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Paranormal Mysteries with Naomi Kuttner
1 Playsin 8 hours
In today's episode, Brook and Sarah discuss mysteries that include paranormal elements with author Naomi Kuttner, author of the paranormal mystery series The Retired Assassin's Guide.
Discussed and mentioned
Thursday Murder Club (2021) Richard Osman
The Retired Assassin's Guide to Country Gardening(2025) Naomi Kuttner
The Retired Assassin's Guide to Orchid Hunting (2025) Naomi Kuttner
The Retired Assassin's Guide to Amateur Theatrics(2026) Naomi Kuttner
Murder on the Orient Express (1934) Agatha Christie
About Naomi Kuttner
Website: https://naomikuttner.com/
For more information
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Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
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Order Life or Delft by Brook and Sarah
For a full episode transcript, visit https://cluedinmystery.com/paranormal-mystery-interview-with-naomi-kuttner/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke. Hi Sarah, today we're continuing the discussion about paranormal mysteries and we have a treat, we have an author interview.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm very excited to introduce Naomi Kuttner. She's a cozy mystery and fantasy writer living in New Zealand. When she's not busy raising her twin son and daughter or writing, Naomi spends her free time surfing, wing foiling, and retrieving her shoes from Max the dog.
00:00:47
Speaker
Her Shadow Kingdom series is a blend of urban fantasy and Norse mythology, and she's currently working on book three of A Cozy Mystery series set in New Zealand.
Inspiration and Setting
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome, Naomi. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hello to everyone. It's lovely to be here.
00:01:06
Speaker
So, Naomi, why don't we start with you telling us about this series that starts with a book, The Retired Assassin's Guide to Gardening. Yeah, so about two and a bit years ago my my twins were born and one night in the middle of the night I found myself um reading the Thursday Murder Club, as a lot of people were around that time. And it just seemed like a perfect blend of cosiness with a bit of murder sprinkled in and I thought, you know,
00:01:41
Speaker
this is what I need in my life right now, i'm getting woken up four or five times a night. I need some kind of outlet. I think i could I could write one of these. So that was kind of the um the genesis of the series.
00:01:54
Speaker
And I started off writing it by hand, sort of in the moments that I had in between keeping my twins alive. And um to be honest, the the first book was finished by the end of the year.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I do not remember too much of writing it, it's a little bit of a blur. But I had this great nostalgia for New Zealand. of like I was born here, I grew up here, but even so I felt this huge nostalgia for New Zealand of my childhood. So I set this murder mystery, paranormal murder mystery, in a fictional town on the west coast of New Zealand.
00:02:32
Speaker
um I grew up in a small town as well. And I just put in all my favorite bits of New Zealand. I tried to make it as as um Kiwi. It's another name for New Zealanders. It's our national bird.
00:02:43
Speaker
As Kiwi as possible. And I really had a lot of fun with it. And then now it's grown to two books and I'm i'm working on the third book. And the ghosts, arms yeah, well, we we can talk about the ghosts. I think that's what we're going to be mainly talking
Main Characters and Plot
00:02:59
Speaker
about. But that was really the the genesis of of the series.
00:03:04
Speaker
I love that you also grew up in a small town, as did I. And I really felt that when reading your book of that, you know, this is something that you felt very acquainted with and you knew how to put in the little details that only someone who um lived there would know these little things about the town. And it's lovely. um But as you mentioned ghosts, that is where we would like to take this. And what drew you to writing paranormal mystery rather than, you know, you mentioned Thursday Murder Club, there's no paranormal elements in that. What made you decide to go that route?
00:03:41
Speaker
I think it was some ah sort of the seed of an idea because the main character in these novels is Dante, who's a a retired assassin. He's retired from MI6 and he's come to the opposite side of the world to try and live a quiet, normal life.
00:03:58
Speaker
And if you read the books, you'll see this is a very difficult for him. And yet, though life he ends up living is far from normal. But I had the kind of the seed of the idea. It's funny thinking back on how things come from, where they come from. I had this sort of idea of an assassin and a kid who can see ghosts.
00:04:15
Speaker
And the assassin being on holiday somewhere and the kid freaking out because he can see all the ghosts. And the assassin thinks it's for a completely different reason. He thinks he's been recognized or something. And that was the sort of seed of the idea.
00:04:27
Speaker
and those two characters grew into Dante Reed and the other character is Charlie who is a New Zealander. He's around 20 and he ends up being Dante's gardener and he can see ghosts. So that was the seed of the idea but I also had been thinking about the idea of mysteries in general and how in mystery with ghosts it could end up being very boring because you could just ask the ghost who killed you.
00:05:00
Speaker
And that would be a very unsatisfying way to solve mystery. So I was thinking, well, how could you write a mystery with ghosts and still have have all the things that you have in a mystery where you want the detectors to have clues and red herrings and and all that kind of thing? So I started thinking about ghosts in that way.
00:05:21
Speaker
and that they're not just hanging around, you know, wanting to help the sleuths. They've kind of got their own things going on. They've got their own agendas. They're kind of like the people they were in life, so they're not always truthful. They're not always helpful. And even perhaps if the victim of the murder is as there, they may not know who killed them.
00:05:44
Speaker
Like, they may have been attacked at night. They may have been poisoned. So, possibly if you could speak to the ghost of someone who's been murdered, they may not even be able to help you all that much solve the crime.
Paranormal Elements and Mysteries
00:05:56
Speaker
So, it was that idea that i wanted to explore and that's part of why the ghosts showed up in this series.
00:06:03
Speaker
If you think about it, one of the great mysteries of um life is death and what happens after it. so I mean, I just imagine what might happen and what might be know kind of nice to happen, that you could actually talk to people after they go.
00:06:19
Speaker
Nobody actually knows, but that's just added another dimension to the mystery. Well, and so that leads really nicely into my next question, which is about, you know, in paranormal mystery, there's often more than one mystery unfolding. You've got the crime itself, but there's also that question of what's happening at the supernatural level. So how do you approach balancing those two threads in your writing? ink Well, it's interesting because in mysteries where there are no ghosts,
00:06:56
Speaker
um I was thinking the other day about, say, um murder on the Orient Express. That story, the murder happened off the page and quite a few years ago. It was a tragic case of it of a little girl.
00:07:10
Speaker
and but that murder kind of haunts the pages of the story. Like you can't get away from it. It colours everything that's happened. There's these people, I think, I can't remember how many were, I think there were 12 people whose lives had just been completely destroyed by these tragic tragic events.
00:07:29
Speaker
And they, even though, you know, there are no ghosts in Agatha Christie, the victim still haunts the story in a way because she's on everyone's minds.
00:07:40
Speaker
And so i found that ah The way that that I dealt with the ghost is a little bit different in each story and this kind of comes down to a world building question because when you're writing any kind of story, but particularly paranormal, you kind of get to make up the rules of of the world, of the ghost.
00:08:03
Speaker
And i confess I cheated a little bit in that the main character, Charlie, who can talk to ghosts, he's still figuring out the rules. So I kind of gave me a chance to figure out the rules a bit as I went.
00:08:16
Speaker
But in this particular world, some ghosts pass on immediately after they after they die because they have no unfinished business. They're ready to carry on to whatever the next stage is and some hang around.
00:08:29
Speaker
and so like in In the first mystery they try to find the victim to find out what she can tell. In the second mystery the victim actually just passes on, he's lived a good life, he's he's ready to carry on.
00:08:44
Speaker
and so What I think dealing with the supernatural elements, there's first the mechanics of the mystery as in what can you learn from these ghosts as you could with any other witness, except these witnesses happen to be dead.
00:09:00
Speaker
um But then this idea of catharsis. because hopefully the sleuths successfully solve the mystery they get closure for that victim and then then that person can pass on or or something like that and it's kind of that hopefully happens in real life as well whether they're ghosts or not but i guess it's a the way of kind of making that um making that abstract idea concrete within the rules of this this world
00:09:33
Speaker
So that answers your question. No, that's great. Thank you. Naomi, do you think that adding the paranormal elements to a murder mystery changes the role of the sleuth or the detective?
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely does. Well, but I guess I better backtrack a little bit because in this particular series, there are actually three sleuths.
00:10:01
Speaker
So there's Dante, who's a retired assassin, and he has his particular set of skills. And he also has some massive blind spots to do with interacting with normal people, because he hasn't really done much of that.
00:10:13
Speaker
And then there's Charlie, who can speak to ghosts and is also, i don't know, I think ah think of him almost, he's a very lovable, quite innocent character. So he's not really there with all the sneaking around and deception.
00:10:26
Speaker
But then there's Eleanor, who is a retiree with her own Shekid past, who's very good at that kind of being sly and getting things out of people and and all that kind of thing. So it definitely does, um like you can approach the the mystery from those three angles with three very different characters that all have very different roles.
00:10:50
Speaker
um I think it does change the role because a lot of the evidence that, say, Charlie, who can talk to ghosts, the evidence that he gets is in no way admissible in any kind of court of law. You can't say, oh, well, the ghost of so-and-so told me this thing.
00:11:09
Speaker
So while the sleuths may have an added layer of inside knowledge, they still then have to go and find all the evidence to be able to prove it and um to get this person to either reveal their own guilt through their actions or to know get them to a drawing room scene where they sort of point the finger at the the guilty person.
00:11:31
Speaker
So Yeah, it does add an added layer. And there's also a huge potential for irony in it as well, because some of the most fun scenes to write are when, say, Charlie is trying to do something, in some investigation, a witness interview or something like that.
00:11:49
Speaker
And then he has all these nosy ghosts sort of daring over his shoulder saying, oh, I wouldn't do it like that. No, that's not true. Or yeah just adding in their
Writing Process and Challenges
00:11:58
Speaker
two pence. And the poor chap, no one else can hear it, but he can. And it's extremely distracting.
00:12:05
Speaker
So that's definitely part of the the fun of writing a sort of invisible chorus that no one else can see. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun as a reader as well. And, you know, then there's the period of time where Charlie doesn't share the information. This is particularly in book one. He doesn't share the information that he's learned because he doesn't feel comfortable sharing that with Dante or the others. um So it was it's almost like evidence that someone has found, but they're not coming forward with it yet.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. I didn't really consider all the implications when I was like, right, and there will be ghosts. But there's a lot to unpack. And I kind of have in like in the book that I'm writing now that takes place, it's the it's the Retired Assassin's Guide to Amateur Theatrics.
00:13:01
Speaker
And it's centered around an amateur production of Macbeth. I had no idea that theatres are incredibly superstitious, allegedly haunted places.
00:13:15
Speaker
There's all these superstitions dating back hundreds of years, like for instance when a play is happening, you always have to, when everyone leaves for the night, you have to put a ghost light in the centre of the stage.
00:13:28
Speaker
And there's all these different theories about whether it's to keep the ghosts happy or to keep the ghosts away. And all of these things that are still very much part of many theatres, especially the old ones. And the old ones are often, they have like several ghost stories attached to them because a lot of the old theatres also caught fire at various times in their history.
00:13:49
Speaker
And then Macbeth. there's I recently did a tour of one of the theatres in Auckland, which is a gorgeous theatre from the It's kind of made up to look like the Taj Mahal with a night sky. and It's quite a rare example of that kind of architecture.
00:14:06
Speaker
and the guide was talking about the Scottish play and that's because Macbeth is considered such an unlucky play that you're not even allowed to say the name Macbeth inside a theatre unless you're actually doing the play rehearsing the play on stage.
00:14:23
Speaker
So there's all these wonderful superstitions and you can really tap into this rich mythology probably going back as long as humans have been telling stories about ghosts and hauntings and and drama and and all of that. So it is, it's just it's really fun to explore.
Literary Influences
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like it's it's a lot of fun to write that particular book, but it also sounds like it's pretty fun to write your series. I have been having so much fun. I don't know if I should be allowed to be having this much fun.
00:14:58
Speaker
Mystery readers often care very strongly about fair play or the idea that the reader should have access to the same clues as the detective.
00:15:09
Speaker
How do paranormal characters like ghosts complicate that? You touched on this earlier when you, when you were talking about, you know, that, um, Dante could ask, how did you die? Right. Um,
00:15:24
Speaker
So how do you, you've touched a a little bit on on how you work around that. um But are there any other ways that you avoid that complication or work around that complication because those those characters know more than would be available to a traditional detective?
00:15:46
Speaker
oh
00:15:49
Speaker
think Actually in the in this latest, the one book I'm writing at the moment, I've been playing with the idea, don't know if I should say this, but I don't think it's a spoiler, of about how ghosts have their own agendas so they can be deceptive.
00:16:07
Speaker
So while um you know the sleuth may have access to extra knowledge than a traditional detective, That can also be misleading and you can't exactly completely rely on it just because someone's a ghost. doesn't mean they they have abandoned their own agenda or they they can't be somehow involved in the crime or something like that or may want to mislead the sleuths for their own purposes.
00:16:33
Speaker
But I agree, like fair play, I take that very seriously as well. And I think so far I've provided everyone with all the clues. Like they get the clues at the same time as the sleuths.
00:16:44
Speaker
And um what I do like, which is something that Agatha Christie was a total amazing maestro of, or maestra, um is that she gives you all the information, but she misrepresents it. And she kind of builds in assumptions when she's giving you the information. she She slips them all these assumptions into it that are then going to totally misdirect you as a reader to go off in the wrong direction.
00:17:12
Speaker
And then at the end, when Wharo or Miss Marple gives their summing up, you see how they took the same information as you, but without making assumptions, they came to the right conclusion.
00:17:24
Speaker
And I think that's also part of the art of writing a good mystery, is being able to do that. So you have played fair with the reader, but you still managed to pull the rag out from under their feet at the end, hopefully, by misdirecting them with you know, with the facts, which is, again, one of that the kind of sleight of hands of of writing a good mysteries.
00:17:45
Speaker
I had not previously thought about ghosts being unreliable characters. And I think I'm going have to think about that a little bit more.
00:17:57
Speaker
yeah I mean, there's all those poltergeist stories and and so on. I mean, they often, they're not necessarily benevolent, really. So, yeah. still part of the world building.
00:18:11
Speaker
I think that it's interesting. We also want to think that every ghost wears has some sort of historical costume too. You know, you see the jokes about ah that they wouldn't be in modern clothing and they can also be telling lies because they're just people.
00:18:28
Speaker
that's I just love thinking about that as well. Yeah, and by and large, the ghosts of this little town in New Zealand are um They just kind of got along, got getting on with the afterlife in a way, and they're just as gossipy and eccentric as they were in life, which is, again, quite a lot of fun to write.
00:18:51
Speaker
um And then, of course, you have the the ghosts who are really up to no good. So, yeah, I guess it all comes along with the whole small town small town um vibe. And, you know, the small towns where sleuth happens to live end up being very dangerous places to live yourself.
00:19:09
Speaker
you should definitely move out if an amateur detective ever comes to move into your fourth down because the body count will just sort of soar up off the charts isn't that true well share with us a little bit about your writing process um as far as like what your routine is and and how you like to build your stories sure so usually just start with the a seed of an idea, which is something that usually goes like, wouldn't it be fun if blah, blah, blah.
00:19:42
Speaker
So I thought, wouldn't it be fun if there was a theater production that Dante was involved in And I thought it should be a very murdery one, like Macbeth.
00:19:52
Speaker
And then supposing he has to play a murderer in the play and then he's trying to pretend not to be a murderer while everyone's trying to get him to be very murderous.
00:20:03
Speaker
And so on. So that's usually like the grain of the idea. I definitely started off as a panther, so someone who sort of makes up the plot as they go along. And after writing the first mystery, I discovered that that is a very, very labor intensive way to write a mystery.
00:20:22
Speaker
Ideally, when you write a mystery, you should know who done it and what they done and how they done it. and if you don't then you end up doing a lot of rewrites.
00:20:32
Speaker
So I've slowly swung more and more into the plotting camp, but I still find that I can only get the plot advanced to a certain point when I just need to start writing the actual story. And at the moment, for instance, I've written the first draft of this third book, and then while I'm revising it, I came up with a, I think, a good idea.
00:20:59
Speaker
to change the plot quite a bit and add an extra twist. and So then that means a bunch more revising. So I sort of swing back between plotting and pantsing.
00:21:10
Speaker
and um I don't know, i kind of look in admiration at the people who are able to just write a beautiful detailed plot and then just write the whole thing out in one go.
00:21:21
Speaker
um they may up They must exist somewhere, but maybe they're not as many as I think there are. touch yeah So that's kind of the writing process. and yeah generally write try to write every day um when my children are asleep or at daycare and yeah just carry on through to the end basically and then keep on revising until it looks ship shape and then send it to my editor and and my then my beta readers so that's kind of how it works
00:21:58
Speaker
who are some of your favorite authors writing in this space Yeah, so, I mean, that's one of those questions that I often blank on it because there's so many.
00:22:10
Speaker
But when I think about it, um i thought I was thinking about when like when I first startedbb started to really love mysteries. At first I thought, okay, it was when I started reading Sherlock Holmes, as everyone does when they, well, not everyone, but lots of people do when they're just starting off into the mystery genre. yeah It's Sherlock Holmes, and it's great stuff. It's really fun.
00:22:32
Speaker
Then I thought, actually, earlier than that, I used to read a lot of Enid Blyton, a lot of famous five, secret s seven, fantastic four, with Timothy the dog, that and the murderer, like, they didn't have any murders, but the the villains would be like, they'd overhear these conversations, which would be like,
00:22:52
Speaker
blah blah blah at midnight tonight blah blah blah we'll meet down by the old castle and stuff like that so i think that was probably my earliest mystery reading and also tintin i mean tintin the the cartoons are often mysteries and they're so much fun.
00:23:12
Speaker
So then the others would be Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie of course, and then Laurie R King who does wonderful historic Sherlock Holmes reimaginings, Alexander McCall Smith, Ben Aronovich who does this great to urban fantasy police procedurals.
00:23:34
Speaker
And then there's kind of more unusual ones like Lois McMaster-Bujold. She does a lot of her Vorkosigan stories are actually when you look at them sideways, there's often a mystery there.
00:23:45
Speaker
Or Terry Pratchett with his Nightwatch series, which are police procedures, but they are also mysteries. I mean even Harry Potter has, I can think the first three books are mysteries, definitely the first two.
00:24:00
Speaker
So i think mystery is one of those wonderful genres that come into so many books because one of the great ways to keep a reader reading is to ask a question.
00:24:11
Speaker
and then solve it over the course of the story. So yeah, I mean there's so, and there are like a whole other boatload of writers who are writing great mysteries right now, and my reading list is so long, and there's so little time to
Book Availability and Conclusion
00:24:29
Speaker
actually clear it. of yeah Yeah, I share that affliction, Naomi, that our reading lists are just so long, we'll never get through. And yeah every new books come out that look fantastic.
00:24:45
Speaker
Oh, so many. So, so many. So Naomi, share with our listeners where they can find out more about you and your books. So all my books are on Amazon. If you look up the Retired Assassin's Guide, you'll find the series there.
00:25:00
Speaker
And they are also have been made into audio books. And I'm very happy to say that the narrator is a New Zealander, because often New Zealand accents end up sort of falling somewhere outside of New Zealand, anywhere from Australia to South Africa.
00:25:16
Speaker
But the narrator is a Kiwi who's done a fantastic job as well as doing all the other voices as well. And yeah, so if you just look up the Retired Assassin's Guide on Amazon, you'll find them all there.
00:25:29
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you again for joining us today. And thank you listeners for joining us on Clued in Mystery. Until next time, I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah.
00:25:41
Speaker
And we both love mystery. Clued in Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers. If you liked what you heard, please consider telling a friend, leaving a review, or subscribing with your favorite podcast listening app.
00:25:58
Speaker
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