Author interview: A pivot to ‘cosy crime’ requires a high level of literary craftsmanship

Jennifer Thorp’s debut novel  Learwife, published in 2021, was an impressively ambitious and richly lyrical work. 

An imaginative twist on one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, it was told from the perspective of King Lear’s absent queen.

Her follow-up, Death on Ice, couldn’t be more different. A page-turning detective yarn, it features the Blanchard twins, Finn and Rose, scientists who end up tackling a murder mystery aboard a luxurious Arctic cruise ship. 

The unexpected pivot from literary fiction to ‘cosy crime’ came about when Thorp was struggling to produce a planned second novel.

“Sophomore syndrome is real. I wrote a draft and sent it to my agent, and she very kindly said ‘this is not working’. She told me to put it away for a couple of months,” says the Australian author, who is now based in Cork.

“I think it’s very sensible advice for anyone who has writer’s block or is struggling with any artistic project — take a step back from it, put it away, because without distance, you don’t have any critical faculty, and so that’s what I did.”

Inspired by a magazine article about luxury cruises in the icy oceans of the Arctic and Antarctic, Thorpe began writing a murder mystery, initially to entertain her England-based friend Bex, who was on maternity leave with twins — hence the sibling protagonists.

“These cruises take people around the Arctic and Antarctic on a luxury ship that doubles as a research vessel.”

“And we came up with the idea just to entertain her and to keep me busy. I sent her a chapter a day, and she would send me voice notes in the evenings or while the babies were sleeping and that’s how it was written,” she says.

“It was 27 chapters, and I wrote it in 27 days.

“It wasn’t really intended for publication; it took her about four months to persuade me to send it to my agent, we had some very lovely conversations with a bunch of publishers, and then I got this deal with Faber.

“It was all icing on the cake, because it did what it was meant to do, which was remind me that writing is fun, and entertain one of my best friends while she was nursing two tiny people in the middle of the night.”

Any literary snobbery that once pertained to crime fiction has been largely banished, aided by the likes of former Booker winner John Banville, who has had significant success with his Benjamin Black detective novels. 

According to Thorp, crime writing requires an equal level of skill and understanding to literary fiction.

“You’re just applying it in a different direction,” she says. “And also the readership is extremely switched on, they can see through everything.”

The level that you have to write at to make sure that you are entertaining and also baffling people who know and love all of these stories back to front is considerable.

The popularity of cosy crime — usually defined as more gentle and light-hearted fare, with little or no graphic or gruesome detail — has soared of late, helped by the phenomenal success of its highest-profile proponent Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club. 

Thorp says she was reluctant to read any of his books.

“I was going to, but then I worried that I would either unconsciously start to mimic what he was doing, which is really not helpful, or I’d read one of his books and think ‘this is too good, I can’t emulate it’.

“And then I’d have a crisis of confidence and wouldn’t do anything. So I feel that when the book is out in the world, it will be safe,” she says.

In terms of contrasting the process of writing literary fiction with crime fiction, the big difference was time.

“Learwife took five years,” laughs Thorp. “But I can’t improve on John Banville’s answer when asked about this.

“He said writing the John Banville novels is art and writing the Benjamin Black novels is craftsmanship. So you’re like a woodworker putting together a really beautiful table.

“They both require an equal level of attention and focus, but they draw on different parts of the instrument.”

But the aim is always to entertain people or to draw them into something.

Thorp does acknowledge that readers expecting something similar to the style of her debut novel could be in for a surprise when they pick up her new book. 

To prevent any confusion in this regard, while Learwife was written under the handle JR Thorp, Death on Ice comes from the pen of RO Thorp.

“The worlds that I’m creating with the detective novels and with Learwife are very, very different. They’re going to do very different things for you,” she says. 

“It’s part of the reason why I operate, under publishing advisement, under two different names, because if you come to these books thinking you’re going to get something like Learwife, you’re going to be confused.”

Thorp lives near Blarney St in the heart of Cork’s northside and loves being a part of the vibrant community there: 

“We got very lucky. We moved here sight unseen, because my partner had got a job offer at UCC, and we were like, alright, we’ll see how it goes, and we’re still here because it’s wonderful.

“We live near the Rock Community Centre, which is great, although sometimes it is slightly startling, because they have irregular bagpipe practice.”

So I will occasionally be working from home and suddenly hear the sound of bagpipes playing loudly.

Living in Ireland has also been beneficial in more tangible ways; Thorp has previously been awarded a Markievicz bursary to help develop her career and is a recipient of the basic income for the arts, which she says has made a huge difference to her professionally:

“Without it, this detective series wouldn’t have been written. I was working as a journalist while also trying to write, and it meant that I could step away from that for a little while and devote myself full-time to writing.

“I feel so lucky and so very grateful for the opportunity.”

Thorp has also previously worked as a librettist, writing scripts and lyrics for operas and other musical works. She says it has given her a valuable sense of discipline in her work as a novelist.

“I write strictly for commission, so people ask you to do something very specific and you are giving them what they need,” she says.

“And if they come back and say, ‘that’s not what I need’, you change it. It teaches you humility, there is a lot of collaboration and cooperation and making things beautiful within the constraints that you’ve been given.

“I often tell writers to try working with a musician or an orchestra because it teaches you so much. 

“You also learn the musicality of the language you’re working with, because things being sung are very different to things being read.”

Death on Ice is part of a two-book deal with Faber and Thorp has already written the follow-up, Death on Water. She writes at home in the company of her cats, sometimes venturing out to a local café or the nearby Friary Bar.

“If I’m lonely or I’m having a difficult writing day, I just go in to the Friary and hang out with them. I know Cork is a city, but it’s small enough to still feel like a community.

“Art and writing are very close to the surface all the time here. It feels like an essential part of the city’s identity, of how it thinks about itself in the world, it’s lovely.”