Author Jane Casey on ‘Everything She Didn’t Say’
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What is Jane Casey’s new novel Everything She Didn’t Say about?
My next guest has garnered millions of fans for her detective fiction series of novels featuring Maeve Kerrigan and D.I.
Josh Derwent. Her new novel, which hits the bookshops in a few days' time, steps away from Maeve's world. Instead, it's a standalone novel based in the rugged landscape of Mayo and the streets of Dublin, it has to be said. It's called Everything She Didn't Say, and it begins with a murder scene and a dead body in the suitably named Shadow House. The novel's author, and full disclosure, my first cousin, Jane Casey, joins me on the line from London. Morning, Jane. Good morning, Pat. How are you? I'm very well. Now, all your fans in Newstalk want me to ask you, how is Maeve? How is Josh?
Oh, they are very well. I'm nearly finished writing next year's book, which is Back to Maeve. So nobody needs to worry. Like, I've taken a bit of friendly fire about not writing a Maeve book this year, but don't worry, there's one coming next year.
Now, when did this book form in your imagination, the latest book, Everything She Didn't Say?
It actually was during the pandemic, weirdly. I think just because I was thinking about being in places that I loved and being in County Mayo and just that kind of setting, I thought I really want to write something set there. So it's been kind of gestating for a long time and just waiting for the right moment to write it has been a matter of patience.
And the question of writing a book about your native Ireland, I mean, did that put extra pressure on you?
Oh, for sure. Yeah, I was terrified. And like I still am. I'm really worried that people will kind of read it and not feel that it's true to life. But that was something that I was really careful about when I was writing it.
What I found interesting about the book is that you don't kind of make concessions in outlining to people, you know, this is Mayo, this is the Garda Síochána. Well, that is the Irish police force. You call them the guards or the Gardaí and you don't make an apology or an explanation for that. You use words like Egypt, colloquial words, skull for school, for example. And, you know, you expect your reader to be intelligent enough to cop on quickly.
That's it. I mean, well, the world's knowledge is in our pockets these days. So anybody can look up anything that they don't find familiar. But I also think like if you read a Scandinavian novel, they use kind of the language of the place and it's part of the culture. And yeah, I just really wanted it to feel authentic and not like I was explaining too much.
Now, how much do you want to tell us about the plot? Because there are a number of female characters and there are obviously the Gardaí, both male and female, featured principally two males.
That's right. It's a twisty plot and it is difficult to talk about without spoilers. So all I would say is it begins with two male Garda detectives turning up in a very remote part of North Mayo. And they're there to interview a woman who's turned up covered in blood, but she has no injuries. And she says to them that she has been staying in a cottage with her best friend and the best friend has disappeared. But that is, of course, not the full story.
Not the full story. I don't know whether you ever saw the movie, the Kurosawa movie Rashomon in your college days in Oxford or whatever, where you have a murder plot, I think it is. And the different characters give their narrative of what happened in the murder. But each one is utterly different from the other.
That's right. And you get a new perspective as you're going along. That's very much what this book does, I think. I sort of want readers to feel like they're investigating it with the guards, like every little bit of information kind of changes the picture that you're kind of making up in your mind of what happened and who was there even. So, yeah, that's the idea.
Now, your two detectives, one of them is different. He's not what you typically expect from a guard and the other very much is. So the formation of those two individuals.
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