Christine Tipper

Cosy murder, cups of tea, and the odd body on the beach

Dear reader,

Welcome back. Settle in, because there’s rather a lot to catch up on this week: a real-life honour for a very fictional crime scene, a confession about starting over, and favourite authors. Let’s get into it.

🐾 Sprite’s Corner

In which Paige Harper’s ever-loyal Norfolk Terrier shares her thoughts

Sprite trotted into the kitchen this morning very pleased with herself, tail going like a metronome, and announced (in the way only a small dog with strong opinions can) that Exmouth Beach — yes, that Exmouth Beach, the one where Paige nearly ruined a good pair of boots investigating a body washed up on the beach in Murder on Exmouth Beach — has just been named the best beach in the whole of the UK and Ireland.

It’s official: the AA ranked it top of 228 Blue Flag beaches, praising the paddleboarding, the kitesurfing, and the sheer number of cafés along the front. Sprite, predictably, cares only about the cake crumb potential. Paige, is delighted for the town, though she did mutter something about hoping this summer’s day-trippers don’t go digging where they shouldn’t.

“Best beach in the country,” Sprite said, settling into a sunbeam. “Fewest bodies, ideally.”

On Knowing When You’ve Taken a Wrong Turn

I’ll let you in on something I’ve been sitting with this month. The new novel — the one set in Cornwall — wasn’t working. I could feel it for weeks before I let myself admit it: scenes I was avoiding, a plot I kept having to prop up with explanation, a main character I didn’t much want to spend time with. All the warning signs were there, and I ignored every single one of them, the way you do when you’ve already sunk a lot of time into something.

Eventually I stopped pretending. I put the draft aside and started again, properly, from the beginning. It’s a strange kind of relief and a strange kind of grief at the same time — all those words, gone. But I’ve learned, book after book, that this is simply how it works for me. It happened with Paige. It happened with the forensic artist. There were several versions of both of those series that never saw daylight, false starts I abandoned because they weren’t quite right, before the story I actually meant to tell finally showed itself.

I don’t find my stories by planning them perfectly – if at all! I find them by writing wrong versions over and over until the right one appears.

So here’s my question for you this week: what have you started — a book, a job, a garden, a relationship, anything — where you realised partway through it wasn’t going right, and were brave enough to begin again? I’d love to hear about it. Just hit reply.

A Time Machine

Which authors would I’d love to meet, living or dead? On the crime side, I’d happily corner Karin Slaughter, Jonathan Kellerman or Kathy Reichs at a festival and not let them leave. But if I genuinely had a time machine, there’s only one name on my list: Sue Grafton. It was Kinsey Millhone — sharp, funny, entirely her own woman — who first made me fall for female sleuths, right back with A for Alibi. Every Paige Harper mystery owes her something. I’d love the chance to tell her so.

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Until next week,

Let the adventures continue,

Christine (and Sprite, underfoot as ever)