Chichester novelist Greg Mosse is in print with the second in his cosy crime series, Murder At Bunting Manor, following on from Murder at Church Lodge – part of an accelerated publishing schedule which will see the first four released within a year.
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00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always good
00:06 to speak to Greg Moss. And Greg, you have number two in a new series of cosy crime thrillers
00:12 just coming up now.
00:13 I absolutely do. This is my invitation to point over my shoulder, oh sorry, other shoulder,
00:18 and say look, there are the posters on the wall, and I can bring them to your closer
00:22 attention by saying Murder at Church Lodge is followed by Murder at Bunting.
00:26 No, Church Lodge, that came out in July, but the point is the first three books in this
00:31 series were all written in lockdown, they were all ready and waiting to go. You started
00:36 with a massive advantage with the backlog almost, didn't you?
00:40 I think it's really important to stress that I wasn't entirely on my own. I didn't just
00:44 sit in my chair spinning these stories hoping for the best. I was already in touch with
00:48 my agent Luigi Bonomi, who's a wonderful, encouraging, creative agent who helped me
00:54 to shape the novel. And in fact, by the time he had done the deal with Hodder & Stoughton,
01:01 I had the first draft of the fourth one as well. So when Luigi made the proposal to the
01:08 company there's going to be four cosy crime novels, he wasn't whistling in the dark. He
01:13 was saying there actually are already. Can we publish them very quickly? And brilliantly
01:20 Hodder & Stoughton accepted that, and we're publishing all four over 12 months.
01:24 That's quite some achievement, isn't it?
01:27 It feels like it, yeah.
01:28 Now it sounds like in the first book your heroine Maisie almost has the sleuthing forced
01:33 on her, but in the second one it's more of an invitation, isn't it?
01:38 Yes, that's really well put. She's stuck, isn't she? When she comes back to England
01:42 from Paris and discovers that not all is as it seems around her brother Stephen's death,
01:49 it's forced on her exactly like you say. But at the end of Murder at Church Lodge, she's
01:54 stuck in England waiting for the trial to take place, and somebody has read about what
01:59 she's done in the newspaper. In fact, they've read about her in the Chichester Observer.
02:04 What do you think of that?
02:05 Who'd have thought?
02:06 The 1972 Chichester Observer, and I don't think you were yet working on that August
02:11 Channel.
02:12 No, no.
02:13 So somebody's read about her and gets in touch through her solicitor and says, "I have a
02:18 mystery too. Will you come and help me solve it?"
02:22 And you mentioned Chichester, of course, and that's crucial to this series, isn't it? This
02:26 is absolutely the terrain that you've always lived in, isn't it?
02:29 Yes.
02:30 A terrain that you know incredibly well, and there's nostalgia here because you're going
02:33 back to the early 1970s and drawing very much on your own memories, aren't you?
02:39 I think there's an enormous advantage in the vividness of an 11-year-old's memories, and
02:46 that's what it is for me. I don't have to think about where was the livery yard, where
02:51 was the village shop, where was the pub, how long would that take, what would it feel like
02:55 getting on a bike on a drizzly February day and cycling into Chichester on the back road.
03:01 All of that is, yeah, and feel it vividly. And what that does is it means that all my
03:06 attention is on, hopefully, an authentic and true depiction of characters who feel real.
03:14 I'm not overburdened with the details of topography and inventing them.
03:20 Oh, that sounds fantastic. And how far can you run with this series then? You're talking
03:25 about a number five. Is it pretty open-ended, do you think?
03:28 So for me, I've actually got outline plots for another four once I finish this contract
03:38 of four. So Murder at Church Lodge, Murder at Bunting Manor. The third one coming out
03:42 next March is Murder at the Theatre, which is in fact Chichester Festival Theatre. Here's
03:47 a lovely, for me, detail of the historical past. The first production in 1972 of the
03:53 Chichester Festival Theatre summer season is the play that happens in my novel. But
04:01 of course, the director and the cast are all different people.
04:03 Which play is that? Is that giving away to? Well, no.
04:06 I'm going to leave that.
04:07 Findoutable, isn't it?
04:08 Exactly. It's Findoutable next March. And then of course, the fourth one in the sequence,
04:12 which is set in a wood fair in the Sussex countryside. And I think you'll agree a wood
04:18 fair is a place where there are lots of useful tools that can be used for murder.
04:25 In certain minds and in certain thoughts.
04:27 Yes.
04:28 Yes, indeed. Fantastic. Well, congratulations on publication number two.
04:33 Thank you, Phil.
04:34 Looking forward to the publication number three. And yeah, fantastic. Great to see you.
04:38 I'll be there. Thank you very much, Phil.
04:40 Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
04:41 (laughs)