Latest cosy crime thriller from Chichester novelist Greg Mosse

SussexWorld

Chichester novelist Greg Mosse is in print with the second in his cosy crime series, Murder At Bunting Manor, following on from Murder at Church Lodge – part of an accelerated publishing schedule which will see the first four released within a year.

Transcript

00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always good

00:06 to speak to Greg Moss. And Greg, you have number two in a new series of cosy crime thrillers

00:12 just coming up now.

00:13 I absolutely do. This is my invitation to point over my shoulder, oh sorry, other shoulder,

00:18 and say look, there are the posters on the wall, and I can bring them to your closer

00:22 attention by saying Murder at Church Lodge is followed by Murder at Bunting.

00:26 No, Church Lodge, that came out in July, but the point is the first three books in this

00:31 series were all written in lockdown, they were all ready and waiting to go. You started

00:36 with a massive advantage with the backlog almost, didn't you?

00:40 I think it's really important to stress that I wasn't entirely on my own. I didn't just

00:44 sit in my chair spinning these stories hoping for the best. I was already in touch with

00:48 my agent Luigi Bonomi, who's a wonderful, encouraging, creative agent who helped me

00:54 to shape the novel. And in fact, by the time he had done the deal with Hodder & Stoughton,

01:01 I had the first draft of the fourth one as well. So when Luigi made the proposal to the

01:08 company there's going to be four cosy crime novels, he wasn't whistling in the dark. He

01:13 was saying there actually are already. Can we publish them very quickly? And brilliantly

01:20 Hodder & Stoughton accepted that, and we're publishing all four over 12 months.

01:24 That's quite some achievement, isn't it?

01:27 It feels like it, yeah.

01:28 Now it sounds like in the first book your heroine Maisie almost has the sleuthing forced

01:33 on her, but in the second one it's more of an invitation, isn't it?

01:38 Yes, that's really well put. She's stuck, isn't she? When she comes back to England

01:42 from Paris and discovers that not all is as it seems around her brother Stephen's death,

01:49 it's forced on her exactly like you say. But at the end of Murder at Church Lodge, she's

01:54 stuck in England waiting for the trial to take place, and somebody has read about what

01:59 she's done in the newspaper. In fact, they've read about her in the Chichester Observer.

02:04 What do you think of that?

02:05 Who'd have thought?

02:06 The 1972 Chichester Observer, and I don't think you were yet working on that August

02:11 Channel.

02:12 No, no.

02:13 So somebody's read about her and gets in touch through her solicitor and says, "I have a

02:18 mystery too. Will you come and help me solve it?"

02:22 And you mentioned Chichester, of course, and that's crucial to this series, isn't it? This

02:26 is absolutely the terrain that you've always lived in, isn't it?

02:29 Yes.

02:30 A terrain that you know incredibly well, and there's nostalgia here because you're going

02:33 back to the early 1970s and drawing very much on your own memories, aren't you?

02:39 I think there's an enormous advantage in the vividness of an 11-year-old's memories, and

02:46 that's what it is for me. I don't have to think about where was the livery yard, where

02:51 was the village shop, where was the pub, how long would that take, what would it feel like

02:55 getting on a bike on a drizzly February day and cycling into Chichester on the back road.

03:01 All of that is, yeah, and feel it vividly. And what that does is it means that all my

03:06 attention is on, hopefully, an authentic and true depiction of characters who feel real.

03:14 I'm not overburdened with the details of topography and inventing them.

03:20 Oh, that sounds fantastic. And how far can you run with this series then? You're talking

03:25 about a number five. Is it pretty open-ended, do you think?

03:28 So for me, I've actually got outline plots for another four once I finish this contract

03:38 of four. So Murder at Church Lodge, Murder at Bunting Manor. The third one coming out

03:42 next March is Murder at the Theatre, which is in fact Chichester Festival Theatre. Here's

03:47 a lovely, for me, detail of the historical past. The first production in 1972 of the

03:53 Chichester Festival Theatre summer season is the play that happens in my novel. But

04:01 of course, the director and the cast are all different people.

04:03 Which play is that? Is that giving away to? Well, no.

04:06 I'm going to leave that.

04:07 Findoutable, isn't it?

04:08 Exactly. It's Findoutable next March. And then of course, the fourth one in the sequence,

04:12 which is set in a wood fair in the Sussex countryside. And I think you'll agree a wood

04:18 fair is a place where there are lots of useful tools that can be used for murder.

04:25 In certain minds and in certain thoughts.

04:27 Yes.

04:28 Yes, indeed. Fantastic. Well, congratulations on publication number two.

04:33 Thank you, Phil.

04:34 Looking forward to the publication number three. And yeah, fantastic. Great to see you.

04:38 I'll be there. Thank you very much, Phil.

04:40 Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

04:41 (laughs)

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