Hello everyone,

General:
I think I’ve transferred everything necessary to my new desktop PC, and I hope there’ll be no further problems in that direction. One problem it does raise is that I no longer have a laptop, and so I can’t take missives like this to transmit on the correct day, so I have to ask someone else to do it.

Challenges:
The first set of results were interesting, and especially good to see Celia claiming the main honours. But there’s a long way to go, and after the second set of results from Sue, I’ll put out the seasonal ‘points’ gained (as opposed to the marks gained for a single entry).

Crime Writing:
This book has had excellent reviews in the press, so I decided that as I had an interest in this genre, I’d better read it. I actually know the village of Road (now spelt Rode) well, but had no idea of this bit of its history.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale

The alternative title is “The Murder at Road Hill House” and it is fundamentally a true story. It is a classic setting, because the murder occurs in a country house, where it seems that one of the residents (family or servants) is likely to be guilty, but one can never rule out an intruder, but probably with the complicity of someone from the house.

The murder occurred in 1859, and all the dates and timings of movements of the implicated people are recorded. The local police were involved from the start, but as there was no obvious clearcut criminal, help was sought from a small band of specialist detectives in London. Mr Whicher was sent out from London to the shires (in this case the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset) to solve the case, and he set to work, and his progress through witnesses is well recorded, much being reconstructed through comments in the national and particularly the local press.

Kate Summerscale has researched extensively all the reports of the murder, and from these reports created an account which is quite compelling to read, despite the narrative lacking the direct speech which is such an essential component to involve the reader in today’s whodunits. What makes it different from an Agatha Christie type murder story lies in the fact that the press operated in almost a paparazzi-style search for clues and opinions, and there appeared nothing to stop them doing so: newspapers seemed happy to point their fingers directly at a subject, and to criticize the police when they had alternative opinions.

There are many quotations from the national and particularly the local press to illustrate the progress and direction of the investigation, and, indeed, some of the opinions were expressed so strongly that they appeared to sway the course of the investigation and apprehension of suspects. The public began to write to the police with their solutions to the case. The press coverage of the Road Hill case whetted the public’s appetite for detailed coverage of murder, and many columns of newspaper coverage ensued in the 1860s. The birth of modern detection methods, and of which Mr Whicher was a prime exponent led, through the press coverage, directly to the popular concept of the fictional detective. It is an interesting commentary that Mr Whicher may be the first and perhaps only real detective who will be remembered alongside the great fictional ones such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Maigret.

Kate Summerscale has written an immensely enjoyable book: you can enjoy it as a novel or as a work of scholarship, or as I have done, both. It deserves to outsell any other contemporary book in this genre.

Short Articles:
I had no response from my comments about possible future short articles on a theme. I’m just prodding you again, to see if there’s any further thoughts about the idea.

Nor did my thoughts on the demands on language raise any comments. Not all of you (maybe not any of you) – will look at the demands on language in the same way as I do. I’ve got this attitude of thinking that everything exists for a reason, and I was trying to see how language could fulfil rather a lot of reasons - everything from creative thinking (mental imagery) to hard factual descriptions (equipment specifications and use).

Alter Egos:
I’m sure you all enjoyed reading about Chris’s other writing pursuits, but it does make me recall that not everyone has revealed their other interests, and indeed my not wish to do so. There’s no pressure on anyone to do this: one of the basic concepts I had when I formed this group was that it was about enjoying writing, and whatever else members did was not directly relevant – though it might be interesting. To me, every member is an interesting person through his or her writing, whatever else I may learn.

I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine – she was my deputy at my previous writers’ circle. After it closed, she moved away from West Somerset, and I heard from her in October 2005 that she was a mover in a small group to set up a charity to collect discarded bicycles in the UK, get them refurbished (by prison inmates) and ship them to Gambia, so that more children could have them to enable them to attend school. “Well done, Helen,” I thought, that’s a good project.

Last week, I had a update from her: the charity bikes4Africa has just shipped the 5,000th bike. That’s been achieved in 4 years. Some achievement.

Now so far, you may have formed a picture of Helen O’Shea – perhaps as some king of perpetual do-gooder. Yes, she’s a nice person. What you don’t know, though, is her creative writing interest. He first short stories that I read of hers were very short – under 1,000 words – but they were black, gruesome and left one with an unpleasant taste for the situation described (so they were well written). They certainly qualified as horror stories. She published some on the internet, but finding it is a problem as there is another, rather prolific Dr Helen O’Shea who seems to crop up in all my searches! I’ve tried her other name, Helen King, but that’s even a more widely used name.

Competitions:
Thanks to Chris for the note about the Fish competition.

I wouldn’t normally circulate details of a poetry competition, but in view of the correspondence about free copies, I thought you might like the payoff. Should we do anything about it?

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Dear Alpha Writers,

Has anybody in your writing group entered The Local Poem Competition? It’s an annual free-to-enter competition with a £1000 cash prize. You have to write up to 160 words and 20 lines maximum about someone or something local to you and submit it by email to poems@unitedpress.co.uk or by post to: United Press Ltd, Admail 3735, London EC1B 1JB by the closing date of December 31st. We also want to offer free books to all writers’ groups, so please send us details of all the groups you know of. Ashley Anderson

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Best wishes all

- Olaf