About The Book
The twisting twenty-fifth instalment of Lesley Cookman’s much-loved Libby Sarjeant seriesLibby Sarjeant is deep into rehearsals for the annual pantomime when a body is found in a doorwaytwo weeks before Christmas-and Libby and herfriend Fran are called into action once again, whentheir investigation leads them to a local brewery and the sale of many of its pubs.With the help of a team of local publicans, can Libby and Fran unravel the case before it’s too late?
The Importance of Place
This is a subject often discussed by novelists in all genres. And, of course, it is very important. In fact, readers will frequently comment that the “place” is almost a character in itself.
I certainly wouldn’t claim that about my “places”, but they are very important. When I wrote the first Libby Sarjeant mystery, I called it Past Imperfect. The publisher promptly renamed it Murder in Steeple Martin, with great foresight, as it turned out, because these days, books with titles beginning “Murder” are almost a genre by themselves!
So, the first few books in the series were known as Steeple Martin Mysteries, and therefore the fictional village became extremely important. A friend of mine, a brilliant artist called Susan Allison, made a delightful pictorial map for me, which still occasionally appears in the front of the books. By the second book, there was a little seaside town, and by the third, more villages. Eventually, I created an entire fictional section of Kent, fanning out from the ancient city of Canterbury. I keep my own very amateurish maps of the area beside me as I write, mainly to check that I’m not setting a new street in the middle of the sea, or putting a hospital on top of a stable yard. Don’t mock – it has been done.
It’s also very important to maintain the correct geology, flora and fauna of an area, even if it’s fictional. Your story may be erring on the side of fantasy (how many middle aged women do you know who fall over corpses on a regular basis?) but integrity must be preserved. The reader will be pulled out of the story immediately if you start describing a bleak moorland landscape in the Cambridgeshire fens, for instance.
Of course, if you set your book in real towns and villages, you can avoid most of the pitfalls, but I chose not to for a variety of reasons – not least the fact that somebody might take me to task for having a murderer living in their house. This has been brought home to me quite forceably but watching a TV series set in a town I know well. It frequently shows views from shop windows looking at completely the wrong street. Not to mention the worry of possible legal action…
So my fictional area continues to expand. Regular readers now know it as well as I do, and would quickly correct me if I got something wrong. And that, of course, is what you’re aiming for. Reader committment. If you write a series, you hope to build up your readership, and if you don’t give those readers a comfortable and familiar place for your characters to inhabit, they may not stick around. Or it might not be a comfortable place – think of that bleak moorland, for instance – but it must be right, and recognisable.
If the story is actual fantasy, not just a fantastic set of circumstances, then you’ll still have to make that place believable. If you have pink mountains, that’s fine – but they won’t be bleak!
So there we are. Place is important – and as a writer, it can be great fun creating it! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Libby’s latest adventure.
Author Bio
Lesley started writing almost as soon as she could read, and filled many Woolworth’s exercise books with pony stories until she was old enough to go out with boys. Since she’s been grown up, following a varied career as a model, air stewardess and disc jockey, she’s written short fiction and features for a variety of magazines, achieved an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales, taught writing for both Kent Adult Education and the WEA and edited the first Sexy Shorts collection of short stories, in aid of the Breast Cancer Campaign. Lesley is a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers’ Association.
Lesley has also written pantomimes performed all over Britain, and published a book on how to do it!
Learn more about Lesley by visiting her blog.
Social Media Links – https://www.facebook.com/LibbySarjeantMysteries/
