes. It helped to create an empathy and connection with the protagonists which made the reader really care about what happened to them.
Some authors, on the other hand, like to make their novels almost ‘timeless’. Their main characters stay much the same despite the passage of the years. I am thinking here of Inspector Wexford or Adam Dalgleish who first appeared in mystery novels back in the 1960s but who are still sleuthing, little changed by the ravages of time, to this very day.
Both techniques can work equally well and, as in the case of Wexford, for instance, the world around him does alter with the passage of the years even if he, as a character, does not.
Sometimes it is childrens’ books which deal with the enigma of time the best. the concept of time-travel has been often explored in fiction aimed at the young. Children have a particular fascination with time, I think, as it suggests the promise of new worlds and new possibilities that appear to offer a tantalising taste of freedom that can so often be missing from their own ordered and restricted lives.
The only dilemma that exists if your main characters are young is whether or not they should age from one book to another. This was handled extremely well in the Harry Potter books when J.K Rowling could easily have kept her protagonists forever youthful.
Many books aimed at children deliberately utilize the concept of growth and development so that their characters can age alongside their young readers, giving them a sense that they are not alone in having to face the challenges of reaching each new milestone in life. My daughter particularly likes Jeff Kinney’s ‘Wimpy Kid’ series for that very reason.
Whatever decision you make about your novels’ place in time, it is important to get it straight in your mind before you begin to write and then stick with it throughout the novel. I chose to add dates to the three sections of my first book, in order to help my readers to easily follow what was quite a complex plot. However, with my second novel I have decided not to do this, as I was concerned that adding specific years to the book might, paradoxically, have the result of ‘dating’ the piece. When, for all of us writers, the elusive prize is to create a book that is literally ‘timeless’ and can be read in decades to come, but will still feel totally relevant and contemporary to the reader.

The twist in the tale?

The absolute keystone to a great piece of mystery fiction is the surprise twist at the end. Sometimes this ‘about face’ in the plot can take place somewhere in the middle of the narrative and then it can mark a neat shift in the direction of the story.
When I am setting out to write my novels, the ‘shock’ ending is one of the first elements of the plot that I plan. Then the whole novel can work up to this surprise conclusion. As a writer, you must ensure that you have placed enough clues along the way so that it is at least possible for your readers to guess what is going to happen, but you want it to be very difficult for them to do so. You do not want to deny them your deliciously unexpected resolution. You can always lay some alternative plot lines that you can then resolve at various points in the story- but always leave the best until last.
So why do readers and viewers enjoy the surprise denouement so much? I believe that it is human nature to want to solve puzzles and that is why mystery and detective fiction is so popular. Also, we feel cheated if the solution is perceived to be too easy. We are intelligent beings and we like a good challenge.
So which writers create the best conundrums? As you will know by now, I enjoy Ruth Rendell’s psychological chillers which always have a fantastic twist in the tale- ‘The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy’ and ‘The Blood Doctor’ written under her pseudonym of Barbara Vine are two of my very favourite. I would not dream of spoiling their endings here! The novelist Evelyn Waugh was once attributed the dubious honour of having written ‘the most shocking lines in fiction’ in his 1930s book ‘A Handful of Dust’ again I would not wish to ruin it for any of you as it is a great read and these lines do not appear at the end of the narrative but somewhere in the middle which adds to the interest I think.
Many literary cliché’s have been associated with the classic fictional ‘twist’. For example, the discovery that one of the characters is actually an identical twin, or of babies having been switched at birth are two historically popular literary devices. Another technique that can produce a shock ending is the notion of men dressed up as women and vice-versa, an idea used by writers for hundreds of years. Shakespeare was even at it!
Cliché or not, if the zig-zags of your plot line are well-written and have enough intricate clues and the occasional red herring then they will satisfy your reader. However, beware of succumbing to the totally unbelievable and implausible ending. You will recognise what I mean here, this is a resolution that appears to have been parachuted in from absolutely nowhere. Your readers will be disappointed and feel cheated by this- you have to stay true to the characters you have created and if your book has realistic themes then your conclusion must be realistic too.
Interesting and shocking things occur in real-life all the time so you don’t need to resort to alien invasions or meteors falling out of the sky!
A well- constructed ‘twist in the tale’ can make a good novel truly great- so best of luck!

Can you have a great mystery novel without ‘blood’ and ‘guts’?

I certainly think so, although recently I’ve found it more difficult to find them. The real masters of the genre have never used graphic violence to ‘spice up’ their plots. Agatha Christie, P.D James, Ruth Rendell (writing also as Barbara Vine), Josephine Tey, Dorothy L Sayers and new writers on the block like Ruth Ware and Sophie Hannah can create genuine chills through their suspenseful prose, interwoven with just the hint of the worst crimes that mankind (and womankind) are capable of. These great writers avoid stomach churning descriptions of blood and guts, relying instead on very clever storytelling and well observed characterisation.

Now that we expect a certain amount of gore in our T.V dramas and mystery fiction, is it possible to write a top novel in the crime field without it? Or will we now need to create a whole new genre of fiction for this type of narrative, something that isn’t as potentially twee or as dismissive as the umbrella term, cosy mystery? It’s a large field and I hope there’s room for everyone’s tastes within it- I certainly enjoy a good ‘serial-killer chiller’ myself, but my favourites are those books that tease me along with a labyrinthine plot and a final conclusion that actually seems plausible to me because I feel that I understand the motives of the main characters. I don’t like an ending that just parachutes in from nowhere and makes me feel dissatisfied and cheated, a kind of ‘deus ex machina’. Any suggestions on great writers; new and old who manage to achieve this would be gratefully received.