A Series of Unfortunate Deaths By Victoria Dowd

A Series of Unfortunate Deaths

By Victoria Dowd

Murder Most Cold is the fifth book in the Smart Woman’s mystery series. The books follow the Smart women who are Ursula Smart, our rather unreliable narrator; Pandora Smart, her mother; Aunt Charlotte; and, of course, Bridget with her bizarre menagerie of pets. The books are classic whodunnits updated with lots of dark humour. The first in the series, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, was fortunate enough to win The People’s Book Prize for Fiction 2021 and was In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel’s book of the year.

The Smart family are a rather dysfunctional lot, scarred by grief and death, but still capable of issuing a sharp little barb even in the most gruesome of situations. In the original book they visited a country house, Ambergris Towers, for a book club weekend that not all the members survived. That was pretty much the end of the book club for them.

This latest instalment finds them journeying out to Finnish Lapland for a wedding with a difference and plenty of murders. The body of someone who they have only just seen is found dead under thick ice that has been forming for weeks. There is no way the body could have got beneath the ice and yet under the Northern Lights Ursula sees the eyes staring back at her. This time the Smart women are faced with an impossible crime, so they not only have to work out whodunnit, but howdunnit.

I’m a huge fan of the old Golden Age Detection novels where locked rooms and impossible crimes abound. Authors such as John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie presented us with perfect puzzles that were often similar to watching a stage magician at work, conjuring scenarios from the air, only to outwit the reader in the all-important denouement. I wanted to explore this idea in a more modern setting in each of my books. Some, such as Body on the Island (the second book in the series) are set within a closed circle of suspects. The Smart women, having decided that they weren’t very good at surviving after their experiences in the first book, head off on a Bear Grylls’ style survival course to the Outer Hebrides and end up on a supposedly deserted island with one manor house and one old chapel. There is no way off the island after their boat is destroyed leaving only a very limited pool of suspects to choose from.

For the third book, The Supper Club Murders, however, as well as the closed circle, I wanted to take the idea of a locked room mystery into a different setting. Here the Smarts visit a small, isolated village on Dartmoor. They are invited to a safari supper club, in which the people of the village journey together from house to house eating a course in each one. This was inspired by a New Year’s Eve party I went on which was a safari supper. As we moved around the village, people kept dipping in and out of the party. It was impossible, particularly in the dark, to know where everyone was at each moment.

It occurred to me that it was the perfect setting for a murder mystery. But I wanted to take the puzzle even further with a new style of locked room which involves a gate house where the portcullis gates are down and the body of a man is found on the floor having been killed with a cannonball that couldn’t possibly have got through the bars.

I love devising strange new scenarios and tricks for each new book. However, with this book, I managed to confuse myself. I needed there to be confusion and misdirection as to where each person was and therefore what they could know at any given time or have seen. As I was writing the book, I managed to lose various characters and forget who should be where and when.

My son hit upon an idea! He built the entire village out of Lego for me and each character had a mini figure to represent them. We did indeed have the Smart women in Lego. So now, as a character moved in the book, I would move them in my miniature village. I could see immediately where everyone was at any point in the story. There was only one problem. Occasionally, my son would need one of the little figures and sometimes switch them for a different one. Many was the time I would come back to the village and discover Chewbacca had taken up residence.

As you can tell, writing these kinds of books takes a lot of plotting and intricate planning. Every piece has to fit perfectly in the story otherwise it won’t work. I plan on my murder boards, which by the end have all manner of maps, photographs, character lists, Post its and, of course, red string. After each book is finished and ready for publication, I clear the boards and store it all in boxes. It’s a very satisfying feeling to take the before and after photographs. Looking at that blank board, all manner of new adventures can begin to take root and develop. 

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Victoria Dowd is the award-winning author of the bestselling Smart Woman’s Mystery series. She was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger this year. Her debut novel, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, won The People’s Book Prize and was In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel’s Book of the Year 2020. Victoria was awarded the Gothic Fiction prize for her short fiction, which has been published widely. She also writes the Adapting Agatha series and has appeared at many literary festivals including Malice Domestic (the Agathas); the Jaipur Literary Festival; the International Agatha Christie Festival; and Crimefest. She is also on the board of the Crime Writers’ Association and head of the London Crime Writers’ Association.

 

MURDER MOST COLD

DISCOVER THE FIENDISHLY TWISTY, UTTERLY ADDICTIVE CRIME FICTION OF VICTORIA DOWD.

**FROM THE WINNER OF THE PEOPLE’S BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 AND SHORTLISTEE OF THE CWA DAGGER AWARD 2023**

A winter wedding.
A mysterious disappearance.
A body under the ice.

Handsome Spear proposes marriage and Ursula Smart suddenly has a glimpse of the sort of happy life she had never imagined for herself. Beginning with a small winter wedding, on the edge of a secluded, frozen lake, away from it all.

But trouble is never far from the Smart women, especially when the atmosphere is already so frosty.

Tensions start rising as soon as they arrive and it’s not just Ursula’s mother Pandora getting cabin fever.

Poisoning. Stabbing. A mysterious disappearance. Who’s targeting the wedding party?

Then on a midnight jaunt, Ursula sees a face trapped under the ice, eyes staring in frozen horror. And her happy future begins to fall apart.

Weddings should be joyous occasions. But there’s a murderer at this one.

A GOLDEN AGE MURDER MYSTERY BROUGHT BANG UP TO DATE.

Funny and shocking in equal turn, Victoria Dowd’s brilliant whodunnit is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Anthony Horowitz, Liane Moriarty, Faith Martin, Frances Lloyd and Stuart Turton.

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Category: On Writing