Today is publication day for A Memory of Murder by Helen Hollick, the fifth in her series of Jan Christopher Cosy Murder Mysteries.
You might know that Helen is a prolific and hugely successful author of Historical Fiction, including a series about King Arthur and her Seawitch pirate novels. Lately she's branched out into cosy murder stories set in the 1970s.
Helen had wanted to become a journalist when leaving secondary school, but the careers advice was not helpful and instead, she worked in a Chingford library where she stayed for 13 years although she was not very happy there; what she really wanted to do was write. Working at the library of course gave her access to books, and it was there that she came across the Roman historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, the Arthurian trilogy by Mary Stewart, and the historian Geoffrey Ashe. She was hooked on Roman Britain - and King Arthur!
Reading everything she could, she realised that she had her own characters of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), and wanted to tell their stories. She found an agent who placed her with William Heinemann and the first in her Aruthurian Trilogy was published just after her fortieth birthday.
Since then, Helen has had USA Today bestseller success with her novel about Queen Emma, and also written about Harold Godwineson.
For the last few years she has been taking her readers on high seas adventures with her pirate character Jesamiah Acorne in the highly acclaimed Seawitch novels but, during lockdown in 2020, her writing went in seemingly a very different direction.
But it's not such a leap as you might suppose, for Jan Christopher works in a library too, and many of the incidents and escapades related in the books really happened, as Helen draws on her memories of her years working in Chingford Library.
There, of course, the similarity ends for, unlike Jan, Helen was never witness to murder (thank goodness). All five of the books sit beautifully in their 1970s setting and evoke the sights, sounds, smells and social mores of that era. Jan's uncle is a Detective Chief Inspector, and her guardian since Jan's father was killed when she was young.
Those who've read the previous four books will know this, but in Book Five, we learn more about Jan's earlier life and about her parents. I'll say no more, for fear of spoilers, but I will tell those who already count these books among their favourites, that the gorgeous and glorious Laurie, Detective Sergeant and Jan's fiancé, is still on the scene!
Here's the blurb:
Easter 1973.
The North London library where Jan Christopher works is in upheaval because the decorators are in to spruce the place up, but there is more for her policeman uncle, DCI Toby Christopher, and her fiancé, DS Laurie Walker to worry about than a few inconvenient pots of paint.
An eleven-year-old girl has not returned home after school, and strange ‘gifts’ are being surreptitiously left for the detective chief inspector’s family to find.
Could these items have anything to do with the unsolved murder, fifteen years ago, of Jan’s policeman father?
