After
a gap of ten years Minette Walter's new novel is a game changer for
the author once dubbed the “queen of British crime” The Last
Hours is an historical novel set in 1348 in rural Dosetshire as The
Black Death sweeps across England. I had the chance to put a few
questions to the bestselling writer and asked her what drew her to
the subject matter. “As
a story teller, I'm intrigued by everything and the Black Death is a
powerfully interesting subject. Six centuries on, it's hard to grasp
how devastating it was or how far-reaching its consequences.”
While
it might seem an unusual step for a writer to move out of the
thriller genre towards historical fiction; the
author sees it as a natural progression.
“The
idea for The
Last Hours
kept knocking at my mind and never to have written it for the sake of
remaining in 'genre' would have been frustrating. In any case, I
wonder if it is such a big change! The Black Death was the worst
killer man has ever known. Which crime author wouldn't want to write
about it... and point fingers at the culprits? There are many worse
criminals in history than there are in crime fiction.
Despite
the apparent change of genre Minette Walters talents as a thriller
writer are still very much in evidence with a cast of characters
trapped in a confined space and growing fears about their own
survival the author ramps up the tension and with this novel she has
given us some truly memorable characters that will captivate readers.
Walters
is a longtime resident of Dorset and the locality and it's history
seems to gotten under the author's skin “My
husband and I moved to Dorset nearly twenty years ago, and one of the
first things we learnt about our village was that it has a plague
pit. No one’s entirely sure where it is, but the 12th
century church still stands and visitors can still see the mounds
that delineate the medieval settlement. The whole site is a scheduled
monument and it's hard to rub shoulders with history without becoming
fascinated by it.” Living
in an area so closely impacted by such a a devastating event it was
probably inevitable that Walters' writer's brain would begin to ask
what if? While the Black Death has been explored in fiction before
the fact that the novel focuses in on the impact felt in a very
particular location and a small group of people makes it a unique and
intriguing prospect for fans of Medieval fiction. “The
Black Death became a particular interest when I discovered that its
first port of entry into England was Melcombe (Weymouth) which is 9
miles from where we live. 14th
century chroniclers reported barely one in ten being left alive in
Dorset by the time the pestilence passed. I wondered what that
meant...Had some fled?..who were the ‘bare’ few who managed to
survive? And
how had they avoided it?”
Walters
took a long break from writing, other than a horror novella The
Cellar in
2015 she has not published in ten years and while she never gave up
wrting she did take a step back and with time to think the idea for
The
Last Hours began
to form “I
did indeed spend considerable time on research for The Last
Hours but, once the idea crystalised in my head, the writing
came easily.” I'm
sure her countless fans will be pleased she's back and she is likely
to gather many more fans from those who enjoy the books of Sarah
Hawkswood, Karen Maitland and S.D. Sykes.
Lisa
Redmond is a writer, currently working a novel about
17th-century Scottish witches. She
blogs about books, writing and women in history.
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