Unique Gloucestershire March 2016

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Writing the Uniquely Dark Side of Town
The Challenge
It started with a challenge. Could I write a crime thriller, with clues and a detective
and red herrings? And could I set it in Cheltenham? My previous novels (Sacred Site
and Featherfoot) were murder mysteries – more whydunit than whodunit, and they
were set in the Australian outback. I’d never had a proper detective before, and
wasn’t sure how to plot a straight crime novel. Could I do it? There was only one way
to find out.
It began, as every one of my
novels begins, with a big sheet of
paper on the dining room table,
a mug of coffee, and a set of
coloured marker pens.
Unique Cheltenham
I love landscapes. To me, the
landscape is an essential part of
the book, as important as the
characters. Setting a crime novel
in Cheltenham meant coming up
with a crime that was essentially
Cheltenham: a plot and
characters that couldn’t happen
anywhere else. What was unique
about Cheltenham?
I brainstormed everything that
made Cheltenham unique.
Regency architecture, the
spas, the top-class schools, the
festivals, the races. All afternoon,
I brewed cup after cup of coffee,
and threw everything I could
think of at that big sheet of
paper. Then I stood back and
looked at it.
Already there were some ideas
that appealed more than others.
My mind started asking, ‘What if?’
What if this place was connected
with this this crime? Or this
time period? Or this person? I
drew bold arrows linking ideas together, then crossed them out. Finally a pattern
emerged, and I got that tingling feeling I get when I know an idea is taking off.
Another sheet of paper, this time focussing on the ideas I wanted to play with a
bit more. I had linked together Regency architecture and public schools. On my
daily walk, I passed a building site where they were digging deep foundations,
and I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if they dug up a skeleton?’ It’s
the kind of thing I think about, when I’m walking and letting my mind drift. It has
a tendency towards the dark places. So there was the kernel of my new novel: a
skeleton that turns up in the grounds of a prestigious Cheltenham school.
And from there, the rest was history. Literally.
The Hell Fire Club
Time for some research, and
I turned to the histories of
Cheltenham, finding out about
how the healing properties of
the spa water were discovered,
when the spas were built, and
how Cheltenham itself was
transformed during the Georgian
period. My imagination conjured
up a time of intense activity:
amber stone being carted into
Cheltenham along rough tracks
to build the magnificent houses
we know today. The cries of the
labourers and the stone masons.
The wrangling over land prices. The influx of people to service the growing
town: the artisans and tradesmen who built houses and settled in Tivoli. The
furniture makers, grocers, butchers, seamstresses and milliners who recognised
that Cheltenham was a town on the up, and were determined to get a bit of the
action.
Or course, not everyone came to Cheltenham with honourable intentions. I’ve
been reading history for decades, and I knew that whenever a place was on the
up, the prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and money lenders wouldn’t be far behind.
I liked the contrast between the exterior elegance and manners of Regency
England, and the poverty, filth and disease that was the experience of many.
I had heard about the Hell Fire Club, and I wondered, ‘What if a version of it
existed in Cheltenham?’
The Hell Fire Club was a Georgian secret society for aristocrats. Rumours
abounded about what actually went on at their meetings in a series of manmade
caves: debauchery, drunkenness, and devil worship. This stuff is a gift for
novelists, and I formulated a plot involving a Cheltenham-based secret society
for wealthy men. I called it the Paternoster Club. It meets in a vast Regency villa