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Yuletide reveal
Jan. 2nd, 2019 09:31 amThis year I wrote casefic for Robin Stevens' Murder Most Unladylike series. These are a fabulous series set in the 1930s with two teenage girls, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, who are detectives - there are eight books out so far (one is short stories and additional material), covering various traditional crime settings such as a country house, the Orient Express, the theatre, a boarding school, and Cambridge. They are very much Golden Age crime in style and detective format, but with a modern sensibility about some of the pitfalls works of that era fell into; there are numerous sympathetic queer characters (Death in the Spotlight spoiler removed, as I can't get spoiler text to work) and Hazel is Hong Kong Chinese (one of the recent books is set in Hong Kong, and it's fascinating seeing Daisy deal with an environment where she is out of place and ignored.
Anyway. I wanted to write casefic, but I did have to dampen down my original Between Silk and Cyanide-related urge to write WWII spy fic (which is so obviously where the series is heading - we're currently in 1936 and Hazel is starting to work on codes) because I could tell this would spiral rapidly out of control. So I cast round for shorter ideas, and one of the things that stuck was the fact that these books were set in a death-penalty era UK. Dorothy Sayers' books do grapple with this (obviously Strong Poison, but I think it's the end of Busman's Honeymoon where Peter is really wrestling with his role in the execution of the guilty party). Stevens has alluded to this but not put a lot on stage (entirely reasonably for books aimed at 10-12 year olds!). I also re-read my collection of Poirot's Early Cases to try and keep things short and ended up pinching the cigarette clue.
As usual I ended up finishing right on deadline (apologies again to my betas!) and there are still a few loose ends I would have liked to tweak, but it's mostly there. Detective stories were one of my earliest reading interests (after fantasy but before SF, comics, fandom etc) and it was great fun to write one.
The Case of the Suspicious Suicide (6307 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Daisy Wells, Hazel Wong, Inspector Priestly, Lavinia Temple
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Boarding School, Detectives, Misses Clause Challenge, Female Friendship
Summary:
Anyway. I wanted to write casefic, but I did have to dampen down my original Between Silk and Cyanide-related urge to write WWII spy fic (which is so obviously where the series is heading - we're currently in 1936 and Hazel is starting to work on codes) because I could tell this would spiral rapidly out of control. So I cast round for shorter ideas, and one of the things that stuck was the fact that these books were set in a death-penalty era UK. Dorothy Sayers' books do grapple with this (obviously Strong Poison, but I think it's the end of Busman's Honeymoon where Peter is really wrestling with his role in the execution of the guilty party). Stevens has alluded to this but not put a lot on stage (entirely reasonably for books aimed at 10-12 year olds!). I also re-read my collection of Poirot's Early Cases to try and keep things short and ended up pinching the cigarette clue.
As usual I ended up finishing right on deadline (apologies again to my betas!) and there are still a few loose ends I would have liked to tweak, but it's mostly there. Detective stories were one of my earliest reading interests (after fantasy but before SF, comics, fandom etc) and it was great fun to write one.
The Case of the Suspicious Suicide (6307 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Daisy Wells, Hazel Wong, Inspector Priestly, Lavinia Temple
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Boarding School, Detectives, Misses Clause Challenge, Female Friendship
Summary:
'Half a term!' said Daisy to me. 'What could possibly happen in half a term? It's just exams and Speech Day!'
Death in the Spotlight, Robin Stevens (2018).
