Initially, L. J. Hurst worked in the backrooms of the media industry. He now divides his time between work for an international scientific publisher and a rather more British independent bookseller. In years past he was a regular attendee at the Shots on the Page Festivals from whence Shots Mag sprung
The late Colin Watson identified a village where, between the Wars, all those ghastly murders took place one after another, before yet another quiet and unassuming resident was discovered to be a serial-killing psychopath: the village, Watson said, was called Mayhem Parva. It must a phrase which stuck, for the word Mayhem has re-appeared recently in Janet Maslin’s New York Times review of Kate Atkinson: Atkinson and Tana French, says Maslin, write “mayhem-centric books that should not be regarded as genre fiction”. Just one county down from Atkinson’s Yorkshire, Roz Watkins is giving good reason to add her Derbyshire to Mayhem-ia.
In her first book, The Devil’s Dice, Watkin’s protagonist, DI Meg Dalton, was investigating the caves in the north of the county (where many years earlier Conan Doyle had placed the horror of Blue John Gap), but now she has moved south a little, to the wooded sides of the Derwent Valley (note to American readers: the Derwent valley is similar in appearance to the Hudson Valley, but it has a lot more history). She has kept real names of some places, and others have been re-named if not re-imagined. Then, through the wooded hillsides she sets a child running in blooded clothes: undergrowth and trees making it difficult to find the house where the first victim is to be located.
Dalton goes to investigate. She finds murder, the child who cannot remember exactly what has happened and – eventually - a mother whose journeys through Matlock cannot be matched to the CCTV film the police replay. Even those who live in the woods, though, and gaze into the limestone gorges of the Peak, are not free from high-tech: there are characters alive due to elaborate surgery, challenging pharmacology, psychiatrists who can and cannot use computer conferencing. There are also more deaths, threats, and fear. Then snow starts to fall.
DI Dalton discovers that no one can be trusted at first meeting – shocking admissions brought out in clever interviews carry the story forward, but so do other events like the thing on the front door when she eventually goes home. Mayhem!
Part of the conclusion depends on an explanation of what is happening elsewhere in the world, and since this book was published (in April 2019) more news stories have emerged confirming the true horror that Watkins has used as a basis in reality for her novel. Derbyshire may not have the large cities and conurbations to which Atkinson or French can send their investigators, but that does not mean that the real world cannot invade such an otherwise forgotten part of the country.
