The End is Nigh On Impossible
It’s always great when you work out who the culprit is in a mystery novel – especially when you are writing it.
My current work in progress is a homage to the Queens of 30s detective novels, set in a present day television show where ten celebrities are marooned in a haunted mansion on a remote Scottish Island while being filmed for a reality television show. The title – Ten Ghost Bottles – is an obvious reference to Christie’s classic which is now called And The There Were None. I’m not the first to steal the idea, and won’t be the last, but hopefully I’ve put my own spin on it.
I normally have a good idea where I am going when I write but as the characters were ones that were familiar to me I thought I would start this one with just them and the concept.
The lead character is a psychic Beryl Crystal who my wife Jules and I invented when we were looking to develop something she could appear in as an actor. It started off as a 50 minute screenplay which we were going to produce ourselves as a pilot, but scheduling issues with the local amateur actors we were going to work with meant we never managed it. However I did a lot of work for a potential pitch and outlines four ten episode series with a range of character sketches for them and a bible about the show. Some of those I have written since as short stories and a stage play (which we will also get round to putting on one day).
The concept for this novel was originally thought of for a different set of characters but I thought it would be better for Beryl. She sincerely believes in her psychic powers, but others are sceptical and she does use some of the stage medium tricks in her act to ‘kick start’ her real powers. In the pilot she is asked to find a missing husband by his family and gets caught up in a police investigation.
The joy of having written the scenarios for 40 episodes is that I have a lot of background on Beryl, her research assistant Charles, the police sergeant who slowly becomes her love interest, and lots of other people in her world. I therefore only had to invent half a dozen new characters from scratch for the novel.
As I said, I had no idea whodunnit when I started but just kept throwing in more and more reasons why it could be any of the people on the island. As there are lots of production tricks installed in the house, it means some of the deaths could be done remotely so there is another set of suspects on dry land. While doing the shopping yesterday, I worked out who the culprit was and how everything and everyone linked together. I’m not telling you, of course, as you will have to read it.
Just a second 35,000 words to go to finish the first draft.
