G.M. Malliet

Agatha Award-winning G.M. Malliet is the acclaimed author of three traditional mystery series and a standalone novel set in England. The first entry in the DCI St. Just series, Death of a Cozy Writer, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for many awards, including the Macavity and the Anthony.

The Rev. Max Tudor series has similarly been nominated for many awards as have several of her short stories appearing in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Strand.

Mailliet's new DCI St. Just mystery is Death and the Old Master.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Titles are nearly as important as covers. It is one of the pleasures of browsing a bookstore that you can be drawn to a book you never knew you wanted by its title alone.

I’ve been lucky with being able to keep my original ideas for book titles. I believe I’ve never had an editor request an alternative title except in the case of the St. Just books. “Marketing,” a term for a generally anonymous, behind-the-curtain group in publishing, wanted every title in the series to begin with “Death.” (The series began with Death of a Cozy Writer.) After six books, all this “Death” is getting a bit morbid, but I’m stuck with it now, and I do see the wisdom of making it easier for readers to find me.

I have a title I really love for Book #7. I won’t say what it is, lest I break my lucky streak.

Choosing titles is the fun part, however, even given that constraint. Death and the Old Master, a title with layers of meaning, suggested itself to me in a chicken/egg fashion, and became integral to the plot. DCI St. Just is based in Cambridge, and the story concerns an aging master of a fictional Cambridge college called Hardwick. The master is an art expert who acquires a painting that may or may not be by an Old Master.

What's in a name?

Names are so crucial to getting the character to gel. In the same way the title has to be right, and sometimes goes through a few tryouts, the name has to fit the character.

Or perhaps be so at odds with the character that it’s a bit of a tipoff they may be up to no good.

I bless whoever invented the search/replace feature in word processing that makes these tryouts possible. I suppose back in the day before typewriters, authors had to decide immediately on the character name and stick to it.

I especially have fun with the sort of hyphenated names the British nobility go in for, like Eliza Snodgrass-Chickenwire or something, but this time my college master’s name is simply Sir Flyte Rascallian. He is a bit of an isolated, lonely figure—a brilliant academic, of course, and the best in his field, much in demand to weigh in on the value of artworks found behind dust covers in the attics of the rich and famous.

I became quite attached to my old master and sad because I knew early on I’d have to kill him off. The same goes for the next character to die in the book, whose name I won’t reveal.

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

Endings are harder because in the puzzle-type mysteries I write, there tend to be a lot of characters and motives, and bringing all the strands together like Viking braids at the end is difficult. I’m sure this is why Agatha Christie liked the technique of gathering everyone in the drawing room, so Hercule Poirot could explain how he reached his conclusions.

I’ve used the gathering technique more than once. I do try to vary things, but honestly, it’s the simplest and most straightforward way to explain very complicated plots.

I never change beginnings. Once it’s there on the page it’s pretty much set in concrete.

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

My series heroes (Max Tudor, St. Just, and Augusta Hawke) are a bit like me because they are all seekers after truth and justice—crusaders, if you like. My characters have traits—greed, fear, hope, kindness, self-delusion—that most of us share, but it’s a question of degree.

My favorite characters to write are narcissists or charismatics, the kind who lead cults. I’ve had a fair amount of experience with those, and they are endlessly fascinating.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The daily news is an endless source of inspiration, particularly the metro section of my local paper, which happens to be The Washington Post. I get a lot of plot ideas from reading about the scammers and embezzlers, not to mention the politicians who never seem to learn. There was recently quite a horrible murder that occurred near me that will end up, in some distorted fashion designed to protect the innocent, in one of my stories. It has all the elements of a Christie plot.

Visit G. M. Malliet's website, Facebook page, and Instagram home.

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--Marshal Zeringue