Authors Interviewing Characters: Dominique Gracia

Authors Interview Characters: Dominique Gracia

Fans of JC Briggs and MRC Kasasian will love this new collection of twelve short stories featuring a wry female detective who just can’t seem to shake the investigative business. Alongside other Victorian greats, like Sherlock Holmes and Dorcas Dene, Meinir Davies investigates crimes from East London to her native South Wales, and everywhere in between. She talks here to Dominique Gracia about her detecting career, highs and lows, and working with Sherlock Holmes.

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Dominique: Meinir, although you were only a detective professionally for a few years, you’ve seemed unable to shake that life, even now as an established school mistress. What is the appeal of crime-solving, for you? 

Meinir: That is a common mistake amongst readers who do find detective work appealing. I wouldn’t say it appeals to me. It’s not appealing work; you often see people at their worst, and crime is rarely an intriguing puzzle for the cerebral mind, as some people like present it. Sometimes there is a thrill in the chase, when you have a particularly cruel or prolific offender at hand, but otherwise the thing that draws me into these cases is simply compassion. Being an investigator gives you a chance to help people, to right wrongs but also to protect others from future wrongs. Once you get used to that, it’s a difficult habit to shake.

DG: I suppose once you’re used to some success, it’s a difficult habit to shake, but one has to have some success first. So how did you get started?

MD: That is a long story and quite a private one. Let’s say simply that I left service for a period—I was a housekeeper and ran a fairly large household—and when I returned to professional employment it was hard to go back. Investigative work was still relatively easy to come by at that point, even though it had already become the subject of young women’s advice columns!

DG: So perhaps a rather accidental entry into the profession. And yet you were notably successful in the few years when you were employed at Captain Montagu’s agency. What would you say was your biggest success during that time?

MD: Some of the best cases are purposely unknown. But of the ones I can speak of…? Well. This was really purely by chance, but in circumventing the plots against Laura Levy—Madame Levonski, as she was known in public—I helped foil one of the greatest criminals London has ever seen. And Laura is now, herself, one of the most enormously successful detectives that no one has ever heard of. 

DG: That will surprise some people. We are used to hearing about the official and unofficial police both through journalism and other media. The public will likely think of Holmes as the greatest detective, but are there others in the shadows, like Laura Levy, who surpass him?

MD: I don’t think this is a field where one can create a ranking! The Met must do this because they operate on a hierarchy, but the most well-known officers are not necessarily the best. But Sherlock is, of course, one of the greats. The stories that Dr Watson has set down are partly journalistic, of course, but also partly fictionalised because they are intended to be parables, and because they are intended to protect the innocent. But Holmes’ accomplishments are as great as he says. 

DG: You knew Holmes well, it sounds like. What would be one thing that might surprise our readers about him?

MD: His very keen interest in detective stories. Many cases are passed off as fiction—again, that’s to protect the innocent, and in some cases for a certain didactic purpose, if the author is that way inclined. But Holmes reads everything, it seems, and across genres. There is rarely a short story or serialisation in a monthly that he is not across. 

DG: How does he find the time?!

MD: Investigative work involves very long periods of boredom. 

DG: Of course. What did you used to do in those periods?

MD: Knit.

DG: That’s very practical.

MD: Detectives usually are. There is the misconception that they are cerebral creatures, but all of our work is ultimately practical. Could this thing have taken place in this way at this time with these actors involved? These are practical questions first and foremost.

DG: Means and opportunity before motive?

MD: Motives are eminently practical too. You need only look at how many crimes are financially motivated to see that. The kidnap of Clara O’Donoghue’s mother, for example, or the business of Mrs Jane Holmes. [She alludes here to some of the stories set out in her casebook.]

DG: We’ve talked a bit already about others in the field. Perhaps you can share one final insight with our readers about names they should keep a lookout for. Of all the official and unofficial police you’ve worked with over the years, who was your favourite investigative partner, and why?

MD: Dai Jones had far more skill than he was given credit for. He was subtle, and people mistook that for simplicity.

DG: Thank you, Meinir. Perhaps we’ll be reading his casebook next. 

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Dominique Gracia (@graciado) is a researcher of Victorian literature and culture, and a writer of short fiction and other bits and bobs. As an academic, she writes on Victorian detective fiction, including Sherlock Holmes and Dorcas Dean, aesthetics, and media theory. The Meinir Davies Casebook is her first full short story collection. You can support it on Kickstarter or preorder now, and read more of her work at graciado.com.

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing