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In
the spring of 2006, I was asked by editor David Stuart Davies if, as
a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast, I would like to contribute a pastiche
to a collection he was intending to publish as part of Wordsworth’s
Tales of Mystery and The Supernatural series. At the
time my writing was strictly confined to contemporary crime fiction
and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take the plunge back a hundred
years or more. Practical considerations soon took over however,
as it was my first opportunity to appear in a mass market paperback
that was being stocked by the chain bookstores. Once I decided
to do it, my long-standing interest in modern history and historical
crime fiction made the task less daunting. I’d already
devoured the Sherlock Holmes Canon, most of Poe, the Richard Hannay
quintet, Patrick O’Brian, Flashman, Captain Alatriste, the
Erast Fandorin detective stories, and the Leibermann Papers, amongst
many others.
While researching the short
story, I found a reference to the strange will of Cecil John Rhodes,
the British Empire equivalent of Bill Gates. He died in April
1902, just before the end of the Boer War, which I knew as the first
taste of modern warfare for the British Army. Although I spent
many years in South Africa, I knew very little about Rhodes, so I
turned my attention to his life and death. When I discovered
that the richest man in the Empire had a will that wasn’t just
idiosyncratic, but actually sinister, I realised I was onto something
much more substantial than the concept for a short story.
You know those Rhodes
Scholarships? Yes, well there’s actually a real-life
conspiracy theory behind them – and it sort-of happened as
well. You’ll have to read The Architect of Murder
to find out what I’m talking about. Of course, writing in
the twenty-first century, the first thing I did was Google and
Wikipedia Rhodes’ will to see if anyone else had written the
story. I found one: a science fiction novella by John Crowley
called Great Work of Time. Even though it was out of
print, I tracked down a copy and read it. It was sufficiently
different to what I had in mind, so I wrote the short story for
David, The Adventure of the Long Man, and began serious
research on the novel.
The switch from contemporary to
historical crime fiction was easier than I’d expected, and two
of the problems I’d so far had with my writing simply
disappeared.
One of the criticisms of my
work thus far was that my hardboiled approach was better suited to
American settings than the British ones with which I’m
familiar. I’d considered writing thrillers or Noir
instead, but while I enjoy both of these subgenres, my main interest
was – and still is – the murder mystery. I realised
I could get away with much more of the action and violence associated
with hardboiled detective fiction in 1902 London than 2007 London.
The Holmes stories themselves are a perfect example: often relegated
to the cosy mystery classification, they deal with mutilation, drug
abuse, kidnapping, torture, child murderers, organised crime,
assassination, and almost everything else one might expect to find in
Hammett, Chandler, Parker, and Crais. The London of The
Architect of Murder is a violent and nasty place beneath the
veneer of gentility, and when I write about the mean streets of
Westminster I’m not exaggerating: Devil’s Acre, one of
the most dangerous slums in the city, was a couple of minutes walk
from Westminster Abbey.
Another problem solved was the
possibility of real-life events catching up with, or overwhelming a
plot. To take an unrelated example, the premise for my second
novella, The Secret Service, is that al-Qaeda have
recruited Caucasian agents in order to have a better chance of
penetrating NATO security forces. The idea was suggested to me
when I read about the connection between the Stasi and the PLO
during the Cold War and – as far as I knew – hadn’t
been used before. While I was still writing the story (in
December 2005, I think), I read a report of al-Qaeda
recruiting Croatians for exactly that purpose. I finished the
novella, but I lost the originality I’d hoped to achieve.
By setting the new novel in 1902, however, the problem went away.
Not only did I know what happened next, I could actually tailor my
story to fit in with the events, and thus preserve the thread of
historical realism.
There were other benefits of
turning back the clock, which I only appreciated once I started
writing. Most importantly, I was able to tell a story while
maintaining the suspension of disbelief. To take contemporary
Britain as an example: since the reforms following murder of Stephen
Lawrence in 1993, all homicides are investigated by squads of
thirty-plus specialist detectives, and there is no way a private
detective would be allowed to conduct his or her own enquiries at the
same time. The private eye, so essential to hardboiled crime
fiction, is no longer a realistic investigator of serious crime.
Furthermore, police procedurals must now cater for huge squads of
detectives, and the author must find a convincing way of cheating, in
order to focus on a few of these individuals and tell the story in a
way that will entertain readers. Graham Hurley and Mark
Billingham do this particularly well. There are no such
concerns with historical detection. In the Edwardian period,
amateurs roamed with few constraints, and serious inquiries were
often conducted by one – or a small team of – police
detectives, especially if they were of a sensitive nature.
Another huge hurdle which
disappeared was the CSI-DNA phenomenon. I read somewhere
recently that the only way to commit a murder undetected is to cover
oneself head-to-toe in plastic and then burn the plastic afterwards,
which seems pretty accurate given the ability of crime scene
investigators to extract DNA from all sorts of trace evidence.
This is a problem for an author, unless he or she is writing a novel
with a CSI as the lead character. I find it interesting that
the detective story (including adaptations on screen) seems to have
moved from the dominance of amateurs like Dupin, Holmes, and Poirot
through the police procedural to the a new era of the scientist as
detective, ala Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Jefferson Bass, and
of course the huge success of the CSI TV series.
Again, all of this is a problem
for an author wanting to write outside the new subgenre. How do
we keep the reader guessing without having murderers walking the
streets in plastic suits? Robert Crais and Sean Chercover have
managed to keep the traditional private eye tale alive extremely
well, but the difficulty of the task grows with every advance in what
Holmes called ‘the science of deduction’. Once
again, all these problems disappear when going back to 1902.
Crime scene and trace evidence work varied greatly across the
different police forces of the Empire, and even within police forces.
Am I saying it’s easier
to write a historical detective story?
I don’t think so. I
research all my stories, whether contemporary or historical, novel or
short story length, but there can be no doubt that historical
settings are more research intensive. Bernard Cornwell shared
his expertise and experience in an essay where he wrote that one can
never do too much research, but should only do the absolute minimum
required for a story. He was quite correct, because one could
spend years researching any historical period – and probably
enjoy every day of it – without actually writing the novel.
While I’ve made every
effort to accurately represent the place and people of 1902 London, I
am first and foremost a storyteller, telling what I hope is an
entertaining and credible tale. I also hope that readers
unfamiliar with the period will discover some interesting facts about
Edwardian England, but if they want to learn what it was like to live
there, then they’ll do better to pick up one of the excellent
non-fiction books I used for my research. The Architect of
Murder is a murder mystery which takes place in history, not a
reference book.
What I hadn’t considered
was the contentious nature of history itself. For example, I
couldn’t persuade my editor that a Scottish gentleman of the
time would refer to himself as ‘Scotch’ rather than
‘Scots’. He was convinced that the word was an
insult outside of use with regard to foodstuffs like whisky, beef,
and eggs. I had, however, taken the terminology from the work
of an Edwardian Scottish writer. Two of my proof-readers picked
up on this point as well, and I decided that my editor was right:
even though I knew the term was used at the time, the majority of
contemporary readers would see it as a mistake, or laziness on my
part. So, ‘Scotch’ became ‘Scots’.
Several emails and letters were
also exchanged over the song now best known as Land of Hope and
Glory, by Elgar and Benson. I had a different version,
called the Coronation Ode being sung by the crowds during the
coronation procession of King Edward VII (on Saturday the 9th
August 1902) and was told by a proof reader that the Coronation
Ode was first performed on the 2nd October 1902 at the
Sheffield Festival. Seeing as I’d taken my description of
the songs being sung from the diary of someone who was actually
present, I decided to argue this time. The tangle was
eventually unravelled and the song stayed. On the one hand, I
was glad that the proof reader obvious knew the period; on the other,
it seemed a lot of effort for such a minor point.
My first love is still the
hardboiled detective story, followed closely by the realistic police
procedural, but I had a hell of a time in 1902 London, and I think
the disadvantages of going back in time were outweighed by the
advantages. I enjoyed writing about real-life characters like
William Melville, who later went on to found MI5, and is considered a
possible candidate for Fleming’s ‘M’. If you
read the novel, you’ll hear ‘Q’ mentioned as well,
and there are appearances by a few of the celebrities and
personalities of the time. I won’t give any others away
because my goal is that at the end of the novel readers might want to
look up was real and who was fictional.
As an amateur historian, I like
to think of The Architect of Murder as something which could
easily have happened, something which fits perfectly with the march
of history and with the real-life events of the time. It not
only could have happened, but in a way, it did happen.
The story is about Rhodes’ will, and the eventual fruition of
that will – the scholarships – was a victory from beyond
the grave. How much of a victory? Read the book and find
out.
Editor’s note:
since Rafe submitted this article, The
Architect of Murder has sold out in
its first print run. If you would like to see it back in print,
contact Robert Hale publishers or Rafe at his website
http://www.rafemcgregor.co.uk/
THE
ARCHITECT OF MURDER was published by
Robert Hale in February, 2009
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