Why? I know the story. I pretty much know what's going to happen. The trouble is that so much has to happen. This is the complication that ensues when the sleuth has a personal history and agenda as well as doing her job and solving mysteries.
This book will be called FOUR FUNERALS AND MAYBE A WEDDING.
The premise, of course, is that Georgie will finally be getting married. Her path to the future looks like smooth sailing, but then one thing after another starts going wrong. As you can tell from the title people start dying. Georgie finds herself in a difficult situation. Her dream house suddenly isn't.
And the biggest question of all: will she even get married?
Now I know this is a mystery novel. There is supposed to be a crime/a body. The sleuth is supposed to solve it and all is well.
But there is so much of Georgie's personal story in this book that we don't get to any sort of crime until at least a hundred pages. Then we aren't sure it was a crime. We are never sure there is any sort of crime until almost the end of the book. So I'm worried. Will my readers want that body earlier on? They will be concerned about what might be going on around Georgie. They will have suspicions that all is not right. But there will not be a body.
Is this all right, do you think?
Anyway, here is my sample from the book. It's something we've all experienced: those first house hunting attempts that don't turn out as we dreamed. Georgie and Darcy have been to see a couple of absolutely awful flats in London and then comes this third one:
We took the Tube
to Swiss Cottage and walked up a pleasant, tree-lined street. My spirits began
to perk up, especially when we stopped outside a big white block of flats. This
was more like it. We met a very superior type of young man at his office off
the foyer and he escorted us up in the lift.
“It’s a trifle bijou, but I’m sure
we will meet your needs,” he said. “Our flat-dwellers are all most satisfied.
We even had a titled lady here once. Lady Lockstone, is the name familiar to you? It was in all
the society pages.”
Darcy glanced at me and winked.
“What happened to Lady Lockstone?” he asked.
“Unfortunately she passed away. She
was ninety-three after all.”
We disembarked on the tenth floor.
“I’m afraid the lift does not go up to the eleventh,” he said and led us up a
narrow stair. “As I mentioned these apartments are a trifle bijou but for a
young couple like yourselves who probably won’t have too much furniture…” And
he turned the key. It was essentially a room. Quite a decent sized room but it was an attic. The ceiling sloped down on
one side so that we would have to be careful not to bang our heads when we got
up from sofa. Over in one corner there was a curtain around a sink and tiny
stove. “The kitchen,” superior young man said, pulling back the curtain like a
magician revealing a rabbit. “So well designed and compact.”
There was a dining table, a sofa and a bathroom
so tiny that we could just squeeze between the sink and the bath to reach the
loo. And… “Where is the bedroom?” I asked.
“Ah.” He waved his hand like a magic
wand and tugged at a piece of paneled wall. This lowered into a bed. “Such a
space saving device,” he added. “Everything you need right at your fingertips.”
“You’ll be able to reach out of bed
and put on the tea and toast,” Darcy said with a straight face.
Who hasn't gone through something like this? I remember my first flat after college. Sharing with two friends on a street that seemed quite respectable, but there was one loo for three floors and we later discovered that thee prostitutes lived in the basement! Do share your horror stories.
What a treat, Rhys . . . I am chuckling over the flat!
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that your readers will be so excited about Georgie’s impending marriage, they won’t care if there’s no body in the beginning . . . .
Alas [or perhaps luckily], I have no “first apartment” horror stories to share since all if the places I’ve lived since college have been more “nice” than “horrible” . . . .
I agree with Joan - you have a huge set of fans who won't care about the body. And keeping the mystery about the crime going until the end? Perfect.
ReplyDeleteBad apartments? You bet. I had a "studio" apartment when I started grad school. A big single room, tiny bathroom with a door, kitchen set into one wall, and a loft above the kitchen where I slept. Unregulatable heat came with the place, and in the winter it was so hot I had to leave a window open to survive - and then the snow came in. But it was only $100/month and I had it all to myself.
Edith, my garage apartment was a whopping $75 a month. Hard to believe now.
DeleteI agree with Joan and Edith! We all love Georgie and Darcy and the crimes are just icing on the cake. And I never feel the murder has to happen in the first few pages, anyway. I love the little snippet, reminds me of some awful place I've stayed in London and the UK over the years.
ReplyDeleteI had a garage apartment behind a Queen Anne Victorian house when I was in college in Texas. It was ratty, but with help from my parents and my aunt and uncle, we fixed it up with paint and rugs, prints and hand-me-down furnishings. It was my first place of my own and I loved that little apartment so much I hated to leave it. There was an enormous pink crepe myrtle tree in the back yard, and a huge fig tree that grew over the fence from the landlord's yard. And the bedroom window opened onto the screened porch, so that it was like sleeping in a tree house.
Now my first flat in Edinburgh, just off Leith Walk, was a different story. It was a fourth floor walk up in a Georgian tenement building, no central heating. But there are things I remember fondly; the gorgeous view over Calton Hill, the neighborhood shops, which I loved, especially the Valvona & Crolla deli. And I developed really good leg muscles from hauling everything up five flights of stairs every day.
Also had to imagine what that Montgomery Street flat in Edinburgh must be worth now!!!!
ReplyDeleteYou know what, Rhys? If you hadn't told me there wouldn't be a body for quite some time I wouldn't even have realized it. Georgie and her adventures truly will keep me from wondering 'where's the body?'
ReplyDeleteNo apartment horrors to tell. Or maybe I have blanked them out.
I agree that readers will be so interested in Georgie's pre-wedding adventures, they won't care that there's no body early in the book. Look at Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers: there's not even a body! Do we care? No, because Lord Peter FINALLY proposes to Harriet Vane. You're in excellent company, Rhys. :)
ReplyDeleteRhys, your titles are delightful, and get me laughing before I even open the book: MAYBE a wedding! As for dead bodies, I do believe that in your work, and the work of all the best mystery writers, the murder is not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is the protagonist--in your case, Georgie--and how she makes us laugh.
ReplyDeleteLove this snippet, Rhys! And I agree, I love these books for the relationships, the crimes are "icing" -
ReplyDeleteThe first Paris hotel my husband and I ever stayed in was in 1969, $6 a night and yes, the loo was down the hall. WAY down the hall that was dark at night so you needed to remember where the light switch was... and if you tarried too long in the loo the lights went out.
Rhys--you had me at "a trifle bijou."
ReplyDeleteWherever you lead/write--I will follow!
My first apartment was actually… A house. It was…It was in a college neighborhood-- very cute, and in retrospect shabby, but probably worth a tremendous amount today as the neighborhood went upscale eventually. A living room dining room kitchen downstairs, two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Roommate Sharon and I loved it so much! And it was 100 bucks a month, 50 bucks each, Can you imagine!?
We thought we were so cool. We bought a white shag wall-to-wall carpet for the living room. Installed it ourselves. That's how long ago it was!
Rhys, I hate those writing 'rules' that say things like "if you are writing a mystery, the body must appear in the first blah blah pages...". B-S! You are telling us a story--and the magic is in the writing--not when (or if) a body ever appears. We adore Georgie and her travails!
ReplyDeleteRhys, I agree with all the rest. When or if the body appears isn't relevant, and it is your book, so screw whoever disagrees!
ReplyDeleteI don't have any grim first apartment stories, but I do have a story from my brief experience as a real estate agent.
I listed a cute little house in Long Beach that was owned by a gay male couple. You could tell by the decor! Adorable. Until that day I was showing it to a very conservative straight couple. I walked ahead of them into the master bedroom and there on the floor was something, a shiny piece of aluminum foil I thought. I reached down and picked it up without even thinking.
It was an aluminum foil penis, carefully modeled on the real thing, as if it had been wrapped around one of those things and then carefully slipped off. It even had a little hole in the end. Don't even ask.
My clients left.
One bathroom for three floors AND prostitutes in the basement? Oh my.
ReplyDeleteAfter writing procedurals and switching to a historical traditional, I have the same concerns about the body - does it need to drop sooner? I guess my critique group will tell me.
Mary/Liz
All these stories and I forgot about our first apartment as a married couple. Top floor of a house with narrow stairs. No insulation on the dining room, so frost formed on the INSIDE of the windows. The whole place was crooked; our favorite game was to drop a ball at any spot in the kitchen (the only room with linoleum) and watch it roll to exactly the same place. The heat was so bad we walked around all winter in quilts belted with rope.
DeleteAh, good times. We thought of it as bonding.
Mary/Liz
So glad Darcy's finally stepping up to the plate. I was starting to think he was a rogue. My worst living situation: an unfinished basement, right after I passed the bar exam. After that I moved into the second worst: a two-bedroom in a building so close to the next that the sun never came into the windows. Ever.
ReplyDeleteBody, schmody. Georgie and Darcy together, hunting for a place to live? Swoon.
ReplyDeleteHank, remember raking the shag carpet? That stuff never felt clean!
The worst place I ever lived was in the first apartment I ever chose for my self, after my divorce, and after living with a guy I thought I would marry next, but didn't. First, it was behind the commissary for one of the big local chili chains (Cincinnati chili is unique), obviously where they processed the vital onions for all the stores. The smell was eye-tearing most days, and snuck in through the window seams.
Secondly, the couple who lived above me had strange personal habits that they repeated Every. Day. I never met them, but every night, just after I was about to drop off to sleep, they clomped into their uncarpeted bedroom above my head. Then they apparently hurled what had to be massive clogs onto the hardwood floor, threw themselves into bed, and had energetic, noisy sex for ten minutes on the squeakiest mattress on the planet. In the morning, the process reversed, half an hour before I wanted to wake up: Sex, clomp, clomp, then hurling more stuff on the floor.
I got no sleep the whole four months I lived there. Then I took friends up on their offer to share the second floor of their new home. They could barely afford it, so my $85 a month rent made a difference. For that I got a pretty nice finished attic with a half bath. I shared their bathroom for showers, and their kitchen downstairs. My couch, a sleek black faux leather one (that I still own, forty-some years later), was too big to go upstairs, so I let them use it.
Which was fine, until the wife started cheating, and used me as a beard. I didn't realize it until the husband asked me something about what we'd been doing and I innocently answered that she and I had never done that. They both smoked, and there is still a melted spot in the side of the couch. I stayed long enough to save up for a new deposit--I'd lost the one on the first apartment because I broke the lease.
My next apartment was lovely until the last year I lived there. But I had sworn I wasn't moving again until I either remarried or died. Luckily, Steve and I got married!
Is it any wonder I've lived in this house for 32 years?
Exactly! If that rug is still there, it makes me shiver. The number of crushed M & Ms alone would be enough to start a… I don't know. Chocolate factory. No way on earth to clean those!
DeleteOH yes, Karen. The noisy couple! You must put them in a book some time.
DeleteHa! It's where they deserve to be!
DeleteOh, Hank, those things squicked me out. No way I could walk barefoot on one.
Just have to say that you captured your readers long ago and they will love whatever you produce -- it's fun to mix it up once in a while.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I spent a summer in a room in Washington DC. Two single beds (we pushed them together), a shared bathroom in the hall, and the kitchen was in the basement. I had very long hair that never dried in the heat and humidity. The house was smelly and damp, especially in the kitchen. But all I remember cooking is Chef Boy-ar-dee ravioli.
One summer I was invited to live with a friend for the summer and be his best man. The house itself was nothing special: four of us guys in two bedrooms downstairs, sharing a single bathroom, and two women upstairs. I had lived on campus during college, so I didn't have high expectations. Once there, I began dating one of the young women who lived upstairs, and was also in the wedding. The horror story wasn't the house itself, but the atmosphere after things soured between us, but we were still living in the same house, preparing to be in the same wedding, playing cards with the others, and struggling to be civil.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great short story, Jim! You have to write it!
DeleteAgreeing here: your readers will want to know what is happening with Georgie and Darcy, and will trust you that a mystery will appear. Can't wait to read it. As to apartments, no horror stories, but my expectations were low. First apt, senior college year and after, was a traditional New England 3 decker, with front porches across the front on all 3 floors. Unfortunately, we were in the back, in a floor that had been divided into 2 apartments. The big bedroom had bulit-iin china cabinets. It was dark! But we painted one living room wall orange and hung sheer orange curtains to maximize the sun. And orange and purple flowered slipcover for the couch. (What can I say? It was the 60's) We'd escaped dorm life for the bright lights of Cambridge, MA and it was all very exciting. My first post grad-school apt was an attic in Brooklyn Heights town house - sloping ceiling in the bedroom and a steep flight of attic stairs to get there. But the neighborhood was lovely and we could see the Brooklyn Bridge from the tiny kitchen window. At 24 it seemed great.
ReplyDeleteMy first apartment on Farnham Ave in New Haven was six girls in a three bedroom apartment with one bathroom - nightmare! I went to live in my boyfriend's frat house down the street, charmingly called the Batcave. Rhys, I agree with the others. My investment in Georgie is such that a body is secondary at this point. Can't wait!
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the reassurances. I've been writing and muttering "someone bloody well better die soon!"
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've had anything quite that bad, but there was the apartment with the light switch to the half bath on the outside of the bathroom. Ironically, it was my parents who were the worst about flipping it on and off when they came to visit.
ReplyDeleteAs to the plot, is there any way to restructure it so the body drops earlier and the sub-plot of house hunting happens around the investigation?
I loved reading the sneak peek of the new book, Rhys! I don't think readers care as much about body count as editors and agents do. ;)
ReplyDeleteI remember looking at apartments with one of my sisters, and this particular unit we were touring was listed as having a dining room. There was no dining room that we could see, and when we asked the agent, he insisted the 4'x4'piece of linoleum in the kitchen was the separate dining room. I suppose you could stand on it with your plate in hand and eat dinner, but there wasn't even room for a table!
Rhys, I don't care when, or even IF a murder happens.A perplexing problem is often good enough for me. I just finished reading the latest Royal Spyness book, and I got so wrapped up in getting to know the characters that I completely forgot that there would probably be a murder until it actually happened!
ReplyDeleteOne of the most frightening new apartment stories I've ever heard happened to a coworker of one of my sisters many years ago. The young woman had answered an ad about sharing an apartment with another young woman. My sister's coworker moved into the apartment but the roommate wasn't there. She wasn't around the next day, either. In a day or two the police showed up. Her body had been found in a wooded area in another part of town. I think the murderer turned out to be an ex-boyfriend.
DebRo
Who looked for an apartment after college? Lady Georgie and Darcy or you?
ReplyDeleteRhys, I am so excited about Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding. It will be published in August 2018? I always enjoy reading your Royal Spyness books.
Diana
It was my first apartment after college. Georgie didn't go to college!
DeleteMy own sort of annoying experience; when I first bought my condo nearly three decades ago I heard a lot of angry screaming and yelling coming from the unit next door--the bathrooms back up to each other. I remember being worried that someone might get killed; they seemed to have such a bad relationship. I eventually found out that only one person lived there, and she constantly yelled at herself in the bathroom mirror. On the few occasions when I tried to say hello to her, she turned her head away. She eventually moved out, and it's been peaceful ever since.
ReplyDeleteDebRo
We actually bought a house in the city when we got married. It had a tenant who refused to leave and was a bit of a hoarder, so we lived for 3 months in my parents finished basement while the sellers tried to evict and clean. We had a powder room, bedroom, and a bar.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see how Georgie and Darcy end up. I'm sure a body will turn up at the right time. Who knows? Maybe they'll get a discount on rent as a result! I hated looking for a place to rent after we were married. We had an Airedale, George. It was hard to find a house or duplex that allowed pets. When we would find one it invariably had "problem" neighbors. So glad those days are done.
ReplyDeleteRhys, your readers love Georgie so much that reading about her personal issues for the first 100 pages will be most enjoyable. Georgie and Darcy are always on readers' minds when they open a Royal Spyness book, so I actually think you will be giving readers what they want. Of course, Georgie's involvement in solving a mystery or murder is part of what delights fans, but I can't see any disgruntlement at all in having it come later in the book.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any horror stories about living arrangements. I went from home to living in a dorm to living in a decent apartment and getting married after college, with no horrors after marriage either. But, your flat story about the one bathroom for three floors and prostitutes in the basement, Rhys, has Georgie written all over it. Hahaha!
wow I do hope the marriage goes through; I hope they don't take the little one room attic; I do like a body somewhere in the beginning for the reason of the plot; I love and have all your books; do whatever you want I will love it.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the lack of a body or a late body. I know I'll love your next book Rhys as I love all the books about Georgie and Darcy.
ReplyDeleteNo horror apartment but a very minus first one. My husband had to put his feet in the shower when going to the loo.
In my first apartment, the dining room floor sloped so badly I couldn't serve soup.
ReplyDeleteI have eagerly read all of the "Royal Spynes" books.... the body can show up at the wedding reception at the end of the book as far as I am concerned.
ReplyDeleteFINALLY, Georgie and Darcy will do the deed, getting married. Through several books I wondered why Georgie waited so long to remove herself from the line of succession. After Crowned & Dangerous, I thought the wedding book MUST be close. I can't wait to read the next book.
ReplyDeleteThe 3rd apartment my husband & I had was...colorful. It was a townhouse, with shag carpeting. We returned home one Saturday night to discover the downstairs toilet had backed up. A lot. The carpet in the living room, hallway, and bathroom was squishy. The maintenance man came and as part of cleaning up pulled up the carpet in the bathroom. Much to our astonishment he found drug paraphernalia beneath the carpet behind the toilet.
Another great situation for early season bow hunting, particularly with donkey deer, is the point at which a buck makes camp underneath a bluff in the shade. Taxidermy
ReplyDelete