Murder in a Heatwave

Shedunnit

Caroline Crampton

Books, Arts

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the temperature rises, don't lose your cool. Thanks to my guest Cecily Gayford — you can find more information about Murder in a Heatwave and all the other anthologies she has edited via the website for Profile Books. Be aware: there are spoilers in this episode for the the story "The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran" by Dorothy L. Sayers. There are non-spoiler details given about the other books listed below. Mentioned in this episode: — Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie — A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black — The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch — Murder in a Heatwave, edited by Cecily Gayford Related Shedunnit episodes: — Episode 1 of "Mysteries of Summer": Cricket and Crime — Murder on Holiday — Death Under Par NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/murderinaheatwavetranscript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tempers flaring, simmering tension, anger boiling over.
0:10.1	A lot of the language that we use to describe the bursts of violent emotion that can result
0:14.8	in the murder for a murder mystery have to do with hotness and heat.
0:21.0	It's an image so common that I don't think we even give it much thought.
0:25.0	The association of a volatile or escalating situation with a rising temperature that makes
0:30.3	everything feel out of control is automatic.
0:34.5	For crime fiction, where every story involves some kind of boiling over incident and then
0:39.1	the investigation of its aftermath, I think it's worth looking a little more closely
0:43.8	at this association between heat, emotional volatility and violence.
0:49.5	When the world itself is getting hotter and more and more places are experiencing extreme
0:54.1	heat in summer, it feels rather grimly appropriate.
0:58.2	And so today we're experiencing murder in a heat wave.
1:17.2	Welcome to She Done It. I'm Caroline Crampton.
1:24.2	This is the second part of She Done It's mysteries of summer trilogy,
1:32.6	in which I'll be taking a closer look at how writers from the golden age of detective fiction
1:37.3	incorporated the classic elements of an English summer into their murder mysteries.
1:42.3	Today we're looking at heat and heat waves, but you can find the first episode which was about
1:47.0	cricket in your podcast app now, where you can also subscribe so you don't miss the last installment.
1:55.0	The heat of summer has proved to be a very useful tool for the detective novelist.
2:00.5	From Agatha Christie's classic opening scene of sunbathe as roasting themselves like so many
2:05.6	pieces of meat in 1941's evil under the sun, to the boiling hot murder scene set in 1950's Dublin
2:13.3	in Benjamin Black's A Death in Summer, there were plenty of instances where turning up the
	...

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