A Braevallich-based writer’s new ‘cozy crime’ series is set to draw readers into a world of murder mystery in wartime Manchester.
Flic Everett, a feature writer from Manchester who came to the banks of Loch Awe seven years ago and writes under the name F L Everett, describes the sleuthing adventures of Edie York, an obituarist and aspiring crime reporter.
The series begins with A Report of Murder, which sees 24-year old Edie unwinding a knotted murder case in the countdown to the Manchester Blitz. Along the way she is helped and hampered by sarcastic Detective Inspector Lou Brennan, while offbeat mortician Arnold draws her suspicions.
Writing about a major event in her hometown meant Flic needed to get the details right.
“When I researched it, I didn’t want to be making stuff up randomly,” Flic says.
“I know it’s almost passing out of living memory now, but if anyone does remember, I don’t want them to say ‘that didn’t happen’. I want them to go ‘yeah, that’s exactly how it was’.”
Yet the setting for Edie’s uncovering of dastardly deeds was different when Flic wrote her original draft of the book ten years ago. Unfortunately the publisher wasn’t enamoured with the character enjoying the 1960s and suggested the war, sending Flic to a full edit.
“I thought ‘wow, this is a lot of work’. But I really thought the story was good and I like the characters. I really want to write novels more than I want to do anything else, so I said yes.
“I spent summer 2022 rewriting it. They loved it and offered me a three book deal.”
Book two in the series, Murder in a Country Village, is scheduled to be released on November 23, and sees Edie discover a body while walking in a Lancashire village. The author is already working on the third instalment, in which the amateur detective must investigate a death in an ENSA troupe.
With so many bodies piling up, Flic jokes Edie would not be out of place on the TV show Midsomer Murders.
“Can there really be this many bodies? It’s lucky I made her in an obituarist, because that way she will naturally come into contact with quite a lot of death.”
Unlike more casual murder mysteries, Flic notes that death does affect Edie in the series, and murder is not glossed over.
However, the new fiction author, who celebrated the book’s launch with a 1940s tea party serving tinned salmon and cucumber sandwiches, stresses that a fast paced ‘cozy crime’ book does have rules an audience demands.
“Several people get murdered. Edie gets caught up in great danger. But she triumphs at the end – as we would expect.”
A Report of Murder by F L Everett is published by Bookouture.
