ABOUT A MEADOW MURDER

Make hay while the sun shines?

Summer 1972. Young library assistant Jan Christopher and her fiancé, DS Lawrence Walker, are on holiday in North Devon. There are country walks and a day at the races to enjoy, along with Sunday lunch at the village pub, and the hay to help bring in for the neighbouring farmer.

But when a body is found the holiday plans are to change into an investigation of murder, hampered by a resting actor, a woman convinced she’s met a leprechaun and a scarecrow on walkabout…

A Meadow Murder is the fourth tale in the Jan Christopher cosy murder mystery series, the first three being A Mirror Murder, A Mystery of Murder and A Mistake of Murder… see what I’ve done there? Yes, I’ve created a proper puzzle for myself because now every tale in the series will have to follow the same title pattern of ‘A M-something- of Murder’ (Suggestions welcome!)

Based on working as a library assistant during the 1970s, the mysteries alternate between the location of Chingford, north-east London, where the real library I worked in used to be, (the building is still there, but is, alas, now offices,) and my own North Devon village, but ‘Chappletawton’ is a fictional version, larger than my rural community and has far more quirky characters.

The main characters in the series, however, remain the same: Jan Christopher is the niece, and ward, of Detective Chief Inspector Toby Christopher and his wife, her Aunt Madge. In A Mirror Murder, Jan (short for January, a name she hates) meets her uncle’s new driver, Detective Constable Lawrence Walker. Naturally, it is love at first sight… but will an investigation into a murder affect their budding romance?

We find out as the series continues: Episode Two takes the young couple to spend Christmas at Laurie’s parents’ old farmhouse in Devon, while Episode Three sees us back at work at Chingford library. We again travel to Devon for the summer of 1972 in Episode Four – A Meadow Murder. And no spoilers, but the title is a little bit of a giveaway!

“As delicious as a Devon Cream Tea!” author Elizabeth St John

“Every sentence pulls you back into the early 1970s… The Darling Buds of May, only not Kent, but Devon. The countryside itself is a character and Hollick imbues it with plenty of emotion” author Alison Morton

PERFICK WEATHER FOR A PERFICK DAY…

(discounting finding a body, that is)

By Helen Hollick

‘Perfick’ as Pop Larkin would say in The Darling Buds of May. This year, back in June, the weather was ‘perfick’ for haymaking – we really did ‘make hay while the sun shone’. We, being my husband, daughter, the neighbours and our local farmer, Andrew. I sat and supervised (OK, watched), alas the arthritis in my knee and hip means I can no longer walk up and down steep meadows heaving bales of hay around, so I sat and talked to the couple of bees from the hives along the hedgerow who came to see who I was. (They weren’t very impressed that the flowers on my skirt were not real, so buzzed off to find something more interesting.)

I had the idea for the plot of A Meadow Murder during the previous summer of 2022, while the grass in our top meadow was being cut for hay. The cover photograph on the book is my field – a real Devonshire hay meadow, and the scenes in the story are based on my everyday life… even down to the red Massey Ferguson tractor.

The field slopes, so from the gate at the top corner you can’t see what is down the bottom. ‘What if,’ I mused, ‘there’s a body down there?’

The plot grew from that one thought.

What I wanted to do, when I set out to write the Jan Christopher mysteries, was to create a series that totally fitted the ‘cosy (cozy – US spelling) genre by being light-hearted and easy and quick to read – ideal for a beach read, or an afternoon curled in front of the fire, glass of wine and box of chocs to hand. Or maybe a quick chapter at bedtime, or to while away a tiresome commute or journey. So I deliberately chose the ‘novella’ format of less than 50,000 words, or about 120 pages in a paperback. The same main characters will appear: Jan and Laurie, Uncle Toby and Aunt Madge, with a few other familiar faces popping up every-so-often – Jan’s library colleagues or Laurie’s mum and dad, or some Devon villagers. Add in a murder to solve, with some liberally sprinkled red herrings, plus Jan and Laurie’s blossoming romance all make for a good tale.  (Will their relationship always be smooth plain sailing I wonder?)

Bits of the plot verge on autobiographical, anecdotes from my years of working in a public library, for instance, and drawing on my life here in glorious Devon. As with haymaking and a walk through the woods. This excerpt scene is based (loosely) on my own strip of woodland, especially the small waterfall. I say small – as Laurie remarks, it isn’t exactly Niagara Falls, but it is taller than me, and I really did climb up it several years ago!

For this year, I’m glad that we cut and brought in our 480 bales of hay back in June when the sun was shining. It has, more-or-less, rained every day since then. However, I am relieved to say that the murder element is purely fictitious!

READ AN EXCERPT:

The stream was running merrily along several feet below the path, then suddenly it disappeared, plunging over rocks to cascade down about eight feet into a large pool. I laughed and slithered down a low part of the bank. I couldn’t resist the temptation: off came my shoes and socks, I rolled up my jeans as best I could, set down my shoulder bag and, skirting round the edge of the rippling pool, started to climb up the waterfall, to the side of the ribbon of white, frothing water.

“Jan! Mind! Those rocks are slippy!” Laurie warned, watching from the bank.

“I’ve never climbed a waterfall before,” I called back. “This is wonderful!”

He laughed. “Well, it’s not exactly Niagara Falls, is it?”

Triumphant, I stood at the top, grasping an overhanging branch to steady myself. The white-spumed, gushing waterfall looked a long way down from up here and somehow, I had to descend it again – the banks to either side were too steep to climb up, and anyway, were overgrown with ferns, nettles and brambles. Going down the waterfall itself, backwards and feeling for footholds with my toes, would not be quite as easy as the going up had been – as I soon discovered. I got a little wet, but Laurie gallantly rolled up his trousers and stood, shoe and sock-less, ankle-deep in the pool to steady me down the last few feet. (He claimed that his assistance had nothing whatsoever to do with his hands firmly placed on my hips, either side of my bottom.)

We dried our feet with our socks, then put our shoes back on. The socks were damp, but without them, even though we were not far from home, we would both have quickly got blisters.

We walked on. Laurie stopped to inspect a section of broken fence. “Deer have brought it down, I expect,” he said wiggling a loose fence post. I wandered on to what looked to me like a huge mass of rhododendron bushes. I later discovered that’s exactly what they were: years and years ago, well before the Great War, there had been a small shepherd’s cottage in this part of the woods, and the bushes had been planted in the back garden.

Laurie pointed out another, larger badgers’ sett, which looked very much in use. Rounding the mass of rhododendron bushes, I caught my breath and realising that I was alone, shouted in alarm. “Laurie! Come quick!

READ ON IN A Meadow Murder, and immerse yourself in country life during the summer of 1972 … and maybe solve a murder along the way?

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All Helen’s books are available on Amazon: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: HELEN HOLLICK

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/supernatural series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, ‘Cosy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Murder Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler.

She lives with her husband and daughter in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon, enjoys hosting author guests on her own blog ‘Let Us Talk Of Many Things’ and occasionally gets time to write…

Website: https://helenhollick.net

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