The Detection Club, one of the most prestigious groups of crime writers in the world, is honouring Simon Brett with a special anthology in the year of his 80th birthday.
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00:00Good morning. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always a
00:07big pleasure to speak to Simon Brett. Now, Simon, this is a big, big year, isn't it?
00:10You are turning 80, and the Detection Club, of which you were a president for many years,
00:16have come up with a wonderful tribute to you, an anthology.
00:20I know, it's lovely. They've produced this book, all written by Detection Club members,
00:26who are some of our finest crime writers, and they've written all these stories in my
00:31honour. And the book is called Playing Dead, which is a kind of reference, I guess, to,
00:36you know, my writing has either been about murder or has been comedy, so I think Playing
00:41Dead fits in pretty well. And it's actually, it was published on the 4th of March.
00:47And it's a fabulous tribute, isn't it? Because we're talking about your peers writing stories
00:52with you in mind, with little in-jokes that you refer to in your writing.
00:58Because the stories all stand out perfectly. They're very excellent stories on their own.
01:02But a lot of them have got little in-jokes in there. Like one of them, you know, I write
01:09a series about Mrs Padgeter, and I write a series about setting up a village called Feathering.
01:15And so in one of the stories, somebody lives on Padgeter Street, and they have a friend
01:21in Feathering Lane, you see, this kind of thing, which is, I mean, it's a lovely little
01:25joke for me, but it doesn't... And I also write a series about two 1920s brother and
01:32sister sleuths called Blotto and Twinks. And so in one of the stories, somebody has two
01:37dogs who are called Blotto and Twinks. And it's just full of little references, which
01:42mean a lot to me and won't sort of upset the average reader, because they won't notice.
01:48Well, that's a huge compliment, isn't it? The fact that these stories are being written
01:51obviously so much with you specifically personally in mind. That is quite something, isn't it?
01:57Yeah, I mean, it's a huge honour, and I'm absolutely delighted with the book.
02:04And quite apart from that, you are enormously busy with your own books now. Some years ago,
02:09we were talking about your hundredth book. You are way, way past that now, aren't you?
02:14What are you up to?
02:16I think I'm up to the hundred and twentieth. There's a book going to be published towards
02:23the end of the year, a Mrs Pargeter book called Mrs Pargeter's Past, and I think that will
02:28be my hundred and twentieth book. And there are a couple more before then, which are going
02:33to be published too, in April, one of which is called Death in the Dressing Room, which
02:40is a feathering mystery, and feathering is a little village I've invented on the south
02:45coast of England, not too far away from Arundel, Chichester, that kind of thing. And the other
02:51one is the start of a new series called Major Brickett and the Circus Corpse, and that is
02:58set in Suffolk, actually, so I'm moving around the country.
03:02And the feathering one revolves around a death in a theatre, a murder in a theatre, but it's
03:07not necessarily Chichester Festival Theatre, you're denying that?
03:13I mean, it couldn't possibly be Chichester Festival Theatre, but somebody might recognise
03:17themselves and, you know, think that I was laudering them. So, I mean, if readers happen
03:24to think there were parallels with Chichester Festival Theatre, it shows that I've got subtext,
03:30you know, so that's fine.
03:33And this is feathering number, is it 22, did you say?
03:37I think it's 22.
03:3922, goodness. And that's quite something to sustain a series for that long, isn't it?
03:52Yes, I think what happens if you know the characters very well, and the feathering series
03:58has two neighbours who are very unlike, you know, one is very high bound and sort of respectable
04:06and the other is slightly laid back and one is a retired civil servant and the other is
04:11an alternative healer. So, I mean, almost any subject you're going to put them or setting
04:17you're going to put them into, they're going to have different attitudes. And so I think
04:23that keeps it fresh from my point of view. Also, I mean, if I just wrote the one series
04:28and, you know, moved from writing one series about Carol and Jude in feathering, and then
04:33started the next one about Carol and Jude in feathering, I think that could become a
04:37bit boring for me. And if it's boring me, then it's probably going to bore the reader.
04:42But I vary that with writing other series of books and, you know, stage plays and bits
04:48and pieces. So it kind of, you know, something new, I think, refreshes one. And it's lovely
04:56to go back to characters, you know, because Mrs Padgeter, who I wrote about, I didn't
05:00write on Mrs Padgeter for about 15 years. And it was absolutely delightful to go back
05:04to her. And the same with Charles Parris, my acting detective. You know, I left him
05:11alone for about 15 years. And in that interim, a lot of the settings there are all theatrical
05:18and a lot of new things that happened in the theatre, like, you know, verbatim plays and
05:25that kind of thing. And in television, you've got, you know, the invasion of reality television,
05:31getting members of the public to look stupid and putting a lot of playwrights and actors
05:37out of work, which one obviously disapproves. So, you know, there are things like that,
05:43which can happen. And now, of course, we have AI. So I mean, what effect that has.
05:48The ultimate nightmare, yes.
05:51The media, well, your medium and my medium and music and theatre and, you know, it's
05:58going to have a huge effect.
06:00Well, you clearly see crime everywhere, don't you?
06:04Yeah, yes, exactly.
06:06Fantastic. Well, Simon, sincere congratulations on the Playing Dead anthology by a fabulous
06:13list of names. And that's out now. And The Feathering, the latest in The Feathering series
06:18is out in April, isn't it?
06:20It's on the 1st of April and it's not an April Fool. It's really happening.
06:24Brilliant. Well, lovely to speak to you. Congratulations.
06:27OK, well, and you, Phil.