cozy mysteries

VERY short fiction

/ Caron Allan

I’m not much good at writing poetry, but a short story – or a really short story – I do like to have a stab at.

Very short fiction, usually a maximum of 500 words, is called Flash Fiction or Micro Fiction. And there are groups online who write 6-word fiction, 25-word fiction. To me those aren’t really stories so much as quips and captions. But I recently discovered 100-word stories and that gave me something to really think about. A 100-word story is called a Drabble – but most of my stories are a little under 100 words., so I’m not sure they qualify!

It’s tempting to link them together – but would that be several stories of 100 words, or would it be one story in installments? It feels like that might be cheating.

But here are a few I tried out.

 

But that one seemed to naturally lead on to this:

Um, Neil you’re such a baddie!

So maybe I’ll try something different, though it’s tempting to see how the above (2) story(ies) could pan out.

My stories do seem to tend in a certain direction – I always seem to turn to crime in one form or another.

And lastly…

Actually I cheated there, as I didn’t invent this, I just observed it when I was in a cafe and gave it my own little embellishments.

Hope they made you smile.

***

 

 

 

Five Good Things

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

I can’t remember what this is called, but it looks cute and smells heavenly – a winter blossomer!

On some of the social media platforms I use and visit, there is a hashtag or thread for ‘3 Good Things’. (esp Mastodon social…) These posts enable people to share about positive experiences, often quite small, that cheered them up, gave them some happiness or boosted their mental health.

Things have been tough lately, haven’t they? Politics – don’t get me started – the economy, just – everything.  For many of us, winter is a grey, cold place, we don’t always get to see people or do the things that we love and make us feel a sense of fulfillment.

So I thought I’d share five good things that have given me a lift over the last couple of weeks.

  1. New whiteboard! It is truly colossal. I grossly overestimated the size I needed. (Maths is not my strong subject…there’s a reason I’m a writer!) So although I need a stepladder to reach the top, it’s a thing of beauty and wonder to behold, already covered in my illegible scrawl.
  2. I’ve got snowdrops – and grape hyacinths! Yay, spring is coming! Soon my garden – and yours too, if you have one – will be full of lovely blooms to fill us with happiness. If you don’t have a garden, maybe just a pot with a small but glorious riot of colour? Or take a walk to the nearest park and get a lungful of fresh air and check to see if anything is putting forth buds yet. it will give you a huge boost.
  3. I’m getting on with my (many) WIPs. That feels good to me – I feel productive, ideas are flowing, that makes me feel positive and like I’m achieving something with my life.
  4. Although we no longer have cats, (cue sad face) I love to see the cats of my neighbours pottering back and forth, sniffing the bare stalks of our catnip plants hopefully, or staring at the birds on our bird feeders. it’s like Cat TV for them! Fortunately casualties are very low.
  5. I’m enjoying reading. I’ve only read two new books this year so far, but I am enjoying having my Kindle. I always used to favour ‘actual’ paperback books, but these days I find them too heavy to hold, so I’m getting used to eBooks. Like the world of nature, books help me to leave myself behind for a short while and ‘escape’ into another world.

So that’s it – my five good things. Modest but uplifting small things in my life. I hope yours is going well too!

Even my rosemary cuttings are thriving – and flowering all through the winter like brave little soldiers! The colour gives me such a lift!

***

Ask not what 2025 has in store for you, but what you have in store for it!

/ Caron Allan / 3 Comments

It’s traditional to devise an action plan or a list of resolutions at the start of a new year.

Maybe we plan to fix things we think are wrong in our lives – get more exercise, eat well, lose weight. Or we feel ready for a change such as a new job or new home.

I’m pretty bad for making resolutions then giving up on them, so this year, I’m keeping my aims modest:

I hope to lose a little more weight. I’ll try to get a wee bit more exercise. I’ll keep up my reading (got loads of books on my TBR pile now, almost entirely mysteries).

And I’ll write, of course.

I’m planning/hoping/intending to finish my first draft of Dottie Manderson mysteries book 8: Midnight, the Stars, and You. It’s currently standing at a total of 60,000 words, so about three quarters or so done.

Here’s a short extract from that book:

His mother wittered on. Henry yawned and looked around him. The place was looking pretty good, he had to admit. Hopefully it wouldn’t take too much longer… he glanced down at her, seeing for the first time how thin her grey hair had become. He remembered when he was a small boy and she’d had lustrous dark locks, curling all over her head and down to her shoulders. His father had adored her hair.

Her skin too seemed aged even since he’d seen her – what, just two weeks ago? She looked pale, her complexion having a slightly transparent tissue-paper look about it. She looked all of her age and more. It warmed his heart to think that soon she would be gone, and all this lovely property, and the money too, would be his. He came out of this delicious reverie when she said,

‘And by the way, Henry, dearest, it was so considerate of you to send that dear girl to collect my jewellery to put into your safe. She told me that there have been so many dreadful robberies reported in the newspapers. Such a good idea of yours. I feel so much happier now you have them, such a weight off my mind.’

‘What?’ he demanded.

She paused in her sniffing of a particularly lovely Souvenir de la Malmaison and gazed at his reddening face with a vague sort of bewilderment.

‘Henry…’

‘What did you say? You gave your jewellery to some girl? What are you talking about?’

‘She said she was your new maid, and that her name was Eliza. I must say, I was very glad to hear that you’d…’

He cut her off with a terse, ‘You actually handed over your jewels to a complete stranger?’ He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Surely she hadn’t actually…

She gaped up at him in that frightened kitten manner. He felt like shaking her hard, or strangling her, his hands itched to be about that scraggy throat. He stared at her, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘Not a stranger, dear, not really, after all she is part of your household,’ the Dowager Duchess protested mildly. She’d always had a soft spot for the servants, he recalled.

‘Mother, dear,’ he added, smiling in spite of his rage. ‘I do not have any new staff. I most definitely did not send anyone to you for your jewellery. Please tell me you didn’t actually…’

But he could see from her expression that it was only too true.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh my dear goodness me, oh my…’ Lord Dalbury’s mother began to cry.

And I also plan to finish book 3 of the Miss Gascoigne 1960s murder mysteries. That one is called Through Dancing Poppies, and the word count is a smidge under 40,000 words, so more or less half done.

Here’s a bit from that:

Dee was on the point of asking in her best schoolmarm voice, if there was something the matter, but the girl turned back to glance in their direction. Dee realised it was none other than the school’s former pupil and new media sweetheart, Poppy Bell.

‘Poppy?’ Dee said, and the girl fixed a look on Dee and Rob, wide-eyed, fearful. ‘Whatever is the matter, dear?’ Dee asked, falling into her role of responsible teacher.

Dee was aware of Rob looking in surprise at first Dee then at the young woman Dee addressed, but Dee fixed her attention on Poppy and the man with her.

‘Didn’t I meet you recently?’ Poppy asked, a frown creasing her brow as she tried to recall.

‘That’s right. I was coming out of the Holly Tree restaurant with Miss Evans last week just as you were going in. Is everything all right?’

‘I don’t know…’ Poppy glanced at her companion, who turned to look at Dee and Rob. Dee realised he was angry. He said,

‘Some bloody fool just tried to run me down as I got out of my car. Luckily, I leapt back smartly enough, or I’d have been done for. The bastard—excuse my language—the devil wasn’t even looking where he was going. Probably drunk. Had to have been doing fifty, and in a car park too! Anyway, it shook me up a bit, that’s all. No harm done.’

Dee’s hand went to her mouth in dismay. Instinctively she glanced around her, as did her brother.

‘Rotter’s already gone. Scared of getting into trouble, I don’t doubt. Anyway… Excuse me, where are my manners. I’m Teddy Reynolds. Poppy and I are—well, we’ve just got engaged to be married as a matter of fact.’

He put a proprietary arm about the girl’s waist, pulling her close to his side. Poppy smiled adoringly up at him, leaning into the crook of his arm.

Dee, calculating that he was old enough—easily old enough—to be the girl’s father, nevertheless managed to smile, and said,

‘Oh my! Congratulations! How exciting.’

‘Is this your old teacher, lovely?’ Teddy Reynolds asked Poppy.

Dee didn’t care for the old part, especially from him. She said,

‘I used to teach here, though I never had Poppy in any of my classes. I taught modern languages: German and French, basically. Now I’m just a visitor like everyone else.’

‘And this is your husband, I assume?’ Reynolds said, turning to hold out a hand to Rob. Rob shook the hand, and added,

‘No, no, just her brother. Just come along for the fun of it.’

‘Nice to meet you both. Look here, Poppy my lovely, we need to get a move on, or you’ll be late.’

‘Right,’ said the girl, once again back to the usual bored tones of a teenager. ‘See you,’ she added, to Dee and Rob, then turned on her heel and walked away.

Reynolds had a little more grace. ‘Yes well, sorry to take it all out on you. Bit of a shock, as I said. Still no harm done. Yes, yes, must get on. Might see you again later, perhaps. Coming Poppy, my lovely,’ he called.

Not that Poppy had given him so much as a backward glance. He hurried off with a final apologetic glance at Dee and Rob.

There are so many others that I want to write.

I’m really excited about one particular book, I have even plotted it out, which I never do, as I am what we call a ‘pantser’ – I don’t plan ahead, I just dive and and start. The book doesn’t have a tile, it doesn’t have cover, both of which I usually have done years ahead of the actual writing. All I can tell you is it’s one of those stories where the heroes are the baddies, and they are going to get away with SO MUCH. I suppose you could call it a ‘caper’ novel.

Sadly I doubt I’ll have that finished this year, though I’m really hoping to make a start.

I also have written about a third of a new Criss Cross spin off. I’m planning that as a trilogy. Instead of Friendship Can Be Murder, the series title will be Families Can Be Murder, and the first part of that is called Dirty Work. I hope to put that out at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. Criss Cross and the other two parts of the first trilogy are written in the first person in the form of diary entries, and the story is told from the point of view of Cressida. The new series will be told from the point of view of her husband, Matt, writing his own diary, but with many intrusions from Cressida herself.

And lastly, I have a standalone novel that only needs a final read-through and slight tweak before that is ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. That is called The Cousins. It’s a slight variation on my usual theme in that it’s not a murder mystery as such, it’s more of a family saga with some secrets to be discovered.

If you fancy reading a bit of that, you can find it here.

Now I think about it, seeing all this written out like this, it does seem like a lot, and quite a tall order. I only hope I can get it all done. I felt disappointed in my lack of ‘progress’ in 2024, but as many of you know, I have been having treatment for breast cancer since October 2023, so 2024 was a very difficult year for me, and for my lovely family and friends who were such a huge support. I’m still not out of the woods yet as my treatment is continuing for at least another six months, and possibly longer. At least I have my eyelashes back!

I hope 2025 is good to you all, and want to say again how much I appreciate the support and enthusiasm of all my friends, dear and values readers and fellow writers.

***

Looking back at old work

/ Caron Allan

I saw this quote by Dean Koontz recently and it made me reflect on all the other stories that haven’t made it as far as publication. I’m talking about my stories here, not other peoples’.

I have written many, many more books than I have published. and I think that is often the case for other authors.

As authors, we have to serve an apprenticeship of writing. We have to learn our craft, just like a teacher learns to teach, a surgeon learns how to operate, or a dinner lady learns where the kids have to line up to come into the dining hall at school.

No one ‘just knows’. Okay, you might have a facility with words, you might be brimming over with fantastic ideas, but that doesn’t guarantee that what you write will be readable or marketable. and you need to be able to repeat the performance again and again.

Another (very) early work, written on the back of Weetabix packets… circa 1970

So it doesn’t surprise me that even an eminent author like Dean Koontz may have dry times when nothing seems to work sales-wise. Or that he seems to feel it took him a while to get started.

When I look back on some of my early stories, I cringe at the crass ideas, the overused plots, the terrible, stilted dialogue. Or the lack of knowledge. In one story I had a crocodile chasing a woman for miles up a steep hill. (Hint, that wouldn’t happen in real life. Like me, crocodiles are not fans of long steep walks uphill.)

In a way it can be discouraging to look back and think, I had zero talent, this is awful. (And, quite often people still think this about my writing, even though I’ve come on in leaps and bounds over the last thirty years!) On the other hand, every so often you can come across a paragraph, or even just a phrase, where the sun seems to shine through and you think, now that, is most definitely, a good bit.

So in no particular order, here are some of the stories that didn’t (yet, though who knows) make it:

I still mainly write my first drafts by hand – that gives me the excuse of buying more notebooks…

Jobshare: the idea was, a famous author hires a stand-in to take his place so he can disappear for a while to concentrate on writing not just a new book but a whole new genre he has not tried before. The lookalike was murdered, but who was the intended victim – the author or the lookalike. I think we’ll probably never know. This one had more holes than a fishing net.

The Soft Impeachment: even worse than it sounds, this was a cringe-fest of a romance. Luckily for you, I haven’t published it. But it was the first full length novel I ever completed, back in the early 1980s, and it was this that showed me I could do it, no matter what anyone said.

Dolly: I changed the working title of this to Babygirl once I started work on the Dottie Manderson mysteries, but it’s still never made it out of the filing cabinet. The idea is that a famous actress has just buried her adoptive mother and goes in search of her birth mother, only for her birth mother to be murdered. Who was the villain, the actress’s boyfriend, her unknown father, the dodgy care home owner, or someone else. Hint: I have no idea.

These were the only really early ones I actually finished, though there are a number of others that stalled around the third to halfway mark.

Even a bad book needs a bit of planning!

These are the almost-rans, written within the last twenty years and still in line for revision and maybe even, one day, publication:

Humanity: this was my vampire novel, written in 2002-3 after we returned from Australia after five years away, and I wanted to do something new. Sadly, I lost faith in the project when the TV series Being Human came out. It’s the same idea really – can a vampire hold on to their human qualities and carve out a life for themselves in the real world? Here’s a teeny extract:

  He moved along the road.  Cautious.  Keeping to the darkest shadows.  Nothing coming from either direction.  Middle of the night.  Not a single light on in any of the houses.

  He wiggled the fingers clutched to his side.  Sticky.  Very Sticky.  (Q: What’s brown and sticky, Uncle Neal?  A: A stick!  Nephews and nieces laughing.  God, kids tell such corny jokes.  Seems like some things never change.)

  As he crossed a pool of lamplight, he didn’t need to look down at himself to know that he was still bleeding.  The blood had soaked one side of his shirt and now it alternately flapped heavily or stuck to him, cold, and filled his whole body with a nauseating chill that had become frighteningly familiar.  It felt like every heartbeat pumped more blood out of the tear in his body.  The wound felt massive, like a huge rip in the side of an ocean liner, yet he knew it wasn’t as bad as that.  But he needed to rest.  Had to get himself inside somewhere. 

I have a soft spot for this book, so maybe one day, it will see the light of day…

The Refuge: another book that I can’t quite let go of, and have been thinking of reworking and releasing for several years now. It’s about ‘found family’ I suppose, though I didn’t know that term then. It’s about people surviving the destruction of their town and fleeing to a refuge in the mountains, and their attempts to survive, and like Humanity, it’s about whether we can hold on to ourselves in a time of crisis, and rebuild a life. If you like, you can read more about it here:

The Silent Woman: is a ghost story with a bunch of people who are ghost hunters, but it’s more to do with solving mysteries than just investigating the paranormal. There are a couple of chapters and a bit more information about this book here: 

Like many authors, I often feel I am made up of things I have written. A bit like, I don’t know, baggage maybe, or more like photographs of loved ones, we writers carry these stories with us everywhere we go, no matter what we do, and I believe that every new story we write is built upon the shoulders of these story-memories. It’s part of who I am, and I love it.

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Writing a believable character

/ Caron Allan / 5 Comments

I think we all know that a work of fiction could not exist without its characters. They act out the plot, control the information given to the reader, and they are the people we would like to be if we ourselves were the centre of the work. They are our representatives in the story world in many respects. I think that is especially true in the kind of books I write – fairly traditional, solve-along-at-home mysteries.

One of the things I love about characters is their ability to be brave, cowardly, wicked or audacious, righteous, and definitely unlike me, astute and quick-thinking! They are able to be either in the right or the wrong place at the right or the wrong time. Always in the thick of the action, the excitement, leading the way to discovery. I love that my characters can do all the things I can’t – lead exciting lives in glamorous, or not so glamorous places, rub shoulders with criminals and celebrities, solve mysteries, dancing until the early hours of the morning, and of course, go to nice places! They rarely have to worry about shoving things in the washing machine, getting the groceries sorted, puzzling over a newly appeared patch of damp on a ceiling, or a lost roof tile. They don’t have to clear up after pets or puzzle over the right home insurance.

Hopefully this will be out in 2025. I’ve written it, I promise.

In many ways, a minor character can be fairly cardboard – not every character needs to be – or indeed can possibly be – unique. They are like the stock characters of a theatrical production. There are only so many human traits, qualities and physical looks that can be applied to characters. In a lot of cases, I just suggest an appearance or a type of person and let the imagination of my readers furnish the rest of the details. If you’re anything like me, too much description to read slows down the action and is the bit you have a tendency to skip.

But the main characters – oh they have to be fully realised and to become completely real, fully-rounded and believable for the reader, or else there is no empathy, no immersion in the story. If you can’t lose yourself completely in a murder mystery, then there is nothing to be gained with the final revelation, the answer to the riddle of the story. It just won’t matter. I love it when I close a book at the end, and look around me, almost surprised to see the world is still turning. I had forgotten the real world, and part of my imagination, part of my self is still lost in story land. That is a job well done by the novelist. It’s what I try to aim for, though I often worry I don’t succeed.

For me, a main character has to be imaginable. I need to be able to picture that person, as if they were real, moving and inhabiting some invented space in my head. I like to think I might recognise them if I met them in real life. I want to know how they think, how they feel, what they like, what they hate. I want to know who their friends are, how they fill their spare time, what they do to pay the bills, all the real life stuff that applies to ‘us’, the readers.

Honest this one is going to be finished one day too…

If they don’t engage with the world around them in the book they are set in, they won’t feel real to me. They need to act like real people. They must be impacted by social issues, by world events, by the art and popular culture of their time. I want to see them dancing, singing, talking, crying, laughing, eating, drinking, catching a bus or train, driving somewhere, getting caught in the rain, falling in love, or visiting their mother. They have to have a life that extends beyond merely the demands of the mystery. They can’t just be clue finders.

That said, I try to add what I think of as timeless values to my characters. I don’t want them to exhibit the tendencies and faults of their time. I don’t want my main characters to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted. I want them to transcend what might have been widely-held attitudes of their day, because those are things which are important to me. I don’t want them to appear too sanctimonious or holier-than-thou either, so it’s a fine line between Dottie, Dee and so forth being a decent person and being way too prim and proper.

But hopefully it’s keeping them on the right side of believable, and relatable, and making the story the stronger for it. I try to make my books character-driven rather than event or plot-driven, as for me, a story is all about its players.

So what’s happening with me now?

Just a quick catch up for you. I had hoped to have at least two if not three more bosk out this year, but it just hasn’t happened. It’s been a tough year. diagnosis of breast cancer, followed by chemo, two surgeries, radiotherapy and now, I’m about to start yet more chemo mean that I’ve been utterly exhausted and not able to write very much at all. I’ve done perhaps half of Dottie Manderson mystery book 8 Midnight, the Stars and You. and I’ve written about half of a new Friendship Can Be Murder mystery, to be called Dirty Work, and… *sigh* I’ve just started book 3 of the Miss Gascoigne mysteries, Through Dancing Poppies. I wrote a stand-alone novel The Cousins last year but haven’t had the oomph to do anything with that yet, so it’s all in the pipeline. Hopefully 2025 will be a n easier year.  On the upside, a new German translation of the first Miss Gascoigne mysteries Eine Begegnung mit Mord will be out on the 11th October, so that’s something, I suppose.

Onward and upward. 

***

Looking ahead to Autumn and new things…

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

Our maple is already wearing its Autumn hues

It’s still the height of summer (not that you’d know it from the 19⁰C and wet weather we’ve had this week, in contrast to last week’s high 20s and even low 30s) yet already I’m turning my face towards Autumn.

I know I say this every year, but for me, it is not Spring, but Autumn and Winter that form my season of creativity. I have no idea why this is. I don’t know why, but for me, autumn is not the season for rest and consolidation, but of flights of imagination taking wings. I get quite excited about the approach of autumn and winter. Maybe it’s the cuddly jumpers, I don’t know.

It seems as though the rest of the world is full of new life in the Spring. Is it because I’m an October baby, my lifecycle naturally starts from Autumn onwards? Or because when we lived in Brisbane what seems like a lifetime ago, October was in the Spring? But how can five years there undo the habits of the other fifty-nine years I’ve lived in the Northern Hemisphere? Or maybe it’s because for parents everywhere in the UK, Autumn is when the children go back to school and you at last get two minutes to sit in silence and just enjoy hearing – nothing. Ah, bliss!

Started a new notebook today too – a cause for celebration in itself!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, in our house things have been tough since last October but now, today, I feel something stirring again. It’s a feeling, a bit like being pregnant, a sense of something wonderful happening in the hidden depths, a private joy that no one else is able to share or even aware of. It’s the buzzing of new ideas, of fresh creative energy, a sense of gentle excitement that says, ‘Hmm, I think something is coming…’ I love it, it’s such a special feeling, and it can only mean one thing.

I think I feel a new story coming on…

***

Unmasking the culprit

/ Caron Allan

This post kind of continues from a previous post about how the killer in a traditional murder mystery such as the ones I write–or try to–is always ‘one of us’. It’s important that the killer IS one of us. (You can read that one here, if you like: One Of Us?)

But I have to say, if I read a mystery and the perpetrator is revealed as someone barely mentioned, or the author uses that old chestnut, the guilty butler, or any other member of staff, I am SO bitterly disappointed–with both the story, and in fact the author. Because it just feels like a let-down, like the author ‘phoned it in’, as they say, ie couldn’t be bothered to do a proper job. Even some of my favourite authors indulged in this heinous practice!

In his essay, The Decline of the English Mystery, George Orwell wrote, ‘The perfect murderer is a humdrum little man (or woman, I say!) of the professional classes.’

I think most people could agree that when they read a murder mystery, the most satisfying part of the book is trying to beat the sleuth to the finish line. Or at least, to be able to nod sagely at the end and say, ‘I knew it!’ as the killer is revealed.

We’ve come a long way from this scenario: ‘God must search out the solution to this crime because only He knows the secrets of the heart.’ (Revelations of a Lady Detective, William Stephens Hayward, 1864) Now, we as readers want to take God’s place and work it out for ourselves. Is it because we want to impose a rigid order on our lives, or have complete control over something? Who knows. We could write a philosophical paper on why we enjoy crime books when we (most of us, anyway) are vehemently opposed to violence in real life.

I have to say, I do get a thrill when the murderer turns out to be someone I had completely ruled out or overlooked. I like to be surprised but I also, more than anything, like to be convinced. So if the evidence is flimsy or entirely circumstantial, I don’t buy into it at all. I need to know the why of it far more than how or all the other questions. After all, in a traditional type of murder mystery the guilty party must have a compelling and urgent necessity to take such a drastic act. Otherwise, they could simply move to another town and live under a new name. Or something normal like that.. and bear in mind that many of the most popular murder mysteries are set in the past when there was capital punishment in Britain, and that in many other places there still is today. Why would someone risk losing their own life if not for some absolutely necessary reason?

So here are a few must-haves for the killer of a traditional murder mystery:

  1. They have to appear innocuous or be excluded from being ‘the one who did it’.
  2. If possible they should be genial, amiable and pleasant to most people, and get on with everyone (apart from the victim lol )
  3. They will be very aware of every move the victim makes, and take a lot of trouble to keep themselves informed.
  4. They need to be pretty intelligent to outsmart–for a while at least–the sleuth who will be coming after them.
  5. In spite of being pleasant, genial etc they also should reveal–gradually–an arrogant side with a large dollop of superiority complex: they believe they are able to outwit everyone, and are better than anyone, and that their motive completely justifies or exonerates their action.
  6. Lastly, they will crave attention and status; this means they love to get involved in the investigation into the death of the victim. They want to keep themselves informed in order to plan their next move, and to make sure they are safe.

In mysteries, many killers merely carry out the act to cover their butts: the victim knows something, or has the power to do something that threatens the killer’s safety in some way, whether it is their actual liberty at risk, their financial position, their social status, or the safety or fidelity of a loved one. It must be an utterly compelling reason for them. Occasionally they act out of revenge or pure hatred.

The killer displays a persona – derived from the latin word for mask – to hide their true nature from everyone they encounter.

If they are truly psychopathic, they will feed off the admiration of others and continually find ways–subtle and not-so-subtle–to make sure everyone knows how clever they are. Sometimes this will lead them to offer to help the detective, or sometimes this will lead to another death, as they either have to cover up the first crime, or feel a need to display their ingenuity.

In the case of serial killers, another death can be the result of their urge to experience that sense of fulfilment and power they got from the act of killing itself. They crave that thrill as an addict craves their addictive substance. The pressure is then on for the sleuth to find the killer to prevent yet another death. And often, the author will ensure that tension ratchets up a notch or three by having the next potential victim someone the sleuth really cares about.

In fact the concept of the powerful killer is no such thing. As the story reaches its denouement, they are revealed not as powerful but weak, because they do not have the ability to be satisfied with being ordinary, or to shake off the slights in life that the rest of us just have to get over.

The most exciting, most fulfilling moment of the story, for us as readers, is that moment when the detective shines the spotlight on Mr or Ms Nice-Person, their mask of geniality is ripped away and they are revealed for the evil beast they truly are. And our reaction to this – surprise or joyous confirmation of our own suspicions – is a tribute to the author’s dexterity in manipulating our expectations.

Wow!

 

Is the 11th too late for goalsetting?

/ Caron Allan / 5 Comments

For various reasons I’m a bit late to the What I Will Accomplish This Year 2024 party.

I have goals – quite lofty ones really, but who knows what I will have the time and energy to achieve? But if I decided, you know what, I’ll take a year out, the danger is I won’t achieve anything, and what’s the point of that?

So here we go – this is 2024 as I see it, part of the way through the second week of January. this is what i would want to do, in an ideal world, if the sky was the limit and i didn’t have cancer treatment to deal with.

  1. Finish and publish Dottie Manderson mysteries book 8: Midnight, the Stars And You. This has to be this year’s main priority in terms of writing, because people keep saying things like, you know, when is it out? There’s only so many times you can nod and smile and say, it’s coming, honest. There’s a teaser for it on here somewhere. If you fancy taunting yourself with something that is still four or five months away, here it is. I promise it’ll arrive eventually.
  2. Because I felt pretty down about the whole ‘by the way, you’ve got breast cancer’ thing, apart from working on the 2nd book of the Miss Gascoigne 1960s mystery series (which came out on Dec 8th) I started playing around with a book I wrote over ten years ago, purely for fun, and it’s actually almost ‘there’ – almost ready for publication, and so although it’s not part of any of my three series, I will very likely publish that in February, just for fun. It’ll just be a one-off, stand alone novel like Easy Living. This book is called The Cousins, and again, there’s a teaser and a bit of info here.
  3. Now I know last year, in a fit of optimism I started banging on about a new story in the Friendship Can Be Murder series, which has been out for over ten years and I kind of thought was finished at three books. And I have written quite a lot for that new book, but it’s nowhere near ready, and so, let’s be honest, it’s not likely to make an appearance in 2024, or if it does it’ll sneak out at the very last minute. I tentatively called that book Dirty Work, and I do hope to finish it and publish it over the next year or two, but there’s no date as yet.
  4. And then, my second main priority will be to get to work and finish and publish book 3 of the Miss Gascoigne mysteries. This will be Through Dancing Poppies, and I hope/plan/rashly promise it will be out in November of December of this year. You can bang on my door and demand it if I don’t deliver.
  5. My next German translation of a Dottie book is due out at the end of this month. If you love to read a novel in German, this could be perfekt for you! Keep your eyes peeled for Rosenblüten und weiße Spitze: ein Dottie Manderson Fall: Buch 7. Zitat aus Rosenblüten und weiße Spitze: Ein Dottie Manderson Fall: Buch 7

And by the way, if I seem flippant about the cancer, I’m not. But I am open to talking about it – as they say, fear of the name increases fear of the thing itself, and I refuse to live in fear. I trust the medical team at the hospital where I’m having treatment, in fact they’ve been blooming amazing, and I believe them when they say that ‘eventually’ I will be okay. And so many lovely people are praying for me… And if only we could get proper funding for the NHS I’d be a happy bunny. I believe passionately in a national health service – good health is not something that should be the preserve of the wealthy.

So that’s how my 2024 is looking right now. What are you doing with yours? Got any plans for world domination or maybe a nice holiday?

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Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth

/ Caron Allan

I always love to reread old favourites. Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth is just that: everything I love in one volume.

  • elderly amateur detective – check
  • hint of romance – check – though not as much as usual for Wentworth
  • cosy mystery – yup
  • clues – oh yes
  • red herrings – check
  • a host of daft characters – check
  • poison pen letters – what’d not to love? Though I was sad the letters weren’t quoted – too offensive, maybe?
  • increasingly exasperated professional detective – I love a stroppy copper who just wants to get home
  • the killer speaks

Now obviously I can’t tell you whodunit, or there will be no point in you reading it. So with the help of mime I mean, carefully edited text, I can comment. So take a look at this:

As you can tell from the title, this is a poison pen letter mystery. It’s set in an English village in the mid-1950s, so quite late as Wentworth books go, she’d been a published author since 1910, and sadly passed away at the beginning of 1961.

(Note to self, If I’d started earlier, I might have got 50 years of writing under my belt too… So envious.)

The village setting means we can guess at many of the situations and some of the characters here.

There’s a retired military man in a big house, he may have been a brilliant army Colonel but he is rubbish at relationships. he really wanted a dolly-bird half his age to look good on his arm and to make sure the house was tidy. Sadly, his chosen love is mainly interested in having a good time, and is fed up with her elderly husband, who is clearly BORING. (If he’s so smart, why did he choose her? Conveniently we can nod to one another sagely and say, as they do in the book, ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’)

But – the fish-out-of-water over-dressed, colourful wife effortlessly puts everyone against her, not doing herself any favours by refusing to make herself pleasant or conventional. Wentworth describes her wearing of bright colours, making her literally the scarlet woman, giving her loads of make-up,  and making her determined to not give a damn. Here she is being interviewed by the police about her secrets.

But has she acted on these secrets, or the urge to get rid of her annoying husband and grabbing the money, to slope off into the bright lights with her boyfriend, who incidentally was about to be married to someone else… We need more information…

Almost the entirety of the rest of the cast are single ladies – widows and spinsters all – and all a bit bored with life in a village with insufficient scandal/bingo/internet facilities to keep them busy.

They knit. They sew. They garden. They care for children. They cook. They clean. And they are – let’s be honest – a bit too fond of a good gossip.

Cue the poison pen letters.

For me, the disappointing part of this story was that everyone was far too polite to let us know precisely what was written int hem. There are suggestions of infidelity, and immorality, and secret yearnings and guilty secrets, but no juicy details. Oh well, you can’t have it all, I guess. It’s enough for us to know that one poor girl has killed herself because of the letters, and two more deaths follow in quick succession, leading us to question the ‘suicide’ verdict of the first death.

Miss Silver, Wentworth’s elderly lady detective, comes to stay in the village under the guise of being a dotty but not very well off old woman in need of a change of scene. She knits her way through scenes and observes the inhabitants acutely. She dispenses kindness to those who need it, and has no truck with those who get a bit above themselves, especially overbearing men.

Miss Silver is a tricky character. She’s clearly not ‘elderly’ in our modern sense, I’d say she could be in her 60s in this book. She’s not frail, and her mind is a steel trap. She’s deeply religious, compassionate, and fierce about getting justice for those who can’t get it for themselves. She was in early life a governess, and she can kill an attitude with a single look. She has a couple of irritating quirks, but I think this is just the difference between early 20th century attitudes and now. I find her far warmer and more loving than Miss Marple, for example, and she is surrounded by people, many of them very much younger, who admire and love her. And with her understanding of human nature, she sees everything.

As I said before, I love a poison pen letter. Forgive me for plugging my own, here. In A Meeting With Murder, my character Dee Gascoigne is staying in a village where poison pen letters are doing the rounds. Dee doesn’t really see what the issue is with these letters. Her friend Cissie explains:

Dee still shook her head. ‘I just don’t see why people get upset. I mean, why can’t they just put the letters in the dustbin or on the fire and forget about them?’

Cissie smiled. ‘Think about it like this,’ she said. ‘Imagine you lived in a tiny little place like this, where you knew everyone. Then imagine one day you opened a letter, you didn’t know who it was from, for they never sign these poison pen letters. And when you looked at it, it said something like, ‘I know you killed your mother to get all her money’. Think how you’d feel, to get something like that. And you’d know that somewhere in the village was a person who really thought it was true, but you didn’t know who it was and you didn’t know how many others they’d tell. And suppose you were frightened everyone would believe them, and that they were all looking at you too. Suppose your friends began to hear rumours and believed them. Suppose they stopped speaking to you and began to avoid you…’

Dee stared at Cissie and her delicate colour faded from her face so quickly Cissie was afraid she had gone too far to make her point. She felt cruel. She reached out a hand to pat Dee’s arm. ‘There, there, dear, don’t let it upset you. I was just trying to explain…’

In a soft, distressed voice, Dee said, ‘But that’s horrible, I’ve never thought of it like that before.’

‘Exactly, dearie. But that’s the kind of wickedness these letters contain. Now imagine getting three like that in a fortnight. And everyone you know, everyone you meet, you’d look at them and think, was it you what sent me that? You’d feel like you was being watched, my dear, and you wouldn’t know where to turn or who to go to, nor would you be able to sleep for fear of what the next day would bring, and you’d wonder if people knew and if they thought it was true. Even I’ve had one. Accused me of stealing money out of the birthday cards that were put in the post. And I’ve never stolen a thing in my life.’ Cissie pulled her shoulders back and lifted her head, the very model of moral rectitude.

For me, it’s the psychological aspect of the poison pen mystery that is most intriguing. I LOVE the ‘why’? In Wentworth’s book, we reach the final unmasking of the killer who is, of course, the writer of the letters. In a near-perfect summation of the ‘otherness’ of a murderer, Wentworth manages it beautifully: (Anon is because I didn’t want to say who it was – no spoilers here!)

So go on, read an old-school favourite this Christmas, and lose yourself in your most-loved tropes, busybodies, and village settings!

Happy Christmas!

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Marsali Taylor’s new murder mystery Death in a Shetland Lane

/ Caron Allan

Amazon Author Page - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marsali-Taylor/e/B0034PACI8/

Hello to all!

This week, I’m delighted to  share news of Marsali Taylor’s new murder mystery book, Death In A Shetland Lane. This is the third of this series I’ve been lucky enough to get roped into review for Marsali’s book tour.

You can read previous reviews here and here.

 

 

My handsome grey Cat stayed up in
the cockpit while I got the motor going, but tortoiseshell Kitten
headed below to sit in her box and wash the sand from her white
paws. I glanced down at her, lifevest glowing pink against her
ginger-allspice-cinnamon fur.

Meanwhile, here are some facts about Marsali Taylor:

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland’s scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland’s distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women’s suffrage in Shetland. She’s also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.

BLURB

Days before the final Shetland fire festival, in broad daylight, a glamorous young singer tumbles down a flight of steps. Though it seems a tragic accident, sailing sleuth Cass Lynch, a witness at the scene, thought it looked like Chloe sleepwalked to her death.

But young women don’t slumber while laughing and strolling with friends. Could it be that someone’s cast a spell from the Book of the Black Arts, recently stolen from a Yell graveyard?

A web of tensions between the victim and those who knew her confirm that something more deadly than black magic is at work. But proving what, or who, could be lethal – and until the mystery is solved, innocent people will remain in terrible danger…

My Review:

Let me just quickly say, I’m not very good at book reviews. I don’t go into the plot in huge detail etc.

For me the best thing about this book, and Marsali’s others, is the intricately woven depiction of the relationships of the Shetland people and culture that are featured in this series. They are so lovingly presented, in some respects it doesn’t matter about the crime. You feel as if you know these people and it’s a worry when they end up involved in a murder because you worry about the impact on them and their families. One of the writer’s greatest skills is that she populates her books with a range of characters so perfectly described, that as a reader, you are involved. There is a lot to lose if the case is not solved.

And there is the unique culture: music, spiritual beliefs, superstitions, history and of course, the language. There were a few unfamiliar terms, so I was so grateful for the dictionary at the back of the book (bookmark, everyone, for ease of consultation!)

The murder is a seemingly straightforward one, a simple crime, maliciously planned, and with a number of viable suspects. As always, Cass cannot help but get involved, even though there is an official police investigation, because after all, she was there when it happened, and tried valiantly to resuscitate the victim. And as ever, it was fantastic to read about Gavin swirling about the place in his kilt–of course! Though, sorry, but quite obviously, it’s the cats who stole the show: as always.

A highly enjoyable book, especially if you love sailing and messing about in boats!

My thanks to Lynne Adams, Headline Accent Press and Marsali Taylor for the chance to read this fab new book.

I went from one tack to the other, enjoying her,
then sat with my feet up on the opposite seat, my familiar tiller snug
in my hand, and the white sails stretched above me.

HOW TO BUY

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Author Facebook Page 

Author’s Website 

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