Murder She Wrote – Debbie Young's Writing Life

photo of Debbie leaning on a tomb in Hawkesbury churchyard — Crime writer Debbie Young makes a grave confession (picture by Angela Fitch in the churchyard at St Mary’s, Hawkesbury)

Making notes for an article I’m writing about the importance of meeting readers’ expectations, I’m forced to acknowledge that, for a cosy mystery writer, I’m a reluctant murderer.

While I love devising an intriguing and imaginative plot that provides motive and opportunity for a multitude of suspects, when it comes to delivering the fatal blow, I have to force myself to, er, bite the bullet.

There have even been moments when I’ve regretted announcing in advance that all seven titles in my Sophie Sayers Village Mystery series would have “Murder” in the title – although when they’re all lined up together on the shelf, they will make an excellent matching set:

Best Murder in Show
Trick or Murder?
Murder in the Manger
Murder by the Book
Springtime for Murder
Murder Your Darlings
School’s Out for Murder

Mea Culpa

I confess… a certain hesitation in bumping people off for the sake of entertainment. This may come as a relief to my family, friends and neighbours. But it’s hardly an ideal quality in a crime writer.

I’m guilty… not of murder, but of occasionally breaking the rules of what’s expected in a crime story.

I stand accused… of letting intended murder victims occasionally escape with their life at the last minute, or to have a murder turn out to be not what it first seems.

It’s a fair cop… But it’s all good fun, all the same.

Must Try Harder

image of covers of first three books in the Sophie Sayers series — The first three books are available from Amazon or may be ordered from your local independent bookshop

But in my next book, Murder by the Book, I’ve pulled myself together and started the story in no uncertain terms: by chucking a stranger down the village well to a certain death.

But who is the victim? And who pushed the stranger, and why?

All will be revealed in April, when I’ll be launching Murder by the Book at the fourth Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival on Saturday 21st April.

For more information about the Festival, visit www.hulitfest.com
To buy the first three Sophie Sayers books before the fourth is published, click here.
For general information about the Sophie Sayers Series, click here.

Following this summer, I have a new standard for measuring the quality of a holiday: it should not involve:

the emergency services
any mention of us in the local paper
a dead body

By day two of our summer holiday this year, we’d already failed on all three counts, through no fault of our own.

Mindful of the feelings of the relatives of number 3 on the list, I won’t go into details, for fear of making the incident identifiable. Sufficient to say the experience was enough to make me empathise with the famous author/detective Jessica Fletcher, as played by Angela Lansbury in the ever-popular television series, “Murder She Wrote”. Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher never seems to be able to take a holiday without stumbling over a corpse.

We’d stopped for the night in our camper van in a delightful, safe place that we’ve stayed many times, in a scenic corner of a pleasant town, popular with dog-walkers, cyclists, skateboarders and motor-homes. Returning from an enjoyable family cycle ride, we noticed a cluster of anxious-looking dog-walkers around a vehicle parked within sight of ours. My husband went to find out what the fuss was about, only to return, pallid, moments later, telling us the vehicle contained a dead body. Being a trained first-aider, he’d instinctively reached out to check the body for vital signs. It was cold. A dog-walker dialled 999. The emergency services, quick to arrive, diagnosed natural causes.

On the pretext that It was starting to get dark, we drew the curtains in our van, to shield our young daughter and ourselves from the distressing sight of the emergency services removing the body. For our daughter’s sake, we went out of our way to carry on with the evening as planned, putting on a calm, non-alarmist front. We played cards till bedtime, interrupted only by a knock on the door from a pleasant Polish policewoman who came to take a statement from my husband as a witness to the discovery. We made small-talk with her and she rewarded us with great advice about the best nearby beach to visit.

When she’d gone, we retired to bed and slept well until awoken by a knock on the door around 9.30am. It was another policeman.

“If I were you, I’d move on now, sir, because the local press have got wind of the incident and they’ll be coming round asking you questions.”

We took his advice and made ready to depart. Only on opening the curtains did we discover that, overnight, the area had been deserted by every vehicle but ours. We were now alone and conspicuous within a large empty parking lot, cordoned off by police tape signalling a crime scene.

A courteous bobby moved the cordon aside for us to drive out, and for the rest of the day we tried to put the incident behind us.

That is, until we were in a supermarket that afternoon, where I spotted a front-page article about the event. We were mentioned in despatches: