The return of my In GAD We Trust podcast, and a welcome return for Alasdair Beckett-King, comedian and now children’s author.
Since last appearing on the podcast, Alasdair has written two books for younger readers — Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum (2023) and Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) — and so joins me this time to discuss mystery fiction and the writing thereof. Because I wrote a book myself, you may remember, so we’re positive old hands at this.
How many Agatha Christie novels has Alasdair read? What does he think of the Sarah Phelps adaptations of Christie’s work? Is classic detective fiction effectively sat in a fantasy world? And how likely is it that a child wearing a false moustache would be taken as an adult by everyone they meet? Some of this, and much more besides, is answered below, so here’s hoping it passes a pleasant hour for those of you who might be interested.
You can listen to the podcast on iTunes here, on Spotify here, or by using the player below.
My thanks, of course, to Alasdair for his time, to Jonny Berliner for my theme music, and to you, the anticipated audience, for your attention. In GAD We Trust is definitely an on-going project for me, but the next ten episodes will be a little more occasional as befits my full-time working status — rest assured, more are planned and will hopefully pop up and surprise you at irregular intervals over the coming year or so.
The Invisible Event 
What a pleasant surprise to find a new episode in my inbox this morning!
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That’s the response I’m going for — hopefully these will provide an irregular pleasant surprise over the coming year or so. Enjoy!
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Yay, I can start believing in Gad again!
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Trusting, dude. Hopefully you’ve always believed 🙂
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Saturday mornings, good coffee and your podcasts go well together.
Indeed most GAD fiction is fantasy so I appreciated the comparison. I can love a book, its puzzle, means, motive, etc. without picking it apart that the culprit would never have the brains, skill, or luck to execute the crime. There has to be some suspension of belief. Thinking about some of my favourites (e.g., The Judas Window, Evil Under the Sun, Suddenly at His Residence that you’re about to review, etc.), it seems unlikely the guilty parties could made all that happen. But in no way does that lessen my enjoyment.
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Yeah, the more I think about that point the more inclined I am to agree with it — certainly I no longer come to GAD for absolute realism, and haven’t for quite some time. Let me be baffled and astounded, and so long as we stay within the bounds of the mathematically probably possible I’m a happy man.
Thanks for the kind words, too. I’m lucky enough to do the podcast when it’s enjoyable for me, and this one was a lot of fun. More on the way at some point.
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Ooh, I’d been wondering if this was what you were teasing in your review. Very happy to have this show up in my podcast feed this morning.
John Dickson Carr and G. K. Chesterton both made comparisons between detective fiction and fantasy – perhaps the only belief that they and ABK share.
Honestly your discussion placed so many “these sound amazing, buy them!” flags (particularly that bit about run-down East Yorkshire coastal towns) that I really will have to ignore my self-consciousness and buy them.
I do wonder if the many detectives with dark pasts, trauma etc, are quite so psychologically realistic as all that.
Also someone tell ABK that a murder in the first chapter, without building the characters, is a perfectly respectable way to start a murder mystery!
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Ah, I just went back to your review of the first one and the names of the settings are very clearly based on exactly where I grew up. That settles that, then.
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I do wonder if the many detectives with dark pasts, trauma etc, are quite so psychologically realistic as all that.
Yes, this is an excellent point — it’s perhaps fairer to say that they have pretensions to realism, and their authors probably intend them to be realistic. I don’t read anything like enough of that sort of thing — which is to say, I consider reading any of it to be too much — so can’t really comment, but they’re perhaps a less aware form of fantasy novel, let’s conjecture.
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What a lovely discussion! As others in the comments have pointed out, the assertion that detective fiction is fantasy is an interesting one. I’ve been mulling over that all morning.
So glad to see/hear In GAD We Trust back!
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Ha, we’ve all had our minds blown a little, haven’t we? Sometimes it takes just a tiny shift in perspective to get one thinking…!
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So great to have the wonderful podcast – and ABK – back
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Many thanks — the plan is to put one out every so often, so hopefully there’s more to intrigue and delight in the future.
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It was interesting to hear the idea that having the murder committed too early i.e. pre book starting or first chapter is somehow considered “wrong” in some publishing/reading circles. Both camps were alive and well in the GAD era with someone like Heyer adopting the delayed corpse reveal (having spent half the book introducing us to the characters). I think this method can sometimes not work so well. For example, P D James’ later works suffer because she over-wrote. The template I noticed was roughly speaking 150 pages of looking at the characters, then the murder occurred, then the inspector learns everything we learnt in the first 150 pages, taking around 150 pages himself to achieve this and then finally further investigation and wrap up which could take another 100-200 pages. The question of when to introduce your dead body has been conundrum for a while as writers such as Delano Ames playfully take it head on in their novel – The Body on Page One.
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I imagine it’s a little odd for younger readers — the convention probably being that the characters and setting are introduced first, and then the plot gets going.
Interesting to see this sort of thing played out to a greater extent in the general example you cite. Maybe we learn more from our childhood reading than we appreciate…
Of course, some of us think it’s completely fine to drop a body in the first chapter. Some of us even write books with this exact occurrence…
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