Co-authored Mysteries (part 1)

While not a sub-genre, mysteries that are written by multiple authors deserve special mention. In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss examples of different co-authored mysteries and provide an update on their own.

Discussed and Mentioned

The Fate of Fenella: by Twenty-four Authors (1892)

The Floating Admiral (1931) Members of the Detection Club; Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley

The Documents GHS and Margaret Cole

Robert Eustace (Pen name of Eustace Barton)

L.T. Meade

Dorothy L. Sayers

Ellery Queen (Pen name of Daniel Nathan and Emmanuel Lepofsky)in the Case (1930) Robert Eustace and Dorothy L. Sayers

The Agathas (2022) Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

The Night in Question (2023) Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

James Patterson

State of Terror (2021) Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

Lincoln Child and Douglas Prescott

An Anonymous Girl (2019) Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

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Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but sometimes errors slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi, Brook.
Brook	Hi Sarah, today we’re going to talk about collaboratively writing mysteries. And that’s something that’s pretty near and dear to our hearts recently, isn’t it?
Sarah	It sure is. As listeners will know, we have been co-writing a mystery and sharing our progress with members of the Cartel, and it has been quite an interesting experience.
Brook	It definitely has. And it’s sort of got us interested in learning about other pairs—or groups—who have gotten together to write mystery books together. And um it’s been really fun to learn about this. It’s been really fun for me to learn about this topic this week. What about you, Sarah?
Sarah	Oh, I agree. It’s been really interesting to just learn about all of the different ways that people collaborate.
Brook	Definitely.
Brook	Yeah. So let’s talk about some of those, in broad terms, some of the ways that you might go about writing a mystery together. One is called like the chain method where simply one person starts the story and another person takes over. It might be a pair of people ,or it could be a group of people. And many times they don’t know what the other authors had in mind when they’re doing their portion. There could also be the idea of one of them plots and one of them writes, which we see that in quite a few of the examples that I’m going to give.
Brook	Then you could perhaps divide it up with different points of view of the story, which might be an easier way. I don’t know, easier is a loose term here.
Brook	But you can keep your own tone and your own voice a little easier rather than trying to sound like the other author. And then I’ve also heard where um people get together and they brainstorm and plot the story, but then one of them drafts and then hands it off to the other to edit. So those are just some ideas of ways that groups or pairs may co-author.
Sarah	Yeah, that’s right. And um I don’t know that there’s kind of the right way or the wrong way to do it. I think it’s kind of whatever works for the for the pair or the group. Did you come across The Fate of Fenella?
Brook	No, that is not one that I heard of.
Sarah	Okay, so according to Martin Edwards, this is the first round robin story. And so it’s, I think, very similar to that chain method that you talked about. And it was published in 1891 and 1892, over 24 parts in the magazine The Gentlewoman. And each part was written by a different author.
Sarah	The odd number chapters were written by women and the even number chapters were written by men. And ah we are familiar with two of the authors. Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker each wrote a chapter.
Sarah	So I’ve read the first little bit. It’s in the public domain. But I really, ah just based on reviews that I read about it, get the sense that um they did not collaborate at all. There was not a lot of discussion beforehand. It was, I’m writing a chapter. I’m passing it on to you and you can write the next chapter.
Sarah	So this is from the publisher’s note that was that accompanied the book when it was eventually published. “The publishers claim with no little satisfaction that in this book they offer the reading public a genuine novelty. The idea of a novel written by 24 popular writers is certainly an original one. The ladies and gentlemen who have written The Fate of Fenella have done their work quite independently of each other. There has been collaboration, but not consultation. As each one wrote a chapter, it was passed on to the next and so on until it reached the hands of Mr. F. Anstey, whose peculiar and delightful humor made him a fitting choice for bringing the story to a satisfactory close.”
Sarah	And I do believe that this is a mystery. There’s infidelity and a murder and an investigation. So i I think it would be fun to kind of read and see how wild the plot gets.
Brook	Well, and with that sort of a setup, it’s bound to get kind of wild, right? um And, this came to me over this week. I read The Floating Admiral, which is also a chain, a story written by The Detection Club. So we can talk about that ah later, but um I would but imagine that this one is very similar that the the people that are right in the middle, you know, like number 10 or number 12, they’ve got all of this backstory and material that they somehow have to work with. And I really had to tip my hat to those people. You know, the person who starts it, they’ve got a breeze. But then by the time you get into the middle, it’s getting complicated. And then to be the person that has to tie it all up. I mean, that that’s a feat.
Sarah	Absolutely. Yeah, I’ve read The Floating Admiral a while ago. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t the first of the collaborative stories that those authors wrote, because I think they did some work for the BBC, where they, same kind of thing, they kind of shared as they wrote, each author read whatever it was that that they had written. And then the first time they they did it, the audience competed to guess the conclusion.
Brook	That’s a fun addition to the whole process because ah as the one that you mentioned, this was definitely, that one was definitely done for the sake of, you know, entertaining the audience. I imagine that people were really clamoring to see who’s going to be the author of this one, because these were very famous, at least in their time. And you know where is the story going to go?
Sarah	Yeah, exactly. Well, and the BBC did end up commissioning a few additional, uh, similar series from members of the Detection Club. And then I think from that was the germ of The Floating Admiral.
Brook	I really enjoyed it. I um was impressed in several different ways. One was the fact that, as I said at the beginning, if you were going to do ah divide up the work, for instance, with two different points of view, you wouldn’t necessarily have to worry about ah replicating tone and voice. But in this situation, they did. There’s a main narrator who is our ah sleuth. And that was done beautifully. And I think that that really spoke to the skill of each of those authors, because they just carried it through so well.
Sarah	Mm hmm.
Brook	And if there was a quirky character, they were able to continue and make that character feel the same throughout the story. Very highly skilled. um And I also thought it was really fun because sometimes they would end a chapter their chapter right in the middle of a conversation. And the next, you know, so I just had to giggle at how this was definitely a game to them as well. And it was like, okay, take that Agatha Christie and where are you going to go from here?
Sarah	And remind me, Brook, as a reader, you know who’s written which chapter, correct?
Brook	Correct. Like each chapter has a title, which is actually pretty humorous. And then by Agatha Christie or Ronald Knox or whoever. So, I enjoyed that as well. I don’t know if ah like the original publication, if it was done that way, but at least now you’re able to see who wrote each one. And because we’ve read several of these now, many of these, I would say, it was fun to know, okay, this is the Ronald Knox chapter.
Sarah	Mmhmm, mmhmm.
Brook	And am I going to see some of his um you know signature ah skill there? I really enjoyed the fact that when Agatha Christie’s chapter came along, she introduced ah a great new character to the story, very quirky, very um humorous.
Brook	I just really enjoyed that because, you know, sometimes Christie is um said to not create great characters, that they’re cardboard, they’re just placeholders. And I really think that she is one of the standout characters of the story. And ah again, that was presented by Agatha Christie.
Sarah	It’s interesting when you know which author has written which parts. So, in most of the co-authored books that I’ve read, you don’t know. But there’s a series, there’s two books in it um by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson and it’s called The Agathas. The first book was called The Agathas and the second is The Night in Question. And it’s a YA series and it features two high school aged sleuths who ah come from you know different socioeconomic backgrounds, but they go to the same high school and their love of mystery brings them together as you know I think there’s um mysterious deaths or missing girls maybe in the first one.
Sarah	And to write this, each author took on one of the main characters. So, if it’s a chapter featuring, you know, from the point of view of um one character, then that was always written by Kathleen Glasgow and the other was always written by Liz Lawson.
Sarah	As you said in the introduction, that allowed them to each have their own voice and not really worry about um that continuity, right? They just had to focus on the continuity of that of that character. But most of the other co-authored books that I’ve read, there isn’t that clear distinction. And I think that that’s pretty impressive when two or more people can manage to sound like a single voice.
Brook	Absolutely. And I don’t think that all authors could do that, not just because of skill level. I’m not, I mean, when we look at the group of the Detection Club, I think that that was just a skill that they had mastered, but also just kind of the author’s natural voice. you know If it’s not close, if it’s if it’s not at least similar, I think that’s gonna be a really hard ah melding to make.
Sarah	I was reading about James Patterson, who of course has had so many collaborators. And I was, I can’t remember the name of the author that I was reading about in this interview, but he was already quite um well established before he started working with James Patterson. And he says something along the lines of, “You know, I thought, I knew what I was doing. And this was just a master class in storytelling working with Patterson,” because Patterson has quite a methodical approach, I think, to his collaborations.
Brook	Mmhmm.
Sarah	And so he, Patterson drafts a detailed outline, and that ah apparently can take you know two months for that process. He does get the co-author to contribute. He said that that is a really important part of the process because he wants them to be really bought into the story, and that makes total sense.
Sarah	Then the co-author does all of the drafting and sends um pages to Patterson in 30- or 60-page increments so that they can discuss it and Patterson can give his his feedback.
Sarah	I think that’s really interesting and, and um you know, at at some point, we probably should do a whole episode about James Patterson because he’s really quite an interesting person.
Sarah	But he has had some very famous co-authors as well, where I think in those, he’s taken on more of the writing role and the um celebrity—so he’s worked with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton, for example—I think they’ve provided input, but I’m not sure that they’ve done much of the actual drafting.
Brook	Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting um thing to note that it it sort of flips because um you know the criticism I think sometimes we get of Patterson is that he’s he farms out all the writing. But the fact of the matter is he is ah an author in and of himself and yes, he’s taken on the the writing portion And then they’ve helped do the plot for him because they’ve been the expert in the subject matter. And so very interesting man. I agree. We should definitely cover him in an episode. I feel like his one of I feel like ah his business model is a answer to one of the questions that might come up like, why would you want to collaborate? Why would you want to co-author? And um it can be a business decision just like that because for efficiency and for being able to turn out books, um that’s part of it. And we we have seen that in other franchises like the Nancy Drew books or the Hardy Boys.
Sarah	Mm hmm.
Brook	I mean, those were business decisions to have multiple authors working on a series. Another reason why I think is the creative challenge. I mean, that’s certainly, and the fun of it, was certainly why the detection club was involved in doing the collaborations, although they did become a commercial success, I believe.
Brook	And I think it also can be a great way to balance balance out strengths, you know, ah many times ah somebody’s great at dialogue, ah not so great at narrative or back and forth, whatever your strength is. And then if you have a partner who can kind of balance that out with you, it can just result in a much stronger story.
Sarah	Well, and it’s, I don’t know, in my experience, it’s been really fun.
Brook	Mm hmm. Definitely. And i I think we should share that our method is very similar to the chain method that, ah you know, we discussed at the beginning. ah That idea where where you leave off, I pick up and we we have just kind of discovered the story as we went along.
Sarah	I do think it’s interesting and reading about how others do it has had me thinking about, “what if we did try coming up with ah an outline?” Because that does seem to be how a lot of co-authors approach it. Lincoln Child and Douglas Prescott have written several books together.
Sarah	And this is from their website, you know one of the FAQs. It says, “these days we tend to work up a detailed outline together, passing it back and forth via the cloud until we’re happy with it. Then we assign sequences or related sets of chapters to each author. The other author later revises these chapters. That way we tend to get four hands on just about every word.”
Brook	Oh, that’s very smart, isn’t it?
Sarah	Mm-hmm.
Brook	And it’s not that we haven’t plotted, but we are kind of plot as you go along authors, but I agree. ah Speaking of efficiency, probably that outline is beginning.
Brook	And I love the way that they do that together as well. You know, it’s a living document and they they come up with the the plot outline over time.
Brook	I could see that that would be something that would work well for us.
Sarah	Mm hmm, mm hmm.
Brook	Well, I have some other Golden Age examples of collaborations. If people have ah found some interest in this and would like to go back and look at some books that are written by co-authors, one is G.D.H. and Margaret Cole. And this was a married couple who wrote a series set in Edwardian Britain. They have 28 collaborative mysteries featuring Detective Harry Wilson. And It was said that George did the plotting and Margaret wrote the stories. And they really downplayed the quality of them. They thought they were just for fun, but they were inducted into the Detection Club. So obviously, they were pretty good.
Brook	And then there’s Robert Eustace, which is a pen name of Eustace Barton. And he collaborated on 11 detection novels with L.T. Mead. And he later wrote The Documents in the Case with Dorothy L. Sayers. He plotted that book, ah but it said that later Dorothy L. Sayers regretted not being more involved in the plot because she thought it could have been a little better. And then ah many people may not realize that Ellery Queen, which is a big name in mystery fiction, was actually two people. Ellery Queen is two cousins, aniel Nathan and Emmanuel Lepofsky. And the pair produced novels, screenplays, magazines, and puzzles. And similar to the other pairs mentioned, one cousin typically plotted and the other specialized in writing the stories.
Sarah	That’s such an interesting approach. And we’ve talked about a few examples of that. Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny had a similar approach as well, where um ah I think Louise Penny kind of drafted the outline. And she would write a couple of hundred pages and then send them to Hillary Clinton, who would provide feedback.
Sarah	And um it was really, you know, I think they decided that they were going to do this. It took them a while to land on what their um what their plot was going to be. And I think you might have mentioned this when we’ve talked about this book in the past, where ah Louise Penny had said to Clinton, “what keeps you up at night or what kept you up at night when you were the secretary of state?” And Hillary Clinton came up with three ideas and they decided to go with one of them. I don’t know if they’re going to explore the other two. um That would be, you know, a real treat, I think, because ah I certainly enjoyed State of Terror. I think there’s a ah ah screen, I think the, sorry, I think the film rights were sold for it. So maybe we’ll get to see it on screen as well.
Brook	Oh, I think that would be a great movie. You know, when I think about ah having one person formulate the plot independent of the other one and then the other one writes it, I don’t know how much I like that idea. It makes sense if you’re dealing with, you know, for instance, but a celebrity or somebody who is not an author because they you know that’s not their ah forte. But I don’t know how much I would love to have someone just hand me that the piece of paper and be like, okay, here’s the story you’re going to write.
Brook	I feel like exactly what James Patterson said would really be necessary where He involves that co-author and they at least collaborate some whether or not it’s complete collaboration. At least they have some buy-in because otherwise it might feel just like a school assignment.
Sarah	I agree. I think you would want to be involved in kind of all aspects of it. I think the other side of the spectrum is a pair that I’ve read a couple of their books, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. And I think it was after An Anonymous Girl they are interviewed in the audio book and they talk about their method of working together. And they write in a shared document, but they write it at the same time. So they’re on a Zoom call with each other. And one of them is typing while the other is, I guess, like narrating the the plot or whatever. And, and to me, that sounds like a very, I mean, you’re definitely involved if you’re doing it that way.
Brook	Yes. That is writing together, together. Like to the nth degree. That’s amazing.
Sarah	And they’ve written several books together, so it, you know, it must work for them.
Brook	Yeah. And that just goes back to what we so spoke about right off the top, which is there’s so many different ways to do this and there’s really no right or wrong. It’s whatever works for you.
Sarah	So Brook, this was a really interesting conversation. And as you said, really fun to learn about different ways that co-authors work together.
Brook	Yes, and we’re so interested in this. We’re going to continue the conversation with a special episode next week, so you won’t want to miss that. But for today, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery.