Irish crime writers: We set up a WhatsApp — now we ask grisly questions about bodies decomposing

A WhatsApp group devoted to female crime writing? Deirdre McArdle explores the twilight world ahead of a festival dedicated to the popular genre

Sam Blake says the appeal of crime writing is in psychology. “People want to know what made someone ‘do it’." Picture: Alice-Rose Jordan

There are WhatsApp groups, and then there’s the Irish Murderesses WhatsApp group.

It’s made up of Irish female crime writers and was started by authors Sam Blake and Catherine Ryan Howard to keep track of the authors attending the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

Blake, whose real name is Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, tells me how the group came about. “About 10 years ago, a few of us were going to Harrogate and we needed to keep track of who was where so that we could meet up while we were there. So we set up a WhatsApp group.”

The group grew legs and now features a host of Irish female crime writers — and membership is exclusive. “There’s a big Irish posse at the festival now and word of the group has gotten around. Lots of people want to join, particularly English authors who have Irish connections, but we’ve kept the membership to Irish writers.

“Having that connection means we all chat about what we’re doing and where we’re going, and that’s built a really strong sense of community among us.”

Conversations range from grisly questions like “how long do bodies take to decompose in a particular situation?” to the “writing struggle” they all experience like “being stuck on a character or having to write 20,000 words in four days”.

Blake, a best-selling author who has penned 13 crime novels, has made it her business to foster a writing community in Ireland. She founded Murder One – Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival in 2018.

“We have a lot of literary festivals, but they don’t necessarily focus on commercial work or crime. When I looked at Harrogate, which is an enormously successful festival, it just seemed such a gift, knowing how strong our crime writers are here.”

Now in its ninth year – the festival will take place in the dlr LexIcon in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin from October 16-18. A Murder One: Mystery for Kids takes place on October 15 for school groups.

The first day features workshops including a World Building Masterclass with Dave Rudden, The Essentials of Crime Fiction with Professor Henry Sutton, Meet the Agents from Darley Anderson Agency, and Blake’s The Secrets of the Submission Packet. Saturday and Sunday feature panels with writers including Andrea Mara, Jo Spain, Carmel Harrington, Edel Coffey, Gill Perdue, Catherine Ryan Howard, Leodora Darlington, and Rosemary Hennigan discussing topics such as their favourite way to murder someone, what happens when family relationships turn toxic, and killer opening lines.

Blake, conscious of how broad the crime genre is, likes to ensure the festival covers various styles.

“At Murder One, we’ve got Dave Rudd and Ashling Rawle who will be talking about their genre-tweaking books which come from different corners of the crime world. We also have Tanya Sweeney, whose book is very much crime, but when it’s packaged in its pink and green cover, appears much more like women’s fiction. Those three authors are really crossing different areas of the genre. Crime writing is a really broad church; people don’t always have to die.”

Launching just ahead of the Murder One weekend on October 15 is an anthology of stories written by 32 members of the Murderesses WhatsApp group. Called Fear, the collection of stories came about following a chat in the group about fears and phobias.

“Someone in the group mentioned something they were frightened of, I think it was cockroaches. Then a whole load of other people jumped in with other things, and it was wild. Of course, we all write about fear to a certain extent normally, but we were taking it to another level, and when I saw all of the fears in the chat, I thought that would make a really good short story collection.”

Reading about other people’s fears and phobias “makes yours feel more normal”, says Blake. Rather than feeling like an odd one out, you realise plenty of others carry the same thing. All proceeds from the book will go to domestic violence charity Women’s Aid.

Irish female crime writers are enjoying a lengthy period of global attention. Catherine Ryan Howard and Andrea Mara have seen their novels adapted for TV with much success. It’s a golden age, and unsurprising to Blake.

“We have world class crime writers, and they have really come to the fore over the last 10-15 years. I think it’s because a lot of us are a similar age, and it takes a while to build a career, it takes a while to get published, and people have reached that particular age in life where it’s all starting to happen.

The good news, says Blake, is that Irish crime novels travel well globally. She puts that down to our “genuinely distinctive perspective. We have that intense history of occupation, civil war and famine that’s in the DNA of everybody who lives here.”

That’s combined with a storytelling tradition founded on the need to “keep the Irish language alive”, said Blake. “The fact that people had to be storytellers in order to keep the Irish language alive is absolutely vital to that storytelling history.”

But crime fiction has “always been huge”, says Blake. “I think it’s a way of dealing with modern crises. We saw a lot of it in covid, particularly where people were very anxious. And crime fiction boomed because when you’re reading a crime novel, something awful happens, but you know you’re in safe hands, and you know there’s going to be resolution for the characters — it’s sort of controlled drama, as opposed to life generally, which is terribly uncontrolled.”

Housed within that interest in crime writing, is an intense obsession with true crime, traced back to the 2015 Netflix show Making A Murderer.

The appeal is psychology, she believes. “People want to know what made someone ‘do it’. Why killing somebody seems to be a good idea as opposed to just having a conversation.”

Blake herself is drawn to the hazy grey areas: if a good person does a bad thing, does that make them a bad person? That’s exactly what crime fiction digs into too, she says.

But where fiction and fact differ is in the resolution. In true crime, “people don’t always get their comeuppance.” And she’s quick to point out that real life can often throw up plots so implausible an editor would reject them - “is it not easier to get divorced than to murder your wife?”.

In saying that, true crime has informed some of Blake’s own work. Her novel, Your Every Move, was partly inspired by the Suzy Lamplugh case in the UK, a story that was close to home because her mum met Suzy’s mother. But she is quick to point out that writers need to be mindful that these are real victims and real trauma.

“It’s just too awful and too crass to make money out of somebody else’s grief.”

Murder One will take place on October 16-18 in Dún Laoghaire. See:  https://murderone.ie/buy-tickets/