Fleur Hitchcock Murder at Snowfall Bookbuzz Blog

A couple of years ago, a bunch of things happened at around the same time.  

Firstly, a sofa, and two armchairs appeared in a layby on the side of a hill on the way to my daughter’s school. Alongside them, a grey metal cabinet.  

And then, my fifteen-year-old daughter developed a strong desire to visit the Christmas lights at Longleat safari park. One of her friends had been, and said it was brilliant.    

Finally, a small but perfectly formed Christmas market reappeared in the centre of Bath. 

I booked the tickets to visit Longleat, and a few days later we noticed that the sofa and the armchair had disappeared from the layby. The metal cabinet hadn’t. 

As we passed it every morning, we began to wonder what might be inside it.  

Then we went to Longleat. It was quite wonderful. We saw tigers, and red pandas, and hyenas and rabbits – but we also saw lions and wolves and, as it got dark, the whole place changed from a park full of wild animals to a theatrical marvel of lighting and sound. Yes, the doughnuts were overpriced, and the fries were overpriced and soggy – but it was magical for all that, and I began to wonder what it would be like in the snow. How would the lights look in a blizzard? How would the animals behave in a snow storm?  

Ideas began to bubble inside my head.  

The next day we drove past the grey metal box again and we convinced ourselves that it was big enough to contain a body. Although we got caught in the traffic jam that crept past the box, neither of us had the courage to get out of the car and check. 

While all this was going on, the Christmas market stalls appeared in the streets of Bath, and the weather got colder.  I popped out from work to buy something at the bottom of town. It took me ages to fight my way through the crowds, and it occurred to me that here, this setting, would be brilliant for a chase. Masses of people, chatter, the smell of mulled wine and roasted nuts, fairy lights overhead – huge golden shop windows, their glow spilling out onto the pavement. All of it shouting Christmas, and warmth and security, and under that, a sense of menace, of something really wrong, a pursuer, a murderer. 

Without properly thinking about it I began to put it all together, and I found the characters of Ruby and Lucas. Ruby, a down-to-earth year eight, longing to take the starring role in the school production of Hairspray, but not quite confident or old enough to push herself forward; and Lucas, her newly acquired stepbrother, who’s given the starring role, that he doesn’t want, and living in a house he doesn’t know, with a stepsister who is studying his every move. 

I thought about their parents too – a loving mum and a delightful, cooking-everything-brilliantly stepdad. Then there’s the headstrong granny, her mum’s excellent workmates, and Ruby’s best friend, Mia. 

They became a babbling collection of friends in my head, and I knew exactly where they lived and how their world looked. All they needed was a mystery, and the grey metal box provided that. 

As I wrote, the mystery darkened, and called for peril. The lions and wolves of Longleat roared, and I called for snow. I love snow, real and imaginary, so I added one of those massive snowstorms where the world stops, the roads close, and nature raw in tooth and claw comes biting back. 

I ramped up the tension, doubled the peril, increased the pace.  

And Murder at Snowfall burst on to the page.