A few formidable ladies of history

 

We have, in general, been led to believe that women are the weaker sex. If we look at women over the last 1000 years, there are so many unsung influential women, it is impossible to even scratch the surface in a blogpost.

It is quite irritating that going back to before the 17th century, we only tend to know about women who were either royal or notorious. In the royal category, we can put Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1190, at the age of around 65, Eleanor rode across the alps in winter to Navarre to fetch Berengaria and escort her to her wedding with Eleanor’s favourite son, Richard the Lionheart.

Another doting royal mother comes into the category of formidable women. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She worked tirelessly at the courts of Edward IV and later Richard III ensuring that Henry, in exile in Brittany, was kept abreast of events. When Richard’s blunt way of dealing with people made him so unpopular, Margaret steered her son’s journey from exile to the throne and the formation of the Tudor dynasty in 1485.

In the notorious category, I have to mention Cleopatra who is alleged to have said ‘I will not be triumphed over.’ She was—mythbuster—not beautiful but struck Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her wit and charm. Another memorable woman is Bess of Hardwick, who survived four husbands, growing very wealthy in the process. A close friend of Elizabeth I, she also remodelled Chatsworth and built Hardwick Hall.

Moving forwards to the 20th century, Emmeline Pankhurst endured horrendous abuse in Holloway Prison when she went on hunger strike to win votes for women. And here I must mention Rosa Parks the African-American civil rights activist who in 1955 refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man. Hands up who knows the name Professor Sarah Gilbert. She is the scientist who designed the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in an unbelievably short time and has saved countless lives.

Another group of heroic women who have only lately been acknowledged, worked tirelessly in constant danger to help the allies win World War II. I refer, of course, to the women agents of SOE. Some of these agents are now household names. Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine was the first female radio operator infiltrated into France. She was betrayed to the Gestapo, escaped at least twice, and was finally kept in chains and tortured for information. She revealed nothing. Her final word before being shot in the head was Liberté.

Most female agents were awarded civilian MBEs by the war office. Noor was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1946 and only in 1949 did the British government award her a George Cross. Violette Szabo was also posthumously awarded a George Cross. She is noted for keeping up the morale of other captured agents. She, along with Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, were executed in Ravensbruck by being shot. Bloch and Rolfe were so harshly treated, they were carried to their deaths on stretchers. For anyone interested in reading more, I heartily recommend Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. I have read thousands of books but this one is definitely in my personal Top Ten.

It was reading about the heroines of SOE that inspired me to write Distant Shadows. Although the main action of the book takes place in 1953, my heroine, Peggy, was a radio operator in France in 1944, whose Paris cell was betrayed to the Nazis. She escaped but returned to England spitting accusations of treachery and was swiftly bundled out of SOE. Now in 1953, Peggy has uncovered a fraudulent operation relating to the assignment of contracts in the rebuilding of London. Outraged at the cynical duplicity of the perpetrators, Peggy writes anonymously to her old SOE supervisor. But in so doing, has she enabled the traitor from 1944 to find her again?

Distant Shadows is available here: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B09CQ1G9GY

 

 

How a passing interest in SOE became a passion to write a mystery/thriller

 

Writing Distant Shadows was a joy. My way of paying tribute to the lost agents of SOE in the second world war.

 I have long been interested in the brave actions of the FANYs (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) in WW2. The women agents who carried on their tradecraft under the noses of the Gestapo and, in France, the Milice, the French political paramilitary organisation formed to fight against the French Resistance.

 These brave women suffered in the torture chambers of Nazi concentration camps. Beaten, tortured, worked to death on starvation rations, they often ended their lives by being shot in the back of the head or given lethal injections and their bodies burned. For this, they were, in the main, awarded MBEs, apart from Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine, who was still regarded as “missing” in 1946.

 Despite opposition from Whitehall, Vera Atkins, from SOE F Section, insisted on going to France and Germany to find out what had happened to “her” girls. It was also at her insistence that the War Office agreed to award the agents honours and for them to be regarded as “killed in action”. She also persuaded the authorities to honour Noor Inayat Khan with a George Cross in 1949. These agents were incredibly brave, while being incredibly modest about their part in the allied victory. And even when security restrictions were eased, few ever spoke about their time as agents.

 This was my starting point for Distant Shadows. And the more research I did, the more determined I became to write a book with an ex-SOE agent, who had escaped from Paris, as its protagonist. 

 Distant Shadows grew from the usual what-if?s that drop into writers’ heads. What if one agent escaped, aided by her superior in England? What if her accusations of treachery and betrayal were covered up by the top brass and she was hustled out of SOE? What if she knew her life was in peril from the traitor, so decided to change her name and disappear? And then the final what if? What if she recognised a pattern of fraudulent activity in the bestowal of government building contracts and decided, nine years after going into obscurity, to stand up for her principles at the start of a new Elizabethan age, and bring the fraud to light?

 For anyone interested in reading about the FANYs and Vera Atkins, I can recommend:

 Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: the story of Vera Atkins and the lost agents of SOE.

Marcus Binney: The Women Who Lived For Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War.

 There is a memorial to the lost FANYs at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London. More information here: Women's Transport Service (FANY) : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London

 And here is the precis of the book that came out of all those what-ifs!

 Distant Shadows:

 It’s the day before the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The dawn of a new Elizabethan era. It is also the day Peggy Palmer, formerly Agent Claudette sent to Paris by the Special Operations Executive, decides she has no option but to bring the corrupt building scam by Knowles Bros. into the light of day. Who can she ask to help? Who will believe an almost 30-something spinster, firmly on the shelf by most people’s standards?

 Peggy decides to contact her old SOE supervisor, now Sir Andrew Kingsley, put to work in an out of the way government department. Peggy’s anonymous letter starts a chain reaction that brings the distant shadows of her time as a radio operator in Paris in 1944 back into her current life. And with shadows come memories she has tried to forget. Of her lover, taken by the Gestapo, tortured and murdered. Of the traitor in the ranks she is still convinced betrayed them all.

 She has made a point of becoming unmemorable in the 9 years since her accusations of treachery were dismissed by the top brass. 9 years since she decided it was safer to disappear, change her name and her job. More than once. Distant shadows fed by long memories.

 And will those distant shadows revive the spectre of the traitor who betrayed her Paris cell; who condemned the love of her life to end his on the end of a Gestapo butcher’s hook? Can Peggy trust Sir Andrew who seems almost too anxious to stay close to her? What is he afraid of? And why is successful thriller writer Noah Keyes, another of her SOE trainers, equally anxious to be at the centre of the action?

 What avalanche has Peggy’s decision to write that letter begun? And will she survive the fallout?

 Distant Shadows is available here: - https://bookgoodies.com/a/B09CQ1G9GY

 

So you want to write a crime novel: Part 8. Suspense

 

Suspense is a vital component of writing a crime novel. At its most basic, suspense is based on fear. The reader’s fear. The more anxiety you can make your reader feel, the more successful your story will be.

Conflict. The most important aspect of engaging readers to the extent of them being fearful, is your protagonist and your antagonist. Unless readers not only like your main character, but are mentally cheering them on, why would they be in the least bit bothered when danger threatens and there is the danger the antagonist might win? But then, you can also make the antagonist engaging, too. A likeable rogue with a hard edge that may make the reader overlook him/her. More conflict within the reader.

Strong characters, with flaws that they are fighting to overcome in order to obtain their objective will make your story unputdownable. You must make sure your main character and your antagonist are determined. The one to obtain the objective and the other to make sure that doesn’t happen. Sometimes your protagonist and antagonist will want the same thing. That ups the ante on the conflict. It’s like two people fighting for the love of a third person, except that in a crime novel, it is much nastier and devious.

Time. If you make your characters fight against the clock, the suspense level spikes immediately. If John cannot get to Isabel by 4pm, chances are the killer will get there first and she is next on his list. Can John reach Isabel in time? Make your time short.

There’s a song in Singing in the Rain called Make ’em Laugh. In a crime novel, you make them wait. And you do this by scene cutting; closing the scene on a cliffhanger. You have set up the action but right at the point where the reader is desperate to know what happens, you end the scene and go onto another character doing something different. However, part of the agreement between writer and readers is that the writer does not leave readers hanging for too long. Otherwise they will lose interest and shut the book. Tom Clancy did this very well. He had multiple characters, all facing huge problems and switch from one to the next and so on. If your readers are fully engaged with the characters, the suspense will be incredible. Use time to your advantage.

Foreshadowing. In other words, hints. Sometimes subtle, sometimes up-front. These are a joy to play with because you are trying to lead the reader up the garden path of misleading facts that don’t mean anything. Some hints will, of course, be crucial to the central action of the book. A hint might be, for example, the way a character behaves; something that indicates a state of mind or mindset. Who can forget Bogart in The Caine Mutiny constantly playing with small steel balls? It doesn’t foreshadow an event but sets up the perception of the character’s behaviour and makes what happens later logical.

Foreshadowing for events is less subtle. Perhaps one character is afraid of the dark but is abducted and shut in a cellar with no light. How will he/she deal with the panic on that fear on top of being abducted? Foreshadowing is necessary for suspense and, if done with finesse, can have your readers going in any direction you want to send them.

High Stakes. This is a good accompaniment to the time element above. If the stakes are high and the time is tight, readers are going to be glued to your story with their hearts thumping. Let’s go back to John trying to reach Isabel before the killer does. We already know he must get to her before 4pm. So you introduce a really high stake twist. The hospital is 20 minutes away: he should be ok. But then, he is caught up in a huge accident and its resultant traffic jam halfway to the hospital . Up the stakes, up the suspense.

Plot Twists. (Spoiler Alert) An essential part of a crime novel. Many how-to­ books advise trying a twist on a twist. The extra one you don’t see coming even if you think you’ve worked out who the killer is. Look at the end of the film Sixth Sense. How many people—including me— didn’t work out that the main character was, in fact a ghost? 

How about your protagonist trying to help his brother who has been accused of a murder he didn’t commit. You follow your protagonist’s actions using short time constraints and the high stakes of brotherly love, trying to find evidence to prove the brother innocent and you show the brother twisting painfully on this hook, with his distraught wife and children suffering too. And then the protagonist does find enough evidence to clear his brother. He is declared innocent. The next day, the brother confesses he was guilty. The twist on the twist can also be tightened by how your protagonist finds out the truth. And what they do about it.

Red Herrings and Clues. You need to seed these so carefully. Experienced readers will spot them a mile off. But sometimes, you want them to. And some of the subtle ones will be misleading and a couple of the not-so-subtle ones will be true. I try to plant a significant clue, in passing, early on in the book before the reader has settled down. Throughout, you must be fair to the reader. No sudden appearance of someone at the end who wasn't there at the beginning. The clues must be hidden in plain sight. Drip-feed your clues, don’t give them all at once. And don't answer them all at once, either. Make the reader work for the solution.

 In conclusion, if you put a strong, likeable but flawed character who has a goal and who will take readers with him/her on a cake-walk journey with plenty of conflict, red herrings, twists and high stakes, exacerbated by time constraints and any other problems you can manufacture, you will have a solid, absorbing and enthralling crime novel.