YAShot 2018 Blog Tour | Addicted to Crime
Hey everyone! I’m so excited to be taking part in the YAShot 2018 blog tour. Today I’m here to share with you a guest post from Christi Daugherty. But first a bit of info on YAShot and Christ Daugherty herself!
What is YAShot?
YA Shot is a one-day annual festival based in the centre of Uxbridge (London). The 2018 festival will take place on Saturday 14th April 2018. It’s a day chock full of bookish fun with authors and panels and bookish people all over! In the evening is the UKYA Blogger Awards, with blogger panels (which I’m on one of), which will also be super fun. I’ll be at both so I hope to see you all there!
Christ Daugherty
“As a newspaper reporter, Christi Daugherty began covering murders at the age of 22. She worked as a journalist for years in cities including Savannah, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. Her work eventually took her to England, where she wrote the international bestselling Night School series of thrillers for young adults under the name CJ Daugherty.”
Christi is now on her 9th book after Night School, and has migrated to writing more Adult Crime. After chatting to her about her writing, we decided that it would be interesting to look at the differences between writing crime for YA and writing crime for adults. I hope you enjoy the result as much as I did!
Addicted to Crime
By Christi Daugherty
I was a teenager when I first fell in love with crime.
I read A is For Alibi by Sue Grafton and, as I worked my way through high school, I also read my way through her alphabet of murders. I’m still a fan of her detective, Kinsey Millhone, who had a clever mind and a slightly strange obsession with playing tennis.
Another crime book that stayed with me, was An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, by PD James. Written in 1972 – it was old when I was young. But the overarching ideas of it are universal. I mean, just the title for a start – “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman”. It starts an infuriating argument on the very cover.
I loved that Cordelia Gray didn’t set out to be a detective. She was a lonely, struggling assistant in her early 20s in a tiny, rundown London detective agency – until the owner died, leaving the business to her in his will. Everyone she knew expected her to shut the detective agency down. How could a young woman be a private detective? It just wasn’t right, they all said. And Cordelia thinks she probably will shut it down. But first, she decides to finish a case. Just one.
That is my favourite part. Because all crime readers know what Cordelia doesn’t – she’ll fall in love with the work. How could anyone solve one murder and not want to solve another?
Over the years, I got busy with work and life. For a while, I forgot about my love of crime.
Then, one day, I came across a book called Dupe, by Liza Cody, in a secondhand bookshop. And it all came back. Anna Lee is a young private eye, working for a small detective agency in 1980s London. She races around the city in her battered Triumph, investigating a suspicious death. Like all the best crime novels, Dupe is absolutely addictive. My love for crime was rekindled.
A year later, when I sat down to write my first novel, Night School, I had Anna Lee, Kinsey Milhone and Cordelia Gray in my mind. What were they like when they were younger? I wondered. Where they already inquisitive and rebellious? From that thought, I came up with Allie Sheridan, a rebellious sixteen year old, who is sent away to boarding school after committing petty crimes and getting arrested.
The school is an Eton-like place for the children of the elite. Allie feels completely out of place, there. She still refuses to compromise. Still breaks all the rules. When a student is murdered, and the school tries to cover it up, instead of suspecting their teachers, students point fingers of blame at Allie. The new girl. The one who doesn’t fit in. The one who found the body.
Allie has to solve the crime in order to protect herself. What she uncovers in the process is a conspiracy. One all the adults – and some of the students – have been hiding from her. A conspiracy with her family at its heart.
The Night School series was a bestseller in multiple countries. When it ended, I expected to write another young adult series. I think everyone expected that.
But the character who came to me was 27 years old. She was a crime reporter, like I used to be years ago, in a city in the American Deep South. She has a murder in her past – one that was never solved. One that haunts her. When she covers a murder that looks exactly like that long ago crime, she believes the same murderer might be back. The one who killed her mother. If there’s any chance she might be able to at last solve the killing that has haunted her life, she’s going to take it.
It’s seen a a big jump to move from writing young adult to writing adult crime. But I have to say, I didn’t find it that dissimilar.
Murder is murder, whatever your age. As a crime reporter, Harper McClain has no more right to investigate a murder than Allie Sheridan does. Neither of them is a police officer. The only way either of them can solve the crime is by breaking the rules. And occasionally, breaking the law. They both are absolutely dogged in their determination to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
This adds danger to both stories – in Allie’s case, she risks expulsion from a school she’s come to love, the loss of her friends, and a life she’s just settling into. In The Echo Killing, Harper risks a job that is everything to her. She risks losing the man she’s just fallen for. Losing her life.
Perhaps the stakes seem higher in the adult crime novel. But only, I suspect, because I’m an adult. Everything you have is everything you have, whatever your age. And losing it all might mean losing different things when you’re young. But it’s no less terrifying.
In fact, when I look now at the two books, with their characters – one ten years older than the other – the key similarity is that both women are absolutely determined to solve the crime that plagues them.
And we know they’ll both go on to solve more in the future. Because crime is addictive.
I hope you enjoyed my stop on the tour! Make sure to check out the rest here!
Are you coming to YAShot?
3 Comments
This was so cool! I’m definitely gonna check her books out. I may have found a new fave author!(:
Great guest post! I have to agree that crime is addictive. I can easily get hooked on crime books which is a problem because there are so many good ones out there!
This is such a fab post!
I always find it really interesting when writers talk about how their craft has developed.
And yes, crime is so addictive.
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