Author R&R with Lyn Squire
[image error]Lyn Squire was born in Cardiff, South Wales and earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wales, his master’s at the London School of Economics, and his doctorate at Cambridge University. During a twenty-five year career at the World Bank, Lyn published over thirty articles and several books within his area of expertise. Lyn also served as editor of the Middle East Development Journal for over a decade and was the founding president of the Global Development Network, an organization dedicated to supporting promising scholars from the developing world. Lyn has always been an avid reader of whodunits and has reviewed scores of mysteries for the City Book Review (Sacramento, CA), but it was the thrill of solving Charles Dickens’s unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood that convinced him to put aside his development pen and turn to fiction. His first novel is Immortalised to Death, the first installment in a planned trilogy.
[image error]In Immortalised to Death, death strikes England’s foremost novelist, his latest tale only half told. Was he murdered because someone feared a ruinous revelation? Or was it revenge for some past misdeed? Set in the Kent countryside and London slums of 1870, Immortalised to Death embeds an ingenious solution to Charles Dickens’s unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood within the evolving and ultimately tragic consequences of a broader mystery surrounding the author himself. Convinced that the identity of Dickens’s murderer lies in the book's missing denouement, Dickens’s nephew and unlikely detective, Dunston Burnett, sets out to complete his uncle’s half-finished novel. A stunning revelation crowns this tale about the mysterious death of England’s greatest novelist, and exposes the author’s long-held secret.
Lyn Squire stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:
The research an author undertakes depends, of course, on the subject matter of his novel. In my case, my debut novel, Immortalised to Death, is a mystery set in 1870 England. In brief, the story opens with Charles Dickens, dead at his desk, his latest tale, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only half told. My protagonist, a middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (hardly detective material) has to complete the half-finished novel to solve a broader mystery surrounding the legendary author himself. With this in mind, here are the three modes of research I used.
Online Research:
Consider this example:
Hugo sat alone at a table outside a small brasserie in the Place des Charmes drinking his coffee. He watched the white-aproned waiters scurrying from table to table, trays held head-high on upturned hands. He studied the cafe’s customers seated under the sun-shading awning – businessmen, couples, friends – but not her. Would Nicolette come?
The question is this: Will the reader think that this scene is set in a French square? Probably. But the fact of the matter is that I just made up Place des Charmes.
The example illustrates a point that is perfectly general. All the novelist has to do is make the reader believe the character is situated in whatever environment suits the author’s purpose. The key word is, of course, believe. The writer must conjure up enough of the flavor of a place or time to be convincing. If, however, he slips too far into factual inaccuracies, readers can be jarred out of their enjoyment of the story, and, if noticeable errors pop up too often, become sufficiently annoyed to quit reading.
My novels are set in nineteenth century England. To avoid any ‘jarring’ possibilities, I researched Victorian dress, furniture, architecture, and so on at a general level. It is relatively easy these days to research all these aspects of Victorian life online. I suspect the same holds true for other places and other times. Being ‘believable’ for scene-setting and general background, then, should be a routine task for any serious author and is one that can be accomplished relatively easily.
Bibliographical Research:
Matters become more complicated when a famous person features prominently in a story (Charles Dickens in my case). The same principle – be believable but do not jar – still applies. But, unlike the easily-swallowed Place des Charmes, all readers will know something about Charles Dickens and many people will know a great deal. In consequence, authors must be much more thorough in their research to avoid crossing the red-line between believable and jarring. Ensuring historical accuracy in everything related to Dickens, then, was a top priority for me.
I started my research with several biographies of the author (including John Forster’s 900-page monster, the first biography to appear) and several other biographies of secondary characters including Georgina Hogarth, his sister-in-law, and Ellen Ternan, his mistress. This provided all I needed to know about Dickens and gave me a solid foundation for some of the main characters in the book.
I also read all of his novels. Not a requirement in most cases, I imagine, but I had a specific reason: I wanted to make sure that when Dunston Burnett, my protagonist, wrote his continuation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, he stayed true to the literary tendencies of the master storyteller himself. The following two characteristics of Dickens’s writing proved particularly important.
The first can be found in many of his novels. Dickens delighted in revealing on virtually the last page some unexpected connection among the story’s characters that allowed him to deliver that final surprise so loved by readers… and authors. For example: That Esther Summerson is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon, the secret that ultimately drove her ladyship to suicide, is only disclosed towards the conclusion of Bleak House. The pattern is repeated time and time again. The second is unique to David Copperfield. Dickens grew up in poverty and was so ashamed of his upbringing he rarely mentioned it, but he still wanted some way of telling his story. David Copperfield’s early life was the vehicle he chose for that purpose. I make use of both of these literary devices in crafting Dunston Burnett’s solution to The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Physical Research:
Finally. I visited Gadshill Place, Dickens’s home in Kent, less than an hour’s train ride from central London, to make sure that the book’s description of the house was as faithful to the original as possible. I actually stood in his study where the murder in my novel is supposedly perpetrated. I also walked down the drive and crossed Gravesend Road for a glass of ale in The Falstaff Inn, the scene of another incident in my book. And I surveyed the house’s surroundings, especially the route via Forge Lane to Higham railway station, the link to London used by several of my characters. By the time I’d finished my one-day visit, I felt comfortable that what I wrote about the novelist’s home and its setting would be close to one hundred percent accurate and would be accepted without question by most readers, even those who have toured Gadshill Place themselves.
A Personal Perspective:
The above may sound like a lot of work for one novel, but to my mind it was required to render my story believable, and it was an opportunity to learn about a truly fascinating man who accomplished so much in his fifty-eight years. I’m following the same strategy in the subsequent two books in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy. After Immortalised to Death (to be published by Level Best Books on September 26 of this year), book number two, Fatally Inferior (forthcoming in September 2024), is set against the furor generated by the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and the third, The Séance of Murder (forthcoming in September 2025), has as its backdrop the spiritualist movement that swept through Victorian England.
I’ve already read a mass of material on Darwin’s theory of evolution with its magnificent general law governing the evolution of all organic beings – multiply; vary; let the strongest live; let the weakest die. And I am now in the midst of reading up on the great mediums of the nineteenth century and the famous converts to the spiritualist movement ranging from Queen Victoria to Arthur Conan Doyle. This reading serves as a means of checking for factual accuracy but it also provides ideas for plots… and I learn a lot.
You can read more about Lyn Squire and his writing via his website. Immortalised to Death is published today by Level Best Books and is available via all major booksellers.
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