The captivating detective

There is an interesting new detective on the crime fiction scene and her name is Manon Bradshaw. A clever, articulate English graduate with a messy personal life, she is flawed, funny and fabulous.

Manon is the creation of journalist turned author Susie Steiner and she first appeared in last year’s hugely popular, critically acclaimed Missing Presumed. An intelligent, slyly witty read with a beautifully crafted twisting storyline about the mysterious disappearance of a young Phd student, it stormed up the bestsellers charts with readers and reviewers all expressing their hope that this wasn’t the last they would see of Manon Bradshaw. Luckily it wasn’t.

Persons Unknown, the second novel featuring the complex and likeable Cambridgeshire detective, this time investigating a murder, was published in July and it is an equally compelling read.

Steiner’s first novel, 2013’s Homecoming, written while she was still working full-time on the Guardian, was a domestic drama set on a remote Yorkshire farm. It received rave reviews and marked its author out as a writer to watch. The Manon Bradshaw books, while confirming her talent and skill as a novelist, are quite different in tone and content. “The Homecoming took me ten years to write and the main characters were taciturn Yorkshire farmers. Missing Presumed was like being let off the leash,” says Steiner who appears at Ryedale Book Festival tomorrow. “Manon came out of a feeling of playfulness, humour and pleasure. She is very emotionally open and expressive; I really enjoyed being with her.” That humanity comes across in the books which are as detailed on Manon’s less-than-perfect life outside work – the first was punctuated by a series of disastrous encounters with men she met through internet dating sites, the second brings her complicated relationship with her sister and adopted son to the fore – as they are on police procedure.

They also feature a nice, well-observed line in office politics – there’s plenty of banter but t’s often laced with a competitive edge – and it’s all underpinned by a fine literary sensibility. “What I was after was something with a grip of real narrative drive, but I also wanted the characterisation and the descriptiveness of literary novels, so I was trying to do that kind of mash-up.” She has achieved it, in spades. Steiner’s conscientious approach to her research into the technicalities and specifics of police work also pays dividends – the investigations in both Missing Presumed and in Persons Unknown, feel very authentic. “I find procedure fascinating but also those are the details that really matter,” she says. She has spent time with the Cambridgeshire major crime unit and has a reliable police contact who she says is “incredibly helpful”. At Ryedale Festival Steiner is appearing with Gail Honeyman, author of the best-selling Eleanor Oliphant is Perfectly Fine, talking about depicting difficult, therefore realistic, protagonists in fiction.

“One of the big things I had to learn with Manon is that you have to let your characters behave badly sometimes,” says Steiner. “I think it makes it much easier for readers to relate to them.” The good news is that Steiner is already at work on the next novel in the series.

The Ryedale Book Festival event is at the Milton Rooms on September 23 at 3.30pm. www.ryedalebookfestival.com

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REVIEW

Susie Steiner’s second novel featuring detective Manon Bradshaw is a totally compelling page-turner about the murder of a young man, discovered in broad daylight in a park miles from his home, dying of a stab wound.

Having left for London at the end the first book Missing Presumed, Manon is back in Cambridgeshire with 12 year old adopted son Fly, a baby on the way and living with her sister Ellie and young nephew Sol. She is mostly working on cold cases but is drawn in to the murder investigation because, shockingly, some of the evidence appears to implicate both Fly and Ellie. As her professional and personal lives collide messily, Manon has some difficult decisions to make.

Steiner handles the mechanics of the crime genre with great skill – a tightly structured plot that motors along, plenty of police procedural detail – but what makes this really stand out is its literary sensibility and its hugely likeable heroine. She is warm and loving but can be petty and irritable, supportive and kind, yet often self-obsessed; she is very funny and great company but can be casually cruel; good at her job, yet plagued by self-doubt; in other words – complicated and imperfect, just like the rest of us. Steiner populates her book with other equally rounded and believable characters – Manon’s bantering colleagues, incidental figures pertinent to the plot and a nicely offbeat love interest.

Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner is published by HarperCollins, £12.99.