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Join us as we dive into the world of crime, thrillers, and mysteries! We answer your listener questions with award-winning author Kate Atkinson and publicist Alison Barrow. Plus, Kate discusses her brand-new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook. Get ready for some killer reads!
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Episode 5: Transcript
Rhianna Dhillon:
Hello, I'm Rihanna Dhillon. Welcome to The Penguin Podcast and another episode of Ask Penguin. We're the podcast for conversations about all things books and book related. And if you'd like to get involved, it's really easy to get in touch with your questions. You can email us at penguinpodcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk, or click the link in the show notes, and we'll be answering some of your questions a little later in this episode.
Today. I've got my magnifying glass. I am twiddling my mustache. I've got my dear stalker on. We're going to jump into one of my favourite genres, crime and mystery, from locked murders to private detectives with questionable coping methods. I love the good mystery, but I've always wondered, how do they get written? Does an author know who the murderer is from the beginning, how many viable suspects should there be? How do you even begin to plot something so intricate.
Well, my guest today is an author who'll hopefully be able to give us a clue or two. I'm so thrilled to be joined by one of the most well-known and best loved novelists working today. Her work spans time periods and genres, from the best-selling shrines of gaiety, set in the aftermath of the First World War to her Whitbread Book of the Year, winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum, to one of my all time favorite books Life After Life, her bestselling literary crime novels feature former detective turned P.I Jackson Brodie. So he first appeared in case histories, which became a BBC TV series starring Jason Isaacs. Now six books in the P.I. returns in her new novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook. My guest is, of course, Kate Atkinson, Kate, thank you so much for joining us on The Penguin Podcast. Oh, it's a pleasure. So, as my very potted introduction suggests, your writing covers all sorts of genres. Death at the sign of the work is the sixth Jackson Brodie novel by now, do you consider yourself a crime writer?
Kate Atkinson:
I don't think I've written a novel that doesn't have a crime in it, so that doesn't, by definition, make it a crime book, but this has a detective in it, so then that starts to become a crime novel. And now they're like the Jackson Brodie books. I think I never set out to have this series of detective novels, and he's not a very classic detective anyway, so no, I don't. I just think of myself as a writer, and then I think of the particular book I'm writing, and that's so I don't like being put into genre classifications, because I think they can be not only quite constraining, but I think they can be quite maybe demeaning. Is too small work. But you know, women's fiction, you know, crime fiction, cozy crime, all of those things, I think they're a way of a slightly more literary way of looking at being, you know, like, oh, that's just women's fiction. That's just cozy crime. I used to really resent being called cozy crime, because Jackson's not cozy. This, I can see why you would call it that, but now I think, yeah, I'm gonna brace that cozy that nice way. I don't mind writing cozy crime. Why not? If it makes people happy, why not?
Rhianna Dhillon:
You said that you didn't necessarily set out to write a detective series. So what happened?
Kate Atkinson:
I don't know. I wrote the first one, and it started off as being the individual stories, which were all murders that had happened in the past. So they were cold crimes. Actually, there was only two, and that was what I was writing, I wasn't, but then I once I started, I thought, well, this is ridiculous, because why are you doing this if these aren't going to be solved, or if someone isn't going to be looking at them, right?
Because obviously the people, the characters that are involved, have tried and fail. So you need to bring in a detective. And that was when I really halted, because I thought, if I bring in a detective, then that will become, whether I think it is or not, it will become crime fiction, and that's how it will be labeled.
And so I was, I was very cautious about introducing a detective and but it was really easy to write. And whenever you write a book that's really easy to write, you sort of come off it, and you've still got the same energy, and you're like, Oh, that was easy to write. I'll just do another and the second one was relatively easy to write. And then I thought, power of three, I'll write a third. And then I thought, I'm actually on a four-book contract. I'll just do and that was the really difficult one, because I wore out my enthusiasm or that that mode. So that was why there were four, and that was why there was quite a long gap between the fourth and the fifth.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And now we're at the six. We are, and it's a series.
Kate Atkinson:
We are, and it's a series.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I'm sorry to break it to you Kate, it is definitely a series. But do you think that people could just jump in with this one?
Kate Atkinson:
I don't know. I mean, I can't see it from that point of view. From my point of view, I don't reiterate. I don't go, you know, and Jackson bred, you know, he's a father of two, and you will remember this last crime that he just, I just write it as if you know who he is.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I think you absolutely can jump in with this one because you sort of drop hints throughout the book. And it doesn't all have to come at the very beginning,
Kate Atkinson:
Because I do hate that. In books, they give you a whole precis of everything that's gone before.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Can you perhaps just describe briefly the plot?
Kate Atkinson:
I can give you the elevator pitch for that.
So there are a group of disparate characters who are trapped in a country house hotel during a snowstorm where a murder mystery is taking place. That really is the entire plot of this book. But out with that, the murder mystery has all the stock characters that you would get in a Golden Age crime. You know, there's a there's a the murder mystery itself, the play within a play, there's a murder. The murder mystery that's taking place has a Major and a Vicar and a Dowager and a detective, and so all of those characters, the Butler, of course, but an Underbutler as well, just for extra bonus. And so what I wanted to do was to have those stock characters in the center of it, actually more towards the end of it, and have them reflected in real characters. This, you know, whole debate about realism there. But so that the army major I have has actually got PTSD from Afghanistan, where he lost a leg, the Vicar's lost his faith and his voice detected is Jackson, which says it all. And we have an extra detective in Reggie. So it's those, not the tropes that we're seeing in the actual play.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And what I love so much about this is how funny it is.
Kate Atkinson:
It is funny, it is funny. But I wrote it during Lockdown, and I was amusing myself. I knew I've always wanted to write a mode of mystery, so I just thought, this is a really good time. I was just in a way for me, I think. And then I thought, well, I'll put Jackson in it, because that's, you know, he can, he can do this. So that's how he came to be an exhibit really started as his book. It started as Lady Milton's book, but he, you know, I thought I may as well, but it was really just because I knew it would be funny and I would enjoy that as a you know…
Rhianna Dhillon:
Do you think that humor and sort of murder mystery, they go hand in hand?
Kate Atkinson:
I think if they are bad they do. I think I have experienced a couple of ones where I've just thought, oh my goodness me, you could do better than that, but I think there's always that silly edge to them, isn't there? Yeah, I can't imagine being really serious, or that would be…I did read somewhere a while ago of someone dying of a heart attack when they were doing a murder mystery in a hotel. And I thought, what was that? Just, you know, what? If you did one that was actually really terrifying, that would be not good,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Not cozy. You're talking about, you know, you did you read Agatha Cristie? And obviously there are a lot of inspirations that come through in this novel. And is that a kind of homage? Did you always want to write a sort of homage to Christie?
Kate Atkinson:
No, not at all. No, no. It was just, it was more. She's so very good at the murder mystery that I think I took a lot from her. There's little things that, little nuggets in her tutoring for me, like the main one of the characters who has a large part to play, but off screen, as it were, is the housekeeper, Sophie Greenway and Greenways is a name of Agatha Christie's home down and Devon and Tommy and Tuppence. So the lady Milton's Labradors. And those are two of her her characters. So throughout there's a Nancy styles. Is the fictional Agatha Christie in this in this book. And, you know, obviously the mystery, not the mystery of Styles, but, you know, there's a book which happens at Styles, and I think that was sort of there just as little, little easter eggs, just for me. I sometimes think I just wrote this book for me.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I mean, all of your novels actually, not just the ones with Jackson Brodie, are so intricately plotted. So how do you begin to map out a story like this? Sometimes people say that they start with the ending and then go backwards. Is that the same for you?
Kate Atkinson:
I start with the title, and I had the title for years, usually because I don't understand the neurology of writing, but I know that if I have something in my head somewhere, then there is a part of my brain that I can't access that is thinking about it. So I know if I've lodged a title somewhere, then there is something that's kind of accreting around it, like an oyster. You know, pearl in a shell, not always a pearl, sometimes not quite that valuable, but so I have the title.
And the titles really can sometimes just be looking for a novel, because I like titles. And sometimes I have a title I like a lot that I wait years until I can find something that will suit it or and then occasionally I give in and think I'm just going to give a title this book that has nothing to do with it, but I like it then, but it has it does have an effect. It definitely draws thinking towards it. And then I know where I wanted to begin as a rule, and I know it's not I know where I want it to end, although sometimes I do, but I know how I wanted to feel at the end, how I want to feel, and how I would like to convey that feeling to the reader. But I'm, I have a I'm a multi ending writer. I would think it's like Beethoven's Fifth he just couldn't finish it. He just needed to go on. So he kept giving it endings.
And there's some books that I have maybe five endings to, because I just need that sense, sense of an entity and but the bit in between is relatively unknown to me, and I think it's the thing that's interesting to you, is what's going to happen. If I knew what was going to happen, I have tried to plan, and I know that I now have the confidence to not do that, because I know that the second I put my fingers to the keys, it will change. So there's no point in going, this is going to happen, and that's going to happen. So it doesn't work like that.
But I am a very wasteful writer. I couldn't I mean, I can end a day with fewer words, definitely end with fewer words than I start with, and also that I'm very much a one step forward, two steps back, so to write so I never have a big final draft, because I'm drafting all the time, all the time, all the time. So I don't really take notes. I'll take notes on things like timelines where people are or what you know, it's more that I'm storybooking In a way, just to keep me right.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What I find really interesting about crime stories is that people always talking about the ending because they want to get to the end. They want to find out what happens. But I always think that's such a waste of the rest of the book.
Kate Atkinson:
Well,if I'm reading a crime novel, I don't read much crime these days, but if I'm reading crime novel, but that is what you want, isn't it? But then, isn't that what you want with all books, you sort of want to get to the end, even if you're savoring it, you still have a sense that the journey you're on is to get from the beginning to the end. And I think, I think with most crime novels, traditional crime novels, you're definitely on that A to B journey. You know, that's you start off, you've got this thing, you're going to solve it. You get to the end, you've solved it, and that's like, Oh, okay. But because I can't write a to b. I write sort of A, C, D, F, from back again to B. I don't write like that, which is one of the reasons that I would say I don't think of myself as a crime writer, because not really solving anything. I don't think anything gets solved in Death at the Sign of the Rook. And in fact, it's, it becomes very nuanced at the end, because, you know, Jackson's one of Jackson's mantras is that, you know, what's justice got to do with the law? And I think he's, you know, he's sort of manipulating, and he makes other people manipulate these kinds of endings.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I love Jackson's relationship with Reggie, and I sort of, I feel like really, kind of brilliantly written books like this. Always do have, like, a strong partnership at the heart of them. Why do you think that is, you know, obviously you have, like, the kind of classic Holmes and Watson, even like Jonathan Creek and Maddie Magellan. You know, there's sort of crime fighting.
Kate Atkinson:
They need someone to talk to. They need someone to talk to. They can't talk to the reader. They need to go. What do you think would happen if that happens? And I think that person, did you see, what they'd what they did, so it would all be in their heads otherwise. But we do have someone that we can see him thinking to as it were, and someone who is then rejecting his thinking, really, because she's she's so dismissive of him,
Rhianna Dhillon:
But in the loveliest way,
Kate Atkinson:
In the loveliest way, yes,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Like we're talking about. You have Agatha Christie, but not in Death at the Sign of the Rook, and you have Richmal Crompton but notin God in Ruins.
Kate Atkinson:
Yes, I'm such a huge Just William.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Me too. I would love to do a podcast with you just about Just William
Kate Atkinson:
I could talk forever about Just William. I don't know why I read him early, because I don't think anyone ever bought me a Just William book. I think they must have been in my grandmother's house, and I wonder if they belong to one of my uncles, because I don't remember them either being new books. They were almost old books. I've got quite a lot there. And there was something because I was a very, very well behaved, introverted only child, female only child. And there was something very liberating about William being so incredibly careless in every aspect of his life. I just, I just love that, and I love to Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown, particularly their absolute exhaustion with William was just so funny, yeah, and even if, yeah, just, I just love William.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What is sort of next for you then? Is there something that you are really excited to start writing?
Kate Atkinson:
I am writing, and I'm about two thirds of the way, what I think is actually going to be quite a short book called The dome of discovery, which is set in the Festival of Britain in 1951 and there is a murder in it. So a bit, I don't think it's a crime brew. It's, it's been, the research has been good, you know, fun up to a point, and then I think just, I've had a lot of problems struck it. So that's sort of what I'm doing at the moment, is moving bits of it around to be in the right place, which is what you do with crime novels, surely, because there's so much plotting that you have to keep readjusting the plot. So I'm doing a lot of plot readjustment at the moment, and it's really good for me to be doing publicity for The Rook because I really needed a break from it. And I can sense my kind of frustration and not being able to write at the moment, and they're thinking, that's good, because, you know, I get like a greyhound in a trap at certain points. I think, yes, now I've got the right energy. So, because your energy changes, fluctuates a lot when you're writing, I think, and you know, when you're done and it's down, it's very hard to write, I think. So you really need that kind of, Oh yes, I remember why I was writing this book.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Because you have, you know, you like, you say, You returned to Jackson Brody and you sort of returned with A God in Ruins. What is the sort of itch that makes you want to go back? Well, I
Kate Atkinson:
Well, I was, I always knew I was going to write God in ruins so there was never, it wasn't a going back. It was like waiting. I needed to write life after life first, to introduce Terry as a Teddy, as a character. But I always knew that really God influences the book. I wanted to write more, but I wasn't ready until I'd written life after life. So it wasn't a return. They were always for me, very much together,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Kate, thank you so much for talking to us. Death the Sign of the Rook is available now in all good bookshops, along with Kate's other titles. I hope that you're going to be sticking around.
I am going to stick around for a little bit of help with the Ask Penguin listener questions.
Kate Atkinson:
Yes, I am going to be sticking around.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Thank you so much. We're going to thank you in just a moment. Thank you. You're listening to ask Penguin, the new podcast from Penguin Books, and today I'm with author Kate Atkinson. We've just been joined by Alison Barrow, PR, Director at Transworld, and I'm right thinking that you two know each other quite well.
Alison Barrow:
Yes, we do. I am really fortunate to have worked with Kate for the entirety of her publishing career and most of mine. We've known each other for 30 years. I worked on her very first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and in fact, we worked out it's 30 years ago now since we met. Gosh, yeah, yeah, quite the relationship.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Let’s get into our listener questions. So if you're new to the podcast, this is the section of the show where I get to sit down with some of the experts who work here at Penguin and get the answers to your questions. We were hoping that you both might be able to help us out with some suggestions for crime and mystery reads. So our first Ask Penguin question is, I'm looking for a psychological thriller with a dark academia law vibe.
Kate Atkinson:
That's very nuanced.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It is quite specific. Very specific. Does anything spring to mind?
Alison Barrow:
The obvious, one that comes straight to mind is Donna Tartt’s, The Secret History, which I actually didn't re-read, I listened to recently.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Who reads it?
Alison Barrow:
She did, and she has a dreamy voice. She has a really beautiful, lyrical voice. And I think it really stands the test of time, and a lot of writers have marked their work by it, I think so that's the kind of classic. More recently, there's a book called The Cloisters, which is sort of a bit genre bending by Katy Hayes, and that has that dark academia vibe. So that's a good one to go for as well.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Perfect.
Kate Atkinson:
I was just trying to remember Gone Baby Gone the Dennis Lehane, which is one of my favorites, and I think that has a policeman in it. So that's as close as I can get.
Alison Barrow:
Scott Turrow is an American writer with a legal background.
Kate Atkinson:
I'm not above enjoying a John Grisham, to be honest.
Alison Barrow:
Helen Fields, more contemporary writer. She has a legal background and brings that to play a lot in her writing.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Excellent. Oh, a really lovely spread there. Thank you. Our next question, Dear, Ask Penguin, I'm after a who-done-it in a Woodhouse style, any tips?
Alison Barrow:
I think Tom Hindle has that kind of levity in his writing, again, a more contemporary writer, Simon Brett, another author, his Charles Paris's books are very, you know, they've got that lightness of touch and that sort of a side to the to the reader, which kind of brings that humor.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, I think that's what I really love about those books. Really brings the reader in, okay, another one, any riveting and page turning psychological thriller recommendations?
Alison Barrow:
Load’s, Kate. Go.
Kate Atkinson:
I think, well, all of, all of Gillian Flynn’s books are psychological thrillers, I think, and, and, very good. I think, you know, Gone Girl was like the classic, in a way, has become a classic, because it's really quite long time since that was published. But otherwise, Yellowface by Rebecca Kwan, which is really about how stealing someone's idea results in stealing their life results in getting into a terrible result. And so in a way, it's all to do with authenticity, but it is. It's one of those books that you would kind of take a step back from and go, Oh, I don't like, I don't like. What's gonna happen now,
Rhianna Dhillon:
Because also race is involved.
Kate Atkinson:
Yes, of course, because she's stealing, she's stealing a whole culture really.
Alison Barrow:
Well, I'm bound to mention Paula Hawkins latest book, The Blue Hour, which is tantalizingly set on a tidal Island, a fictional one off the west coast of Scotland. And the the island is cut off from the world once every day. And on this island is a very mysterious woman, an artist, and we unpick her backstory, which is interesting and layered, and very many people come into her life. And it's, it's an extraordinary, exceptional book, and a sort of step on from Paula's Girl on the Train, which she's most well known for a little bit in the territory of Notes on a Scandal, if you remember that thing that's a psychological mystery as well, with nods to Barbara Vine, who wrote also as Ruth Rendell. And so her Barbara Vine thread of books were very much in that dark, psychological sort of sinewy realm, I would say
Kate Atkinson:
Sinewy. That's a good word. Sinewy.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's a really lovely word to describe a book. It really makes you want to get your get the knots out.
Alison Barrow:
Yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
We have one last one, dear. Ask penguin. I'm really into light hearted mystery books with lovable characters. Some might say cozy. I guess I've been devouring The Thursday Murder Club series. What should I read next?
Alison Barrow:
I would say Janice Hallett, she's writing more in that sort of intimate. Cozy is it has almost become a drug of Word, and which is we've had, but you know, it shouldn't really be, because some people really want that intimate setting. So the appeal, yes, exactly the appeal.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And she's got a new one.
Alison Barrow:
She has.
Rhianna Dhillon:
love, I love Janice. She has a nice little Christmas one as well. If you're in the mood for a really quick Christmas set for mystery
Alison Barrow:
Richard Coles as well. Yeah, he's writing a scene of more sort of cozy crime, I would say. I hope I'm not being um unfair to him in that regard. But those are, they are written with a likeness of touch and very much in a sort of small community setting, villagey setting. Yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Those are absolutely perfect. Thank you so much both for your recommendations.
Well, that's a pretty exhaustive list of crime and mystery fiction to keep you and me on the edge of our seats. We're well into autumn now. It's the perfect season to curl up with a crime story, cozy or otherwise. So I hope you enjoy some of those suggestions. And thank you so much to all of you who messaged ask penguin. I hope it's been really helpful. You can find details for all of the books that we've mentioned this episode and across the series at Penguin.co.uk/podcasts.
And why not follow the show so that you never miss a recommendation, and if you've got a question or a message for us, you can email penguinpodcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk or click the link in the show notes to go straight to the podcast page.
Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to our brilliant guests, Kate Atkinson and Alison Barrow. Happy Reading.