G.M. Malliet Chats About All Things English

by Julia Buckley
G.M. Malliet is the author of the Agatha Award-winning DEATH OF A COZY WRITER, the first book in the DCI St. Just mystery series, chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2008. The second book in the series is DEATH AND THE LIT CHICK and third is DEATH AT THE ALMA MATER, which came out recently. She is currently working on a new mystery series starring Max Tudor (former MI5 agent, now vicar of a small English village) for Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books.

G.M, You attended Oxford University and have a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge. What was your major?

My major was psychology. Not the kind where you ask people about their childhoods: I was studying (reading, as the British would have it) learning and memory. How we acquire and store language and memories, how we learn to read and write, and how the brain processes all this. I’m still fascinated by this subject.

Did you ever consider living in England permanently?

Oh, yes! But it was hard, then as now, to get a work permit. And there were just too many things calling me back to the US at the time.

When you did live in England, what were the primary differences you noted between the English and the Americans?

The Americans seemed so loud to me, with a tendency to “over-share.” I’m sure they weren’t that bad and in fact the friendliness of Americans is much admired. But I was like a teenager, constantly embarrassed by his or her parents—I felt and feel that blending in is the goal when you’re in a different culture.


Did living in England alter any of your own Americanisms—the way you spell or pronounce words, for example, or your accent?

For my studies, I had to relearn spelling entirely, and unlearn it when I came back to the US. But I always thought it was a bit affected when Americans said things like “con-TRA-versy” instead of CON-tra-versy—so I avoided that.

Was it nostalgia which made you set your novels (all of them so far) in England?

Yes. I call it my version of time travel. I get to go back and remember and see all the sights in my head—without the jet lag! But I also visit the UK in person whenever I can, because so much gets forgotten.

How did you come up with the names of your detective, St. Just, and his sidekick, Sergeant Fear? (Great names, indeed!)

There really is a Sergeant Fear. I have never met this person, but seeing the name in a newspaper story, I felt I had to appropriate a name so perfect.
There is a village called St. Just in Cornwall that my mother’s family has ties to. I thought that was also a perfect name for an honest, fair cop. So I borrowed the name and gave him Cornish roots.

You are now working on a new mystery series. Had this idea been percolating for a long time, or did you have to come up with it quickly?

There is a little English village that has been inside my head for ages. I started drawing a map of it just to exorcise it, because it had nothing to do with St. Just. Then all these characters came along and wanted to live there. And of course they had a story to tell.

By the way, the name of my village is Nether Monkslip, which is really quite “ordinary” when you start looking at the wonderful, lovely, completely crazy names the British have for some of their villages. One of the best is Chipping Sodbury, which of course the natives have rechristened Sodding Chipbury. It so happens J K Rowling was born there, a fact so wonderful you could not make it up.

If you went back to England now, where would you want to go?

Glastonbury.

Why Glastonbury?

Glastonbury is where King Arthur is either buried, or awaiting his return. Arthur, by the way, is St. Just's first name. ;-)

Ah. Do you keep in touch with friends in England?

I do keep in touch by email, and meet up with them here and there. They are all good enough to provide answers to my more esoteric questions about British life—the kind of thing you can’t find on Google.

What’s a place that a tourist should visit in the U.K. simply because it is NOT a tourist site?

I would have to say just drop into a local pub, any pub. Sit in a corner with your beer and eavesdrop. That is where life is lived, although the pubs are disappearing at an alarming rate.

Why are the pubs disappearing?

The pubs are in trouble because of the recession, but I think it began before that and I can't tell you why, exactly. See
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/leisure/article6722488.ece

How, if at all, has being a successful mystery writer affected your everyday life?

You mean the new Jaguar I bought with my first royalty check? That was a joke.

Actually, the real change is that I am always on deadline. Before I was published, I was on a highly movable deadline. No one cared if I finished the book or short story, or not. It is a subtle but huge difference.

Have you always enjoyed reading mysteries? Whose books have influenced you the most?

I have always loved mysteries above all. I think Daughter of Time made a huge impression, as well as Rebecca. There were too many others to mention!

Ward Just wrote, of writing, that writing novels was not what he considered hard work; it had instead “to do with desire—translating desire into prose—and a temperament that accepts concentration over the long haul.” Would you agree? And if so, do you have this temperament?

I am not sure I know what he means by accepting concentration! There is no question that the long haul of a novel is not for anyone unwilling to go and live in a made-up world for the year or more required to write a book. You have to really stay focused on what you’re doing, and be able to keep a bunch of apparently unrelated “stuff” in your head at once.

But I love the phrase, “translating desire into prose”—which takes us back to why I write about the UK. It’s my desire to return there, translated.

Finally, in honor of the season, I ask you: what is your favorite sign of spring? Have you seen it yet?

My trees and shrubs “springing” back, after having been flattened by so much snow this year. It’s a miracle, truly.


Thanks so much for chatting with me, GM!

Classic Approach to Mystery: An Interview with G.M. Malliet

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

G.M. Malliet’s Death of a Cozy Writer, first in a series featuring Detective Chief Inspector St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, has been described as "wicked, witty, and full of treats" by Peter Lovesey and hailed as "a delightful homage to the great novels of Britian's Golden Age of mysteries" by Nancy Pearl on NPR. It has been nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel (winners will be announced at Malice Domestic on May 2) and the Left Coast Crime/Hawaii Five-O Award for best police procedural. It was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books of 2008. Her recently released second novel, Death and the Lit Chick, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

An American, G.M. attended Oxford University and holds a graduate degree from the University of Cambridge. She is a former journalist and copywriter and lives with her husband in Virginia.

[Note: The other four Agatha nominees in the best first novel category have also been featured on Poe’s Deadly Daughters in recent months. If you’d like to learn more about Sheila Connolly, Krista Davis, Rosemary Harris, and Joanna Campbell Slan, enter their names in the blog search box to bring up their interviews or guest blogs.]

Q. Congratulations on your Agatha and Hawaii Five-O award nominations for Death of a Cozy Writer! How does it feel to be honored this way for your first book?

A. It feels incredible—like winning the lottery, only better. In the case of awards and nominations—as you know, Sandra!—you first have to work incredibly hard before you get lucky. It is extremely satisfying to have the effort acknowledged.

Q. What inspired you to write a series modeled after the classic British cozies? Do you reread any of your favorites while you’re writing?

A. I wrote the type of book I love to read. I’d read all the “Golden Agers,” some of them several times over, and while I didn’t think I could match them, I did think I might have fun sending up some of the conventions of the genre.

When I’m writing, I read a lot of non-fiction. The third book in the St. Just series has a sculling and rowing theme, so I had the excuse to indulge my love of the sport with so-called research. I also try to read The New Yorker religiously, hoping the magnificent writing therein will wear off on me. I just discovered the “Eminent Lives” series—Bill Bryson’s contribution on Shakespeare’s life is wonderfully funny. All the writers in this series are masters.

Q. You take some chances in Death of a Cozy Writer – using omniscient viewpoint and a Golden Age tone for a modern story. Did you encounter resistance from agents or editors when you were marketing it? Were there some who just didn't get what you were doing?

A. I didn’t set out to mystify anyone with Death of a Cozy Writer, but that is what frequently happened, yes. The funny thing is, I really had no idea I was doing anything unusual. As a writer, I love omniscient viewpoint, because it allows you to get inside the heads of all the characters. That is much more entertaining, I think, for both writer and reader. The challenge for the writer comes, of course, in not getting too far inside the killer’s head and giving the game away.

Q. You’re obviously very fond of Britain. What draws you to that setting? Do you travel there often?

A. I’m not sure where the anglophilia came from: It may have started with early exposure to National Velvet or Black Beauty. I try to get back to Great Britain once a year. This year I’m hoping for an extended stay to include a pilgrimage to Wallingford, where Agatha Christie lived many years with her husband Max, and Greenway, her home in Devon. Added bonus: I just read somewhere that Wallingford is frequently used as a setting for the Midsomer Murders TV series.

Q. Death of a Cozy Writer is written in a distinctive, wryly humorous voice. Does that style came naturally to you, or do you have to consciously work at maintaining it throughout a book?

A. I have tried to “write serious” and I find I can’t maintain the tone for long. Some bit of nonsense always wants to creep in, so I let it.

Q. What do you see as the differences between the classic British mysteries and the crafts, cooking, and cats cozies being published today in the U.S.? Any thoughts on why Britain, where cozies were born, produces so few cozy writers these days?

A. I don’t know what’s going on in Britain with all the gloomy books. But I have the idea Agatha Christie—despite the humorous mannerisms she gave Poirot and Marple—felt she was accurately depicting a world fraught with evil. Perhaps nothing has changed, except that the depictions of violence have become more graphic.

Q. Was this the first book you'd written, or do you – like most of us – have a few manuscripts you weren't able to sell?

A. I have a romantic suspense novel that I didn’t try very hard to sell (I think I knew without the need of formal rejection that it was middling at best). I also have in my possession many mysteries that were abandoned at the fifty-page mark. The first fifty or so pages of Death of a Cozy Writer won the Malice Domestic grant and I wonder if, without that encouragement, I would have finished the book. It’s a scary thought.

Q. Did you, like so many authors, spend a long time writing, rewriting, and polishing your first published book before it sold? How long, altogether, did you work on it? By comparison, how long have you spent writing your second and third books? Do you plan to be a book-a-year author, and if so, how difficult has the adjustment to that schedule been?

A. A book a year seems to be the norm but I would much rather have eighteen months: I’m a stupendously slow writer and, like Oscar Wilde, I can spend a day deciding whether a comma should go or stay.

I guess it took me over a year to finish Death of a Cozy Writer once I’d won the Malice grant, and I spent a lot of time trying to sell the completed manuscript. Then for some reason I decided that even though the first book hadn’t sold, I’d start work on the second book in the series. I have no idea why I didn’t immediately register this effort as futile. But, it was a lucky thing I did something so quixotic, because when Cozy Writer finally sold the acquiring editor asked me if I had a second book planned. Well, yes, I did, as a matter of fact, so she offered a two-book contract. The third book took me a little longer than a year, and that’s because so much of the responsibility for promotion at every publishing house has fallen onto authors’ shoulders. Authors quickly find themselves on a rolling tumbrel, promoting one book or another, to the point of forgetting which book we’re supposed to be talking about. Authors need, I think, that eighteen months to do it all—especially authors with fulltime jobs and kids to raise—but I also don’t think it’s going to happen.

Q. What aspect of fiction writing gives you the most pleasure and satisfaction? Which has been most difficult for you to master?

A. Looking back and seeing that from the first tentative swipes, a manuscript is emerging—a book that has come from nowhere, and from everywhere. That process is fascinating.

What is difficult is keeping all the characters straight and even remembering what room I left them sitting in. Especially in a traditional British-type story, there tend to be a lot of suspects, and it’s easy to leave one in the bedroom dozing on a window seat only to find he’s somehow moved over to the drawing room and furthermore he’s now perched on an ottoman. Plus, he’s grown a goatee. I use schematics, sketches, lists, charts, and diagrams galore and still spend a lot of time looking for the inconsistencies that creep in.

Q. How is your life different now that you’re a published author? Is everything working out the way you expected, or have you been surprised by some aspects of publishing?

A. I now write fulltime, seven or eight hours a day once I settle into a story, and I try to take the weekends off. That is good advice from Nora Roberts I read somewhere—to treat writing as any other job and not let it consume you. When I moved to fulltime writing, I was afraid I’d develop weird, loner tics and walk around all day in my bathrobe (Louise Penny describes this as the tendency to sit around watching Oprah whilst eating gummy bears). It hasn’t happened yet (knock wood). I am living my dream and extremely grateful for it, although I do wish someone would invent a chair that is comfortable to sit in eight hours a day.

Q. Have you found writers’ organizations helpful? Would you advise aspiring writers to become active in mystery writers’ groups even before they’re published?

A. Absolutely. If you don’t join Sisters in Crime, you are probably only prolonging the agony of being unpublished. The networking, the good advice, the camaraderie—priceless.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are still struggling to break into print?

A. I’m not sure I’ve been around book publishing long enough to be dispensing advice. But the “trite” and true advice holds: Write every day, if only for an hour. A manuscript will emerge, or a short story. Enter reputable contests; submit to anthologies—this gives you a deadline, which focuses the mind wonderfully.

Most of all, develop a Zen-like patience. If you love what you’ve written, rest assured someone else will love it, too—eventually.