In this exclusive Mary Grand A Halloween Murder interview, we explore a high school reunion gone horribly wrong. When old friends gather at a historic castle on the most haunted island in the world, nostalgia quickly turns to terror after one of them is found dead. Was it a tragic accident, a desperate suicide, or a calculated murder? With the castle locked down, everyone is a suspect, and time is running out to find the truth before the killer can escape.
Author Mary Grand joins the podcast to unpack her thrilling new novel, a perfect Halloween read for fans of classic whodunits. We discuss why the Isle of Wight haunted island reputation, with its mysterious ley lines and numerous historic buildings, makes it the ultimate setting for a spooky mystery. Mary shares the fascinating Carisbrook Castle history, revealing how its past as a Saxon fort, a Norman stronghold, and a royal prison for Charles I inspired this chilling tale. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who loves intricate locked room mystery books, as Mary explains how she crafted a puzzle where the killer had to be one of the guests trapped inside the castle walls.
Throughout this Mary Grand A Halloween Murder interview, we delve into the author’s creative process. Mary talks about her beloved amateur detective from the Susan Flynn book series, and how Susan gets entangled in the investigation through her daughter, Zoe, who is a key suspect. We also explore the complex group dynamics of a high school reunion, the intense and frightening Ouija board scene, and the real-world research behind the plot, including the harrowing details of the synthetic drug ‘spice’ and how it’s smuggled into prisons. Mary gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the actual Carisbrooke Castle ghost walk she attended for research and shares fun anecdotes about the famous Isle of Wight tomatoes and her tradition of naming fictional dogs after her friends’ real-life pets. If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie, you won’t want to miss this deep dive into the craft of plotting a modern cozy mystery that keeps you guessing until the final page.
Introduction
Blaine DeSantis: Welcome to Books and Looks, where we do a deep dive with authors to help you discover your next great read. It’s that time of year. Yes, seasons change. The days grow shorter. The nights longer. There’s a chill in the air. And yes, it’s the perfect time for a mystery book. And what better place than the most haunted island in the entire world?
We have a high school reunion gone bad, a death. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? There’s a host of possible suspects, and time’s running out before everybody leaves to go home. We return to the Isle of Wight for a delectable mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last page. I’m Blaine DeSantis, this is Books and Looks, and today we’re joined by friend of the podcast, Mary Grand, to chat about her new book, A Halloween Murder. Mary Grand, welcome back to Books and Looks.
Mary Grand: Hi, hello. Lovely to be back.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow, our favorite mystery writer is back again, and I can’t wait to chat about your new book. First of all, how are things on the Isle of Wight?
Mary Grand: It’s good on the Isle of Wight. We’re just hitting autumn. In fact, it’s all just starting to look like the cover of the book. I live very close to the castle where the story is set. So I’m looking up at it and I’m seeing all the autumn trees and there’s a buildup to Halloween and everything. So it’s all very tied in with the book.
Blaine DeSantis: It does. It ties in nicely. Very good. Wow. Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that. And as you and I were chatting before we came on air here, for those of you who don’t know it, the Isle of Wight is not on the British Channel. No, it is in the…
Mary Grand: English Channel.
Blaine DeSantis: English Channel.
Mary Grand: Well, one side just goes off the Solent.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah. Friends, if you don’t know what the English Channel is, neither do I. I don’t know where it begins, where it ends, or the British Channel, but it’s there.
Mary Grand: Wonderful place. It’s very small, just off the mainland of Britain. And we look out over to Southampton and Portsmouth, which are better known.
Blaine DeSantis: It’s small, but I remember last time you telling us it’s a pretty big vacation spot. A lot of people come over from there.
Mary Grand: It is. A lot of people come on holiday. And the population is about 150,000, so it’s not tiny. The actual island’s about 23 miles by 13 miles. But it’s a lot happening here.
Blaine DeSantis: Plenty for mysteries. Plenty of room to have a lot of mysteries.
Mary Grand: It’s great.
Why the Isle of Wight is the World’s Most Haunted Island
Blaine DeSantis: Well, good. Before we get started, this is amazing. The Isle of Wight is considered the most haunted island in the world. Why is that? Why is it so haunted?
Mary Grand: I was surprised when I read that myself. But it does have a huge amount of historic buildings on it. For a little place, it’s got castles, manors, and they all go back a long time. Ghost hunters come over here a lot and claim they see ghosts and things around the place. You’ve got the castle, you’ve got Arreton Manor, you’ve got an old hospital ruin and all this sort of stuff.
And also, and I don’t quite understand this, but apparently there’s something called ley lines which are invisible, which are meant to be some sort of energy that goes under the island and it’s meant to lead to more paranormal.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow. And it’s all crammed in this little island. That’s pretty neat.
Mary Grand: Oh, crammed on here. Yeah.
A Halloween Murder: A Locked-Room Mystery with a Returning Detective
Blaine DeSantis: That’s great. So tell us a little bit. We’re talking about your book, A Halloween Murder. Yes. Here it is. A Halloween Murder by, there she is, Mary Grand. Tell us a little bit about the plot of this book and who some of the main characters are.
Mary Grand: It’s a murder mystery. This time last year when I was speaking, I was speaking about the Christmas Murder. And it’s the same amateur detective, Susan Flynn. I write in a series, but they can all be read in isolation. They work as a standalone. I do that on purpose.
So this one is set in autumn at Halloween. And you have Susan Flynn, who is my amateur detective, who lives on the island, and her daughter Zoe decides to come over and stay in Carisbrook Castle with some friends. It’s a kind of school reunion. They’re all 30 now, but they were all friends when they were 18 back at school in a band together. And they come over, it’s a reunion that they all come to.
The first night they stay is Halloween and they go on the ghost walk, and then the next day one of them is found dead. Because the castle—they are the only people in the castle and it’s all locked up at night, and this is true, this is actually what happens. There’s one apartment where people can stay. It’s just this one family or one group. It’s a real locked room mystery because it has to be one of the people who are in this party who is the killer.
Blaine DeSantis: How many people are in the group?
Mary Grand: In the group, you’ve got Zoe, who’s Susan’s daughter. So that’s her link into this group of people. And then there’s Maxine, who is a barrister. And Maxine and Zoe both live on the mainland. You’ve got people who actually live on the island. Nick, a teacher. Annika, a phlebotomist. And Leanne, who runs a restaurant. And the only other one person is called Gino, who’s Maxine’s husband. And so he’s the outsider. He didn’t grow up on the island. He doesn’t know them all.
Blaine DeSantis: And it reminds me of a Christmas Murder where we had a Frenchman.
Mary Grand: That’s right. It’s always interesting when you’ve got this small group to put an outsider in as well and see how they change the dynamics.
The History of Carisbrook Castle: The Perfect Murder Mystery Setting
Blaine DeSantis: Exactly. Wow. It’s wonderful. I love it. Now, the main setting for this book is a location called Carisbrook Castle. And again, friends, if I showed you the cover here, there it is again. That is Carisbrook.
Mary Grand: Yeah, you can see it. That’s what it looks like. It really is. That is Carisbrook.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow. Okay. Foreboding as I look at it. And it’s a perfect location for a Halloween mystery. What’s some of the history of the castle? And what did you discover while you were doing research?
Mary Grand: Well, it’s an interesting one, Carisbrook Castle, because I’ve been going there for years with my children when they were little and things. But when you’re writing a book set somewhere, you learn a lot more about it, different things, really. It’s an incredible castle. Some of it is ruined. Some of it has still got rooms that people can go in and out.
It started off as a Saxon fort. That’s what I love about castles, actually, is you’ve got these layers of history, and they change. It makes it more difficult, in a sense, because you have to keep reading and reading. But it makes them really interesting places. And in fact, they have found prehistoric remains up there, which is, it goes way back. Then you’ve got the Saxon Fort. Then it became a Norman castle. Then Elizabeth I took it over and it was changed. Well, not she didn’t personally, but it was taken over in her time. It became a prison for Charles I.
And the most recent time it was actually used to live in was Queen Victoria’s daughter, Beatrice, used it to live in the summer. Eventually now it’s owned by the English Heritage and it’s a tourist attraction now.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay. Wow. And were you aware that there was a place, an apartment you could rent in the castle?
Mary Grand: No, I only learned about that about two years ago. And that’s what inspired me to write the story. Because once I knew, people actually stayed there overnight. They have the run of the castle grounds. They can go up on the battlements, which are fantastic battlements, all the way around this castle. And you’ve got all that. And you’ve got the huge wooden door at the front is locked. It’s made to set a murder mystery, isn’t it?
Blaine DeSantis: It certainly is. Wow.
Mary Grand: Fantastic.
Exploring the Dynamics of a High School Reunion Gone Wrong
Blaine DeSantis: Well, before someone dies, we have this sense of foreboding and dread. Something’s going to happen. I love when you tease us with that on page one all the time. Something’s going to happen. But why did you want to explore a high school reunion? Because everything in that reunion curdles and changes from what it wanted to be.
Mary Grand: Well, I wanted to get a group of people together. I wanted them to have a joint history, but also not like a family who all knew each other that well. What’s interesting about the idea of a reunion is you’ve got this gap of time. So you’ve got a group of people who think they know each other very, very well. But of course, things happen and people change. So you bring them back together again.
And what is meant to be this happy, nostalgic time often changes because people change and relationships change. So I find the reunion idea quite fascinating. I’m not a great one for reunions myself, actually. I think they can be a bit strange because people want to go back to something that doesn’t exist anymore.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s right. That’s right. As a matter of fact, I just got a note the other day from somebody in your old fraternity saying, “Is anybody coming back? It’s the 50th reunion.” I said, “I didn’t even know it was homecoming, let alone a 50th reunion.” So obviously I’m not going, and it’s two miles away from me, so I’m not going that far. There’s a lot of people who really love that stuff. But for me, I’m like you.
Mary Grand: Some people are really, really into it.
Blaine DeSantis: And I just…
Mary Grand: Not particularly because I’ve got my memory of people as they were then.
Blaine DeSantis: Exactly. Well, the last time I saw them, they were in their 60s. I know, or 70s. That’s a long time ago. I think the whole purpose anymore over here in America is they get your name, put you on a list for donations. That’s what they want. Give us some money. Okay. You have my name. You know where I live. Don’t bother coming around. So I’ve given you enough. Anyway, well, that’s really good. I like the fact that it was a reunion. That’s interesting to examine those relationship years later because we do change.
We do change. And you have a scene in here. Now, friends, we don’t give spoilers. We try to work around the plot a little bit. We don’t give spoilers, but you do have a scene here with a ouija board. That was a really super intense scene. Now, some people might not know what a ouija board is. Tell us what that is.
Mary Grand: In many ways, you don’t hear about them so much now. Because I think people tend to go to mediums and things if they want to reach the other side now. But what it is, the idea was you have this wooden board and on it, you have numbers nought to nine. You have all the letters of the alphabet and then you all sit around in the dark and you put your fingers on this pointer thing.
And then the idea is you ask the spirit world a spirit questions and then this thing moves and answers a yes or no, or it’ll spell out a word or whatever. And that is how you get messages from the other side. So that’s what a ouija board is.
Blaine DeSantis: It’s the idea.
Mary Grand: They were big when I was a kid.
Blaine DeSantis: I remember that, yeah.
Mary Grand: I think a lot of people remember them from their childhood.
Blaine DeSantis: But the thing is, this is now a present time. And yet, despite what we know about Ouija boards, it had a really big effect on this entire group. They all reacted a different way.
Mary Grand: I think if you did that in the middle of the park on a Sunday afternoon, you’d all just laugh and nothing would happen. Put people in a castle at midnight in the dark. And you’ve got somebody who says, Leanne leads this. And she actually really believes in this stuff. And so she’s waving herbs. She’s got candles. You build the atmosphere up enough and people start believing anything, don’t they? And they get scared, and particularly because of the way the Ouija board takes them. Obviously, it’s very open to be manipulated by somebody, but the way this takes them is very scary for them.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah, it was. And everybody starts pointing fingers at everybody else or thinking this or that, and the next thing, it was quite interesting. Now, here’s a twist, friends. Here’s a great twist that Mary’s given us. As she said, they’re all in the castle, but not everybody’s actually staying in the castle.
Mary Grand: Yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: Why did you decide to put two people out of the castle?
Mary Grand: Well, partly because I wanted Susan, my amateur detective, to have a way into this group. She obviously wasn’t going to be part of this group on holiday because she’s not part of that group of friends. So her daughter, and it’s actually true that you could only have four people in the apartment there. So I thought, ah, that’s quite handy. So Zoe her daughter stays with Susan and this girl, and they both stay with Susan. So Susan is running them back and forth and it brings her and gets her involved in the whole crime then and the solving of it. So it’s a good link between the two.
From Twixmas to Tomatoes: Fun Discoveries from the Series
Blaine DeSantis: It is. And once again when the police get there, there’s Susan and it’s like, “Not again, not again, you’re always in the middle of things.” Well, now, we’re going to have a little bit of lighter questions for a few, if you don’t mind.
Mary Grand: Yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: Your last book, you introduced us to the lovely, what I call now holiday of Twixmas, which was wonderful.
Mary Grand: I’m so excited that you took that one off. Did you have a good Twixmas party?
Blaine DeSantis: We had a wonderful Twixmas party. And so wonderful, the second annual one’s coming up December 28th. Yes, yes, yes. Another one.
Mary Grand: That’s fantastic.
Blaine DeSantis: Back by popular demand. Everybody wants Twixmas.
Mary Grand: Hooray.
Blaine DeSantis: And we do it, as we say it, Twixmas with an Italian style, because me being Italian, we cook Italian foods.
Mary Grand: Yummy.
Blaine DeSantis: My cousin showed up on my dad’s side, and she was coming in the house, and she said to her husband, “What’s that smell?” She goes, “Oh, my God, that’s Donna and Grump Pops,” because we were frying fish.
Mary Grand: Wow.
Blaine DeSantis: And frying fruits. It smelled just like it used to when we were kids.
Mary Grand: And so that’s the whole part of the whole thing.
Blaine DeSantis: It was. It was great fun. Friends, you find that in the book, A Christmas Murder. Wonderful book. But this book has given us the famous Isle of Wight Tomatoes. Now, I didn’t know they were famous, but they are. I’ve done my research. Tell us about the Isle of Wight Tomatoes.
Mary Grand: I think I might have slightly exaggerated. We get very excited over here when things get onto the mainland. And I was up in London one day, and I saw on a menu “Isle of Wight Tomatoes.” And I thought, “Blimey, we must be getting famous for our tomatoes.” And then I found out they’re considered quite posh. They make all these different sorts. If you look at the website, they’re all different colors and shapes and sizes and they’re quite artisan. And you get them in farmers markets over on the mainland now.
And they are actually very—I buy them in my local shop and I hadn’t realized I was having something quite so posh and unique. They taste lovely. They are very nice tomatoes.
Blaine DeSantis: In the US first.
Mary Grand: It’s not tomato season. Yeah. I’m not sure whether it would be economic to be flying them out to America.
Blaine DeSantis: So what we need to do is figure out a way to get seeds from the Isle of Wight over here to America that go through customs that they won’t think is something we shouldn’t have.
Mary Grand: Contraband or anything.
Blaine DeSantis: So we find out about the Isle of Wight tomatoes, which is a lot of fun.
Mary Grand: Yeah, you do.
Blaine DeSantis: And then we’ve got dogs. Now, there are a nice amount of dogs in this book.
Mary Grand: Yes.
Blaine DeSantis: And what you did was so nice. You named your dogs in the book, your fictional dogs, after your friends’ dogs’ names.
Mary Grand: Yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: Why did you decide to do that?
Mary Grand: What happened years ago, I had a cocker spaniel and I joined a site online for other people with cocker spaniels to try and learn what to do with my cocker spaniel. It was quite naughty. And through that, I’d made some really lovely friends. And it was the same time I wrote my first book, self-published my first book. And these people in this group were amazing. They all bought the book. They all told their friends about it. I couldn’t have wished for a more supportive group of people. And these are people I’d never met, only online.
And so when I then wrote the next one to say thank you to one or two people, I said, “Would you like your dog to be in the story? And I’ll use their name and their color and their breed.” And it was to really say thank you. And every dog that is in there is a friend’s or a friend online’s dog to say thank you for supporting me, really. And I love it because what I end up with bigger files about the dogs than I do about the people. Because people say, oh, they love their dogs being in the book. And then they send me photos, they tell me their likes, their dislikes, and I know a lot about their dogs.
For the first time, probably, it must be 10 years now since I started using some of these dogs, I met two of the owners because I went up north in Britain. And I met up face-to-face for the first time. So that was very, very exciting.
Blaine DeSantis: That is neat.
Mary Grand: And it was honestly, it was really like meeting real, close old friends. It was wonderful.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah.
Mary Grand: So the dogs and the people, great.
Blaine DeSantis: So for future books, his name is Babbitt, B-A-B-B-I-T-T. He’s a Cavalier King Charles, and he is my 11-year-old dog, who is deaf.
Mary Grand: I love that breed.
Blaine DeSantis: I will send you a photo of Babbitt.
Mary Grand: Send me the name and the book.
Blaine DeSantis: I will send you.
Mary Grand: I will. I’ll get him in there.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay.
Mary Grand: My cat has just joined.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s fine. He can’t hear a dog on stage.
Mary Grand: Well, my cat has just joined the row.
Blaine DeSantis: But he snores awfully well. I can tell you that much.
Mary Grand: Oh, you sound lovely. It’s a lovely breed of dog.
Blaine DeSantis: They’re so gentle. They’re gorgeous. He is. Anyway, now I got to go back to a little bit about the book. We could talk as friends forever.
The Real-World Research: Smuggling the Drug ‘Spice’ into Prisons
It was fascinating. Is you bring in drug smuggling into prisons, specifically a drug that I never heard of called spice. I don’t know what spice is, but first of all, tell us that. And then what sort of research do you have to do to figure out how they got contraband into prisons and make it realistic?
Mary Grand: I did loads of research on this. Well, anyway, I’ll tell you, for a book with each thing, you do masses of research and you probably use 10% of that. But to actually understand it and get a feel for it, you have to do masses. So I watched films. I read a lot online. And this spice, it’s horrible. It’s deadly stuff.
It’s what do they call it? It’s a synthetic drug, so it’s man-made, and they say that it mimics the effect of cannabis, but it’s much, much more dangerous than that, and much more unpredictable, and people become addicted very easily, and they can go very violent, they can get a psychotic. And you imagine that sort of drug going into a prison situation.
And the problem is, you see, it can be in a liquid form and it’s put onto paper. So what they’ll do, they’ll send letters and things soaked in this into prisons. It’s very easy to smuggle in and it’s not very easy to detect. So it’s been absolutely rampant and a large number of people have been damaged in prisons from it. So it’s a huge problem, massive problem.
Blaine DeSantis: They put it on paper. Are you supposed to eat the paper? What do you do?
Mary Grand: They either smoke it or they eat or chew it or they make it.
Blaine DeSantis: Really?
Mary Grand: Yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: I have never heard of that.
Mary Grand: Well, the more I read about it, the more shocking it became, really. People were taking, they’d say they were children’s drawings or something like that at visiting time, and they were soaked in spice. And I think they started making it so that mail and things that goes into the prisons now—so much isn’t allowed in now because people were sending in letters.
Character Deep Dive: The Motivations of the Reunion Organizer
Blaine DeSantis: Another thing I never knew about. I find out so much in your books. Now you have got one character, her name is Maxine. She’s the one who put this all together. It’s interesting. Just she, no one else was involved in this. Maxine says, “Let’s have a reunion. I’m going to put it all together.” Did you think that was perfect? And do you think that’s the perfect person to orchestrate such a complex thing, to only have one person involved in the organization?
Mary Grand: You see, when this group are together, at one point, one of them says, “Look, Maxine.” She’s trying to get them all to do something. And they said, “Look, we’re not 18 now. You’re not in charge.” You know how you always have one person in a group who organized. Everybody might sit around and say, “Well, it’d be quite nice of doing so-and-so.” And then one person says, “Right, I’ll do it. I’ll get that organized.” Maxine was that person in the group. She was the natural person.
And this isn’t just a reunion, but it’s partly to do with the retirement of a music teacher who they were all very fond of. So she hears this is happening and that the celebration of this teacher is going to be actually held in the castle on the Friday. And then one thing leads to another. She thinks, “Oh, yeah, we could stay there. Well, maybe we could all go together.” But it always takes one person, doesn’t it? Groups don’t organize things. One individual. And she is that person. She’s a very competent, very organized sort of person. A very busy person, but it’s always busy people organizing things, isn’t it?
Blaine DeSantis: She wants a perfect memory. She wants that perfect memory. And the exact opposite happens, doesn’t it? Wow.
Mary Grand: It certainly does.
Fact Meets Fiction: The Real Carisbrooke Castle Ghost Walk
Blaine DeSantis: That’s great. Well, now, we talked about you have ghost walks, or you have a ghost walk in this book.
Mary Grand: Yes.
Blaine DeSantis: Do they really have ghost walks there?
Mary Grand: They do. I went on it.
Blaine DeSantis: You did?
Mary Grand: This time last year, on Halloween, I went as research for the book. And they actually had a ghost walk in the castle. And as the one in the book is described, that is exactly the one that if you went up this year, you will have. This group of these two men in acting in an Edwardian costume take you around the castle. And it’s brilliant. It’s absolutely, it is unnerving, but it’s not spooky stories. A lot of it’s just about the history of the castle being told at night. It’s really very, very good.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah.
Mary Grand: Really enjoyed it. They do tell you where ghosts—I don’t know what happens if it rains. We were lucky it didn’t rain. But they do tell you all the ghosts that are meant to be there. There’s quite a lot of ghosts who are resident up there. So they tell you those when you look out.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s really good. Wow.
Mary Grand: Yeah, it’s great.
The Author’s Craft: Writing Unlikable Characters and Plotting the “Whydunit”
Blaine DeSantis: It’s a perfect setting. It’s a perfect setting for this book. Oh, it’s brilliant. And then you had the ghost walk, and whatever happens there or everything else. And it’s funny because you write it in such a way. Was it an accident? Was it a suicide? Was it a murder? What is it? What was it? You write it very well. You keep us going back and forth into what actually happens to the very end. You did a wonderful job, as always, with the way you plot these things. Now, I got to tell you something. There are a lot of characters in this book I do not like.
Mary Grand: Yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: Did you have anyone you did not like? Did you like all your characters?
Mary Grand: “Likes” is a bit of a pejorative. I find them all intriguing. I get to know them very, very well. And I was thinking about this when I saw the question, and I wouldn’t say I dislike them. I would say you warm to some more than others, and the one person I don’t like, because they are the killer. And because there’s something different about a killer. I think I had to get to know a very dark side of somebody to find that. So that is the person I actually, at the end, I thought, “Oh.”
Blaine DeSantis: Well, now, when you’re writing this, are there characters that are difficult to write? Or do you find they all pretty much flow once you get started?
Mary Grand: No, I have to work at it. But then I’m that sort of person, really. Some people, everything just all flows. I have to keep going back and forth. I redraft my novel quite a few times. Well, each time you write, you get to know the characters better, which is why I don’t necessarily know the killer to begin with, or I might have an idea of a killer, but the more I get to know them—I said about this darkness in somebody—you start thinking, “Oh, actually, I don’t think it would be in that, but yeah, it could be in them.”
And because there is something different about somebody who kills, and although this is cozy mystery, I still think you have to have a really, really good motive for murder. You can’t just skate over that. It is a huge thing to take somebody else’s life. So I think you have to have not only an extra good external, but you have to have something in here as well. I call it the ‘X factor.’ You have to have something extra that makes you think, to resolve this problem, I have to kill somebody. Most people find other ways to resolve issues, don’t they? Fortunately, which is lucky for us all. But every now and then you get somebody who thinks, “Actually, at the end of the day, my life is worth more than that person’s.”
Blaine DeSantis: I spoke to a lady a few months or so ago, she wrote her book in 1995 and it never got published till this year. She’s gone back and had to completely rewrite it from different points of view 20 years later. And then again, 25 years later. Oh, my God. It’s one thing in a sad space, but I can’t imagine you in a condensed period of time having to write, rewrite, get it all there. That must be a very difficult thing for an author to do.
Mary Grand: I quite like rewriting and redrafting. Maybe not to that extent. I’ve never had, fortunately, usually my editor likes the basic idea and the basic plan and things like that. But I find the very hardest thing is writing the first draft and getting it all down and in sequence. Because my stories are quite complicated in some ways. And just getting that, I’ve got it plotted, but it changes because the characters move things around.
And so getting that first draft, I love it then when I pick that up because some of the hard graft has been done. It makes sense, I hope. And then you can work on really getting into the character, the description, and the what my editor calls the magic side of it, really. So I actually quite like the writing and the drafting.
Blaine DeSantis: Friends, when you pick this up and read this, you will think, “Am I reading Agatha Christie?” Because this is exactly like an Agatha Christie. Well-plotted, well-defined characters, keeping you going to the very end, what’s happening. And in the end, it all makes perfect logical sense. You just missed it. I do all the time. I always have the wrong killer.
Mary Grand: Good. What I find interesting is if people can guess why it was done. I heard somebody said these should be called ‘whydunits’ rather than ‘whodunits’ because you’ve got a number of plausible people who could have done it, but guessing why—that is part of the excitement of writing this. I want somebody to have had all the clues for this ‘why,’ but hopefully not pick them all out.
The Evolution of Protagonist Susan Flynn Across the Series
Blaine DeSantis: Well, I’ll tell you what. Did you start out knowing who you wanted to have as the killer, or did that evolve as you went on?
Mary Grand: That changed slightly. That changed because I discovered new motives. I also liked that darkness, I said. As I got to know the characters, even though one or two of them had pretty good motives by the end, but as I felt I got to know them, I thought, “No, I don’t actually think you’d have gone that far.”
Blaine DeSantis: I found a lot of killers. I found a lot. Didn’t find the one who did it, but I found a lot. That makes you happy. Yep. Now, your protagonist in this whole series is a lady by the name of Susan, who’s not claimed to be an amateur detective or anything, just stumbles into it and can do well. But she wasn’t quite as big a part of this one, I didn’t think. It just didn’t seem because we’re more talking about her daughter, Zoe. And then she’s having problems with her, I don’t want to call him boyfriend, but her friend who’s a boy. And she’s not 20. She’s, isn’t she in her 60s?
Mary Grand: Zoe is 30. Oh, Susan is in her 60s, and she’s got a partner with Robert and all that.
Blaine DeSantis: So was that difficult, changing that with Susan not being quite as the focus as in others?
Mary Grand: Well, it was actually done on purpose because it was her daughter coming into it. I wanted to have her daughter’s point of view at times. Her daughter is actually in the castle more than Susan is. So I just thought it was an interesting idea to have maybe, because up until this book, it’s always been totally Susan’s point of view that we have seen the story through. And I just thought it would be interesting because her and Zoe are very close, but of course Zoe is 35 years younger than her and it’s quite interesting to see things a bit from her perspective as well. Ultimately Susan is going to be the person who solves the murder mystery, but Zoe is a very integral part of that. She’s a suspect to begin with.
Blaine DeSantis: Yes, she is. And that’s interesting because she’s very in your face as a suspect. She’s pushing ahead, but “not me, it’s this person, this person.” Susan has man problems. You put that in, and that’s a cute little thing to put in, that her he’s not a boyfriend but he’s a friend is going to France, I think if I’m not mistaken.
Mary Grand: That’s right, Robert.
Blaine DeSantis: You threw that in.
Mary Grand: It’s like, funnily enough, I’m preparing at the moment a talk I’m going to be doing on character development and how it’s character that brings your reader into your story. And so over the series, Susan has developed and people ask me lots of questions about Susan. And I’ve realized as much as the plot and who did it, a lot of people are interested in her as a person. And that’s very natural.
So things have developed because right at the very, very first one, Seaside Murder, when we first meet Susan she is just, she’s two years on from her husband having split up after 40 years of marriage. She’s very vulnerable and gradually, she’s met this chap Robert now. So you can follow that through the series if you like, but I pick it up so that if somebody walks in on book four, they know what’s going on.
But it’s quite an interesting… a lot of people will come up to me and say, “She’s gonna get back… She’s not gonna get back with her ex, is she?” because he keeps popping up. And it’s like another little sideline. And you’ll find it always happens with detectives, isn’t it? They always have a personal life which should make them more relatable.
Blaine DeSantis: No doubt, no doubt. Well, now she gets a new neighbor and when I first…
Mary Grand: Had someone’s…
Blaine DeSantis: Coming, I thought it was her ex-husband. It wasn’t. Tell us a little bit about this new neighbor.
Mary Grand: Her ex-husband did actually threaten to buy that house, but he didn’t. Well, you only really get a teaser of him in A Halloween Murder because you’re really going to learn about him. He’s Harry and his daughter Becca, and they have a cocker spaniel. You’re only really going to get to know them in the next book. They really come into their own in the next book. So it’s really, the thing with series is to tempt people for the next book, isn’t it? And so you keep something back. Obviously nothing major to do with the plot, but a little teaser.
Blaine DeSantis: It does, because actually Harry…
Mary Grand: Has got, is very secretive, and he’s got quite a big revelation to make in the next book.
Blaine DeSantis: I see. And I even think you use it in your book, but so many authors use things like, “If these walls could talk.” The walls can’t talk, but everybody likes to use that reference. “If they could only talk, the way they’d tell you a great story.”
Mary Grand: Of course they can’t, can they? No. But I think I do hint at something like that in the castle because this castle has seen so much has happened in this castle. And the walls are cold and imperishable. They don’t speak.
Blaine DeSantis: Did Charles ever get out or did he die in the castle?
Mary Grand: No, he didn’t die there. He tried to escape. But his daughter died there, and it often doesn’t get talked about. I find the story of his daughter absolutely fascinating. She died there.
Blaine DeSantis: Wow.
Mary Grand: There’s another ghost for you.
Blaine DeSantis: I was going to say, another one.
Mary Grand: Another ghost.
What’s Next for Mary Grand? More Seasonal Murders and a New Direction
Blaine DeSantis: Well, now, your last book was a Christmas Murder. Now we’ve got a Halloween Murder. And I want to know, are we going to be looking for more holiday-themed books? Like, are we going to have an Easter murder, a Guy Fawkes Day murder? What are we doing here?
Mary Grand: Well, the next one, at the moment, the working title, is A Heatwave Murder. So we’re maybe doing seasonal as well as actual days of celebration. So it’s very much about a heatwave happening on the island. So we’ve gone from being chilly to too hot.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay.
Mary Grand: But it’s been great fun to write.
Blaine DeSantis: But I tell you, I like the fact that we have holidays in there. I really like the title.
Mary Grand: I think people relate to things like that.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah. Now, how many more do you think you got in you for this one? Do you think you got another four, five, six books with Susan?
Mary Grand: Well, I’m probably not meant to say, but there is going to be a change of direction after the A Heatwave Murder. And I’m not saying it’s the end of Susan, but I’m gonna have something new. But we might come back to Susan. We’ll see.
Blaine DeSantis: Real quick, if you’re gonna be moving on from Susan, you know I gotta stay for…
Mary Grand: New dogs in the next one.
Blaine DeSantis: Oh, wonderful. So…
Mary Grand: That will be happening.
Blaine DeSantis: Again, every 10 months you put out a book. That’s got to be, you got to plot in advance, you have a lot to have to do in advance to get this out. What’s your working schedule like a little bit? How do you work in the mornings, noons, nights, or the days you don’t work on weekends? What do you do?
Mary Grand: Gosh, I should be much more organized. I tend to be a person that works well to a deadline. I’m not very good when the deadline seems a bit far away. So I work most days, but the closer I get, I’ll end up working seven days a week because I have to just crack on, really.
What I tend to find is, like I said, I find that first draft difficult. I do quite a lot of plotting and thinking, and getting the first words down is scary, I find. And once I’m going, I’m fine and I’m optimistic. But it’s, as Stephen King said, “There’s nothing as scary as a blank page.” It is scary. And you avoid it by thinking, “Oh, I’ll just do a bit more research.”
Blaine DeSantis: And you can’t go on research forever. There you go. Well, friends, it’s scary. It’s Halloween. It’s a mystery. It’s our favorite girl, Mary Grand. I’ll tell you why. She is a wonderful author who writes wonderful books. I want to show everybody again. I got to show you this cover again, once again. A Halloween Murder. Love it, love it, love it. Anyway, Mary Grand, thank you so much for showing up again today and chatting with us here on Books and Looks.
Mary Grand: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been lovely.
Blaine DeSantis: Thanks again, Mary. As I said during this interview, friends, I think she’s as good as Agatha Christie. I love her plots. I love her characters. The setting is perfect. The Isle of Wight is such a great location for mystery. And so you’re not going to miss any one of her books.
I want to say to all of you, thank you for letting us be a part of your reading journey, to come to you every couple of weeks with author interviews about some of the best new books that I can find. On behalf of our partner at BookTrib, this is Blaine DeSantis for Books and Looks saying, we’ll see you in two weeks with another great read.
