Escapism in fiction is just the thing for armchair travellers wishing for sun
They say when you’re a writer, you’re always writing. Ultimately I think that was something a writer made up to excuse faffing about on the internet for ten hours a day. But maybe there is some truth in it. When you’re a crime writer, nothing is safe, not even something as benign as holiday research. If you’re anything like me – sun-starved, will travel – you may have spent January so far googling luxury holidays in far-flung places. This is supposed to be nature’s pivot, we tell ourselves at the beginning of the month, consigning anything sparkly – whether sartorial or alcoholic – to the Narnia that is the back of the wardrobe.
But as the new year marches on, the realisation inevitably sets in, as brutal as a crunchy snowball to the face, that no matter how assiduously we post our commendable new year’s goals on Instagram, a long couple of icy winter months still lie ahead.
My coping mechanism – apart from taking vitamin D supplements – is searching for dream holidays. The more unlikely I am to go on them, the better. As long as I can do it from the comfort of my own laptop, I’m happy. The chance that I’ll actually book any is about as likely as being knocked out by a coconut, but browsing reams of spectacular aerial shots of private islands, where floating eco lodges are anchored in sparkling azure water, and words like ‘breathtaking’ ‘secluded’ and ‘sumptuous’ are bandied about a lot, is balm for the Januarybattered soul.
In fact, the more breathtaking, secluded and sumptuous, the better. In this fantasy, private islands are a given, and azure water is as bog standard as a croissant at a continental breakfast.
No tropical paradise is off limits in our fantasy getaway. No white sands fringed with swaying palm trees too clichéd for our virtual vacation in order to combat the effects of the dreaded Blue Monday, which fell on 15 January this year.
The concept of the most depressing day of the year was coined by a travel company in 2005. January is widely accepted as the most popular time of the year to book holidays, so it makes sense to pinpoint it to a day. Making people think they need blue skies and sangria in order to survive a completely made-up phenomenon must be the ultimate marketing triumph. Which in turn, must make me a marketer’s dream target demographic (read: gullible).
As tends to be the way with these things, I usually get a little carried away. Scratch the idea of merely visiting paradise. No, I am moving there. For research purposes, of course. Surely, three months volunteering at a turtle sanctuary in the Indian Ocean is the least we can do for the planet.
My husband, who is used to my whims, isn’t buying my suitcase of dreams. My hopes for becoming a digital nomad dashed, I continue on my quest for holiday inspiration, and things begin to take a darker turn.
If being a writer means always writing, even when you’re not, being a crime writer means that the never-not-at-it divil who lives rent free in your imagination will end up using all your lovely holiday research as location scouting for the perfect murder mystery. It seems I’m not alone in that line of thinking.
Escapism in fiction is just the thing right now for armchair travellers wishing for some winter sun, and there seems to be a notable trend in publishing at the moment for ‘destination’ thrillers – novels with luxurious, physically beautiful settings, with a ‘locked room’ element to the plot. Before I know it, my dream holiday has turned into destination nightmare and I’m in my element.
Agatha Christie set her one of her most famous novels, Murder On The Orient Express, on board a transcontinental luxury train, where a man is murdered in his cabin overnight when the train gets stranded in deep snow.
It’s also a perfect example of a ‘locked room’ mystery, whereby there is a closed cast of characters and thus a limited number of suspects.
Suddenly my inner divil has gone into overdrive. All bets are off when it comes to looking up fancy hotels, chateaus, trains and private planes. There’s not a chance I’ll ever actually stump up the thousands required to secure the booking, much less set foot there, but as long as it’s in the name of research, it’s all good.
I hit a wall when I’m trying to pick a setting for this great novel which I haven’t yet written. A luxury train journey in Peru? A vineyard in Tuscany? A boat on the Mississippi? Suddenly escapism has started to feel an awful lot like hard work. Then as a bit of an escape from the escapism, I remember the work that I’m actually supposed to be doing while I was looking for some respite from the cold weather and started planning to write a destination thriller which I don’t have time to write. Whoever said writers are always writing has a hell of a lot to answer for.