Mandy Morton: ‘We were two crime writers trying to solve a murder mystery on a train – and we didn’t have a clue’
The cats of the No 2 Feline Detective agency are back for a Christmas caper aboard a steam train, where a murder mystery game evening turns out to be a bit more realistic than expected.
Author Mandy Morton returns with book 12 in the series, Murder on the Santa Claws Express, in which tabby heroes Hetty Bagshott and her sidekick Tilly are caught up in a murderous family feud.
The books, which are playful homage to Alexander McCall Smith’s cosy crime series, are based on Mandy’s own beloved cats that she shared with her partner Nicola, and the series is set in the 1970s in a town entirely populated by cats who live on a street based on Mill Road in Cambridge.
In this latest mystery, the first meeting between Hetty and Tilly is finally revealed. That’s because fans have been begging to know the origin story of the two cats, explains Mandy.
“The cats live in the back of the Butters Bakery, which is a thread that runs through every story, but readers have been saying they want to know how they met and I thought, well, it’s high time to do it,” she says.
The meeting revolves around homelessness, which is a subject close to Mandy’s heart. She says: “A lot of the books actually have homelessness as a theme. And being a Christmas book I wanted it to have that really serious theme running through it because it is the reason that Nicola and I adopt rescue cats. And bearing in mind the fact that we have in the past adopted elderly cats we don’t, or we aren’t able to, have them for long – maybe two or three years and then we have to say goodbye. So bringing them back in these books is an absolute joy because it brings them back to life again for us.”
Mandy’s main characters, Hetty and Till, are based on the first cats that she and Nicola rescued, but other who have lived with them have now been included in the pages.
She says: ”We currently have two cats, Betsey Trotwood and Stanley. Stanley turned up out of the blue, looking half the size he ought to. We started doing the usual thing of giving him a little bit of meat on top of the shed roof and before you know it it doesn’t take long. Betsey Trotwood was a rescue from the RSPCA six years ago. It’ll be six Christmases since we adopted her and we went all the way to Exeter to find her because long-haired tabbies are not easy to find.
“And then of course we had Hetty And Tilly and in the middle of that we had Molly Bloom, who was a beautiful girl. We lost her a few years back just before we adopted Betsy. She now runs a cafe in the books called Bloomers. So all our lovely cats and even our friends’ cats who they’ve lost do often find their way into these books as characters after they have gone. When I actually sit down to write in the winter, it’s just lovely to have them all around me again.
“All the cats were such different characters. Molly Bloom was accident prone. She’s the only cat we’ve ever owned that actually got her own paw caught in her mouth! We couldn’t light candles when she was in the room because she just walked straight into the flame. So consequently, there’s one or two accidents in her cafe. Hetty was bad tempered but had a heart of gold, so that was easy to write. And Tilly was just so happy to be alive and that’s exactly how I’ve written Tilly in the books.”
In this latest story, Hettie and Tilly are invited to host a Christmas Eve murder mystery aboard the Santa Claws Express. No sooner has the train left the station at Mogbury-on-the-Tilt than our two feline detectives are are put in a dangerous position between feuding families, the Shuttles and the Stokers.
Is the ghost of Hornby Stoker haunting the line? Are there enough sausage rolls in the Biscuit Jar Buffet? Who will hit the buffers at Hissingford Holt? And will Hettie and Tilly’s Christmas be derailed? Hetty and Till plough through red herrings, hot chestnuts and snowbound platforms in a hunt for a festive fiend.
The setting for the book came to Mandy after a themed day out on a steam train.
She explains: “Nicola and I often enjoy days out on steam trains. But the crowning glory was when we decided to sign up for a murder mystery on Bodmin Railway in Cornwall. I’ve never been to a murder mystery dinner before, so we thought, let’s see how they do it. An amateur dramatic society performed a murder mystery on the train while we travelled down the track eating Cornish pasties. It was an absolute hoot.
“There we were, two crime writers sitting on this train trying to solve this mystery and we were absolutely rubbish. We had no idea who did it. But it was hilarious, including the fact we could see the body was still breathing. I then thought, wouldn’t that be a fantastic Christmas adventure for Hattie and Tilly, being detectives on board a train, helping out all the paying customers to try and solve this mystery game and then, suddenly, as always happens in the true traditional Golden Age crime, real bodies start to hit the deck. So it was just an unmissable opportunity and it was an absolute joy to write.”
The book is a novella, which can be devoured in one sitting and is just right for a Christmas stocking, says Mandy.
Murder on the Santa Claws Express is out now, priced £8.99.
