This might sound an unusual subject for a writer of crime and mystery to blog about, but it isn't really. Although my own series is entitled Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection, the series could so easily have been called Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection –A Study in Loss.
Let's begin with my non-comprehensive list of just some of the things (figuratively or literally) that can be lost: Anything tangible; anything which isn't nailed down; anything nailed down; time; fortunes; hair; pets; employment; elections; tempers; face; weight; contests; property; pennies and pounds; one's grip; status; youth; limbs; one's head; businesses; a generation; Eden; birthright; the will to live; the plot; marbles; one's mind/wits/sanity; opportunities; hope; control; a ship; its crew; a battle; a war; liberty; sleep; peace of mind; sanctuary; nationality; a creative work; an art form; the love of one's life; a relationship; patience; patients; the meaning of words; libido; a life with someone; dreams; self-confidence; a world record. People can be at a loss for words, or for what to do. They can lose faith, or regard for others, or for themselves. They can lose their way in life, or just their way. They can suffer loss of memory, or identity, or the ability to do something. They can sell at a loss, make a loss, suffer loss of reputation, or a sense of purpose. They can be lost in thought, a lost sheep, a dead loss or lost without trace. Archaically ‘loose’ or ‘fallen’ women were called lost; as were the souls of unrepentant sinners (my protagonist – Jane Hetherington – meets more than a few of these I can tell you) Loss (and gain) is the theme which runs through all crime and mystery writing. As a private detective, Jane Hetherington spends a lot of time on the trail of 'lost' people or possessions. Though they may not realise it, many who engage her are entering into a sort of lottery – hoping to gain more from learning 'the truth' than they lose. This isn't a bet they all win. Let's look at just a few of Jane's cases. In one, a young woman has 'lost' a piece of jewellery and is convinced that if she doesn't get it back she's going to lose a great deal more (her future). In another, a man still mourns his young fiancée decades after her death; yet it's not this loss which causes him to call upon the services of Jane Hetherington, but the possibly catastrophic loss of something else. One of Jane's clients is described as "wanting everything" but in the end the same client is described as having "lost everything". Then of course there's the worst loss of all, the loss of life itself. My eponymous heroine is herself a widow. The inscription on the gravestone of her late husband reads simply, Not lost but gone before1 Jane draws comfort from these words; yet at sixty-three she has buried her husband and must now spend the rest of her life without him by her side. His companionship and support lost to her, along with the plans they made for their long retirement together. Not only this, but her only child, to whom she is very close, now lives overseas, along with Jane's grandchildren – her dreams of watching them grow up, something else lost. Jane has suffered other losses, including the death of those close to her and her dreams of a large brood of children. Jane isn't the only regular character to have suffered loss. Jack and Charity Lambert, the young brother and sister who live next door to Jane, have lost both their parents and with their bereavement, Jack lost a carefree childhood and Charity a carefree early adulthood. Another character has lost his father in childhood, not through death, but through abandonment. With that loss, he also lost his self-confidence and trust in others. Another character is married to a woman in the grips of dementia – the woman he married lost to him forever. Such a little word to describe something potentially so enormous; something leaving those nursing it feeling confused, annoyed, traumatised, heartbroken, incandescent, hell-bent on revenge, bereft or wanting to instruct a private detective! Loss, be it the fear of it, the avoidance of it, the recovery from it, the fallout from it, the way its sufferer deals with it, or the desire to inflict it upon others, shapes all of life and no crime or mystery series would be complete (or possible) without it. 1 Caroline Norton, English poet (1808-77) The series is available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC “Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.” —James Alexander Thom
The most important character to feature in everyone of this series is private detective Jane Hetherington and I’ll be writing plenty about her elsewhere. Jane’s not the only character to make a regular appearance in the books. There are lots of others who appear frequently and have their own adventures. I hope you enjoy meeting them and sharing their various escapades. Let’s meet them: Hugh Hetherington Hugh is Jane’s late husband. He is two years older than Jane and dies aged sixty-four of pancreatic cancer, even though, as Jane tells the oncologist who broke the news to them, “But he hardly drinks!” In various flashbacks of their time together, Hugh appears somewhere in every one of the novels. We’re there when he meets Jane for the first time and we see him on his deathbed. He is an accountant who eventually becomes senior partner of his firm. He specialises in agricultural after he and Jane (when still a young couple) move from London to the market town of Failsham in the farming county of Hoven. (More about both Failsham and Hoven in other blogs.) The man Jane fell in love with, and remained true to for almost forty years, has an irreverent take on life – call it a gallows’ humour if you will – but he’s every bit as sensible and loyal as Jane. She misses him desperately and knows she will never be able to replace him. She opens her agency as a way of filling the hole left by his death, reflecting that the death of the man to whom she has been joined at the hip for four decades, is a vast and impossible void to fill. Adele Although Jane and Hugh wanted more children, in the end they had only one – their daughter, Adele. When the novels open, Adele is thirty-seven years of age and living in the United States with her husband Lee Smithson, and their three-year-old daughter Amy. Mother and daughter are close and although the two communicate frequently by e-mail and telephone, Jane misses her like crazy. The two visit each other when they can. Charity Parsons Jane’s twenty-four year-old next door neighbour. Charity lives in End Cottage, Cuckoo Tree Lane, Failsham, Hoven, in the last of a terrace of work-men’s cottages. In spite of the age difference between them, Jane and Charity are the best of friends and often gossip over the fence which separates Charity’s cottage from the pink thatched cottage which is Jane’s home; although more often they gossip over a pot of tea in the kitchen of one or other of them. Now and then, Charity helps Jane investigate some of her cases. Despite her youth, Charity’s parents are both dead, and she is raising her kid-brother, Jack, almost single-handedly. She and Jack look out for each other, and Jane looks out for them. Charity is a girl forced to grow up too quickly and assume a parental role, when other young women of her age would have been out having fun. Charity isn’t one to complain though – her take on life is to accept the hand that you’ve been dealt and get on with things – except when it comes to her love life. Here even she can’t be stoical! As the series progresses Charity’s personal life turns and twists more than one of Jane’s detecting adventures, but we’ll be there throughout, sharing it with her, as will Jane, who’ll provide a much-needed shoulder to cry on. Jack Parsons Charity’s younger brother. He’s coming up to fourteen. Jack is like a grandson to Jane, and sometimes he refers to her as his surrogate granny. Fate has played a cruel trick on young Jack, robbing him of both his parents at such a young age, something Jane and his sister are acutely aware of. Missing a father figure, he is devastated when his sister splits up with her boyfriend, Johnny, the two having formed a strong bond. Because of this, Jack and Johnny keep in touch and Jack yearns for the couple to reunite. Despite these setbacks, Jack has a cheery disposition. He’s a sensible enough boy for Jane to let him act as an assistant detective now and then, something he greatly enjoys! In a future novel, he will solve a detecting adventure of his own. During the series, Jack falls for a girl in his class at school, called Polly – his first love! The Prodigal Son Can’t say too much about this character, but I can say that his feckless, devil-may-care approach to life conceals an unhappy young man, scarred by childhood trauma. As the series progresses this character is forced to reassess his priorities in life, and put aside childish things. Unfortunately, by the time he realises he must make amends, it may already be too late. The Dawson-Jones Felix and Mirabella Dawson-Jones are two of Jane’s closest friends in Failsham. Mirabella Dawson-Jones is the rector of Failsham. Felix serves as a councillor on the local district council. They are parents to Susannah and Miles. Susannah is a single mother, and she and her daughter Penny live with Felix and Mirabella. Cuckoo Tree Lane, where Jane lives, leads into Rectory Lane on which can be found the rectory which is home to Mirabella and Felix. Jane is a member of Mirabella’s congregation, as was Hugh, and he lies in the churchyard beside the rectory. Jane visits both Hugh and the rectory frequently. Mirabella’s a larger than life woman, both in personality and size. Despite being busy with her duties as the rector, nothing is too much trouble for her. Felix is retired, and when not busy with his duties as a member of the local council, spends his days playing golf and trying not to be outdone by his wife. He may appear to be a bit under the thumb, but he usually comes up trumps in the end. Despite their squabbling, they get on very well. Both lend invaluable support to Jane and sometimes help her with her cases. Ant Dillard Jane sits as a part-time lay-magistrate (and a few detecting adventures follow from this), as does Ant Dillard. He can sometimes be a rather formal man, but he’s a good friend to Jane and as the chair of the magistrates’ bench, and with a son in the police force, he’s someone who can provide Jane with invaluable information on occasions. Stanley Marshman, AKA Stanman Stanley Marshman, always known as Stanman, was Jane’s first love. They enjoyed a teenage romance, which she felt sure would survive the test of time. It didn’t. After having lost touch for the best part of four decades, during which time they both married other people, Jane finally contacts him again after Hugh’s death. This feels as natural for her to do as opening her detective agency did. He’s delighted to hear from her again, and the two fall into an easy friendship, something they were never able to achieve when young lovers. Through their new friendship, we learn more about Jane and the life events which have shaped her. We also get to know Stan, and touch upon the daily struggles he endures with his beloved wife, Elsie, now unfortunately in the grip of dementia. For added entertainment, Stanman is a successful writer of comic poetry, some of which are in the novels Meet the Family As well as Jane’s friends and neighbours, Jane’s late parents (Doug and Edith) occasionally feature, as does her sister, Jill. Hugh’s parents are also regular characters, particularly his eccentric mother Hetty, and his two sisters: Ginny and Felicity, also known as Flick. When we first meet Ginny she’s a young mother. When we next meet her, she and her husband, Trevor, have both retired after becoming successful property developers. The contrast between the two sisters couldn’t be greater, whilst Ginny is grounded and stable, Felicity is neither. Flick is the opposite of her brother and sister in both temperament and lifestyle. She’s something of a flighty hedonist and has made decisions which neither Jane nor Hugh agree with, but they have both stood by her throughout her life and Jane still remains close to her. This just leaves the various offspring of Ginny and Felicity, Jane’s nephew and nieces and Adele’s cousins. They appear from time to time at various stages of their lives. The series is available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC Here's a bit about the various locations I use throughout the Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series
Failsham Although some of the places mentioned in the novels do exist, London being a prime example, as many of you will have guessed, the market town of Failsham isn't a real town (at least not in Britain) any more than Jane Hetherington is a real person. I created Failsham and Hoven (the county in which it is found) as the type of places I imagined Jane and her late husband Hugh, would live in. In the first book, Jane announces she's bored of city life and wishes to move to the countryside. Hugh obtains a job in an accountancy firm in the Cathedral city of Southstoft (of which more later) and the young couple buy a ramshackle thatched cottage in a nearby market town called Failsham. Here they will live until death does them part. When I created Failsham, I had in mind any number of such timeless market towns as are to be found the length and breadth of Britain. Such towns, although often fairly large, are in many ways self-contained and all have grown over time, to serve the tiny villages and local agricultural communities which surround them, as well as serving as a base for those who live there. As with all such towns, Failsham is proud of its heritage. I made Failsham a town which grew rich from the wool trade and its architecture reflects this. Because it is composite of many such places, I could have a little fun in its design. I gave it a Market Square lined with Georgian merchant houses; a large 17th-century church; workmen's cottages; a new housing estate; a pebbled Victorian schoolhouse; an elaborate town cross and a Primitive Methodist chapel. I also gave it a duck pond and a tree dotted common with sheep a-grazing. Some people are born and die in the town, others move there never to leave, and others are merely passing through. Not everything is bucolic in Failsham though, it has its fair share of petty jealousies and the type of centuries-old blood feuds which run through such communities, giving me plenty of scope to weave different characters (some more eccentric or unsavoury than others) into the plots. Hoven Take any traditional, predominantly agricultural county in Britain; add rolling countryside, a Cathedral city, and a coast line with both genteel resorts and less genteel seaside towns and you have Hoven. Southstoft Creating a Cathedral city of Southstoft, and making it the capital of Hoven, allows me to add an extra dimension to the novels by introducing storylines which could only really take place in a larger place than Failsham. To name but some examples – Southstoft has a Magistrates' Court where Jane sits as a part-time lay (unpaid) magistrate; a health spa; a preserved mediaeval street and a golf-club – all of which I use as settings for various detecting adventures. Greater Flyborough After Failsham and Southstoft, the place which appears most often throughout the series is Greater Flyborough. Greater Flyborough is a bit of a brash seaside resort, but with a darker edge to it than Southstoft or Failsham. Jane and Hugh were frequent visitors to it when their daughter Adele was a youngster, eating sandy sandwiches on the beach or taking a turn on the helter-skelter and Jane has a soft spot for it. Unlike stable Failsham, the population of Greater Flyborough is always on the move, making it the type of place people can hide away in and at least two detecting adventures centre around it. available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC "I do believe I'm good at cracking things and I don't mean china and glass either. Sleuthing, detection, now there I'm a natural."
The chances of those letters containing nothing scandalous was non-existent. How he longed read those letters. ‘I need your services. I'm being blackmailed. Going to the police is out of the question!’ Something made her suspicious. "I'm sick of being a mushroom." "Say what?" "Being kept in the dark until someone opens the cupboard door and hurls a bucketful of the proverbial all over me." "Magic free since ‘93!" Make amorality pay – become a private detective! ‘Tell your cousin if he doesn't want to be Wikied, he'd better cough up 50 grand. A friend.’ "The doors were still locked and the internal security bolt on. The alarm had been triggered. There wasn't any sign of a break-in or any sign of disturbance… It's a complete mystery." ‘Did you think you’d got away with it?’ Face it – everyone’s got secrets. "Run for it!" Torn between two lovers "What do you suggest we try now?" "Old-fashioned sleuthing." Either his girlfriend was shopping for sauerkraut, moonlighting at another salon, or… Here he stopped himself. Don't even go there, mate, he thought. Don't even go there. This surely was too much of a coincidence? "Compatible! How compatible can two people get? I'm completely mad and clearly so are you." "You are on the right path." "The police? I thought the kid got into a scrap. We've got half of special branch here!" "Have you worked out whodunnit?" "I really haven't got a clue." Death may be representing disease, failure, change or death itself. You may have to face a complicated situation. "So unfathomable was this case that I even went to the trouble of looking up the word in the Thesaurus. The words listed there could have described this puzzling case. All very perplexing." "Well that was always the $10 billion question." "Being a busy man he didn't wish to reschedule and so he quickly found a new bride. It probably wasn't that difficult. All he had to do was point out the Manhattan skyline and say: ‘One day all this will be yours.’" I use tricks to make magic. “Now remember, contacting the dead should always be left to the professionals." available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC A selection of quotes from A Game of Cat and Mouse (Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection: 3)11/15/2014 "I'm here for you whatever you've done. But I can't help you if you won't tell me!"
… the case sounded intriguing, particularly the words –There's more to this than I care to put in an e-mail. "Try and remember I'm a respectable widow woman, young lady." "Boy, girls can talk." "… not just girls, so can adult women, mate, believe me." "I'm sure Jane can help you… She's very good at that kind of thing. She’d probably give you a cut-price deal." "First know your enemy." How young she was to be so consumed by such petty jealousies. "… the pesky little critter will be in our hands by morning." "I want you to… find out what's going on." "He was last seen heading north." "Back to the A-board." "Couldn't help yourself could you? Oh no! You never can, can you? " Questions! Questions! Questions! This was exactly the kind of mystery she loved getting her teeth into. "Join the dots!" "No one said we were playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules!" "They've gone stale. Just like the trail." This was getting ridiculous. She'd been on the case for less than twenty-four hours and so far, all she had to show for it was an ever-expanding list of suspects. "Women are like animals when they see a drop-dead gorgeous, half-naked, virile young man… Had I known this earlier, I wouldn't have bothered by all those clothes!" Did she have her man…? "I must warn you, you're not going to like what you're about to learn." "Seems you're not the only one with a vermin problem, Jane." "What ye sent forth comes back to Thee, So ever mind the Rule of Three!" available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC A selection of quotes from Pandora's box (Jane Hetherington’s Adventures in Detection: 2)11/15/2014 "Someone is sending me anonymous letters." "Wars, famine, drought, disease, the depression, we've lived through it all.… but Failsham Council will be the death of us all." "Young lady, this is not an emporium prone to early closing. We didn't even close early during the war and you have no idea how difficult it was to get wool then." "We thought you could find something out… that we could use to blackmail them with." "We appreciate it might take you time to find something with just about anything going nowadays and no one embarrassed by anything they do." "The key to discovering the sender of those letters lies in the present, not the past." "I remain confident of a constructive result." "We don't believe in God or motorcars." She advanced on him, knitting needles pointing dangerously in his direction, her tiny frame visibly shaking. "Don't be fooled by that waif-like vision of angelic loveliness. There was nothing angelic about Angela." "Even my wife doesn't know how bad things are." "It can't be? Surely not?" "She loved her airs and graces that one, but she was no better than she ought to be when all was said and done." "We must rule nothing out." "All this sneaking around isn't doing my ulcer any good." "He'd learned all about hormones at school, and what they did to the body, but this was worse than anything he'd been warned about." "I was a vicar's wife for years. No one and nothing surprises me, love…" However much this wood-chopping helped invent his frustration at a world which seem to be turning against him, his rumbling stomach reminded him of his predicament – Felix Dawson-Jones hated salad, but not as much as he hated old-fashioned wool shops owned by stubborn spinsters. "Adultery’s a sin, Mrs Hetherington." "I don't think this is going to turn out to be an open and shut case do you, Ant?" "When are your cases ever open and shut, Jane?" "When indeed? "Why are you making up such vile lies, woman?" "You've received your first death threat by the way… We all have. It was a round-robin death threat." "Beats me why they do it. Seems a lot of aggro and expense to me." "What a can of worms we've opened!" "That photograph of you… is very flattering.… That means the press like you when they do that." "That'll be why they've made me look petulant and slightly deranged." "You've come to tell us an extraordinary story, haven't you, John?" "I'm going to tell you a story, which began many moons ago…" available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC I write this blog for information purposes only. It concerns April (Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection: 4). Be warned – there are two editions of this novel out there (the First Edition [October 2012] and the Second Edition [August 2013]), and they're different.
The Second Edition is only available for sale as a new book (e-book and paperback) but both the First Edition and the Second Edition are for sale on the second hand book markets, such as the Amazon Marketplace. Hence this blog. Let me begin with a quote from my favourite literary character – Adrienne Oliver1: Rhoda: ‘It must be wonderful to be able to think of things.’ Adrienne Oliver: ‘I can always think of things. What is so tiring is writing them down. I always think I've finished, and then when I count up I find I've only written 30,000 words instead of 60,000, and so then I have to throw in another murder and get the heroine kidnapped again. It's all very boring.’ When I first wrote April, I thought I'd written a whole book. But when I typed it up, I discovered I'd actually only written half a book. I scribbled furiously, wrote the other half, sent it to my editor, and eventually published it in October 2012. Sometime afterwards, I re-read and realised I’d actually written two novels squeezed into one. My editor's suggestions that April might have too many storylines and characters, were correct. The storylines cannibalised each other. It was a bit crowded in there! This might be an occupational hazard of penning a series whose protagonist receives a number of new cases to investigate every month but, nonetheless, there was nothing for it but to rip that novel in half. Thus in August 2013 came forth April [ Second Edition ]. A tale of two novels has been a salutary lesson for me in less is more and editor knows best. Personally, I don't believe the first edition is a bad novel, but I do believe the second edition is better. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Nina 1 Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie April (2nd edition) is available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC (Revised second edition) In the fourth of the crime and mystery series, it's the month of April and Jane Hetherington gives her first radio interview as a private detective. Two men are listening. One returns to his van to discover a blackmail note waiting for him. He knows what he did, and he knows when he did it, but how on earth does anyone else? The other was entrusted with a thirty-year-old secret: ‘For God's sake don't tell anyone!’ He didn't, yet someone found out anyway. How and, more importantly, who? Neither man knows the other, yet circumstances bring both to Jane Hetherington’s door. But this is only the start of a series of startling coincidences. Then there’s the 'surprise' birthday party she discovers she's organising, and complications galore next door. available from all Amazon sites (e-book & paperback). To read inside or link through: https://www.amazon.com/author/ninajonbooks http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007N33HUC |
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