A Q&A WITH LINDA MATHER
Hello, I’m Linda Mather, author of the New Forest Murder series and the Zodiac Murder Mysteries. I was born in Wallasey, Cheshire and now live in Worcestershire, near where the Zodiac Murders are set. I love to set my books in mysterious, beautiful parts of England. My CV is wide and varied: afternoon tea waitress at a seaside hotel, assistant Private Investigator, tele-sales, teacher, HR professional, now author. It’s true, the jobs (and the pay!) improved once I qualified in my profession but, throughout it all, I mainly wanted to write crime fiction and I’ve been saving up stories along the way. Nothing is wasted on a writer! As you can imagine, I didn’t enjoy all of those jobs, but one of the best was when I lived and worked in the New Forest, where the new police series is set.
Why did you choose the setting of the New Forest for this series?
Although I love living in Worcestershire, I found I was missing the Forest. I once lived in the centre of the New Forest in a brick-built Forest cottage, just like DCI Elinor Saxby’s, and it was as idyllic as it sounds. The shadowy forest, apparently safe and beautiful, struck me as full of secrets and stories. There are small communities, squat churches, the famous ponies and thatched pubs, deluged by tourists in summer. Yet there are hiding places in the woods and lonely sites in the marshy places by the coast and on the open heaths where you might come across a disused airfield with stories from the past.
This balance of safety and shadows, the sense of mystery and permanence felt right for a crime story. In the New Forest series, you will encounter dark shadows, you’ll be taken down secretive, dipping paths until you are not sure where you are. There will be clues. There will be moments of peril and deep doubt. And you know you’ll arrive safely out of the Forest, somehow unscathed, the mystery cleared and the loss resolved.
How did the inspiration for this series come to you?
When I lived in Lymington, which is on the south coast, just outside the Forest boundary, my train to work, which met the ferry from Isle of Wight, ran on a single track through the Forest. Looking out of the sea-smeared train windows into the depths of the woods in early mornings gave me that particular fizz of excitement, which sparked the stories.
I wanted to place DCI Elinor Saxby in this rural environment: a city-born woman, who’s had both successes and traumas in her long police career. She joins a small, distrustful CID team, who believe she has only joined them to ‘cruise before retirement.’ As she faces a murder inquiry in the first week, both she and the team will soon be tested.
Inspiration for Death in the New Forest actually came to me on holiday in Spain! I was lounging beside a swimming pool in a small hotel, set in an olive grove and I watched the pool maintenance man carefully lock the shed containing the chlorine gas for the pool. The hotel soon transformed into a boutique spa hotel surrounded by pines, at the top of a steep hill leading to a Forest village.
What has been your most enjoyable part to write so far?
I most enjoy writing about my police team. Elinor is a tough, intelligent cop with a complicated past and a future in her new role, leading the New Forest CID team, to which she never seems quite able to commit. Nancy and her boss, Les, are at opposite ends of their careers and she sees him like almost like a kindly uncle. Although he often has to put her right, she still thinks she knows best. These characters plus the Forest setting carry me forward from book to book and I hope readers enjoy them as much as I do!
What are you currently reading?
I studied American literature at Uni so there are many American classics on my bookshelf. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Chandler are all heroes of mine. It was Sue Grafton’s alphabet series which inspired me to write the Zodiac Murder Mysteries, working through the signs of the zodiac, murder by murder! My favourite British crime writer is Ruth Rendell and I also love Louise Penny’s Canadian series set in the village Three Pines. I often have a nature book on the bedside table and, at present, I’m very much enjoying The Secret History of Twilight by Sally Coulthard.