S01E06: Forgotten Mystery Writers - Meet Dorothy Simpson 🔪
This CWA Silver Dagger winner wrote 15 fantastic police procedurals set in 1980s Kent, England, featuring CID Inspector Luke Thanet.
The first Dorothy Simpson novel I read had Inspector Thanet figuring out ‘whodunit’ based on a clue in a photograph—the golden-brown autumn leaves in the background made him think about the change of seasons and the time it takes for things to happen, which told him that one of the suspects had lied about a date.
I was impressed.
This was the kind of clever, subtle clueing that I had (until then) seen only in Agatha Christie novels. More importantly, it was fair. The photograph is described in detail, so the reader sees exactly what Inspector Thanet sees. It’s just a question of which detail matters and who puts it all together first.
Brilliant, I thought—but didn’t read another of her books until ten years later.
Not for lack of trying but because I couldn’t find any of her books in my local bookstores. You see, Dorothy Simpson was not a bestselling author. Even today, she is barely discussed in detective fiction forums. Her novels are not available in paperback format although, thank goodness, the e-books are, as well as five omnibuses.
In this, the sixth episode1 of About Murder, She Wrote, I kick off a series about forgotten (but fantastic) mystery writers, starting with Dorothy Simpson.
Born and raised in South Wales, Dorothy Simpson studied modern languages at Bristol University. Afterwards, she moved to Maidstone, Kent and worked for many years as a high school teacher and later, a marriage guidance counsellor.
“You may think that marriage guidance counsellor to crime writer is rather a peculiar career move but although I didn’t realise it at the time, the training I received was the best possible preparation for writing detective novels. Murder mysteries are all about relationships which go disastrously wrong and the insights I gained into what makes people tick, into their interaction and motivations, have been absolutely invaluable to DI Thanet, my series character, as have the interviewing skills I acquired during my years of counselling.” Simpson on her website,
In 1975, while convalescing from a long illness, she tried her hand at writing a novel (just like Agatha Christie, who began writing The Mysterious Affair at Styles while recovering from the flu). The result was a standalone suspense novel that didn’t do well. Simpson quickly realised what was missing—a recurring lead whom readers could get to know slowly over many books.
Enter Inspector Thanet
She set about creating Luke Thanet, a mild, pipe-smoking detective inspector who works for the CID in Sturrenden, a fictional town in Kent. He is assisted by the keen, but diffident, Sergeant Mike Lineham. Other recurring characters include Thanet’s wife Joan, his children Bridget and Ben, and forensic surgeon Dr.Mallard.
All these characters are introduced in The Night She Died, the first Thanet novel, and they age naturally over the next 14 books. Thanet’s children are little more than toddlers when we first meet them but by the last book, his daughter is having a baby. This keeping pace with time is one of the examples of the realism that characterises Simpson’s books.
The other is the fact that although Sturrenden is fictitious, it is closely inspired by the Kentish towns and villages that Simpson knew well. The county comes alive in her succinct, yet rich descriptions of the station town, suburban neighbourhoods, quiet villages, and cul-de-sacs lined by posh houses. It’s partly thanks to her that I planned a holiday to Kent in 2019.
Inspector Thanet is a very real character. Apart from a slightly dated preference for pipes over cigarettes, he has no eccentricities like Sherlock Holmes’ opium addiction or Hercule Poirot’s penchant for order and method. The very first page of the very first book presents him in a less-than-heroic fashion—he is lying on the living room floor doing physiotherapy because he’s thrown out his back lifting a lawn mower. This bad back keeps acting up across multiple books, almost as a reminder to how human Thanet is.
Interestingly, Simpson—who describes suspects and minor characters in detail—never describes Thanet physically. All we know is that he is a lean man of average build. In my head, I imagine him as a younger version of DCI Tom Barnaby, played by John Nettles in Midsomer Murders, possibly the longest running detective TV series that deserves its own episode.
I also like that unlike many lead detectives who are brilliant, eccentric, asocial, or all of the above, Luke Thanet is none of the above. He is an ordinary person of reasonable intelligence who is curious about people, compassionate, yet dogged in the pursuit of an investigation. He notices details, does not rush, and lets things come together in their own time. Thanet’s approach to crime solving gives the books a gentle, deliberate, meandering quality. They aren’t as light or mindless as cozy mysteries but they’re also not set at a nail-biting pace.
The victim is the crux.
Dorothy Simpson describes herself as a crime writer rather than as a mystery writer, and I agree. Her books contain clues and multiple suspects with motive, means and opportunity—but they are a lot richer than mere puzzles. There's beautiful scene setting and memorable character studies. Characters who seem ordinary at first, like regular people you see around you. Yet they have depth and shades to them that gets peeled off in layers. She gets the psychology of the murderer right every single time.
But, Simpson writes, everything starts with the victim.
I’m often asked where my ideas came from, but it really is very difficult to say. Occasionally, as in Six Feet Under or Suspicious Death, it was from a newspaper story or headline. Sometimes it was from a theme which had been floating around in my mind for many years before I saw how to use it in a novel, as in Last Seen Alive or Close Her Eyes. But it usually started with an idea of who the victim was, and why he or she had been killed.
The victim was almost invariably the central character in my books even though he was dead before the story began, because everything revolved around him. Once I had an idea of who that victim was I would spend two or three months building up a sound idea of his character, circumstances and past history, then working outwards from him, so to speak, to sort out his relationships with other people, one of which would have resulted in the present tragedy.
The books are, in equal part, police procedurals because they show you how a typical investigation worked in 1980s Britain. Nothing is withheld from the reader. There is no clever detective making cryptic remarks (Hercule Poirot and his lists) or spouting esoteric knowledge about types of sand (Dr. Thorndyke) or cigarette ash (Sherlock Holmes). DI Luke Thanet and Seargent Lineham follow up clues, interview suspects, and do the leg work needed to solve the murder.
The fact that these novels fall somewhere between cozies and thrillers, the fact that they’re not set in exotic locations, that they’re about ordinary people committing ordinary crimes, unraveled by a perfectly unremarkable ‘good person’ detective is possibly why they weren’t runaway hits. But having read all fifteen, some multiple times, I believe they’d have made an excellent TV series. And Dorothy Simpson certainly deserves a wider readership today. Check out her full list of books here.
She stopped writing around the year 2000 due to a repetitive stress injury, which is a pity. I’d have loved to see how she brought Inspector Thanet into the era of smartphones and CCTV cameras. On the other hand, I was delighted to know from her son Mark that she lived a full, long life.
Movie of the Week
Kishkindha Kandam, a fantastic Malayalam mystery/thriller is currently in theatres and worth a watch. Named after the fourth kāṇḍa (book) of the Ramayana, this story is set in the dense Kallepathi reserve forest, where a handful of residents co-exist with hundreds of monkeys. When the gun belonging to ex-military officer Appu Pillai goes missing, it sets in motion a chain of events that nobody could have predicted, unraveling dark secrets. I really can’t say anymore without spoiling parts of the story, so go watch this on the big screen (yes, subtitles are available!) It’s excellently scripted and features stellar performances and stunning visuals.
Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Trivia of the Week
Last week, I wrote about the only murder mystery written by the creator of Winnie The Pooh. This week, let me tell you about six non-mystery novels written by the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie.
Agatha became world-famous in her lifetime, but her popularity had its disadvantages. Everybody wanted her to write murder mysteries…and nothing else. But as a writer, she had more stories to tell and wanted to experiment with other genres.
When she wrote Giant’s Bread in 1930, her publishers were dismayed. The public was expecting another mystery as mindblowing as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, not the emotionally charged story of a musical genius. So she decided to publish it under a pseudonym.
Under the name Mary Westmacott, she went on to publish five more novels that are sort of genre-defying. They feature fascinating characters, social commentary and interesting psychological studies. Today, they’re all published under her own name but disappoint readers who pick them up expecting mysteries. Annoyingly, they’re sometimes marketed as ‘light romances’ which could not be farther from the truth!
My personal favourites among the Westmacott books are:
Absent in the Spring - one of the finest books ever written (by Christie or anyone else).
A Daughter’s A Daughter - a brilliant book about the relationship between mothers and daughters.
Unfinished Portrait - the most autobiographical of her works apart from her autobiography itself.
My third episode on locked rooms vs impossible crimes vs closed circle mysteries didn’t get as many reads as the others; plugging it here for anyone who missed it.
That’s it for today. Tell me, what are you reading right now? 📚
I should probably call this an issue but I like the idea of naming my newsletters the way TV shows are named—with series and episode numbers. So, episode it is.
Oh wow I wonder if NCIS medical examiner Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard (played by the recently deceased David McCallum) is named after Simpson's Dr. Mallard.
The mail from Mark was the icing on the cake in this episode. Thanks for doing so much legwork yourself, Gowri. What a delight this stack is <3