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Authors as Sleuths
169 Plays2 years ago
Have you ever read a mystery where the sleuth is an author? Sarah and Brook discuss mysteries with writers as the central characters.
Authors, Books, and TV shows mentionedHammett Unwritten (2013) Gordon McAlpine writing as Owen Fitzstephen
Agatha Christie Series by Andrew Wilson
Murder She Wrote
Castle
The Ghost (2007) Robert Harris
The Thirteenth Tale (2006) Diana Sutterfield
The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) Ruth Ware
The Plot (2021) Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Vanished Bride (2019) Bella Ellis
The Word is Murder (2017) Anthony Horowitz
The Sentence is Death (2018) Anthony Horowitz
Kathy Reichs
Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano
More Informationhttps://www.cluedinmystery.com
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Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Authors as Detectives
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi Brooke. Hi Sarah. So today we are discussing mysteries where the sleuth is an author. I'm really excited to talk about this because, um, yeah, I realized that a surprisingly large number of books that I've read have the main character as an
Embracing the Genre: Initial Skepticism to Favorite
00:00:34
Speaker
author. And so I thought it would be kind of fun to talk a little bit about that.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah. And I have to admit, Sarah, that when you suggested this topic for the show, and I think it was a really long time ago, it may have been even one of our first brainstorming lists. Um, I really didn't know much about the category at all. And I thought, Oh, well, that sounds like a kind of a cool concept. Um, but oh my goodness, I have completely fallen in love with this and I may have discovered a favorite category of mystery.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the ones that I really enjoy as well. So I'll just give a little bit of a summary and background. So I don't know if I gravitate towards these because I secretly want to investigate a crime. But that may also be why I write mysteries because I secretly consider myself to be a detective. But as I mentioned, I do seem to read a lot of books where the main sleuth or the main character is an author.
00:01:31
Speaker
Sometimes, they do pick these up without realizing that that's the premise, but if I have two books to choose from and one has the investigators as an author, I'll probably choose that one. Our listeners will remember during our conversation about Agatha Christie's disappearance how Dorothy L. Sayers and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were asked to provide assistance with the investigation.
00:01:56
Speaker
Perhaps it was this that set the stage for authors to be sleuths in fiction detective stories. Although before Agatha Christie disappeared, Doyle did insert himself into real investigations to advocate for convictions to be turned over. So maybe that is where that seed was planted.
Historical and Fictional Examples of Author Sleuths
00:02:16
Speaker
And
00:02:16
Speaker
you know, we can maybe talk a little bit about his character Watson, who is the author of the recordings of Sherlock stories.
00:02:29
Speaker
I haven't read any of these, but there are several authors who've made real authors their sleuths. Perhaps it's Dashiel Hammett's past as a Pinkerton detective where he would have actually solved cases in real life that sparked Gordon McAlpine's series, which he wrote as Owen FitzSteven, where Hammett investigates crimes.
00:02:49
Speaker
Multiple authors have paired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde to have them solve cases. And I actually love this premise, and so I'm definitely going to check out a couple of those. And Andrew Wilson uses Agatha Christie as his detective, and Julia Golding has Jane Austen as the sleuth in her middle grade series. And there's countless other examples of, you know, I think there's a series featuring the Bronte sisters, for example.
00:03:19
Speaker
If we look at TV, Murder She Wrote and Castle are both TV series that have authors as the central characters. There are several standalone books that use the device of the author as an investigator. The Ghost by Robert Harris, The Thirteenth Tale by Dan Sutterfield,
00:03:37
Speaker
The Woman in Cabin 10, which you and I have already discussed. There's the plot by Jean Hoff Corlitz. And where in that book, it's not only being an author, but stealing another's work that is central to the story.
00:03:53
Speaker
So Brooke, do you have any theories about why authors might make their sleuths writers?
Why Authors Make Great Detectives
00:04:00
Speaker
You know, I've spent this whole week thinking about it and I really focused this time and I should probably clarify from what I said earlier on the idea of the real life authors as sleuths. And that's kind of where I spent my time diving into.
00:04:16
Speaker
to get ready for our episode. So yes, I've been thinking, why is this so intriguing and fascinating to me? And I have a lot of different thoughts, but one idea is the fact that if you hear author interviews, a lot of the things they get asked right up front is how do you get your ideas?
00:04:37
Speaker
And so I think that this is a very fun, imaginative way of, especially in the category of the true life authors, of how they got their idea. Well, because they were on a case themselves.
Literary Works Featuring Authors as Detectives
00:04:50
Speaker
So, you know, of course they've got this great treasure trove of material. Yeah, I love that. So have you read any of the stories featuring real life authors as the sleuths?
00:05:03
Speaker
So this week I did read book one of the Bronte sisters mysteries. It's the vanished bride by Bella Ellis.
00:05:12
Speaker
And Bronte sister fans will recognize that she's done a little play on her pen name for this because the Bronte sisters used the last name Bell as their pen name when they were writing. They originally wrote as men to become published. And so Ellis Bell was Emily Bronte's pen name. And now the author of this series has taken on Bella Ellis, which I think is quite clever.
00:05:42
Speaker
Really, really well done. I definitely intend to continue with the series because she also has the tone and the feel of as if you were reading a Bronte novel, which let's face it, is a really tall feat to be able to pull that off. But she does, and it's a great mystery. And the interactions between the sisters, all three sisters are solving this case together.
00:06:07
Speaker
the relationships and the interaction between the sisters it just it's great and you know that she's done a lot of biographical research too because she refers to some of the things that actually happen in their lives and she makes it feel very very real like I. Believe that these guys probably were solving mysteries now.
00:06:27
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, I'm definitely going to
Agatha Christie and Andrew Wilson's Detective Depictions
00:06:30
Speaker
check that out. And then the other one that I thought I might check out is Andrew Wilson's series with Agatha Christie as the Sleuth, because I think the first book in that series is set during her disappearance. And in that, she's solving a mystery, which I think is one of the theories that we discussed in our episode that maybe that was what she was doing during those 10 days.
00:06:57
Speaker
I agree that's definitely one I would like to read because it gives us that other alternate explanation of where Agatha was. So I can think of a couple of examples where the author's character is based on themselves.
00:07:12
Speaker
Um, so the first is Anthony Horowitz, whose books, the word is murder and the sentences death feature fictionalized versions of himself, uh, as one of the investigators. And I just absolutely love this premise. Um, and it kind of goes back to what I said earlier about, you know, me secretly wanting to investigate a crime. Um, he's, he's taken that and, and made that into, um, into a series that I really enjoy.
00:07:39
Speaker
And the other one that I can think of is Kathy Reichs and her books where her main character like her is both an author and a forensic anthropologist. But the writing kind of part of her personality or her character's personality is really secondary to the investigation. So it's maybe the sleuth is writing adjacent.
00:08:02
Speaker
And then, I don't know if I would put Watson in there as, because he certainly, you know, part of the way that the Sherlock stories become famous or his investigations become famous is through these chronicles that Watson has been writing as they've done their investigations. And so, yeah, you know, he certainly is considered an author in those stories.
00:08:30
Speaker
I was also interested as I was reading and thinking about this setup, if you will, that authors make great sleuths because a sleuth has to have some sort of special skill, whether it's Poirot or Marple or
00:08:46
Speaker
You mentioned Jessica Fletcher. They have to have some special skill that enables them to solve the crime and
Authors' Skills in Mystery Solving
00:08:53
Speaker
get the aha before everyone else. And if you think about the skills that an author has, you know, they're kind of quietly observing the world. They're taking in details that other people in the room probably are not. Authors tend to be good at communicating and rather eloquent and
00:09:14
Speaker
we, I at least think of my favorite authors as very intelligent. So I think it's a good starting point to make them the sleuth in a story. Yeah, I would, I would definitely agree with that. And I think I would add that, you know, they need to be pretty good researchers, right? And so thinking about where you might
00:09:33
Speaker
get some more information about, I don't know, a particular crime or a particular event. And certainly in Murder She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher being an author was a really good excuse for her to be in different situations where a body might be found.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And so that helps with that, you know, because sometimes you think about some books or some stories where you're like, I mean, how many bodies could there possibly be in this bakery? Right.
00:10:07
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, that's a really good point. And some of the stories where the author is like the journalist, so that takes us back to the woman in cabin 10. Well, a journalist maybe even is assigned to cover the case, right? So it's a great way to help
00:10:27
Speaker
carry a series on as an excuse of why that person is there. I agree with that, Sarah. And the research point, that's great because that's what authors do, right? They're like, oh, I want to learn about that. And so they would have the ability and the resources kind of at the tips of their fingers. Exactly.
00:10:44
Speaker
And the other thing that I was thinking about as I was preparing for our conversation today was there are some stories where an author is a sidekick,
Supporting Roles and Introversion in Detective Stories
00:10:57
Speaker
right? So I think about Agatha Christie's character, Ariadne Oliver, and she appears in several of Christie's books and stories. And she, you know, helps Poirot in a couple of
00:11:09
Speaker
in a couple of cases. I don't know that she's necessarily actively investigating, but she might have a conversation with someone that she relays to Poirot and that triggers for him the solution to the crime.
00:11:25
Speaker
And I think the same thing of Harriet Vane, Dorothy L. Sayre's character who, you know, she kind of works with Lord Peter Whimsy in a couple of cases. Same thing, she speaks to people and asks questions and maybe can get to some places that the traditional sleuth doesn't necessarily have access to, right?
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. And that reminds me of what we talked about in, um, authors as spies in our spy episode. Um, authors are a lot of times sort of unassuming. They might be sort of the, um, the bookish quiet one that you wouldn't necessarily assume is
00:12:12
Speaker
actually detecting and investigating the crime. So I think you're right, they can use some of those maybe introversion skills as a way to get in and talk with people and feel like they're non-threatening. So I think that also makes them a good sleuth and it makes for a fun story.
The Appeal of Authors as Fictional Sleuths
00:12:32
Speaker
I know for me, authors
00:12:34
Speaker
are the people that I consider my heroes. And so I love the idea of having an author be the detective, whether it's a real life author. And you mentioned there's a lot of different ones. If people are interested, Emily Dickinson is a sleuth and one, Doyle, Wilde,
00:12:55
Speaker
the Bronte sisters, Dickens. I mean, if you have a favorite author, you might want to poke around and see if they've been cast as a sleuth. But it feels really satisfying as kind of a bookish person to have this person that you've looked up to be the hero of the story in this way. I've just been hit by an idea, Brooke.
Creative Ideas: Authors as Detectives in Publishing
00:13:18
Speaker
What about a publishing company where the authors are also all detectives?
00:13:26
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that whole series. I love it. I love it. Now you've got my wheels turning Sarah, but yeah, to your point, I think, um, yeah, there's just something really satisfying about the idea of, uh, an author that you love also, um, solving, solving mysteries, you know, not only writing them, but, but actually actively solving them.
00:13:54
Speaker
At the end of the Bronte sisters book one, there's a fantastic author note by the author who was able to visit the Bronte sisters home when she was actually quite young. Anyway, it's great. You can tell I'm really loving this book, right? But she says in it,
00:14:15
Speaker
Admittedly, there's no evidence that the Bronte sisters were ever sleuths. But then again, there's no evidence that they weren't. And I thought that that was just really fun. Like, well, what if? We don't know. We don't know what their real life is like.
00:14:30
Speaker
No, I love it. I'm definitely going to check that out. And yeah, a couple of the others. I think there's there's probably some really great, some great stories. And I highly recommend the Anthony Horowitz, the word is murder and the sentence is death, which the way that he talks about his life as an author and then kind of being swept up in these investigations is pretty great.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yes, those are on my list as well. So there's a couple of other books that I've read recently that feature an author as the sleuth. And I'm thinking of the Finley Donovan series by El Cosimano, where Finley Donovan is an author. And so in that, the character is talking about having to meet these deadlines to submit.
00:15:23
Speaker
manuscripts to her editor and she's working with her agent and at the same time also investigating some crimes, which is kind of fun. I think as someone who is also an author, it's kind of fun to see that in a story.
00:15:45
Speaker
Oh, I would totally agree. And would you say, because I can think back, even stories that maybe weren't necessarily mysteries, but books that I read as a young person where the author was the protagonist, excuse me, the protagonist was an author. Would you say, Sarah, that some of those books encouraged you to want to be an author, like reading these stories about what it was like to
00:16:12
Speaker
to have this life. Yeah, there's something about seeing that little bit of author life that's inspiring for sure. And you throw in a murder and I'm hooked.
00:16:24
Speaker
Um, so last year I read the plot, um, by Jean Hant Corlitz and I really enjoyed that because the whole premise of the book was around one author stealing another author's work. Um, and, uh,
00:16:46
Speaker
how that kind of unravels. So it's more of a domestic thriller. It's not really a who done it. I really enjoyed that book.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds great. I think that maybe there's not enough attention paid to the gravity of that. You know, like if you think about plagiarism or straight up just, you know, publishing someone else's work, those are real crimes and they could be a great setup for a murder mystery.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, totally. It was done really well, I think, in this book. So I just started watching Castle, which I had never seen any of it before. I don't know why I never watched it before because it's really fun to see this.
00:17:36
Speaker
author living out that idea of helping the police with investigations. He very much inserts himself into this investigation, or on an ongoing basis, inserts himself into each of the weekly cases that the police are facing. It's fun to see that on the screen.
00:18:05
Speaker
I have not watched Castle either, but I was very into Murder She Wrote for a period of time and forced my family to watch it each week and would then go to my grandma's house because she still had a typewriter set up and pretty much decide that I was Jessica Fletcher and live out some of the cases in my imagination. Oh, I love that, Brooke.
00:18:31
Speaker
I definitely watched Murder, She Wrote when I was younger, but it's been a long time actually since I've watched it, so I might have to see if I can find some old episodes to refresh my memory.
00:18:48
Speaker
I don't know if there were any earlier examples on screen of an author or someone in the publishing space being the protagonist of a crime show.
00:19:04
Speaker
I can't think of
Closing Thoughts and Call to Action
00:19:05
Speaker
any. I do have a quote from the Vanished Bride, and this is Charlotte Bronte speaking to her sisters. And this is the point in the story where the sleuths are kind of deciding that they're maybe in over their head. We see that a lot in a story where they're like, you know, maybe we should just give up. This is crazy.
00:19:22
Speaker
But she says, it is our duty not to hide. It is our vocation as writers to peer into the dark, to stare and stare until our eyes adjust to the murk and discern every detail that we may drag it into the light. I thought that that was a really great way to sum up what author sleuth might have as their impetus.
00:19:47
Speaker
Oh, that's really great. Thanks so much for sharing that. So Brooke, I think this was a really great conversation talking about sleuths or authors as sleuths. So yeah, I think there's a lot of books in this category. And as you suggested, if someone has a favorite author, there's probably a book or two with that author as the sleuth investigating mysteries. And so definitely worth checking out.
00:20:14
Speaker
That's right. So thank you everyone for joining us today on Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery. Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Steven. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at Clued In Mystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.