Robin Stevens

Robin Stevens was born in California and grew up in Oxford, England, across the road from the house where Alice of Alice in Wonderland lived. Stevens has been making up stories all her life. She spent her teenage years at boarding school, reading a lot of murder mysteries and hoping that she’d get the chance to do some detecting herself (she didn’t). She studied crime fiction in college and then worked in children’s publishing. Stevens now lives in England with her family.

Her new novel is Death Sets Sail.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I'm very proud of the title of Death Sets Sail - I think it really lets readers know what the book is about! My books are 1930s murder mysteries starring young detectives, and this story is all about a murder on board a Nile cruise ... but death is also pursuing my main characters, with one of them facing a terrifying and potentially tragic end ...

What's in a name?

I think names are extremely important. My favorite name from this book is Hephzibah - I think it's awkward and old-fashioned and a little bit weird but still charming, and that's the character! I often borrow names from friends or family members or people who are important to me - my detective George's last name is Mukherjee because that was the name of a tutor whose university course I really loved, and my narrator Hazel's last name is Wong because that's one of my best friends' names!

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think she'd be completely delighted by it. It combines so many things she loved - murder mysteries, Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, Egyptology, cults, young detectives, a group of best friends, and two extremely romantic romances! I hope she'd be very proud of me.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I think they're both very hard to write well! I usually start with a clear idea of the beginning scenes, and the moment of the crime, and then struggle a bit more with the middle and the end. I usually change quite a lot in terms of the final scenes, and what happens with all of the characters after the mystery is over. With this book, though, I actually had an unusually firm vision for the very final chapters. It was a moment I couldn't wait to write, and I couldn't write without crying. And I still cry when I reread it now!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think all of my characters share aspects of my personality! Hazel is my quieter, kinder, more thoughtful side, while Daisy has my impulsivity and boldness and flair for the dramatic. Interestingly, this year I realized that Daisy and I share something else, too: she is an autistic character, and that turns out to have been drawn from life, as I have recently been diagnosed!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My mother worked in a museum when I was a child, and I was particularly fascinated by the Egypt galleries, so that definitely inspired this book! Over the years I've become really interested in the way Westerners claim Egypt as almost part of their own history - so much has been taken from the country and installed in museums across the world, with very little thought about who really owns it. So this book is about a group of British people who see themselves as having ownership over Egypt and Egyptian things, and I hope explores how foolish that idea is!

Visit Robin Stevens's website.

--Marshal Zeringue