with Matthew Costello
and Neil Richards
We are delighted to welcome back mystery authors Matthew Costello and Neil Richards to Omnimystery News.
In June we featured an excerpt from their new mystery Murder on Thames (Bastei Entertainment; December 2013 ebook formats), one of twelve, self-contained mysteries set in the Cotswolds town of Cherringham.
Today Matthew invites you to visit the setting of this series in a guest post titled "Discovering Cherringham".
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You really should plan on visiting Cherringham.
It's in the Cotswolds, you know. English countryside, beautiful area, rolling hills, twisty, hedge-lined roads, and dotted with one picturesque village after another.
You see — as an American, a native New Yorker — the place was rather all new to me.
And Cherringham? Maybe the best of all those villages. Sits right on the river Thames. There's the beautiful and classic St. James Church in the center of the village, and — for the more earthy — three pubs, with the posh Angel at one end, and the rustic Ploughman's at the other.
Fancy some biscuits? (Cookies, you know …) Then Huffington's is the place for you. Fresh baked goods available in a cafe that's always jammed with chatty locals. And for a real three-star meal, there's the amazing restaurant, The Spotted Pig, run by the young, hardworking couple, Julie and Sam. Book early for that one!
From the town hall tower the overlooks the village square, to the tiny but well-stocked book store — which due to an unfortunate event recently changed owners — it's a charming, perfect Cotswold village.
Yes, Cherringham is a place to visit, see … and maybe even live.
Of course, there is the problem of the murders.
Seems, that for such a lovely setting, that crime simply can't stay away either. There are secrets in Cherringham, people with axes and other things to grind. And jealousies and vendettas all seem to rear their murderous heads, from the usually quiet lanes of the village, to the outlying roads.
But for my UK co-author, Neil Richards, and me … well, that only makes the fictional Cherringham village all the more interesting.
So — how did we "discover" this quaint but seemingly deadly village?
Easy — we went there.
Once Neil Richards and I contracted to write a cozy crime e-book series for Bastei Entertainment, we faced a number of questions.
Where do we set the series? Who are the protagonists? Who are our people, the villagers — our "cast" if you will?
And then there was the matter of creating the stories, the twisting, puzzling mysteries themselves, making them both cozy and compelling.
So we decided to go to the Cotsolds, Neil being a resident of (somewhat) nearby New Forest in England, me being a life-long New Yorker. We rented a cottage near a village, and began our, um, research.
At first, we didn't consider the village we lived in as contender for the model for the fictional Cherringham.
But the more we stayed there, sampling the pubs, observing the locals, shopping for dinner in the small market, grabbing a pot of tea at the café … that village became one of the three that fed into our vision of lovely Cherringham.
You'll note that I have not mentioned the name of said village.
Local Cotswold readers of our series may be able to deduce what those three villages may have been. But for now, we are keeping them secret.
(Because — as we all well know — secrets can be very entertaining …)
For protagonists, it made sense to use our own geographical backgrounds as models.
So we created "Jack Brennan", a New York detective; retired, widowed, and seeking solace and refuge on a classic river barge on the river. Jack reluctantly — at first — ends up helping Sarah, a single mum, divorced with two kids, to look into an old college friend's ‘accidental' death in the first Cherringham story, Murder on Thames.
Front there, a great detective partnership is born, with Jack's American perspective navigating — through Sarah — all things British. as well as having his hard-boiled NYC street detecting meet the reserved ways of village life.
Many of the stories emerged in our week there, with the thumbnails for a dozen tales quickly appearing. As of this writing, eleven have been written, with the last — for this run — just about to be started.
And the village is such a lively, engaging place with such interesting characters (many, however, with a penchant for crime) that there will likely be more to come.
One last thing to mention …
As Neil and I discovered, in our own intense and always exciting collaboration, the characters and places in Cherringham have become startlingly real to us. Not only that, those characters have turned into friends you don't want to lose contact with, many popping up in more than a few mysteries.
People like the capable and steady solicitor — and good friend to Sarah — Tony Standish. Or the young Vicar Hewett offering words of hope to those facing the results of a cozy crime. Or bubbly Grace, Sarah's assistant who keeps their web/online business running while Sarah turns sleuth.
For us, the village and residents of Cherringham have taken on their own life.
And so I'd be remiss if I didn't, in as cheery and Cotswold way as possible, encourage you to … do visit Cherringham soon!
Cozy crimes await — as well as so many pots of tea and pints of lager!
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Photos provided courtesy of
Matthew Costello and Neil Richards
Matthew Costello's award-winning work across all media has meshed story, gameplay and technology. He wrote and designed dozens of best-selling games and has published various novels including Beneath Still Waters (1989), which was also turned into a movie.
Neil Richards has worked as a producer and writer in TV and film creating scripts for the likes of BBC, Disney, Channel 4 and earning numerous BAFTA nominations along the way. He's also written story and script for over 20 video games and consults around the world on digital story-telling.
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Murder on Thames
Matthew Costello and Neil Richards
A Cherringham Cozy Crime Series
Cherringham — a quiet, peaceful town in the Cotswolds. Nothing ever happens there, or so it seems — until one morning a woman's body is found in the river. A terrible accident, according to the police. But is this really true? Sarah believes that there must be more to it.
In Jack, a former NYPD homicide detective, she finds a partner who is willing to start investigating with her. And they soon find out that things are not as clear as the police wants them to be …
Mac
