Suspend Disbelief
From the stunning Scottish island of Bute, Nina Allan weaves murder mystery with otherworldly themes for a spellbinding story
Murder mystery comes to the Isle of Bute in Nina Allan’s new novel
BUTE-BASED author Nina Allan has become famous for penning the kind of spellbinding “weird fiction” that she fell in love with as a child.
The writer’s fourth novel, The Good Neighbours is a compelling murder mystery filled with superstition, fairy folk and murder houses, set on Nina’s beloved Isle of Bute.
“The Good Neighbours tells the story of Cath, a photographer, who returns to the island where her best friend Shirley was murdered as a teenager,” Nina says.
“The island community has always believed that it was Shirley’s father, Johnny Craigie, who killed his daughter and the other members of his family, but there has always been something about that explanation that hasn’t sat right with Cath.
“She didn’t like Johnny, but she can’t see him being a killer either. When Cath decides to take a break from her life in Glasgow and pursue photography, she returns to the island where she spent her teenage years.”
During her visit, Cath uncovers Johnny Craigie’s secret obsession with the disturbed Victorian painter Richard Dadd and local myths. This taps into Nina’s intrigue about other worlds.
“Since I was five or six, I have loved the idea of a hidden world literally beneath our feet that has its own rules. For me, it only takes a small leap of imagination to envision this fairy world. I’m not saying I believe in it myself, but I can imagine believing!”
In the novel, Cath carries out her investigations alongside a photography project on murder houses, inspired by an article on people’s experiences living in a place where murder has been committed.
“One of the houses featured in the article was where Julia Wallace was murdered. She was killed in 1931 in an ordinary Victorian terraced house in Liverpool. It was one of those murders that dominated the papers at the time and was never solved properly.
“The article was about the guy who was living in that house now. He’d had these extraordinary experiences where people would suddenly turn up and say, ‘hey, can I have a look at the room where the murder happened?’ or would just start taking photographs through the
window, as if the building wasn’t a normal house with somebody living inside.
“I just found the idea that every house has a story, and that it might be a dark story, really fascinating. I loved the idea of Cath becoming fixated on the same thing.”
Nina originally planned to set The Good Neighbours, in Devon. It wasn’t until Nina and her partner, author Christopher Priest, moved to the Isle of Bute five years ago, that she decided to set the story there.
“Setting the book here allowed me to write about the Bute landscape and descriptions of the places I was getting to know,” Nina says. “We lived in the West Country before but, when visiting friends in Scotland, I was keen to go to Bute because I’d been there on a day trip and the beauty of the place was still lodged in my mind. Both Christopher and I fell in love with the island.
“Then, when the Brexit referendum happened, we really wanted to do something to signal our horror and we thought, well, Scotland didn’t vote for Brexit. Within six months, we were here. We’ve never been happier.” Nina has been writing creatively since she was a child. “I’ve written for as long as I’ve known how to read. I wrote little stories from a young age, often based on books that I wanted to change the ending of or wanted to carry on for longer.
“In my early teens, I fell in love with weird fiction – ghost stories, horror stories, science fiction stories. I was drawn to these strange stories where the world was a bit unexpected and altered.
“Once I got to my teenage years, I was directed into writing about other people’s work. At the time, I didn’t realise what was happening – that I was being steered away from my own thoughts and my own images to discuss other people’s.
“I won’t say I became lost in academia because I loved studying, but I did lose track of myself as a writer.”
“I fell in love with weird fiction – ghost fiction” stories, horror, science
It wasn’t until Nina was in her late 30s that she picked up her pen again, after a friend became a published poet.
“When I started writing again, the first couple of stories were very tentative, but they resulted in a genuine epiphany. I felt I’d come back to where I was meant to be.”
Nina’s work was published in magazines and then in 2011, her first book, The Silver Wind, was released.
“I love using embedded texts, alternate timelines and different points of view,” she says. “The Good Neighbours features both Cath and Johnny’s point of view as well as a fake Wikipedia entry. In my previous novel, The Dollmaker, I included complete fairy tales within the text written by one of the book’s characters. I love playing with form, it’s very important to me.”
Now Nina has rediscovered her calling, the award-winning writer can’t seem to stop. She has already finished work on her fifth novel – a dark tale about conspiracy theories.
“I don’t understand the concept of boredom. I’ve never been bored – there’s always something to look at. There’s always something to think about. I don’t acknowledge the idea of banality. There is always something beneath the surface, and I guess that’s what my fiction reflects.
“If anything, my problem has always been that I have too many books to write! I want each book to challenge me as much as the first one did, because if you’re not scared, you’re not doing it right! Each book pushes you to the limits of your ability and there’s always this thought in the back of your mind of ‘Can I do this? Can I pull this off?’ It’s both exciting and terrifying and I think that’s what creative arts should be.”