Guest Post: M J Carter on her relationship with Blake and Avery

As the third of her historical Blake and Avery mysteries is published, I'm delighted to host a guest post from M J Carter about the relationship between a writer and her characters.

The Devil's Feast finds intrepid young soldier-turned-sleuth William Avery investigating a grisly death in 1842 London at the newly opened Reform Club. A death he witnessed, that might be from cholera but could equally have had an altogether more suspicious cause.

Bereft of his unlikely partner Jeremiah Blake, Avery must investigate alone, unearthing a seething ants' nest of rivalries and recriminations. The club's committee is divided, the members politically at odds and tensions simmer in the kitchen around the eccentric but brilliant head chef, Alexis Soyer.

This wasn't the first death, it seems, and may not be the last. But although Avery is quick to discover deep divisions, he's less sure of what to do about them. He desperately needs his errant mentor Blake to help sift the clues and divert a potential disaster, but will he be able to find him in time?

The Devil's Feast reprises all the rich historical detail and authenticity of Carter's previous Blake and Avery adventures The Strangler Vine and The Printer's Coffin, combining mouth-watering descriptions of sumptuous banquets with a vivid portrayal of life in a Victorian professional kitchen and the genius of the now largely forgotten Soyer, self-styled 'Napoleon of Food'. Above all, it develops the intriguing relationship between our intrepid duo further, as we learn more about the unhappy state of Avery's marriage and the secrets of Blake's past.

Here's what M J Carter has to say about them:

‘The relationship between a writer and her characters can go wrong… Just now, though I’m more than happy to spend more time with Blake and Avery.’

My protagonists are Jeremiah Blake, a working class private enquiry agent — the name given to private detectives in the 19th century — and his younger, posher sidekick, William Avery, a former Captain in the East India Company army. Blake comes from a seedy, maybe actively criminal, London background, and was sent to India as a child where he was spotted for his astonishing ability to pick up languages by a Company spy, and received an education. Avery is the product of a conservative county family from Devon, undereducated and somewhat naïve, who hides beneath a sporty, hearty veneer a secret passion for books and a more questioning nature than he realises. So far, he has narrated the books.

The two are unlikely companions, thrown together by chance in the first book, The Strangler Vine, in a manner they never expected — Blake, the older working class one leads the younger, posher Avery. It allows them to develop a relationship beyond the normal boundaries of stratified Victorian society. Avery finds himself admiring Blake’s cleverness, independence and unspoken code of honour, and equally infuriated by his stubbornness and radical political views. Blake, who has endeavoured to cut himself off from the world, is annoyed to find himself susceptible to Avery’s mixture of youthful naivety, bravery and surprising kindness, and at the same time irritated by that same naivety and Avery’s conservative views.

One of the surprises of setting out to write a series set over a period of years, and have two characters bouncing off each other, is that I feel I can give them story and character arcs which carry over each book and onto the next. I can let them develop and change and bring their pasts to light. I always knew that I didn’t want to reveal everything about them both in The Strangler Vine: that each book would show a bit more about Blake’s mysterious history, and a bit more about Avery’s character forming. I have literally dozens of places I want to take them, and a range of experiences I plan to put them through (some of them extremely uncomfortable).

Of course, the relationship between a writer and her characters can go wrong. Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, feeling he was holding him back from writing other, better things — only to be forced to bring him back to life. Agatha Christie quickly came to loathe Hercule Poirot: his prissiness, fussiness, predictability, but was forced to live alongside him to the bitter end. Just now, though, I’m more than happy to spend more time with Blake and Avery. One thing though, I’m finding that I’d like to travel beyond Avery’s voice, and tell the stories in different voices. Is this a sign of exhaustion? I’d like to think it was just one more step deeper into their world.

The Devil's Feast is published in hardback by Fig Tree on 27th October 2016. Many thanks to Sara at Penguin Random House for my review copy.

Book Review: The Infidel Stain by M J Carter

In The Strangler Vine, M J Carter introduces her two fictional detectives Blake and Avery, an unlikely pairing who meet in 1830s Calcutta during the heyday of the East India Company. Unwillingly, they become embroiled in a mission to rescue renowned poet and national hero Xavier Mountstuart from a band of Thugs; an adventure which sees them travel deep into India's outback before eventually earning each other's grudging respect.

Carter's second book, The Infidel Stain, finds this mismatched duo returned to Victorian England some four years later. In 1841, Captain Avery, having resigned his commission after a tour of Afghanistan, is taking his first ever train journey from his home in Devon to the festering streets of London. An outsider's viewpoint makes him the ideal narrator; descended from comfortable Tory landowning stock, he is simultaneously dazzled by the wealth and innovation but shocked by the immorality and destitution he finds there. His less than ecstatic reunion with the always-inscrutable Special Inquiry Agent Blake quickly draws him further into the seamier side of the capital, as they are retained by Viscount Allington (a pious reformer loosely based on the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury) to look into the grisly murders of two back-street printers.

The newly-formed police force is mysteriously reluctant to investigate and although the victims are soon uncovered as small-scale peddlers of pornography, this doesn't dish up a satisfying enough explanation. The murders continue and it seems radical politics may be tied up with the crimes.

The Chartists, in seeking suffrage for all men, are divided about whether violent physical force can be justified and at odds with the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers, a group of rich northern manufacturers campaigning for the repeal of the price-fixing Corn Laws. Here are shades of Middlemarch - but, what do they have in common with an earlier collective of fiercely atheist revolutionaries or 'infidels', inspired by the French revolution and the works of Thomas Paine? It is in investigating these links, often at peril to their personal safety, that Blake and Avery begin to piece together the answers.

Poverty is exemplified by the waif-like figure of young Matty Horner; an orphan selling winter cress in the streets to scrape a living for herself and her younger brother, earning enough when she can to send him for a rudimentary education at the 'ragged school'. Matty found the body of the second murder victim and Avery is philanthropically tempted to take her under his wing. But, when he attempts to buy food for her, Matty proves herself to be by far the more streetwise - as she has to be to survive:

 'Oh Captain, you're a babe-in-arms'

'I am sorry' I said, disappointed. 'Have I done wrong?'

'The orange. It's no good.' She took my hand and pressed it into the skin. 'See? Like a sponge. It's been boiled. Coster trick. They do it to the old ones - makes them swell up - but if we opened it, all the juice'd be gone.'

And so, the exotic sub-continental romance of Carter's debut novel is replaced by a much harder-nosed reality in The Infidel Stain. But, just as cleverly plotted, it is no less enjoyable for that; despite being a work of fiction (Carter, after years of non-fiction writing, declared 'it was brilliant to make stuff up!') The Infidel Stain feels as though its language is redolent of its time.

Each paragraph is steeped in research and every character drawn from history; Henry Mayhew, one of the founders of Punch magazine has a significant part to play, as does Richard Carlile, forgotten hero of the fight for a British free press. Even Dickens has a walk-on part.

Blake and Avery are easily cast as a detective double act in the mould of Holmes and Watson, but I can't hep thinking this is a rather lazy association to make. Carter's novels are layered with Victorian complexity, meticulously researched, sublimely plotted and completely engrossing in their own right. In her acknowledgements, she gives special thanks to her husband John Lanchester for counselling her to 'take out the boring bits'; in The Infidel Stain she has successfully followed his advice.

The Infidel Stain is published in the UK by Fig Tree, many thanks to them for my review copy. Photos courtesy of The Telegraph.

Everland by Rebecca Hunt

In 1913, three Antarctic explorers set off from their ship, the Kismet, to investigate an unknown island. Their voyage is beset with difficulties from the first, and once on the strange and unforgiving Everland they need to muster every ounce of resilience they have to survive. In these hostile surroundings, new alliances are made and old tensions rise to the surface, threatening to tear them apart.

As the novel opens, the geologist of the group is rescued by a search party from the Kismet

Dinners cried for the miracle of being found. He cried for not being driven out of his collapsing body and made to die alone in the cold. And he cried for Napps and Millet-Bass; for the heartbreak and the pity of what had come before. 

Fast-forward to 2012 and an international community at the Antarctic base Aegeus are watching a classic movie about the expedition.The next day, a centenary fieldwork group of three will leave to survey the island's wildlife. Although arriving by Twin Otter rather than dinghy and equipped with the latest satellite communications, their experiences begin to mirror those of the original party. There are questions over selection and at first old hand Decker supports the inexperienced Brix with more grace than their field assistant, Jess. But allegiances shift again as, through storms and set-backs, the strong must support the weak, all the while trying to hold on to their own vitality.

In the movie version of their lives, each of the men in the first expedition has their character set in stone, based on the book written by the ship's Captain Lawrence

The common-room audience were offended by any affection or respect given to that bastard Napps. They knew what to expect and hated him 

Napps, the villain of the piece, is allowed a solitary line of self-reflection

How time tricks us into seeing who we really are...and what choices we make

This moment of soul-searching becomes eerily relevant to the 2012 party, as the harshest of environments takes its toll once more. Disturbing glimpses of the original expedition are uncovered, but it is the island which seems to be the most haunting enigma of all.

When a book has two distinct threads it's easy to prefer one above the other, leading to resentment of precious reading time expended on the second, less interesting strand. One of Everland's strengths is how deftly the overlapping stories of the two expeditions are woven together, with each being equally compelling. The lichen seen by the original expedition will have grown only a millimetre when it's discovered by the centenary party. While the first endures endless night, the second group labours under the harsh ultra-violet of a sun that never sets. There are multiple points of view and reversals of fortune, but the characters remain clearly identifiable.

As we gradually uncover what has happened to Dinners, Millet-Bass and Napps, we begin to appreciate the inaccuracies of the story passed down the generations. Napps has been mercilessly revised by Captain Lawrence into a callous cat-murdering swine, prepared to be equally ruthless with fellow crew-members. Those who could have saved his reputation have their own reasons not to do so, a theme which again finds its echo in the centenary expedition.

Rebecca Hunt's debut novel Mr Chartwell, concerned the black dog of Winston Churchill's depression and was well received for its originality and visual flair.

With Everland, she has again created a distinct and challenging world, one where the human condition is subject to the harshest of scrutinies. Time becomes elastic as the island's inhabitants across two centuries are tested beyond endurance.  Perceptions are manipulated and truth disregarded and if not everything is neatly resolved, it feels fitting that Everland should retain some of its mystery. This is another absorbing and strikingly original novel from Hunt, which succeeds in questioning and entertaining in equal measure.

Thanks to Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin Books, for my review copy.