Eliza Mace: Detective with a difference
Authors Sarah Burton and Jem Poster discuss the inspirations for their new novel Eliza Mace, and how it’s more than just a detective story.
No doubt there are writers who sit down with the primary intention of producing a work of detective fiction, but that’s not how Eliza Mace came about.
Yes, the novel’s titular heroine has a mystery to solve and, with the help of the local police constable, she succeeds in tracking down the perpetrator of a serious crime and bringing him to justice; but the novel’s roots lie predominantly in our reading of other genres, most obviously literary fiction (a large and diverse category) and historical fiction.
We set out to write a stylish, intriguing and carefully plotted book; its status as a work of detective fiction wasn’t uppermost in our minds when we began to write it.
A work of detective fiction wasn’t uppermost in our minds when we began to write it
So what were its beginnings? A story grows, as J. R. R. Tolkien has pointed out, from the fertile compost of experience laid down in a writer’s mind over many years, but if we were pressed to identify one particular moment it would be the summer of 2016, in a country house in Ireland, when the building’s history was suddenly brought alive for us by a fragment of information volunteered by our guide: the back stairs of the house, she said, were used not just by the servants but also by the owners’ children.
What, we wondered, might the younger members of a wealthy family overhear in that liminal space between two worlds?
That wasn’t, as it turned out, exactly what Eliza Mace would be about, but what survived of that early insight was the idea of a young character, in a historically distant setting, trying to make sense of an adult world whose rules seem pointlessly restrictive.
Out of our discussions came Eliza, a sixteen-year-old on the cusp of womanhood, with a mind of her own and the strength of character to challenge received opinions.
Out of our discussions came Eliza... with a mind of her own and the strength of character to challenge received opinions
From very early on we knew that Eliza would be the linchpin holding the story together, and in order for this to happen she had to be a solidly drawn character, complex and credible.
It takes time to build up a character of this kind, but we knew it was time worth spending. There’s a widespread fallacy that the contemporary reader needs to be plunged immediately into fast-paced action, but in fact most readers understand perfectly well that this is only one of a number of possible ways into a story.
For many readers it may be just as engaging to be introduced to compelling characters and tricky family dynamics, or to be given a vivid sense of the setting and atmosphere (in the case of Eliza Mace, broodingly Gothic) that will stand as background to the story’s action.
There’s a widespread fallacy that the contemporary reader needs to be plunged immediately into fast-paced action
These are, of course, the foundations of most good writing, in any genre, and without them no plot, however ingenious or pacy, is likely to touch the deeper levels of the reader’s imagination.
So while it’s certainly true that Eliza Mace is a detective story, it’s fair to add that that’s not all it is. Beyond the mystery and its solution, the novel traces a young woman’s interior journey as the world she knows collapses around her, leaving her to come to terms with her losses and, at the same time, to map out a new future for herself.
And that’s not the half of it…
A twisty Victorian mystery featuring quick-witted detective Eliza Mace
‘A detective you’ll love and a mystery you’ll want to solve’ – Louise Davidson, author of The Fortunes of Olivia Richmond
Stuck in a crumbling manor house in the Welsh borders in the 1870s, she is thwarted by powers that conspire to protect, control and deceive her. But when her father goes missing in mysterious circumstances, Eliza’s determination to uncover the truth is unstoppable.
But solving the case is no easy task. Her father has run up debts in town and beyond, and there are many who bear him a grudge. As she searches for evidence, Eliza exposes dark secrets that threaten to tear her world apart…
