We are delighted to welcome author Anne Emery to Omnimystery News today.
Anne's eighth mystery in her Arthur Ellis Award-winning Collins-Burke series, Ruined Abbey (ECW Press; May 2015 hardcover and ebook formats), is published this week, and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with her talking about her books.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your series characters. What is it about them that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Anne Emery
Anne Emery: My main detective is a criminal lawyer, Monty Collins, who grew up in a privileged South End Halifax family but who feels more at home in the downmarket bars where he plays the blues. He doesn't necessarily look the part, as he acknowledges in this exchange with a suspect. "Do I look like a killer to you, Monty?" "Do I look like a blues man to you, Mavis?" He has had a troubled history with his sharp-tongued wife, Maura, so family dynamics play a prominent role in the series. His little girl, Normie — named for the opera Norma, and none too happy with the name — is the narrator of some scenes in some of the books. She is notable for having an dà shealladh, which is Scottish Gaelic for "the two sights" or "second sight." She shares that gift — or curse — with her great grandmother, Morag, in Cape Breton.
Father Brennan Xavier Burke is the other main character. He is a brilliant musician, a confident, self-contained individual with a doctorate from Rome and a mind formed by years of metaphysical reasoning. He has a reputation for being a bit brusque by times. Exceedingly attractive to women, he is usually able to resist temptation and live up to his priestly vows. Usually, but not always. Like Monty, he likes to lift a jar or a pint, and is a regular in certain well-known Halifax bars. Burke's family gives me a wealth of material to draw upon. They are what is called a "well-known republican family." That is, an IRA family, and his father had to flee Ireland under cover of darkness with his wife and children when Brennan was just a child. They washed up in Hell's Kitchen in New York and later moved to Queens. I have written one novel set in New York, Obit, and two dealing with the "Troubles" in Ireland, Death At Christy Burke's and the newest book, Ruined Abbey.
What I like about these characters is their depth of experience in life, their histories, their wit, and the sparks that fly between them when they come into conflict, whether it's personal or professional. I have them facing off against each other in court on more than one occasion, with Monty as lawyer and Brennan as witness. Or suspect.
OMN: How would you tweet a summary of Ruined Abbey?
AE: Plot to blow up Westminster Abbey, murder of Special Branch cop. Brennan Burke's cousin charged. Brennan goes to London. Guns, bombs, bars.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
AE: Some of my characters are based on a composite of real people; others are pure invention, but based on "types" that I know to exist. I bring some of my experiences to my writing, particularly my love of music. Both of my main characters are musicians, Monty a blues man and opera buff, Burke a singer and choirmaster. He does only the great, traditional music, and would consign to hell much of the modern, hokey church music that oozed out of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the events and characters were inspired directly by music, e.g. Dylan's "Man in a Long Black Coat", or, in my newest book, "Bold Fenian Men" and other Irish rebel songs.
Each book has a "soundtrack." I don't mean I provide a CD, but I list all the tracks for each book on my website for people who would like to find and listen to the tunes. I would suggest that it is definitely worthwhile adding the music to the experience of the books.
Much of my writing comes out of my interest in history as well, particularly Irish history, and some of the characters are based on the larger-than-life personalities who have featured in that history during the past 100 years.
But a surprising aspect of my experience as a writer has been the coincidences that have arisen in connection with my writing and research. I took a trip to Italy a few years ago, when I was forming the ideas for Cecilian Vespers in my head. One clue in the book was going to relate to St. Philomena, so I wanted to look for some references to her while I was in the country. I went online and booked a hotel in Treviso, on the basis of location and air conditioning. When I got there and went out for a walk I noticed a small, ecclesiastical-looking building right in the parking lot of the hotel. It turned out to be the Oratorio of St. Philomena. I had no idea. But when I put it in the book, I could hardly include such an unbelievable coincidence, so I had my characters look up the oratorio and then book a hotel nearby. Ho hum.
There was another coincidence when I was researching Obit. I had arranged via email to meet a detective in Brooklyn. My friend Joan and I travelled to New York, and went to an Irish bar in Queen's, a completely random choice. You know where this is going. Next day, when we met the cop, Kevin, and he asked about our first day in New York and we told him, he said, "You're shittin' me." Of all the gin joints in all the boroughs of New York, thousands of them, I walked into his. His neighbourhood bar. He had arrived just minutes after we left.
There were a bunch of coincidences in connection with Ruined Abbey too.
Of course one cannot insert unbelievable events in one's book, even though they really happened, because nobody would believe them.
OMN: Tell us more about your writing process.
AE: I don't do an outline or a synopsis. I don't even write the stories in chronological order. When a character or a scene comes into my mind, I write it then and there, even if it is not going to appear until half way through or near the end of the book. Have to do it while the inspiration is there. Then I piece it all together later on. I marvel at writers who start at page 1 and write it all in order.
I do, however, create biographies for my characters. That is especially important in a series, because I don't want to give a character the wrong age, or the wrong siblings, three books down the line. I keep a file of their birthdates, families, years they spent doing this or that job. For example, Brennan Burke's grandfather Christy was born in 1892, fought in the Easter Rising of 1916, opened his pub in 1919, and died in 1970.
I also do a timeline for each book, and for the series in general. The stories are set 20 to 25 years ago, so I download a calendar for the particular year, and I map out the days on which the events occur. That's so I don't end up with Monty in court on the Monday of the Victoria Day weekend, or a bunch of priests whooping it up on what turns out to be Good Friday. Probably nobody else would notice what date Good Friday was in, e.g., 1992, but I would know!
The cast of characters tends to expand. I end up needing people I never thought of when I started out, because I need more suspects to deepen the mystery. I find that the most difficult part of writing a mystery. I know the victim and the killer, and what the motivation was. I know my regular characters and the ones close to the victim and killer. But those other suspects keep me working well into the night.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
AE: I tend to be a bit obsessive about research. I will do what I can online, but there is a complication with my books in that they are set 20 to 25 years in the past. So I have to know, e.g., what a street or factory or plant looked like back then. Locally, it's easier. There is a set of directories in Halifax that were published annually, so I can look up what buildings were on such and such a street in 1991, what year the Athens restaurant moved from Barrington Street to Quinpool Road, and things like that. And, even in my own city, I will drive the route to make sure I have it right; I will go to the building to see how many panes are in the windows. I want to know what kind of flowers are in bloom in mid-May in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and what tenements were still standing in Fenian Street in Dublin. I want to take note of the traffic patterns around Parnell Square so I do not have somebody being followed in the wrong direction. You get the idea. But you can never be sure you have everything covered. That's where a sharp-eyed editor comes in. My favourite example: in the draft of my second novel I had a character boot a door open. My editor at ECW pointed out that, in a building of that description, the door would open inwards. You gotta admire someone who picks up on something like that!
The most fun research of course is the trips to the scene: to New York, London, various cities and towns in Ireland, where I scope out the setting and listen to the music and the chat. Some of my dialogue, and some of my tidbits of "political" information, have come word for word from conversations engaged in, or overheard, in the bars and taxi cabs of those cities.
OMN: What kind of feedback have you received from readers?
AE: I love questions and comments from readers who see more in my books than just the "whodunit". There is always a theme in my novels, which underlies the story and which is sometimes more significant than the mystery plot itself. The theme might be Irish history or Gaelic culture; it might be the longing of children for love and protection; or it might be something that particularly galls me, i.e., people who would not normally be criminals themselves but who "go along" with and pander to those who are.
But the most important elements of the books, to me, are the characters, their motivations, their dialogue, their voices. And this is where the questions and comments from readers get interesting. I don't mind at all when readers condemn my characters' behaviour; that tells me I did something right. I made the character so real that he or she enrages the person reading the book.
I get wildly varying comments on my three main characters, lawyer and blues man Monty Collins, priest Father Brennan Burke, and Monty's wife, The MacNeil (Maura). Maura has a tongue in her head that could slit the hull of a freighter, so people tend to love her or loathe her. Most people love Monty, but occasionally I'll hear that a reader would never go to a lawyer like that; the objections are usually to his drinking and his affinity for down and dirty blues bars.
But by far the most extreme reactions are to Father Burke, son of an IRA family in Dublin. He is a striking figure who is a brilliant and dedicated priest, but he also has a weakness for drink, a tendency to use salty language, and an appreciative eye for the fairer sex. I've had women ask who he is based on, so they can meet him. I've had others say he is not fit to do anything but get down on his knees and scrub the floor of his church.
The most memorable reaction I got was from an elderly woman who did not even want to read my first book, Sign of the Cross, because of the title and the cover image of a priest. But she had to read it for her book club. Then she said she felt better about it because of the caring attitude Burke showed towards someone having knee surgery. I sat there, facing her and wracking my brain trying to think what she was referring to. I never write about medical matters. Only later did I get it. The line was about Burke's Irish accent: "It was the kind of curt, clipped voice you heard just before you lost your kneecap." I'm sure I turned pale at the thought of the woman's reaction if she'd understood that!
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Anne Emery is a graduate of St. F.X. University and Dalhousie Law School. The first book in the Collins-Burke series, Sign of the Cross, was the winner of the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. She has also been honored with a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was the winner of the 2011 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. She has worked as a lawyer, legal affairs reporter and researcher. Anne lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at AnneEmery.com and her author page on Goodreads.
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Ruined Abbey by Anne Emery
A Collins-Burke Mystery
Publisher: ECW Press
It's 1989. The Troubles are raging in Ireland, bombs exploding in England.
In this prequel to the Collins-Burke series, Father Brennan Burke is home in New York when news of his sister's arrest in London sends him flying across the ocean. The family troubles deepen when Brennan's cousin Conn is charged with the murder of a Special Branch detective and suspected in a terrorist plot against Westminster Abbey. The Burkes come under surveillance by the murdered cop's partner and are caught in a tangle of buried family memories.
— Ruined Abbey by Anne Emery
