Bradford writer and teacher's debut murder mystery novel A Spoonful of Murder

The three main characters in this delightful Yorkshire-set murder mystery, published next week, are a trio of retired friends – Liz, Thelma and Pat – who all worked in the same primary school. Every Thursday they meet for coffee and a catch up at a garden centre in Thirsk to share stories of gardening, grandparenting and the like. On one of these occasions while tucking into homemade cake they bump into another former colleague Topsy who seems troubled and is obviously in the early stages of dementia. By the following week Topsy has died in mysterious circumstances.

Hall is a successful playwright whose work has been staged in theatres around the country and produced for radio, most recently the series Trust starring Julie Hesmondhalgh for BBC Radio 4, and as a deputy head of a primary school he has to fit in his writing around a busy full-time day job.

“I get up at just after 5am and write for a couple of hours before going to work,” he says. “I was working on the novel in and amongst other writing and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, because it was the first time I had worked in that form, and then I heard about a novel writing course in Middlesbrough.”

As part of the course the participants were given the opportunity to pitch their story idea to literary agents. Hall was successful and was taken on by one of the agents. “That was great and really helpful because it gave me a sense of having something to work towards. Then the pandemic hit and for the first time in my life I was able to really focus on the writing. I managed to finished the novel and then my agent sent it out to publishers.” After a couple of rejections, Hall was offered a two-book deal with Avon Books, an imprint of Harper Collins. “I couldn’t quite believe it,” he says. “I am so pleased and it has given me another way to tell stories.”

While A Spoonful of Murder fits firmly into the ‘cosy crime’ genre, it does deal with serious issues around the vulnerability of the elderly and was partly inspired by an upsetting personal experience in which Hall’s father was defrauded out of a substantial amount of money. “I was really shocked by that and my whole sense of the decency of people was shaken. I felt that I wanted to write about it and the great thing about writing a novel is that you create a world that you can escape into.”

He says that making his novel’s detectives school teachers is a kind of tribute to the many colleagues he has worked with during his career as an educator. “You see people giving their absolute best day in day out. I have spent most of my working life surrounded by women – there is a lot of wisdom and a lot of humour, so three wise women managing to get to the bottom of the mystery is my way of celebrating them.”

A Spoonful of Murder is published by Harper Collins on March 17. J M Hall will be at Little Ripon Bookshop on March 23, Truman Books in Farsley, March 25 and Huddersfield Litfest on March 29.

REVIEW

A Spoonful of Murder by J M Hall

published by avon books, harper collins, £7.99, March 17

yvette huddleston 4/5

If you prefer your crime fiction to be more Midsomer Murders than The Killing, then this delightful debut novel from J M Hall will be right up your street.

Every Thursday a group of retired primary schoolteacher friends – Liz, Thelma and Pat – meet at their local garden centre for coffee, cake and a catch up. One wet winter morning as they are enjoying their weekly gossip, they spot another of their former colleagues Topsy with her forceful daughter KellyAnne. The three friends are shocked by Topsy’s appearance and demeanour – confused, upset and forgetful she is clearly suffering from some form of dementia. Then Thelma has an encounter with Topsy in the toilets when she tearfully claims that someone is trying to kill her. Thelma dismisses it as more evidence of her friend’s confusion, but a week later Topsy is dead. Gradually Liz, Thelma and Pat begin to suspect there is more to her death than meets the eye and they start to investigate...

An accomplished playwright, Hall knows how to write good dialogue and his skilful, engaging storytelling crackles with lively humour as his characters leap off the page. They are well-rounded, authentic and very human. The murder mystery is satisfyingly teased out, but at its heart this is as much a moving portrait of female friendship as anything else.