Partners in Crime

Writing in collaboration can be appealing. It offers a way of combating the isolation that writers often experience, and also as a way of combining talents, of making two plus two equal five. But writing in partnership with one or more colleagues also presents challenges.

Detection Club members have often worked collaboratively. The Club’s two early BBC mysteries were each written by half a dozen members, while the Club’s first novel, The Floating Admiral, was an exceptionally ambitious exercise involving thirteen contributors. There was no overriding plan; each author in turn took the story in a fresh direction. Anthony Berkeley, who was tasked with writing the final chapter, wryly called it ‘Clearing up the Mess’, but he pulled the strands of the plot together with such skill that the book has enjoyed lasting popularity. The Club’s most recent joint venture, The Sinking Admiral, paid tribute to its literary predecessor, but was written in a different way, with Simon Brett orchestrating the overall structure of the book. As the story neared its climax, a ‘Whodunit Dinner’ was held at the Groucho Club in London, during which contributors plotted the resolution of the story and elected the brave individuals whose task was to write it up.

Writing a ‘round-robin’ novel can be hugely enjoyable, and in 1989 Tim Heald organized The Rigby File, a thriller compiled by a team of writers including several members of the Detection Club. Admittedly, such projects are not for the faint-hearted; nor are they suited to the inexperienced writer. But there are many examples of less convoluted literary collaborations that offer potential even for newcomers to crime writing. Michael Jecks and colleagues in the Medieval Murderers group of historical crime novelists have worked together on a series of books, starting with The Tainted Relic, comprising linked novellas by group members. The husband-and-wife team G. D. H. and Margaret Cole were founder members of the Club who wrote most of their books together, while in the modern era, Martyn Waites, a successful crime novelist under his own name, has co-written several books with his wife Lynda under the pseudonym Tania Carver.

In writing his novels, Dick Francis, a doyen of the Club, benefited from the input of his wife Mary and, later, his son Felix, in an example of a highly successful literary family enterprise. After Dick’s death, Felix began a solo career publishing novels in the same vein and branded as ‘Dick Francis novels’, and was duly elected to membership of the Club. Meanwhile, the success of the American author James Patterson’s partnerships with a host of authors has set a precedent for other bestselling collaborations. The Detection Club’s Tom Harper has co-authored a book with South African thriller writer Wilbur Smith; so has Imogen Robertson, and it has recently been announced that she is collaborating on a thriller with former politician Tom Watson.

Margery Allingham’s husband Philip Youngman Carter contributed ideas to some of her novels about Albert Campion, before completing her last book after her death, and then publishing Campion novels himself. Completion and continuation novels have become increasingly popular, and Jill Paton Walsh, as she describes elsewhere, took over Dorothy L. Sayers’ mantle, completing an unfinished novel about Lord Peter Wimsey before continuing the Wimsey series. Stella Duffy has completed Money in the Morgue by Ngaio Marsh, who in the 1930s co-wrote The Nursing Home Murder with a doctor called Henry Jellett – who supplied medical know-how for the storyline. In recent years, Sophie Hannah has published a series of novels commissioned by Agatha Christie’s estate and featuring Hercule Poirot.

The first Detection Club member to achieve success as a literary collaborator was Robert Eustace. This was the pen name of Eustace Robert Barton, a doctor who contributed scientific know-how to stories written by L. T. Meade, a prolific author of fiction for girls who turned to detective stories in the wake of the success of Sherlock Holmes. Eustace became friendly with Dorothy L. Sayers in the late 1920s after she asked permission to reprint one of the stories he’d written with Meade in an anthology, and it was no doubt thanks to her support that he became one of the founder members of the Detection Club. He collaborated with yet another Club member, Edgar Jepson, on a famous ‘locked room’ story, ‘The Tea Leaf’, but today he is best remembered for working with Sayers on her only novel not to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, The Documents in the Case. Again, Eustace came up with a clever technical idea, and Sayers did the writing. What is remarkable about their collaboration is that there is a detailed record of its progress, to be found in the first volume of Sayers’ collected letters.

Sayers’ correspondence shows very clearly the rollercoaster nature of the writing life: the lurches from excitement to despair; the thrill of coming up with fresh ideas; the frustration with publishers and the yearning for good publicity; the misery of receiving (mistaken, as it proved) criticism of the concept at the heart of the book when it was too late to do anything about it; and the joy of receiving an unexpected accolade from the scientific profession. Despite Sayers’ downbeat assessment of the novel (a reaction common enough when a book has been finished), the correspondence provides a wonderful case study about the making of a detective story. The Documents in the Case remains an interesting and thought-provoking example of the ‘casebook novel’, a form popularized by novels such as Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, and of a storyline and characters influenced by a real life murder.

Collaborative Writing

Dorothy L. Sayers’ letters to Robert Eustace

7 May 1928

Dear Dr Barton

… I am so glad you like Lord Peter. I certainly don’t intend to kill him off yet, but I think it would be better to invent a new detective for any tales we do together … it would simplify matters to have somebody with more scientific surroundings, don’t you think? Lord Peter isn’t supposed to know a lot about chemistry and that sort of thing, and it would mean inventing a doctor or somebody to help him out. Also, I’m looking forward to getting a rest from him, because his everlasting breeziness does become a bit of a tax at times! The job is to invent a scientific character of a new type. There have been so many of them – thin, keen ones; short, sphinx-like ones; handsome, impressive ones; queer, shabby ones; secretive, mysterious ones; aged, experienced ones; and even sturdy, commonplace ones – it’s very hard to think of any sort that hasn’t been done …

15 May 1928

… I have been thinking over the mushroom story, and the more I think of it – the more I think of it! … In this story, as you say, it is obvious that there must be a powerful love interest, and I am going to turn my mind to making this part of the book as modern and powerful as possible. The day of the two nice young people, whose chaste affection is rewarded on the final page, has rather gone by, and reviewers are apt to say, sneeringly, that detective stories are better without any sentimental intrigues. Since, in this case, we must have the love to help the plot along, we must do our best to make it as credible and convincing as up-to-date standards require.

29 June 1928

… I think we have got hold of a really fine theme for a story here, and I am most eager to get on to it … The religious-scientific aspect of the thing will require careful handling, but ought, I think, to be very interesting to people, if we can succeed in making it clear to them.

3 September 1928

… The scene in the laboratory will be very good. I think we might let the Great Scientist do a check experiment with genuine fungus poison first, so that the other bloke might exactly appreciate the difference between the two; it would add to the drama if, in the first instance, the observer could stand at the eye-piece and see the darkness change to light as the fungus-solution is put in the polariscope. It would prolong and work up the excitement a little and give the reader a feeling that he had seen the experiment worked for himself …

The big job now will be to introduce complications into the plot. As the whole thing is supposed, at first, to be an accident, we can’t avail ourselves of the wrongfully-accused person or anything like that. We shall have to work it up powerfully on the emotional side. This is rather a new line for me … And we shall have somehow to work the scientific-theological interest solidly into the plot (I don’t quite see how at the moment, but I expect it will come) …

I think The Death Cap would make an extremely good title in itself. It suggests murder and mystery, and to the person who isn’t a mushroom expert it has a flavour of courts of law and the ‘black cap’ …

When the time comes, I am going to work up quite an interesting little item of news out of the collaboration of Robert Eustace and Dorothy L. Sayers and push it round to the press …

10 September 1928

… I will now devote my attention to the details of the crime, and make suitable arrangements for the Villain to poison the mushrooms without

a) poisoning himself

b) being obviously unwilling to share the poisoned dish

c) being suspected of popping a genuine ‘death-cap’ into the dish.

If possible the trap shall poop off while the villain is away in Town, or something. By the way, I shall want to know:

1. What muscarine (artificial) solution looks like (whether clear or coloured, cloudy or transparent)

2. What is the fatal dose

3. What it smells and tastes like (like mushrooms?) in case I want to poison the dish, or the salt, or something other than the actual plants, as I rather want the villain to be out of the way when these are gathered and brought home.

19 November 1928

… I have decided, I think, how to administer the poison and preserve the alibi intact. Also, I am introducing a valuable witness to the death, who will be able to support the said alibi.

I have also been considering the love-affair. I don’t want to make the villain too villainous – nor yet must the victim be a villain. I think I shall (with your approval) make the victim a harmless sort of bore, conceited and self-centred and always twaddling about his cookery and so on, and have him married to a sort of Edith Thompson woman, who eggs the villain on to get rid of the husband. That will allow plenty of human nature and furious frustration and all that kind of thing.

Then I’m rather keen to try the experiment of writing the book in a series of first-person narratives, à la Wilkie Collins. It will be a new line to try, but I think I could manage it. My idea is that somebody … gets his suspicions roused, and sets out to collect statements and evidence, finishing up with the scientific experiment. Then … he bundles the whole lot off to the Public Prosecutor or the police, urging them to take it up. This gets over the difficulty which always confronts me in reading a Wilkie Collins book, namely, why, when all is settled and finished, anybody should have taken the trouble to collect and publish an account of the thing at all. It also gets over the tiresome business of an ending – whether one is to have the murderer tried, or make him confess, or allow him to commit suicide, or what!

26 April 1929

… I have just had a visit from our American publisher … I mentioned our idea about the publicity photographs of Miss Dorothy Sayers and her mysterious collaborator in the laboratory. He was absolutely entranced with the idea – he said: ‘Oh, that’s great! That’s swell.’ I fancy he will give us a really good show over there and get the book wide sales in the States. I am glad of this, because I’m afraid Benn will not do anything very brilliant on this side – Benns are all thyroid-deficient, dim and wombling imbeciles, damn them!

I am not at present intending, by the way, to make any very great secret about its being a murder, or about the identity of the murderer … This is a little different from the ordinary plan of the detective story, but it is much more like what actually happens in real life …

If only we can get this just exactly right, I do think the situation will be extremely powerful, and ‘God’s revenge against murder’ very, very striking. I cannot tell you how enthusiastic I am about this plot, and how anxious I am not to spoil it by any crudity in the handling …

17 May 1929

… You need not worry about the coroner’s inquest. Inquests have no legal importance at all, as far as that goes, and a case can be re-opened at any time after the verdict of a coroner’s jury. Thus, in the case of George Joseph Smith, who drowned his three brides in a bath, though no suspicion was aroused until the last murder, the murder for which he was actually tried was that of the first wife, Annie Mundy, who had been peacefully buried some years previously under a coroner’s verdict of misadventure, the two succeeding cases being admitted as collateral evidence of design only.

20 November 1929

… The new idea for a story sounds very exciting, and I should love to hear about it … But perhaps we had better wait a bit till we see how this one turns out. At present I am being rather dissatisfied with my work on it. I keep on seeing how I could have done things better and having to re-write great chunks. I think this is due partly to the change in style between this and my other books, partly to over-anxiety – wanting to justify a new departure and not let my collaborator down – and largely to the generally unsettled feeling I have just at present … and with the knowledge that I shall be leaving my permanent job at the end of the year … The story is turning out rather grim and sordid, and I am finding it hard to get a light touch into it. The miserable domestic situation of the Harrisons, the mental aberrations of the lady-housekeeper and the temperamental introspections of the poet combine to produce an atmosphere of tense depression which, though extremely suitable to the plot is not exhilarating, either for author or reader!

11 January 1930

… You will, I am sure, sympathise when you hear that our worthy friend Harrison passed away this evening in excruciating agony. A particularly horrible circumstance is that the unfortunate gentleman was all alone when he met his death, in a remote cottage. Mrs Harrison is naturally prostrated.

21 January 1930

… Just a line to say we are getting along nicely. The stepson is suspecting the murder and is about to purchase a bunch of compromising letters from a blackmailing charwoman! The novelist is having a dreadful time, torn between his natural good feeling and the fact that he was at the same public school as the murderer. The wife is a dreadful person. The murderer (who has my sympathy) has just discovered this and his feelings of misery and remorse are dreadful, but nobody knows this yet but me …

Yours, with my mind full of fungi,

Dorothy L. Sayers

9 February 1930

… Yesterday morning at 3 ack emma I wrote the last words of this here tarnation book and, drawing a squiggly line under them, drank a large glass of Bovril-and-milk and staggered away to bed!

Today I took courage to review the first part of it, in which I found much to displease me, but I think it will hold together tolerably …

21 March 1930

… I am sending the book, but in my heart I know I have made a failure of it. Really and truly I was feeling so nervous and run-down last year … that I ought not to have been writing at all. It has produced a mingled atmosphere of dullness and gloom which will, I fear, be fatal to the book. As it was, the earlier half was so bad, that I had to re-write great chunks of it, and it is still bad. And during the second re-type, my typist was laid up for a week with VIOLENT POISONING! I’m afraid there is a jinx of some bad sort giving his attention to the book.

Please make any alterations straight on to the MS. I have 4 copies of it. I WISH I could have done better with the brilliant plot.

Yours very depressed

Dorothy L. Sayers

13 September 1930

… I enclose a little bit of trouble for you from the wife of a learned gentleman who says the synthetic muscarine is all wrong. I have written to thank her, and have said that muscarine is in your department and that you will be happy to take up the cudgels about it …

7 November 1930

… I have received a staggerer! A Harley Street physician has written to ask my advice about synthetic gland-extracts! … I do hope you will be able to put him on to what he wants – what a scoop it would be! First time in history that a detective-story has been of any serious use to anybody!