On the first day of Bloody Scotland 2024, on Friday the 13th, three authors united by their Agatha Christie-esque writing styles appeared in conversation with Vaseem Khan. Authors Frances White, Benjamin Stevenson, and Simon McCleave stirred some thought-provoking questions about what it means to be writing in the style of golden age detective fiction and applying these rules in the new age.
Khan kicked off the discussion by asking each author what classic Agatha Christie Tropes are still important to contemporary crime fiction. Simon places emphasis on unreliable narrators who often have a gap in their memory. His novel Everyone on This Train is a Suspect features multiple writer characters who all demonstrate this quality, adding to the suspense and humorous tone in his book.
In Frances White’s novel Voyage of the Damned, crime fiction intersects with a fantasy world. She says that her favorite Agatha Christie trope is the wise matriarch figure, which is certainly an easy trope to include in a fantasy novel. Benjamin Stevenson, author of Last Night at Villa Lucia played devil’s advocate by outlining the opposite of Simon’s statement, saying that he prefers the trope of the reliable narrator in crime fiction. He said that he favors a “fair play murder mystery,” where the narrator ultimately tells you everything you need to know to solve it from the onset.
Vaseem then shifted the conversation to the subgenre adopted by each author in their respective novels, the ‘closed circle murder.’ He asked each of them to describe what had inspired this approach in their own work. Frances says that “Murder mysteries are already complex, when you add an entire fictional world it adds even more possibilities,” which she explains can be difficult for a reader to follow. She chose to use the closed fiction genre because this at least isolates the characters and the possibilities of the story.
Simon relays that while facing a bout of writer’s block, trying to imagine the type of characters he could apply to his idea of a murder mystery taking place on a train, he saw his own reflection in the blank monitor of his computer and thought, “Hey, what if the characters were also crime writers like me?” Thus was born his closed circle narrative of crime writers who are attempting to solve a real murder by following the literary conventions of crime writing.
Ben points out that “Agatha Christie has trained us to understand the rules of how a mystery works so well,” that it was a symptom of blind familiarity to use closed circle in his novel. However, he says that his novel leans more heavily into the genre of destination fiction as it takes place in a Tuscan villa. He used this trope to explore his personal past as he finds this style of writing “very cathartic,” helping him work through his own demons on the page. He says that he hopes this helps his characters come across as being more authentic to his readers.
The talk concluded with a brief discussion on class and the importance of highlighting marginalized authors’ voices. Frances poignantly says that “Everyone’s stories are worth being heard,” and continued to voice that bookstores can often be a very daunting place for debut authors who do not have the resources or financial means to pursue writing in the same capacity as others. This is a good reminder that having the professional title of “author” is a privilege and the publishing industry is ultimately a business. This is why events like Bloody Scotland are so crucial, as they provide support to new and emerging writers and give them a platform for their stories to be heard.
This talk was an inspirational insight into the ways that traditional genres and tropes in crime writing will always be relevant and can be re-invented and reimagined by anyone who puts their mind to it. Frances White is currently working on her second novel, which follows a group of teenagers who find themselves inexplicably trapped in a Labyrinth. Simon McCleave is working on a Christmas special that mirrors the structure of an advent calendar, and Benjamin Stevenson is working on his 20th novel.
Image courtesy of Emma MacKenzie