Michael Gallagher's Blog, page 5

The Quibbling Cleric: Prologue, part 1 #MysteryWeek

THE PROLOGUE

London. August, 1853.
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.”
—Shakespeare’s Macbeth

‘“I CAN’T THINK WITHOUT thinking about you; I can’t BREATHE without thinking about you; I can’t LIVE without thinking about you,”’ quoted George. He glanced at me through suspicious, narrowed eyes. ‘It looked like your handwriting, Octavius.’
It was; not that I was about to admit it.
‘Was it signed?’ I asked, knowing full well it was not. Oh, why had Annie kept my note? Why had she hidden it where George was bound to find it? Surely she knew her brother pried?
‘No, but the writing was cursive like yours is,’ George persevered, ‘all spiky L’s and T’s. This is my little sister we’re talking about.’ He stressed the words little and sister again, then glowered at me some more.
‘Concentrate, George. This is a crime scene, and we have precious few minutes before young Mr Badger returns with all the constables of N-Division in tow. Come, observe whatever may be observed, and tell me what you think.’
The big lad peered momentarily down at the body, which was sprawled across the broad octagonal space formed by the transepts and the nave. Cool early morning light filtered in through the church’s narrow east windows, amply illuminating the corpse.
‘I think he’s dead,’ said George.

Continues tomorrow exclusively on Goodreads
Love mysteries? Love #MysteryWeek

Don’t forget, all this week you can ask me questions; any question—past or future—about the series’ characters on the Goodreads’ “Ask the Author” feature. Is Gooseberry in with a chance where Annie’s concerned? Ever wondered what becomes of the snivelling Walter? Ask what you will, and I promise to answer as truthfully as I can.

There are twenty free copies of Octopus: Send for Octavius Guy #2 (Octavius Guy and the Case of the Throttled Tragedienne) to be given away throughout May. You’ll find the coupon code and link you’ll need at the bottom of my monthly post on my website. Just scroll down! Happy reading.
Michael
Find me on my website
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and @seventh7rainbow

May 2017: The perils of Times New Roman?

It started with a reader posting a review of Big Bona Ogles, Boy!. I make a promise on my website that I will always try to respond personally if I can and, when I wrote to thank them, it sparked off a fascinating round of correspondence. Do read on…


Well written with a tremendous amount of detail. This book transported me to Dickens’ London for a mystery with a metaphysical twist. I enjoyed the trip but sometimes felt bogged down and needed timeout. (Four stars)—Seaside-Reader LibraryThing Early Reviewer


Michael Gallagher emailed: I’m so glad you enjoyed Big Bona Ogles, Boy!, though I’m sorry if you found it overly-detailed. I’d like to thank you for taking the time and trouble to write and post a review. It really is much appreciated, as not everybody does. I would really like to publish it on my website and use it in future publicity materials for the series. If you are happy to let me do this, please let me know how you would like to be credited—as Seaside-Reader, as you are listed on LibraryThing, or by another name?
Kindest regards,
Michael Gallagher


Seaside-Reader replied: Good morning Michael from California. Thank you for contacting me. It gives me an opportunity to share a personal observation about the format of your manuscript and an explanation about my comment. I thought very carefully about the “detail” comment because I truly enjoyed your story for many reasons, it was charming! I do not want to put off a prospective reader who might not select it because of what may well be a personal preference.
A comment: I liked the italics for internal speculation but I am not sure if it was the font or the spacing that made the page feel so cramped and busy. I asked myself before posting if that visual “business” slowed the development of your story and the path to its conclusion. Yet, there was a quality to the look of the page that was classic and yes, I think, a bit “Victorian”.
Please comment. You may use my review on your website but your response my lead me to offer a revision that you may prefer to use.
Sincerely,
Your conflicted and introspective Seaside-Reader from Newfoundland


Michael Gallagher emailed: Good afternoon to you from a rather grey and overcast London! Your email gave me so many things to think about, and I’d like to try and touch on them all. Firstly, I really am pleased you enjoyed the book! I love Gooseberry and all his friends (even when he’s being high-handed or just plain wrong). As an author, however, I need to be aware of anything that stops a reader’s eye from moving forward on the page (the use of an unexpected word, for instance), or stops a reader from wanting to know what happens next.
Your suggestion that it may be the font—especially the italicized version—that’s hampering your enjoyment seems perfectly plausible to me. Now that you’ve pointed it out, it feels like it’s been hovering around at the back of my brain for some time (although I might just be suggestible!).
I use Times New Roman for a number of reasons: it’s the one that both KDP (Amazon Kindle) and Smashwords (which makes the ePubs) suggest you use for the conversions they make; I think it does have a kind of classic, Victorian look to it; and I much prefer it to the other serif fonts on offer. But the italics compress themselves in a way that does make them harder to read—they are cramped and busy—and authors are advised to use them sparingly.
I try to—and yet they are an important part of my writing palette: they suit Octavius’s internal thoughts, they’re employed (as Victorian writers employed them) to denote foreign terms, and they’re good for delineating written tracts such as letters. I have a brilliant proof reader, a lovely woman named Lara, who also acts as my editor and copy editor. I send her the chapters as I finish them, then she rings me up and we argue over the phone for an hour or two about every comma (I use too many), every passage of italics (I use too many), every set of quotation marks (I use too many). She normally wins. She wins because whatever it is that has stopped her eye is likely to stop other readers in their tracks too. I will be sure to let her know what you’ve said, and in future I will try harder to limit my use of italics—probably by finding alternatives to representing Gooseberry’s internal dialogue if it goes on for any length of time—so thank you!


Me and my brilliant proofreader Lara

There are a number of little things I do to help evoke the spirit of a Victorian novel (the typeface being just one of them) but the truth is I have surprisingly little control over what the reader actually sees. One of the drawbacks of being an indie author is that you are reliant on the conversions that KDP and Smashwords make, and on the devices your readers use, some of which will not support my formatting. No matter how carefully and cleanly I format a typescript, even with the best conversion (which is normally the ePub) weird things can occur: blank pages insert themselves for no particular reason, and, with KDP, font-types (I use a Segoe script for Octavius’s handwritten notebook) are apt to be replaced with standard Times New Roman.
Food for thought?
Hoping that your Californian weather is so much better than ours is,
Kindest regards,
Michael


Seaside-Reader replied: Hi Michael. Your kind and detailed response gave me what will remain a treasured insight into your writing and publishing process. Thank you for taking so much time to assist and educate just one reader! I have come away from this experience with a deepened respect for you, your work and for Lara’s work as an editor/copy editor. I feel privileged to have had this opportunity to correspond with you. I have what may well be a cheeky suggestion for your consideration. Rather than me rewrite my original review, would you consider letting a greater number of your readers enjoy your edifying response in perhaps an edited version of these emails? I think they would be as delighted as I was to read what you say.
I see from the international news feed that the British Isles was battered again by a North Atlantic storm. My summer home is in Newfoundland on the Avalon Peninsula where weather is dictated by the moods of the North Atlantic. Our wee cottage was built by a fisherman for his family over a hundred years ago and clings to the bottom of a pine clad cliff so near to the water edge that we can both see and hear the whales when they visit the 5K strip of water between our home and Belle Island. Newfoundlanders call a narrow body of water between two islands a tickle. So our house is the “the House on the Tickle” in our village of 1,600.
In the winter, we reside in Southern California in the desert of the Coachella Valley where the sun shines 365 days of the year. We drive the 5500 miles between our two homes with two cats, Lily and Mac. Such is the retirement of a school administrator who wanted to go home to family and Canada and NASA scientist who wanted to golf.
Kindest regards to you and to Lara.
Seaside-Reader


Michael Gallagher responded: Dear Seaside-Reader, I’ve thought of the perfect way to use our correspondence: as one of the monthly posts I write for my website. I’ve edited it to make sure your name does not appear, but there are two wonderfully evocative paragraphs about Newfoundland and Coachella that I’d like to include if they don’t give too much away.
Michael


Seaside-Reader replied: Good morning, Michael! I am honoured that you found my description merited inclusion! I ran it by my husband to see if he had any objections. I could have predicted that because he is a scientist he would make two adjustments to the description; the average rainfall in the Coachella Valley takes place over 8 days (the sun shines 357 days) and the drive should not include the 6 hour ferry passage from Cape Breton to Channel Port aux Basques that traverses the Cabot Straight (making the trip approximately 5000 miles). LOL!
Seaside-Reader

I’ve been at this writing malarkey for a number of years now, and the one thing that never gets old is hearing from people who have read my books, especially if I get to learn a bit about who they are and where they come from. I don’t know about you, but I could practically hear those whales singing, and I now feel I have a personal connection to Newfoundland that I might never have had. It’s a by-product of being a writer that I’d never envisaged, and it’s not an uncommon occurrence. I’ve been lucky enough to forge similar connections with readers from other parts of Canada, Wisconsin and Sioux Falls, to list but a few. I do hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse behind the scenes, and will join me next month when I try to pin down what makes a cosy mystery—well—cosy!

Happy reading!
Michael
Find me on my website
on Facebook
and @seventh7rainbow

April 2017: The fly in the ointment

When is a parish church NOT the parish church—or at least the parish church that you want it to be? Simple answer: when the parish was comprised of a number of manors, and one of them was obviously bigger or more powerful than the one you’d been researching—in this case, one that originally belonged to the canons of St Paul’s.

The parish of Islington may have begun life as a place of brooding forests and burbling streams, but by the Middle Ages it was a large tract of farmland to the north of the City of London, which was divided between a number of manors (not just Tolentone, as my previous reading had suggested), the southern end, bordering the city, belonging mainly to St Paul’s. By the twelfth century it had its own parish church, St Mary’s. We know some of the early history of the advowson (the legal right to appoint the vicar) pertaining to St Mary’s because it was recorded in the settlement of a twelfth-century dispute between the dean and chapter of St Paul’s (who believed they’d been given the land by the bishop) and the nuns of St Leonard’s Priory at Bromley (who seemed to feel their founder, William, Bishop of London, had given it to them). In the event, the dean and chapter won out but, but until their priory was dissolved in 1536 it was the nuns of St Leonard’s who appointed candidates to the benefice (the church “living”), on a payment of one mark per year.

Although Islington was essentially a collection of privately owned estates and farms (an important point that is key to its later development), the public seems to have taken a rather curious view about its right to use the land. Laws passed by Henry VIII required all men (bar clergymen and judges) to practise their skills at archery periodically, and nowhere were there more butts to shoot at than in Islington’s pastures. So popular did archery become during his reign that, on deciding the fields had become too enclosed to practise the sport, a turner from London led what could be described as a riot to chop down the hedges and fill in the trenches.

With its clean country air and flowing streams, the place became a favourite destination for walkers to escape the rigours of the city. The numerous dairy farms took advantage of this and diversified into offering cream teas and any number of variations on the theme of syllabub. From the mid-1600s until well into the 19th century it played host to a great many boarding schools, such as an early one run by a Mr Ezekiel Tongue (there’s a character for a future title if there ever was one!) who taught young ladies Greek and Latin. From 1838 till 1840, Wilkie Collins, aged 14, attended a school run by the Reverend Cole in Highbury, where he was bullied into telling bedtime stories to a fellow pupil: “It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware,” he later wrote. “When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure.”

Quite early on, Islington became a holiday destination, too, where wealthy people might build a second home to be used as a country retreat. Inevitably the presence of rich people in a lonely, rural environment attracted a criminal element, and from the late-1600s onwards the parish became the haunt of highwaymen, not least of whom was the famous Frenchman Claude Duval. By 1739 the problem had become so acute, the parish’s Vestry committee offered a reward of £10 to anyone apprehending a robber, be he a burglar, cut-purse, or footpad.

Since the dissolution of St Leonard’s Priory in 1536, the advowson pertaining to St Mary’s—though still owned by the dean and chapter of St Paul’s—was leased to private individuals—apart, that is, from a brief interlude in the mid-1600s when it was presented to the parishioners of Islington. It was soon taken back. The church itself (the second on the site) fell into disrepair, and in 1754 it was replaced by a new one, which stands there to this day. By this point houses stood in lines along the main roads, backing on to farmland that was only just beginning to be re-purposed for residential development.

Gradually new streets, such as Colebrooke Row—which dates from 1768—were laid out behind the existing thoroughfares, and Islington, once again because of the clean air, cream teas, and the access to spas, became noted as a retirement village. Charles Lamb describes his retirement there in a letter from 1823: “When you come Londonward, you will find me no longer in Covent Garden; I have a cottage in Colebrooke Row, Islington—a cottage, for it is detached—a white house, with six good rooms in it. The New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking-pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages…You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with old books; and above is a lightsome drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great lord, never having had a house before.”

In 1768 the land behind Lamb’s house was used as a horticultural nursery. Later it became a brick-field, supplying bricks of London clay to build the ever-spreading network of terraced housing that from the 1820s began spidering out over former farmland. Although this kind of spread was happening in all of London’s suburbs, nowhere was it more prevalent than in Islington. The influx of the middle-classes brought with it the need for some decent public transport. The short-stage coach service that was in operation by this point was soon eclipsed by the introduction of George Shillibeer’s first London omnibuses in 1829, coaches drawn by a team of three horses that were capable of carrying up to twenty passengers. By 1850, the railways had also made their presence felt, with a stretch of line passing through Highbury intended primarily for the transport of goods, but also offering a fifteen-minute passenger service to Fenchurch Street in the city.

Many of the original Elizabethan buildings and inns in the older, southern end of the parish had been pulled down by 1812, and as the century progressed the poor crowded into the yards and courts that were left in their wake—in what were often extremely squalid conditions. As for St Mary’s, the Reverend Daniel Wilson, who served as vicar there from 1824—and his son, who took over eight years later—both recognized that the church could no longer meet the needs of a rapidly-growing population. The parish was divided into districts and, between 1828 and 1850, nine new churches were built, amongst them Christ Church, Highbury, where Gooseberry and George’s next big case will be set. Quite how I’m going to apply an historically non-existent advowson to an almost brand-new church, I’m not yet sure. But trust me, I will!

Thus ends my summation of the massive amount of research I embarked upon to prepare for my next novel. It’s been a long and not-altogether-smooth journey, but it has left me with the most vivid impression of what life was like in Highbury and its environs in 1853. Far more modern than I would have expected!

The quote from Charles Lamb is taken from Daniel Lysons, 'Islington', in The Environs of London: Volume 3, County of Middlesex (London, 1795), pp. 123-169. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/lond... [accessed 20 January 2017].

Thanks also to the Journal of the Islington Archaeology & History Society: www.islingtonhistory.org.uk. Back copies of the journal are available online, and do check out their Facebook page!

Image: St Mary’s Church Islington, photo by Fin Fahey. CC-SA 2.5 Generic licence

Happy reading!
Michael
Find me on my website
on Facebook
and @seventh7rainbow

March 2017: Location, location, location

O.K. So I have my victim: the Reverend Allaston Burr, found dead inside his church, his battered face an unrecognizable, bloody mess. I’m beginning to envisage a cast of characters, his parishioners, all of whom hated him and wanted him gone. And the reason they failed to achieve their end? He was appointed for his lifetime by a third party holding the advowson for the parish in question (if that made no sense to you—and there’s no reason it should—you may wish to consult my post for February). I have my detectives, Gooseberry and George, just champing at the bit for another decent case to sink their teeth into. What else do I need? Why, a promising location, of course!

The actual Reverend Allatson Burgh (note the real spelling) resided way out in leafy Hampstead (where much of Big Bona Ogles, Boy! was set), and was the vicar at the Christopher Wren-designed church St Lawrence Jewry (so named for its proximity to the medieval Jewish Quarter), next door to the Guildhall in the City of London. As promising as this may sound, I wanted my victim living tooth-by-jowl with his disgruntled parishioners, so I began to look elsewhere. I started with a tentative peek at both Highbury (in the modern-day borough of Islington, and best known as being home to the Arsenal Football Club) and Highgate (quite a posh area about three miles to the north). But as soon as I read the words on Wikipedia, “The area now known as Islington was part of the larger manor of Tolentone, which is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Tolentone was owned by Ranulf brother of Ilger,” I knew that Highbury had won out. Ranulf, brother of Ilger! It really doesn’t get much better than that, or so I thought. How wrong I was!

By the thirteenth century, the manor of Tolentone (or “Tollington” in modern parlance, as attested to by some of the street names that still remain in the area) belonged to one Alice de Barowe, daughter of Thomas de Barowe and granddaughter of Bertram de Barowe. In 1271 she made the manor over to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, the British headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, on the condition that they pay the good nuns of St Mary Clerkenwell an annual sum of seven marks so that she and her heirs might be remembered by them in their masses. No particular reason is given for this generous gift to the priory, but I suspect the wooden manor house may have fallen irreparably into disrepair. The priory leased the land to the Bishop of Lincoln for several decades, and when it reverted to them in 1348 (by which point the Hospitallers had subsumed any remaining property and personnel of the disbanded Templar empire), the prior built a new moated manor house a mile to the south of the old one, christening it “Highbury”, nestling as it did on the gentle slopes of a hill. This was a countryside retreat, with a grange (a working farm) and a barn attached.

Although built of stone in order to sustain the elements, the house itself was fated not to last even forty years. At the start of June 1381, during the reign of the young Richard II, the peasants revolted, protesting against what they saw as unfair taxation and restrictive working conditions. They vented their anger and frustration on the Hospitallers in particular. They burned the Priory of St John to the ground, and then went on to do the same to the Temple Inns of Court (which, since the Templars’ demise, were now held by the Hospitallers). They ran Sir Robert Hales, the order’s Grand Prior (who also happened to be the Lord High Treasurer to the king), to ground in the chapel of the Tower of London’s White Tower, and beheaded him with an axe in the street outside. An estimated (though probably overestimated) 20,000 protesters converged on Highbury Manor (which, according to some commentators, had become Prior Hales’s private residence), broke in, ate and drank their fill, and then destroyed the manor house utterly.

I can just see Gooseberry in thrall to all this. Without giving too much away, the plot for the next book has a strong whiff of buried treasure wafting through its pages. How fortuitous, then, that Highbury has such impeccable connections with the Knights Hospitaller!

When the revolt was eventually quelled, the priory and the Inns of Court were rebuilt, but not so Highbury Manor. The ruins, the land, the grange and the barn remained in Hospitaller hands until the 1530s when Henry VIII began dissolving the monasteries and transferring the lands they held to the Crown. He and successive sovereigns leased out Highbury Manor to various individuals, but it always reverted to the Crown, until it was given away outright (with the exception of the two woods on the estate) to one Sir Allen Apsley by Charles I in 1629, as payment for debts Apsley had incurred as “victualler” to the Tower of London.

Apsley sold it within three years to a Mr Thomas Austen, a London cheesemonger, who, like Apsley before him, became Lord of the Manor—though there was no manor house as such, and few buildings except for what had come to be known as Highbury Barn (probably the grange’s three-storey farmhouse). The manor remained in his family for almost a hundred years, and was then sold to a Mr James Colebrooke, who left it to his youngest son George. On becoming bankrupt in 1773, George sold the site (including Highbury Barn) to a property developer named John Dawes. The manorial rites (i.e., little more than the title of Lord of the Manor and any advowson that might pertain to the estate) were sold off some eighteen years later in 1791, though it is unclear by whom, whether by Colebrooke or by Dawes.

Mr Dawes immediately set about creating his vision for the place: a gentile, refined community in an idyllic country setting within commuting distance from the city. First came Highbury Place, a single row of terraced buildings overlooking the fields to the west, its southern entrance gated off to imply an exclusivity from the rest of the parish. It was built over a five-year period from 1774-79. In 1781 Highbury House (pictured above, complete with telescope and observation platform on the right) followed, its local significance reinforced by its being sited of the ruins of old manor house. Nine years later it was joined by Highbury Hill House, whilst the construction of Highbury Terrace got underway, culminating in 1794. Dawes gave the new community some land for a church (not built for another 54 years) and leased the two woods back from the Crown with the intention of creating a 250 acre park that would stretch north-west to the edge of the original Tolentone manor (it never came to pass).

Mr Dawes appears to bow out of the picture at this point, after selling off parcels of land for others to develop. By the 1820s houses had begun to appear along Highbury Grove to the north and south of Highbury Barn, while others stretched eastwards into the fields. In the 1840s Highbury Crescent was laid out in a semi-circle adjoining the original Highbury Place, and by 1853, when my novel will be set, the land to the east of Highbury Grove is being carved up as Highbury New Park.

Highbury Barn, from which a cakes and ale establishment had been operating since 1740, continued to prosper and grow throughout this time under a succession of managers and owners. It became a highly successful tavern and outdoor tea-gardens, which were gas-lit for evening entertainments. It specialized in catering to large corporate parties—sometimes day-long affairs—for up to 2,000 people (or so it is claimed; I myself have only seen evidence of a maximum of 500). Food would be served from the afternoon onwards in a number of staggered sittings, culminating in a ball in the evening starting at nine.

So far, so perfect a location for a spot of murder! A model community of upwardly-mobile, aspiring rich folk who have a rector forced upon them by some outsider holding the advowson. And then I discovered the fly in the ointment. The parish church of St Mary’s—where my murdered rector ought to have worked—had nothing to do with the Manor of Tolentone whatsoever. Join me next month to discover why.

Happy reading!
Michael
Find me on my website
on Facebook
and @seventh7rainbow

February 2017: Research, research, research

Research. For me, it is one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process. The premise of Gooseberry’s next outing, The Case of the Quibbling Cleric, is that a church’s whole congregation detests the rector—enough for someone to do away with him when appeals to have him removed through regular channels are denied. Which begs the obvious question: if he’s so obnoxious, why was he appointed in the first place? Knowing nothing about the Church of England (or any other Church, come to that), I enquired of some Roman Catholic friends (who just happened to be on hand) how C of E rectors and vicars were appointed. Surely, since they were religious, they ought to know? “By the local parish council?” came their tentative reply. It seemed like a reasonable guess, and it certainly gave me a starting point.

It turns out that parish councils are a fairly recent phenomenon, having been around for just shy of a hundred years. They superseded committees called Vestries (so named because members would meet in the church’s vestry). And while they may have had the power to propose a candidate for the post, if modern practice is anything to go by, in theory any interested person or persons might have done so. In all instances, however, their proposal would have been trumped by someone who may indeed have been a total stranger to the parish, but who held a certain ancient legal right known as an advowson.

Advowson. There’s a word you don’t see every day. In manorial, medieval England, it was down to the lord of the biggest manor in the parish to build the parish church and provide a living (in the form of tithes—taxes—and glebes—parcels of land) for the incoming priest. After so much expense, he naturally wished to appoint his own preferred candidate to the post. This right, which became known as an advowson, could—just like real estate—be passed down through the family, sold off if circumstances demanded it, or even given away.

In that early medieval period, the advowson—like the manor—generally passed down through the family, so the right to appoint the priest remained within the immediate community. By the 1500s, however, much of the land (and the advowsons it entailed) had been transferred to the monasteries. Quite why this happened eludes me. One example, though, is the Manor of Tolentone (modern day Tollington in the London suburb of Holloway), which the owner Alice de Barowe gave to the Clerkenwell Mother House of the Knights Hospitaller in 1271 on the condition that seven marks per year be paid to the nuns of the convent of St Mary, Clerkenwell, opposite the priory, for Alice and her heirs to be remembered in their masses in perpetuity. By this point the right to appoint the priest had gone to strangers, even though the various monasteries in question were generally local ones.

But when Henry VIII pulled away from Rome and began dissolving the monasteries in the mid-1530s, the monastic lands and all they entailed went to the Crown. Henry’s supporters were granted various estates, often only for their lifetime—which, under Henry, could be a perilously short one. I found one mention of Thomas Cromwell, for instance, being granted—amongst other properties—the Manor of Tolentone (now renamed Highbury Manor…but more on that next month) when the Priory of St John was dissolved in 1540. If this is true, he can have only enjoyed it for a paltry few weeks until his beheading the same year. As with all the former properties of the monasteries, the right to appoint the priest now lay with the Crown, or to whomever it had been temporarily assigned.

There followed a period of great religious instability under successive rulers. In 1605, when things had settled somewhat, a law was passed requiring the advowsons belonging to any recusants (people who remained faithful to the Catholic Church) to be transferred to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who could then pass them on to a third party for a fee. By the time of Charles II, it was common for the Crown to settle advowsons on its creditors as a means of repaying its debts. Suddenly there was a huge proliferation of people—often with no connection to the parish concerned—who were able to appoint its priest. By the early 1600s, more than a third of all advowsons belonged to people who were termed “impropriators”.

Why, you may ask, would they want such a power? In large, rich families, it was the eldest son who could expect to inherit his father’s estate along with any hereditary titles. The question then arose: what to do with the second and third sons? Two obvious choices were to buy them a commission in the army, or to purchase an advowson and present their son with “a living” that would provide him with a house, a wage, and further income from the glebe for his lifetime.

Surely there was some kind of check in place on such randomly-made appointments? Well, yes and no. In theory the appointment required the approval of the local bishop; in practice the bishop was usually unwilling to challenge it, for, even by the late 1300s, Henry II had ruled that cases involving advowsons should be tried in a secular court, not an ecclesiastical one over which bishops might hold sway.

Advowsons have gone now—or at least they’ve been nullified, having generally been bought up by the churches themselves. So have the Vestries. But in Gooseberry’s day, such an arrangement would help to explain why a parish might end up with a rector who was totally unwanted by them. When I was researching my last novel, I came across the intriguing story of the Reverend Allatson Burgh, so hated by his flock that they petitioned Queen Victoria to have him removed. Their petition failed. The reason for their hatred? He changed the liturgy, the services prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. But why was he not removed, I wondered? Could his appointment have been made through an advowson, an appointment that held good throughout his lifetime?

Oh, and the difference between a vicar and a rector? A vicar lives vicariously off tithes or taxes alone that are raised by the parish whereas a rector also has the land rights to the glebe that’s entailed in his “living”. There! Now you know!

Happy reading!

Michael

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@seventh7rainbow

January 2017: Michael reflects on 2016…

It’s been a busy year for me. In 2016 I released two new Send for Octavius Guy novels: Octopus in March, which received great critical acclaim, and Big Bona Ogles, Boy! , which came out barely four weeks ago and is already beginning to attract some very good reviews. I gave my first interview to a book blog, Emma Hamilton’s Buried Under Books. Emma’s an English teacher currently on sabbatical and, as you might expect, her reviews are more in-depth than those that are usually on offer, and yet manage to remain surprisingly pithy. After teaching at Bede, a local charity, for over twenty-five years, I took voluntary redundancy in order to write full time. Since leaving, I have learnt of the deaths of two of my former students—one not yet thirty, the other only forty. This man’s mother was one of my General Duties Assistants when I worked at Southwark College many years ago. My heart goes out to both their families.

The Crimes & Thrillers reading group I attend at Canada Water Library has seen a huge transition. First we lost the services of Alice King, the member of staff who led the group so brilliantly for a number of years, then, due to poor attendance, we lost the staffing altogether. The three of us (now four) who formed the core of the group vowed to continue on, and in addition to our monthly meeting we have taken the group online. One of the great pleasures of attending a reading group is discovering books and authors you might never have otherwise come across. If you are a Crimes & Thrillers aficionado, why not join us online? If we happen to read a book by someone you rate highly, we would welcome your input and comments. At the very least you might be inspired to try out that author who you’ve always had your eye on!

So what do we read? This year we started off with Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (which I enjoyed more than I thought I would, if indeed “enjoyed” is the right word) and a number of rare and out-of-print titles that the British Library have resurrected as British Library Crime Classics from the Golden Age of Crime Writing. I was introduced to Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano mysteries, and then came a slurry of titles that in all honesty I would rather forget. Once we’d established control over the group we chose what we would read more carefully. I was delighted by The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first Cormoran Strike mystery by J. K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith; we’ll be tackling the second in the series in the months to come. More recently we’ve gone back to basics with The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters (fantastic!) and Venus in Copper by Lindsey Davis (fast-paced, wise-cracking swords & sandals stuff that the group adored). We’re currently ploughing through the almost scholarly Dissolution by C. J. Sansom, which I am thoroughly enjoying—corruption amongst the soon-to-be dissolved monasteries in Henry VIII’s time. We’ll be discussing this on January 26th. Join us to find out what the rest of the group thinks.

As a writer, I don’t get a lot of time to read books of my own choosing. This year, however, I picked up Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. Take the Conan Doyle character Inspector Jones, the Scotland Yard detective who went up against Holmes in The Red-Headed League, then re-imagine him to be far more intelligent than Dr Watson describes. Throughout Horowitz refers to a second case where Inspector Jones crosses paths with the famous detective (The Case of the Three Monarchs; Horowitz’s own invention). In an act of supreme generosity, Horowitz provides us with Watson’s account of this story at the very end of the book, in an homage which is perfectly recounted in unimpeachable Conan Doyle style. It even goes so far as to elucidate the problem of how far the parsley had sunk into the butter! A real treat for any Sherlock Holmes fans.

And what does the coming year portend? I’ve begun work on Oh, No, Octavius! or Octavius Guy and the Case of the Quibbling Cleric. I already have a body—based on the Reverend Allaston Burgh, whose story I happened across whilst researching the latest book. His parishioners hated him so much they petitioned Queen Victoria to have him removed from his post. Their petition failed, which led me to ponder what might have happened next. Though it’s too early to speculate, I think the book might begin with the discovery of the Reverend’s body inside his church, his battered face an unrecognizable, bloody mess. Hmmm, as Gooseberry would say.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2017!

Michael

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A holiday gift to you

I think all my five novels make great holiday reads, and from now until Boxing Day you can get them all for free. There’s no catch and you’re under no obligation; all I ask in return is that, if you enjoy them, you tell your friends about them. There. You won’t get a much better holiday deal than that. Please visit my website for details.
Happy holidays! Happy reading!
Michael

December 2016: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,” as Gooseberry quotes Robbie Burns at the start of Big Bona Ogles, Boy! , the latest instalment of Send for Octavius Guy. They certainly have in this case. I had big plans to promote the book, all of which began to gang agley as the pain in my lower-back flared up at the beginning of November. It has now developed into sciatica, making both walking and sitting difficult for me. At least I can take solace in the fact that I managed to finish the book, and that it was released on schedule. And—come what may—I will not allow myself to miss the launch party on December 1st!

Many thanks to everyone who requested review copies of the book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Coupon codes will be winging their way to you as soon as LibraryThing sends me the winners’ list, which should be in the next three or four days. If you like your detective fiction cosy, this could prove to be the perfect read for the forthcoming holidays. Expect puzzles aplenty and an abundance of clues to ponder as the death toll slowly mounts. As a former LibraryThing Early Reviewer remarked of the second book in the series, “Pour some tea or a wee dram, put your feet up, and enjoy cover to cover.” I do hope you enjoy young Gooseberry’s latest adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it.

As with its predecessors, this latest title is also founded on fact. Towards the end of 1852, the young medium Mrs Maria B. Hayden and her husband William travelled to Britain from their home in Hartford, Connecticut, to bring Spiritualism to these shores for the very first time. She held regular séances in London, which were met with a fairly mixed response. The literary world, in particular, was nothing less than scathing. George Henry Lewes, who was later to become the partner of the writer George Eliot (author of Middlemarch, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, etc., etc.), played an especially mean trick on the woman. Unseen by Maria, he wrote out a question on a sheet of paper: “Is Mrs Hayden an impostor?” The spirit controlling Maria rapped out: “Yes”, causing Lewes to claim this as an admission of her guilt. You will find two of the most in-depth articles available anywhere online on my website that deal with Maria B. Hayden and Florence Cook, the other medium to have inspired the antics (if not quite the character) of Mrs Maria Harmon.

Don’t forget, for real-time insights into Gooseberry’s mind as the case unravels, follow his daily posts on Twitter @sendforOctavius.

Happy reading!

Michael

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November 2016: Gooseberry’s next big case. What can you expect?

It’s London, the year is 1852, and Christmas is rapidly approaching. What? No, you’re right, of course. It’s actually 2016, and Christmas is rapidly approaching—and in the run up comes the release of Big Bona Ogles, Boy! or Octavius Guy and the Case of the Mendacious Medium, the third outing in the series Send for Octavius Guy. So what can you expect from Gooseberry, the fourteen-year-old Victorian boy detective, this time round?

Well, for starters, he’s just celebrated his fifteenth birthday. And he now has himself an unofficial trainee, his older though somewhat less streetwise friend George Crump. You are cordially invited to join the pair at two spine-tingling séances held by a certain Mrs Maria Harmon, a spiritualist medium from Boston, Massachusetts, who is a recent arrival to these shores. Truly extraordinary things happen at these events that Gooseberry is hard pressed to explain—including an attempt on the life of the medium herself.

The boys’ investigation becomes official when a rival firm of solicitors engages them to look into the authenticity of a will, which one of those attending the séances claims is forged. What caused the dying Frederick Eldritch, Esquire, to alter his will—if he indeed did alter it—and how does it relate to the attack on Mrs Harmon? Gooseberry and George are determined to find out!

Expect puzzles and clues aplenty as the death toll mounts. Enjoy Christmas dinner at the Bucket of Blood in the company of Bertha and her friends—the fare may be meagre since she’s temporarily strapped for cash, but you can bet it will be delicious. Take a train ride with George—Third Class, of course; right up next to the engine. It’s his first-ever train journey, and he never quite works out why First Class passengers prefer to travel at the rear of the train. Expect your toes to freeze—the whole of Britain is beset by snow, and detective work means lots of traipsing around.

If you like cosy detective fiction, this could be the perfect holiday read. And if you’re prepared to give it an honest review, why not sign up for a free reviewer’s copy over at LibraryThing Early Reviewers? I can also reveal that on November 1st 1852 young Gooseberry started keeping a daily diary, the results of which will be published some one hundred and sixty-four years later. Follow his trials and tribulations as Mr Bruff’s Chief (and only) Investigator in the lead up to his latest big case—and throughout—at @sendforOctavius.

Happy reading!

Michael

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@sendforOctavius to follow young Gooseberry

Bodhrán player urgently required for an 1853 wedding reception

A bodhrán (pronounced bar-ron) is one of those circular Irish hand drums, and I am in urgent need of someone who can play one, record themselves, and send me the file. Octavius Guy and the Case of the Mendacious Medium (AKA Big Bona Ogles, Boy!) ends with a wedding reception in Camden in the January of 1853, and I should very much like to be able to provide my readers with the actual music that’s playing in the background—the traditional Irish ballad, She Moved Through the Fair. She Moved Through the Fair is generally played quite slowly, but in this case it’s to be a waltz that people can dance to. Ideally I’d like to insert it as a sound file into the book itself (which for technical reasons is only potentially possible on Kindle), but if I can’t manage that, I’d like to use it in a video trailer for the series, which I can certainly put up on my website www.michaelgallagherwrites.com. If you can help, or you know someone who can, please get in touch with me (or have them get in touch) at seventhrainbow@hotmail.co.uk.

I’m now entering the scariest phase of producing a novel; this month I need to submit it to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for inclusion in their next month’s list. The thing is, I have yet to finish the first draft. It’s a terrifying thought that I now have less than two months in which to finish, edit, and polish the book, get it proof-read, and alert my readers to its forthcoming publication. Wish me luck! I suspect I’ll need it.

I can now reveal that on November 1st 1852 Octavius Guy—variously known as Gooseberry and Octopus—started keeping a daily diary, the results of which will be published some one hundred and sixty-four years later to the day on Twitter. Follow his trials and tribulations as Mr Bruff’s Chief (and only) Investigator in the lead up to his next big case—Octavius Guy and the Case of the Mendacious Medium—at @sendforOctavius.

Happy reading!

Michael

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@seventh7rainbow
@sendforOctavius to follow young Gooseberry