Exclusive interview with author Cassandra Chan who discusses her latest Scotland Yard mystery A Spider on the Stairs
Reviewed by Gabrielle Pantera.
Rating: 4 Stars
HOLLYWOOD, CA: – “I had a splendid time hiking around the area between Appletreewick and Burnsall in Wharfedale, looking for places to stash bodies,” says A Spider on the Stairs author Cassandra Chan. “And then I spent even more time in York, tracing my path along the snickelways [medieval footpaths between buildings], making maps of bookstores and listening to Evensong at York Minster. Because I was setting the story over Christmas, I planned my trip for January which is probably not the optimum time to visit Yorkshire. There was a lot of rain, but it worked out very well in the end.”
Chan’s writing is reminiscent Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. A Spider on the Stairs, set during Christmas, is the fourth contemporary mystery in Chan’s series of novels featuring wealthy Londoners Phillip Bethancourt and his friend Det. Sgt. Jack Gibbons of Scotland Yard. Bethancourt and Gibbons are likable, smart and irreverent at times.
Phillip Bethancourt, visiting his parents home in Yorkshire for the holidays, is bored. He gets a call from his friend, Detective Gibbons of Scotland Yard who’s sent to York to solve a murder, possibly part of the Ashdon serial killings. Another murder occurs, one that doesn’t have any of the serial killer’s MO, but Gibbons checks it out. Bethancourt uses his local connections to gain information on this second murder.
While Bethancourt-Gibbons mysteries come from Chan’s passion for British golden age detective novels, she says the plot of A Spider on the Stairs grew out of the personality of the victim, Jody Farraday. “I really don’t know where all the people running about in my head come from. They’re just there.”
“I knew while I was still writing Trick of the Mind that I next wanted to show Gibbons back on the job, but still recovering from his gunshot wound,” says Chan. “Then I had the idea for the bookstore setting.”
Chan says the most interesting research for her was the setting. “I took a month-long trip to the Yorkshire Dales and the city of York,” says Chan. “I hadn’t been there in more than a decade, and although I remembered liking the area very much, I realized when I sat down to write that I remembered very few details.”
“York is a wonderful medieval town, and Fossgate is chock-full of old book shops like the one I wanted for Spider,” says Chan. “I have to admit I got rather less writing done on the trip than I had planned, but I did make notes of everything.”
Cassandra Chan lives in Florida. She was born in Manhattan and from age four grew up in Westport, Connecticut. She’s currently working on her next Bethancourt-Gibbons mystery. Her website is www.cassandrachan.com.
A Spider on the Stairs by Cassandra Chan. Hardcover, 320 pages, Publisher, Minotaur Books (July 20, 2010), Language: English# ISBN: 9780312369408 $25.99
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