Only Murders in my Mind
Episode 25: How Atmosphere shapes Crime Stories
[Music] Welcome to Only Murders in My Mind. A random thought production. Hi, I'm Carol Bissett, a crime writer. And I invite you with my co-presenters, Liz Hedgecock and Mike Jackson, each week to our conversations on all things murderous. Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of Only Murders in My Mind with Liz Hedgecock. Hello, and Michael Jackson. Hello there. Right, so how are you both okay? Yes, I think so, yes, it's a warm day, but bearing up. Yes, Summer has arrived. I think this is Summer. I saw a tweet recently where somebody was complaining about the fact that at that stage we were halfway through June and still no Summer. And the person in the tweet said, "What you're forgetting, it's not really June. It's January the 173rd." [Laughs] It hasn't felt like that. You might have yet another cold wet day, and then you know, I tell you it was the hottest month on record. You're like, "Where?" So he wasn't here. I must have slept through that, yes. But this is a good segue actually, because this leads us very nicely into our subject for today, which is crime settings and the weather. Now you might think, yeah, you might think to yourself, "What's that got to do with it?" But it's got a lot to do with it, and we're going to discuss this sort of thing that makes a series, a film, a book. You just immerse yourself in that particular setting. And we went back to talking about the things that happened in the Norway and Sweden. We always expect it to be cold and everything white, and very often it's a bit lonely and you're thinking to yourself, "If they get stuck in that snowstorm, how are they going to get out?" So the first one I'm going to talk about is "Were the Crowe Dad Sing?" Oh! Which is the purpose. I haven't read it. I wish I had, but I saw the film and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And this last is, I won't go through the whole premise because people might want to watch the film or read the book, but she basically stuck out in a swamp somewhere. Trying to survive. That comes across how isolated she is, how she's got nobody to turn to. So straight away I thought, "Yeah, I can understand why it's important where the setting is." Whether it always seems to be, apart from rain, because as I say it's a swamp, it always seems to be hot and steamy. You know, you can sort of imagine it. When I've seen television plays or films where it's been set in, sort of, I'm just trying to think, sort of, in parts of America where it's always, they're always on the balcony, you know, fanning themselves and all this sort of thing. But yes, this is the sort of setting that evokes our mindset into what's going to happen. And then we want to be taped now to that. Now, that isn't so much a crime book, but I definitely needed the atmosphere and the atmosphere, to make it realistically. Any come to mind for you Liz? Oh, in terms of settings? Yes. Well, can you imagine Miss Marple in Manhattan? No. Exactly. Imagine her in a yellow cab and then, you know, going up the Empire State Building. You just can't see it. It wouldn't happen, would it? No. And the house of basketball is not going to happen on Barbados, is it? Yeah. Or in a shopping centre. No. Yeah. So, you know, things like that. You think of Sherlock Holmes, you think of London fog. Yes. And you think of Hanson Cubs. Yeah. Even though there's one where there's an underground train and it's an integral pass at the plot. Yeah. And it just seems very, very odd. You know, and even though there are ones like the Hound of the Basketballs where he goes off to start more, isn't it? Or Grimmire. Yes. But those feel like unusual. It's still that kind of dark, misty sort of. So we sort of taken his atmosphere with him in a way. I, I, yeah, forget how long the underground has been in London. Yes. And one of the first ones, of course, was Baker Street. Yes. Well, there you go. Yeah. I would have been there from the beginning. I'm going on an underground. I'm going to London this coming weekend and I'm going on an underground tour. Oh, lovely. Right. So the ones that aren't used anymore. Pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures. And this is very often where they stage films and television series. Yes. Because they don't want the general public about it. If you get to see Mornington Crescent, definitely. Oh, yes. Yeah. I wonder when authors are writing the books, the crime novels, the mystery, when they start off with a particular setting in mind, or certainly weather in mind. How important is setting weather and plot? You know, can you have one without the other? Yeah. It depends on the country, doesn't it? Yeah. Why did you decide that you're going to have a series in Mornington and in Virens? Yeah. Because I... Sorry to put you on the spot. No, no. I used to work on the district as a nurse. I answered the call the evening service. I don't think it exists anymore. And I used to get lost frequently going around Mornington. But I did learn all the rat runs, which areas you shouldn't be in. You know, if you're a district nurse with a bag that could have drugs in there, where you shouldn't be at 11 o'clock at night on your own. Yes. All those sorts of things. And as people have said to me, why Mornington? And I said, why midsummer? Why paradise? Why Oxford? Yeah. You know, it's what I know. So that's why I write it. And it's in the town where I live. Because the squad that do these investigations are actually... ...the gesture series crime squad, it does give me a bit of leeway to go further afield. Because, you know, they can go into other areas in Cheshire. And as a district nurse, you used to go to all the areas. You know, posh, unposh, places where you wiped your feet on the way out. Oh, that sort of thing. Yeah. And, you know, the characters are dealt with. The people that are dealt with, you've got a flavour for the sort of... ...the community that they lived in. And as I say, it's relevant just like being in Oxford and, you know, with all these academics. Or being on paradise with all the sun between your toes. So, you know, crime... I feel comfortable. But people did say to me, why Mornington? That's the answer. It's just because I know it probably better than anywhere else. Yeah. You'd take something like midsummer murders. You could take the plot. And put it anywhere, couldn't you? Yeah. But people in this country, and from abroad, love the fact that it's beautiful, typical English villages. Yes. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people, Americans, and what... ...they think this is... that is England. Yeah. You know, it's a bit of a shot when they go to some of the cities. Yeah. I think because I tend to write very short stories, I don't usually have to give setting, whether anything like that. Or quite often, it's in a location. Yes. A lot of your stories are indoors. Yes, they are. Or in somebody's house. Or in a sort of an unnamed, mysterious room. Yeah. You did do one with two ladies emitting in the community centre. I'm sure you do. A lot of somebody's there. Yes. Well, there's a surprise. Well, I suppose with much of what I write it, it's about people, sometimes what they're thinking, what they're planning, what they're doing. Yeah. And then, to a certain extent, the setting is almost irrelevant. Yeah, whereas I think, for me, the setting is very irrelevant. Yes. I kind of want to get the vibes. And when I was doing my first series, where I thought, this is actually going to be a series that's supposed to accidentally falling into doing a series, which is what I did with the first few books. I was very much right. Okay. I am going to have a place, and it's going to have these villages around it, and there's going to be a county town. It's going to have a river in these, the shops. And I drew a map. You know, it has very much right. This is how it's going to be. So, yeah. And I mean, with writing kind of alternative Sherlock versions, the world is pretty much set up for you. You can't really divert from it that much. It's interesting what you're saying about a map. Some of the misread books, who is one of my favourite authors for, you know, nice, easy reading that makes you feel good most of the time. Very often, her books will have little maps of the village at the front. And you can say, oh, well, Miss Smith lives there. And, you know, Mr. Brown lives there. And you can sort of get this feeling of the characters like that. And sometimes the setting can be very simple, can't it? I'm thinking now of the chap who I like reading. I can never get to grips with this first name. I think it's Kem McDonald. Yes. The Stranger Time. Yes. Stranger Time is an old building in Manchester. It is. And the fact that it's in Manchester, to a certain extent, is almost irrelevant. It could be in any big city. But the building itself almost becomes a focal part. Oh, yeah. You've got to picture in your mind the different office spaces. Yeah, it describes it quite well, doesn't it? I've been in a building that it probably isn't. But I feel like it could be because it's got a really ancient lift and it's got lots of floors and all that. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. I mean, some of the things that, we Google a lot, you know, it won't lie to you. Why do we need crime settings, stroke weather? And it says, mood, danger, isolation, darkness, tension, mystery, bad weather, grit. No pressure. So all these things are making the atmosphere for bad things to happen. Mm. You know, one of the things that I always find a bit threatening are dense woodlands. Yes. You know, because it'd be so easy to get lost. Yeah. Wouldn't it? You know, if you're wandering on your own, or if you're wandering with somebody else. And there have been crime, films, books, et cetera, where the forest has been like the place where people have been gone missing, been murdered. Yeah. I suppose the other thing, too, is that you can create that tension and that mystery in some ordinary settings, so you could have a ordinary care home setting. Yeah. And it depends on what you do with the character and what happens. Yeah. That can either make it dark and deep, mysterious. Yeah. Or maybe it's, you know, stuffy and humid and it feels airless and you feel like it's hard to breathe or something like that. Something I was thinking of when we're talking about this topic was the pathetic fallacy, which, and I had to look it up because I vaguely remember this from my English degree days. Writers use pathetic fallacy to evoke a specific mood or feeling that usually reflects their own or a character's internal state, so the sun was smiling down upon him. The raindrops wept around her. I think it's a John Ruskin thing. Yeah. And that kind of feeling of the environment mirroring how you're feeling or the mood of what's going on. Yeah. It's that breath holding, isn't it? You know, when you're in, I mean, how many times did the police go into a dark house? And I'm going, why don't they just put the lights on? Yes. Where's the fun in that car? Oh, come on. We've got this torch, you know, it's all building up. The thing about the nursing home, I can just picture some somebody who's got a reduced mobility being in bed and somebody, you know, that's dressed in black with a balaclava and going into the room at night and all of a sudden that safe environment is murderous, isn't it? You know, it's really threatening sort of thing. Like, oh, there's a smell of an air freshener that some becomes really oppressive and, you know, I want to be sure to care home with either of these two. No, I mean, I can't say I've ever used weather in any of my books, not to build up an atmosphere or anything. I've had some dark sellers. Yeah. I think sometimes I'm quite, you know, sometimes they'll go outside and it'll be a lovely autumn day and it'll be all fresh and crisp and nice and then, you know, other times, you know, they'll head out for a walk and it'll be like dismal and gloomy in the air or be thick or whatever. You know, that kind of the environment reflecting what's going on, but I suppose in the magical bookshop had a lot of fun with the weather. Yes, there's an episode in the first book where Paul Gemma gets absolutely soaked. There's a little bit of flooding going on at one time. She's gone off in a paddy and the heavens just opened. But but in that book, Liz, it's very much the setting is the bookshop. Oh, yeah, and you can feel you can feel the temperature drop. Yes, or the air become kind of, you know, it's like when the cats about and, you know, things start flying off the shelves and all that sort of thing. Yeah. Sort of sitting on top of the books going and not having these, they're mine. Good old folio. Oh, yes. Yes. Are you going to read something like? If you two keep talking, I've got a humble story here that's set in a care home. Oh, yes, fabulous. I think, but you need to keep talking to try to find it. Well, I'll tell you what, I've got a bit talking about setting generally and I was talking about the paper series earlier, which is my first kind of, it was my first series where I thought, right, this is a series I'm going to actually plan this. And this is how it begins. The River Gadd pierces the heart of Gaddistershire. It flows wide and strong in the county town of Gaddister, deep enough for fairies, pleasure boats and peddlers to apply a tourist trade at the heritage key. But above Gaddister, the river's tributives are slow and narrow. The slowest of these runs through the village of much gadding. It is shallow, clear and much prized by the locals for the picturesque quality at lens to the village center. It also lends a distinct dampness to the listed cottages in its vicinity. This is in addition to the natural climate of much gadding, which is inclined to rain. A rambler on the river path would have noticed an unusual addition to the scene on Friday lunchtime. That is if a rambler were pleasant because it was raining the sort of fine rain that soaked you through after 15 minutes. The river was grey to match the sky. The vegetation was lush and green, dripping onto the path and onto the glistening treacherous cobbles of river lane. And backing slowly up river lane was a bright red removal lorry, whose driver leaned out of the window, frowning and swearing under his breath as the rain found his bald spot. "It's no good, Mrs Parker," he shouted, "roads two narrows to get her any further." The lorry siding confirmation as he put on the handbrake and settled to wait, rumbling to itself. Mrs Parker rumbled too. She was standing outside a small quaint cottage holding a thumb-sucking toddler. An observer would have found her hard to describe as she was wearing an overcoat which flapped round her wellies and had a sun-hat jam blow on her head. Only medium-height and bobbed brown hair were visible. Oh, and expecting a baby quite soon. Yes. So I decided to take us off with an aerial view and then you kind of focus in to meet her. Yeah, that works. That works. Yeah, I can just, I can just visualise it all because I've read those boots thoroughly enjoyed them. And there is quite a lot of descriptive writing in it for where they are and everything. I feel. Have you found your nursing home? No, but what is surprising me, because I always surprise myself when I go back and read what I've heard in my stories, is that I've got quite a few here that are very much in a setting. Even though it's only a hundred-word story, let's try this one. In the quaint town of Saint Pierre, the ancient clock tower stood tall. It's face frozen at 307. The legend told of a ghostly figure appearing precisely at that time. It turnedly awaiting for a lover who never returned. One overcast afternoon as people sipped coffee nearby, a shadowy silhouette materialised by the tower. An eerie silence fell. A local, daring to confront the apparition, approached, but found nothing but cold air. At 308, the apparition vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. So did the local. The clock showed 308. For the first time in centuries, it had moved forward. Ooh, there's a setting. There you go, fairy atmospheric. No, but any more like that. Yeah. Erm, I watch them. I linger here in the corridors of our old house, unseen but ever-present. My fingers brush against the living, drawing shivers down their spines. They blame the drafts on ill-fitting windows and heart-closed doors, never suspecting the truth. I watch them, my son, my daughter, the young lives I'm folding without me. My husband's new love fills my vases with fresh flowers as if to banish my memory. But at night, I stand by their bed and whisper whole secrets into their dreams. My laughter blends with the wind. They never understand their nightmares. The chill of unresolved farewells. You and your whispering things into people's ears. Yeah, I know. If you ever say, "I can stay in my spare room." No, I will. Once I will go down to the travel lodge. And one more, then I'll be quiet. Okay. This is Stonehenge. There you go. Yeah. And this is dialogue, just dialogue. But Dad, Dem druid said it was important we get it right. Said we've got to stick to these drawings they've done. Stonehenge, they're going to call it. Reckon it will still be here hundreds of years from now. That's all well and said, son. But we've still got to build it. Look at them drawings. Typical of them druids. We've always got their heads in the clouds. With what they're paying us, there's no way they're going to get anything as fancy as that. It's just stick a few stone columns in the ground, Dad. That'll do. They'll not notice the difference. Yeah, it's going back to settings. One of mine and Liz's favourite television series, How Only Murders in the Billings. Oh, yes. What a setting. What a setting. Oh, yeah. And that's the thing, I suppose. It's a sort of extension of, you know, the country house. Yes, it is, isn't it? They have a whole apartment building. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we go into different characters, apartments, and they're all different. And in its own way, it's like a little village. Oh, it is. Yeah. Well, it's like that sting lives there sometimes. Which is unusual in the village. Yeah. Well, that's what all manner of people were predicting was referencing. I think they got the idea from you. I think they did as well. Yeah. Where you've got a people living in an all manner house. So they can't, they really don't want to have anything to do with each other. But they can't avoid each other. And the reason they can't avoid each other in this case is because there's a lovely central staircase that leads up to quite a few of the apartments, for that's whatever you want. But what's the building called in? The Arconia, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's a sort of place if you're rich. Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only reason Mabel's there is Nix. It's her aunt's apartment that she's kind of looking after. It's been done off, isn't it? Yeah. Because they're all saying to her, how somebody so young can afford a place like this. No. You know, but yeah, in the last series thing move on the pace with that apartment sort of. And it's surprising is I watch the episode of Monk. Yeah. I watch much more all the time. I think these two are far ahead of me. I'm on episode, the series two episode something. And I think there's about another six series to go. I think I think I'm on six. Yeah. I'm about 96 more episodes to go. But the great thing that one of the episodes I've just watched, Monk is in New York. And he hates it. Can't cope. He just can't cope. And he really does engender that feeling of the panic that you can get when you're in a busy place with the noise, with the people, with the bustling. And I suppose in some ways that's where the setting is important to the story because of the character. Yeah. You know, they take, then the writers taken that character and purposely put him somewhere where he knows the character does not want to be. Yeah. In some ways going back to only murders. The most interesting episode is the one where you get it from the perspective of the guy who was deaf. Yes. In his world. So you only hear sort of vague, swingy sounds. Yeah. Because it literally reads, doesn't it? It's absolutely mesmerizing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It's really, well, they write it, don't they? The two main styles in it. They co-write it, don't they? I don't know. I think they do. We'll have to look at it. Sorry I've got that wrong, folks. But I think they do. She also goes back when you think the setting goes back to an episode we've done before about Nordic Noir. Yeah. And the countries that quite often they're set in places like Denmark, Norway. I always imagine it's beautiful places, you know, lovely scenery and what have you. But they purposely, the writers of those grim stories purposely take you to the grimest parts. Yeah. You know. In hospitable. You don't see the lovely scenery, you just see the dingy alleys and graffiti written walls. Yeah. Whereas if you're somewhere like Death in Paradise, I assume it's always lovely. It's always lovely. You always know that they're going to. They're always going to find the person that everything's going to be alright to get. Yes. In the end. But that means that you do have hurricanes and typhoons occasionally. Ah. Remember in the first series they were going, we've got a, you know, type two, whatever. And the very English detective was saying, "Oh, you think that's bad? You should have seen the storms in, was it 66 or 76 or?" Yeah, 76. I took down a new forest. We can cope with this and the next minute he's trying to open a door and he can't even open a door. Yeah. You know, it's... I wonder if writers sometimes take us into settings that we were never dreaming of going to. Yes. We all know big cities, Manchester, London, there are certain parts you wouldn't dream of going at night. Oh, yeah. But in a story you're quite happy for somebody to take you into dreadful places. Yeah. I mean, thinking about some friend of the show, Paul Harmon, in her Margaret Demeray series, Margaret often has to venture into places that aren't remotely safe. Or she'll end up going into a sweatshop, you know, a clothes factory that is highly unsafe environment where, you know, to be honest, it could fall down any minute, you know. Or she ends up going into areas where, you know, people don't necessarily speak English and they look at it with superstition. I mean, she's got some credibility because, you know, hopefully someone there will know she's that lady doctor who sticks a nose in, but she is, you know, quite possibly going to be... Yeah, she is taking a chance. Do you need to, as a writer, do you need to have experience of these settings? Mmm. Good question. I mean, I know Paula does a lot of research, she reads a lot of like first-hand accounts pages and, you know, old maps and she goes into the British newspaper archives and like reads, you know, stuff from the time. So, yeah. It's right. What you know, isn't it? It's what you know or what you can find out. Yeah, true. Yes. It's true, as you say, through Paula doing that research, she sort of almost... No, I went to the Turkish in London to research from the last book because some of the book is set in and around the church. And I really felt when I was writing about it, that I knew what it was like, you know, I didn't just look at pictures of actually being there because, again, one of my favourite writers has got a book and it's based, the start of the book is based in Venice. Yeah. And she went very nicely, went to live there for about four to six weeks to research it like... Oh, for poor thing. I know. How could they cope? How could they cope? What about those authors though? I'm thinking now when you go into hand-to-see science fiction, you know, again thinking of J.K. The settings that she created in Harry Potter were tremendous, in my opinion, which I mean does. Oh, yeah. And the amount of detail as well. Yes. Yes. But that must have all come from her... Well, it has to. There was nothing to research, was there? Some of the herbs and things she talks about do exist. Oh, yes. And some of the animals do exist in folklore, you know, and that sort of thing. But yes. I mean, the school hall that she created. I suppose we all have a vision of a big posh school, a big posh school halls, but then she's taken it one step further, isn't she, how can I make this really fantastical? Yeah, yeah. I think some of that is, you know, taking what we all kind of think of when we think of a, you know, a huge grand hall in an old establishment and then adding on the kind of fantastic layer, like the portraits that can speak to you and move. The candles are floating, yes. Yes. The food just appearing. Yeah. And the howl is turning off all that sort of thing. Yeah. In some ways, we think that's very clever, isn't it? You take something like the portraits, for example, which we've all seen these big portraits, huge portraits. Yes. And then she's got that imagination where, well, I wonder what would happen if these portraits could talk or these grand staircases. What would happen if we could all move? Yeah. I think that's the clever bit about the writing, especially if you're writing fantasy. In some ways, you're allowed to do whatever you like because there is no right and wrong way, you know. It kind of telling the volume up to 11, aren't you? Yeah. If you want the portrait to speak, speak away. Mm-hmm. Yeah. She definitely found a niche in the market eventually after all these other people had said, well, I won't say it was a load of rubbish, but they probably didn't see it for what it's worth. Well, it's probably because they would have read it, I thought. Nobody would be interested. I hadn't read anything like this before, so it won't be interested. Yeah. Or, oh, it's a school story. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The boy with special patterns. Well, yeah. And again, it's that thing, isn't it? As many adults read it as children. Yeah. Yeah, because me and my neighbour, when I didn't live here then, and we were waiting for the last one to come out, and she's a very fast reader. And we both went to some world like W8 Smiths, and they were just a stack of them in the dark way. Mm-hmm. And both of them went home. So then we were racing each other to read it. She read hers first, but I swore it a secrecy, I said, I don't want any spoilers. Every now and again, Ben would pick it up, and Ben's speed reads. And when we got to the end, I said, oh, this happened, and that happened. He went, I know. Yeah. And he just picked your top occasion when I put it down, and you could see him going, like this, who's the pages. And he didn't know all the fine details, but he knew the basic story line from start to finish. Yeah. And I think he probably read it in about two hours. Yeah. You know, it was about, you know, it was like, actually two, wasn't it huge? Yeah. So, yeah. But, yeah, well, how many, how much joy she brought to children's lives that had given up on reading? Oh, yes. You're an ex-head teacher, so. Yeah. I can remember seeing children sat in the playground, and the latest Harry Potter book, you know. There you go. Right. Again, atmosphere, where it was, where it was set. Yeah. Yeah. And she brought it all in, didn't she? And the setting, she had the weather. Yes. It was always snowed at Christmas, always. She hit all the senses in one go. Yeah. Yeah. So, basically, what we're saying is, you know, the setting and things like the atmosphere, the weather are super important. Yes. Which... Not just in crime. No. And when we started talking about this, I thought, what are we going to talk about? I think that's it on this subject, unless anybody else has got anything to put forward. No. You probably could go on that. Oh, we've covered it. Yeah. But the weather's taking the term for the worst, it's foggy out there, and it's snowing. I think the thunder's you. No, listen to him, it's still nice. There's a heat wave as well. But apart from everything, it's five. I listen to Planet Rock, and one of the presenters is a guitarist with a group called Thunder. And it does a program every Sunday, and he goes, "Thunder's coming." You know, like winter's coming, yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So, we'll leave it there. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Like, subscribe, tell your friends, and we'll see you all again next Thursday. Bye for now. You have been listening to Only Murders in My Mind, A Random Thought Production, Produced by John Bissett. The music in peril was composed and recorded by O.M. Studio Strings. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]