A Homecoming Novel
Author Sara Sheridan’s work is inspired by history and mystery
EDINBURGH-BASED writer and activist Sara Sheridan has a great passion for history. The bestselling author has written more than 20 books during her celebrated career – including both mystery novels and works of non-fiction.
Sara’s golden age novel On Starlit Seas was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Prize 2018, and in 2019 she remapped Scotland according to female history in Where are the Women.
Yet Sara is perhaps best known for her popular Mirabelle Bevan Mysteries, a series of crime books set in 1950s Brighton. This month sees the release of book eight, Highland Fling, a novel which Sara was particularly excited to write.
“I’ve been dying to write this book for ages,” she says. “It’s set in 1958, and Mirabelle goes to the Highlands with her partner, superintendent Alan Mcgregor, to visit his family. It’s their first real holiday together and Mirabelle thinks that they’ll be staying on a farm, but it turns out to be this massive home estate.”
Mirabelle and Alan have scarcely arrived when the body of an American fashion buyer turns up brutally murdered. The tragic incident plunges the local village into disarray, and Mirabelle can’t help but investigate.
“I’ve been a big Agatha Christie fan ever since I was a kid, so I was really excited to write this book because it’s very Christie-like. It’s a traditional, country house murder mystery, but set here in Scotland.
“It was fun for me because it was like coming home,” Sara says. “It was like I was bringing Mirabelle home.”
Although Sara has always been an avid reader, the author started her career on an altogether different path – working as a senior administrator at a university. She decided to turn her hand to writing fiction, during a difficult period in her life.
“I’d just separated from my first husband,” Sara says. “I had a baby and was finding things quite difficult. I had a full-time job and I was feeling very stressed out. I remember thinking – I can’t look after my child, do this divorce, look after the house, work and do everything else, all on my own.
“One night, I had a drink with a friend who said, ‘Something has to go here, what will it be?’ And I realised it had to be my job. So, we made this list of things I could do from home and one of them was write a book.
“I figured out that a novel is about 72,000 words long, so if I wrote 1000 words a day, five days a week for 14 weeks, I would have a novel. By the way, that’s a terrible plan! Nobody should follow it. But somehow, it worked!
“When I finished writing my novel, Truth or Dare, I sent it off and within three weeks I got my first offer.”
At the beginning, Sara wrote contemporary novels, but soon found herself drawn to historical fiction. In 2012 the first book in the Mirabelle Bevan series, Brighton Belle was published. The idea for the series came quite unexpectedly.
“I had some time on my hands, so I decided to write a short story for my dad, who was brought up in Brighton. But, when I started to write it, I realised how much fun I was having. And that was the beginning of the series.
“I’m a two-books-a-year person, and I alternate whatever I’m writing. I try not to write two Mirabelles back-to-back or two standalone historicals – it keeps things interesting.”
One of Sara’s recent projects, Where are the Women, remaps Scotland, dedicating streets, buildings, statues and monuments to real women, telling their often unknown stories. Sara tells me how the book came about.
“I’d just written a piece for the short story collection Bloody Scotland, published by Historic Environment Scotland, and afterwards, we did a tour of their properties. The next time I saw the publishing manager, James Crawford, I said to him – ‘There are no women in these properties, what’s going on?’
“He thought about it and a few days later, he contacted me and said, ‘You’re right. What do you want to do?’”
“People feel they’ve been cheated, and it’s girls” not just the
Sara told him about a project by American feminist Rebecca Solnit, called City of Women, which saw the writer remapping the New York subway and renaming its stops after women.
“Jamie said I should do that here. I thought he meant remapping the 26 bus route or something, but he said the whole country! I remember thinking, ‘Oh God, how am I going to do this?’ But I decided to just say yes and figure it out later!”
Sara plotted out an alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur’s Seat belongs to St Triduana.
“We don’t commemorate women in our building heritage, but when you’re brought up with it, you just don’t notice. When I meet readers, quite often they’ll tell me that they’re angry – the book has armed people with the knowledge that there are important women in Scotland, they’re just not commemorated.
“People feel like they’ve been cheated, and it’s not just the girls. This is the other thing that is really misunderstood. Some can see that would be important to women, but I say to men – these were your grannies, too. It’s not that I’m not proud of our male heritage – I am. It’s just that it’s only half of the story.”
The book has already made an impact in Scotland. “I’ve had calls from local councils, telling me they found the book interesting and asking if they can try and follow some of it. I’ve also been involved in Claire Mitchell QC’S campaign to legally pardon the Scottish witches and put up a national monument in their memory.”
This year will see Sara writing another two historical books – the ninth Mirabelle Bevan Mystery, Celtic Cross, and The Fair Botanist, a novel set in Edinburgh in 1822.
“I’m always drawn to two periods of history – the 1950s and the 1830/40s. I find that late Georgian, early Victorian era really fascinating. That’s when the empire rose and fell – it’s so much part of our national identity.
“I’ve always been really interested in history and how history hasn’t changed. It’s just developed. Every book I’ve ever written has come about with me saying, ‘Hang on a minute, why don’t we know about this? Why don’t we examine that?’ I can’t think of a single book I’ve written where that hasn’t been the case.”
Highland Fling