I recently heard a talk on the subject: Crime Writing by Vaseem Khan, Chair of the British Crime Writers' Association and author of two series of detective novels set in India.
He made the point that every book should have a theme which set me wondering about the theme for my Maybridge Mysteries series.
So what, exactly, is a theme?
It's not an idea, or a plot or even a genre.
The theme of a book is not what happens in the story; it refers to its deeper meaning, the complex ideas that are driving the narrative.
One of the examples he gave was Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton. It's an adventure, a thriller, science fiction and there's a touch of horror in there, but the theme is about what happens when technology is used unchecked.
This is especially relevant today with the big discussion about AI and I'm confident that we'll see any number of books on the subject – not just non-fiction, but crime, thrillers and doomsday scenarios – appearing before very long.
Blacktop Wasteland by S A Cosby is about race relations, as is John Grisham's A Time to Kill, while Still Life by Louise Penny is about small communities.
The themes in romantic fiction are much bigger than the simplistic boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl or instalust scenario that tends to be portrayed in the popular press. Even the shortest books deal with the widest range of human experience. While the story's concept will be love, theme is what it says about love.
Coming of age, love is blind, free will, fate, healing, loss, identity, sacrifice. Finding your theme will give your own story real depth.
Classic literary themes include coming of age, good against evil, identity, justice, loneliness, family, corruption.
The inspiration for my first crime novel was an Open University documentary about the appalling treatment of poor, uneducated women in the last century. While I hadn't consciously thought of a theme, it was there from the beginning.
Violence against women.
Not just murder but abuse, mental violence and manipulation not just by men but by the state, who have always seen women as dangerous and used power to silence them.
Thankfully coercive control has recently been recognised in law as a crime, but poor, uneducated women who find themselves in jail are usually there as the result of manipulation by a man, (Not speculation. A family member worked for some time for the prison service, visited women’s prisons and witnessed this at first hand.)
Liz Fieding
Liz Fielding met her husband when they were both working in Zambia and were keen members of the
Lusaka Theatre Club. He was playing John de Stogumber in St Joan, and she was the pageboy to the Earl of Warwick.
He swore it was the purple tights that got him.
Years spent in Africa and the Middle East provided the background to many of Liz's romances. Her first, An Image of You, was set in Kenya, in a place where they had spent many happy weekends on safari. It was plucked from the slush pile because the feisty feminist heroine made her editor laugh. Emotion touched with humour has been the hallmark of her work ever since.
After writing 70 books for Harlequin Mills and Boon, Liz has now turned to crime, signing with Joffe Books
for three "Maybridge Mysteries", the first of which, Murder Among the Roses, is published on 18th April.
Liz Fielding on the web:
Website Facebook X. Instagram TikTok
Liz Fielding has a new book out:
MEET ABBY FINCH. SHE’S A BUSY MUM OF THREE, AN EXPERT GARDENER AND THE STAR
OF YOUR NEW FAVOURITE COZY MURDER MYSTERY.
One part jealousy. Two parts rage. Somewhere in Abby’s sleepy little village, the perfect murder is brewing . . .
Abby enters the Maybridge Flower Show, never dreaming for one moment that she’ll win the gold. Or an invitation to appear on telly, alongside gardening legend Daisy Dashwood!
Some people say Daisy’s a tiresome diva. But starry-eyed Abby can’t wait for the cameras to start rolling. Until . . .
Daisy staggers out on stage. Only to collapse at Abby’s feet.
Her demise might seem like a tragic accident — resulting from a cocktail of booze and hay-fever medicine.
But Abby’s not so sure. She starts digging, to uncover shifty suspects at every turn. From snarky co-stars to a toy-boy
lover, they all had reason to want Daisy dead and gone.
And that’s not the only puzzle playing on Abby’s mind . . .
In life, Daisy went nowhere without her trusty caddy of healing teas. Now it’s vanished.
What if someone’s been tampering with Daisy’s favourite cuppa?
Buy on:
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Multiple Giveaway Alert!
Kindle copy of Murder Among the Roses
Kindle copy of Murder Under the Mistletoe
Kindle copy of Murder in Bloom
Audio codes for Murder Among the Roses & Murder Under the Mistletoe
Let us know in the comments which giveaway would you like to go in for!
