Earlier this year, I stumbled over The Beanstalk Murder (2024) by P.G Bell, a superb crossover mystery which imports the tenets of a well-clued mystery into the world of Jack and the Beanstalk. Bell’s second novel along this line, The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025), followed in due course, and a few weeks ago he was kind enough to sit down with me and talk about the writing of these two excellent books.

The general thrust of this conversation, available here as a podcast episode for your ears to listen to, was examining how to create a lightly-realised alternative universe which nevertheless has superb depth in its writing…most of which has to be implied, since younger readers don’t want to sit through 20 pages of Elvish songs and lore. And Peter, to give Bell his True Name, is very thoughtful and generous in his reflections, which you can listen to even if you’ve not read the books because everything here is free of spoilers.

If you’ve ever wondered about the process of crafting a book, especially one not set in the real world, there’s a great deal to learn from the insight shared here, not least how much damn work can go into appearing so effortless. Also, wow, how sanitised has Little Red Riding Hood become down the years??!

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes here, on Spotify here, or by using the player below. 

My thanks to Peter for his time, and for all the work that went into these superb books, to you for being a patient audience where these unpredictably-released episodes are concerned, and to Jonny Berliner for the music. There was due to be another IGWT episode soon, but some rescheduling became necessary and so you should expect it sometime in August now. Which probably means it’ll come out in October. 2028.

Happy reading!

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All episodes of In GAD We Trust can be found on the blog here.