Over the course of three Jake Jackson novels, English writer, editor, podcaster and Radio Times morning co-host, Stig Abell has carved out a crime fiction niche that continues the lineage of the English country mystery, while bringing the literary chops that always make his stories seem fresh.
In The Burial Place, (preceded by the debut, Death Under a Little Sky, and its sequel, Death in a Lonely Place) former London cop, 38 year old Jake, has settled comfortably into his new life in a glorious rural setting with a generous inheritance from his (late) uncle: a house, lots of money, food stores, mystery book library, wine cellar, an expansive property with a lake and perhaps best of all, a large bag of weed for those quiet nights.
Although this set-up sounds too good to be true, Abell transcends any cliches with his evocative descriptions of the hyper-local natural world of Jake’s new property with some of the most gorgeous writing a crime novel could, uh, hope to die for. And Jake, if not the most singular crime fiction hero, proves, over the course of the three books to be likable, savvy and apparently a terrific lover!
In Death Under a Little Sky, the small rural village of Caelum Parvum (Latin for Little Heaven) Jake’s backstory (unhappy marriage when a child can’t be conceived, the inheritance) comes to light and besides the beauty of the area, which he embraces as a sort of life-giving tonic, there is Livia, a mixed-race beauty who is the local veterinarian, and the second major character in the novels.
And the third character each book? It’s that seductive landscape that drives Jake to get up in the morning (and Livia, of course) and deeply relish his “new” life out of London. And with his graceful, sensuous writing about the natural world, one can readily imagine that for Abell, that that glorious domain just may be his favorite.
“Two barn swallows swoop in the field beyond, dipping close to the pools of water that are slowly seeping away into the earth, harvesting unseen insects with blithe efficiency. They twist and turn, as if shocked by invisible wires, their pale chests like flecks of cloud, forked C-shaped tails visible for an instant before they dip away once more. Agitated chirruping fills the air, like squeaks on an old trolley wheel.”
Each novel centers around typical crimes – murders, missing people, general skullduggery of myriad varieties, and as an ex-cop living locally, Jake ends up being pulled in and helping local law. Just what he wanted to stop doing! His love relationship with Livia has burgeoned considerably since the tentative early days in Death Under a Little Sky. But Livia, with a preteen daughter, is not exactly thrilled with Jake being a cop, and in the first two books, tension arose between the two over it. But it’s not a spoiler to say that as the series goes on, Livia is also inevitably drawn in to Jake’s potential misadventures.
The Burial Place refers to an archeological dig in the area close to the church in the village. Roman artifacts have been found; a TV crew is documenting the activity; the village is rife with excitement … until a series of threatening letters begin to arrive, demanding the dig be stopped or else! Working on the site is a disparate group – maybe an eccentric or two, but a killer? Jake – how can he resist? – joins forces with a new local policeman after the first body drops.
In the previous book, Death in A Lonely Place, Abell introduced a new coterie of “helpers,” some from Jake’s police past. Chief among them are two women, the indomitable Martha, who is legless from an incident in her law enforcement career and Aletheia, still a cop. Martha in particular seems, among other attributes, to have an otherworldly ability to access data — CCTV recordings remotely for example. Aletheia brings inside police info that Jake can no longer access. Martha especially is an endearing personality, a cranky but kind recluse who now writes mysteries, smokes a lot of weed, drinks some very steep martinis, yet helps Jake immeasurably on his informal cases.
In a recent interview via email, I wondered if Abell was one of those kids who loved the creepy-crawlies in the backyard? He readily acknowledges, “I did spend much of my childhood outside, and I can instantly recall the sensations of crouching in bosky, brackeny undergrowth, eating half-rotten windfall fruit, or clambering on fallen trees made soft and spongy by the workings of the weather and time. That has left a mark in my memory, even if I don’t see myself as especially rural.
“I think my love for the natural world is actually just a love of tactility, the way things feel (and look and sound and smell). When I am reading, I always remember the cast-off descriptions of surroundings, little scraps of beautiful expression. And so I try to write moments like that myself when I can.”
The Burial Place, after a spooky prologue, embodies that moment right off: “Dawn always comes before the sun. Light glimmers and glows and grows. It swells up, formless, from somewhere hidden beneath the horizon, paling the sky upwards. Minutes pass, faint hues spread like a stain before you can actually see the sun itself, a ball of bolder colour. If you always sleep late, Jake thinks, you would reckon dawn breaks like a peal or a shout, immediate, when instead it seeps in, quiet and unannounced.”
It’s difficult not to wonder whether Abell’s deep affection of nature is part of a broader subtext, one that could be a reflection, say, of a time in England that is either fading into the past, or has it already? Aren’t the Jake Johnson books in part a paean to the quintessential English countryside?
“This is a really acute point,” admits Abell. “I am undoubtedly gripped by a sense of the destructive power of modernity, the notion that progress – the great movement that has, through human history, made the world unarguably better through each generation – feels like it could be hitting a ceiling … the books are an ode to the slower pace of the past. I decided from the beginning that I would hide Jake in the deepest countryside in an internet blackspot so I could spare him some of the impact of technology, which is enjoyable for me as well!”
And your thoughts on Jake’s psyche? Are you like Jake?
“I get a certain amount of stick for this; Jake being a tall, hirsute, long-limbed mess of a man. And I am a little like that myself. I do idealise him probably too much (he is definitively NOT me, though: he smokes weed, drinks, is intensely practical, indomitably rural), and my publishers are always telling me to make him unhappier and sadder. They are right, but I have a fondness for proper and unbending heroes. So there is tension there: I want him to be exciting and dynamic, but – you know what? – I also enjoy his kindness and decency too. We need a bit of that in the world.”
Well, Jake is all that, and his heart is as large as the property he lives on.
Abell adds, “I’m a genre writer, and utterly thrilled to be one, which means that the propulsion of the story has to be the priority. So, I worry I like writing about the sensations of nature TOO much (I don’t want to be too guilty of what Steinbeck called “hooptedoodle”). But you are right: the environment is a character in the book, and I came up with the feel of Little Sky before I rounded out Jake’s character.”
Abell is one busy guy. He is a founder of the digital radio station Times Radio, a former editor of the TLS, and currently co-host of The Breakfast Show on Times Radio. He’s married with three young children. What does a typical day look like for this man with a very full life?
“I wake up at 2.30 in the morning, ahead of presenting a Breakfast radio show. The downside is that it’s soul-shattering and miserable getting up that early. The upside is that I get to sit in a car, hood up, clutching my tattered soul around me, thinking of crime plots for 40 minutes each day as I get driven to the office. Then I go on air from 6 to 10 and get home before lunchtime. From the moment I get on the train until my children come home from school, I try to focus on Little Sky. [I] am religious in my discipline to write at least 1000 words a day.”
Abell is already plugging away on the fifth book in the series and the fourth, A Twist in the River, is in the can. Does he have a plan in terms of ending the series?
“Honestly, I would love to keep writing them, book after book. My favourite literature in the world is long-running series fiction. I love slipping into a world of familiar characters. Literary friends, really. Like John D. Macdonald’s Travis McGee, or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, Wimsey and Vane, Holmes and Watson, and on and on. So I want to keep Jake going as long as readers will have me. The sixth one is going to be set in a modern cult inhabiting a disused fifteenth century monastery, but that’s all I know at this point!”
This series is best read in order of publication, that said, each title can standalone. But to begin with book one, Death Under a Little Sky, will give the reader a genuine sense of how to introduce a protagonist and watch him grow. You’ll also feel as though you’ve spent a week in the English countryside.
“The sun is slowly dipping beneath the horizon, tracing out the same colours as the crocuses in his greenhouse, a deep yellow that threatens to bleed into bronze, soft pink turning to angry purple.”
