The razor blade scrapes close to my throat. Silently, I pray for a steady hand, trying my best not to imagine the one, firm slit it would take. That’s when I hear the barber speak the words: going anywhere nice this year? The question is, as well as a common opening salvo in small-talk, an invitation to leave the salon chair. To hear not the metallic chomp of scissors, but the hushed rhythm of the ocean. To luxuriate in jasmine and limoncello on a balmy night—somewhere far from home—where all things could be different. In short, the question is an invitation to dream, to indulge wanderlust over the grey quotidian. In a way, the barber’s question is not hugely dissimilar to the crime writer’s when considering a new book (even if blood replaces limoncello, cordite for jasmine). The writer also asks: where to next? And who will be dying there?
Growing up on a North London council estate, I was friends with the Bengali kids next door. I listened, entranced, as they explained the caste system to me. The clearly defined inside and outside. The ones that belong, the others who do not. The rules that are to be lived by. And died by. It seemed so unfair: one’s whole destiny determined by their own birth. But it led to my lifelong interest in closed societies. North Korea. The Berlin Wall. Japan’s Sakoku Policy.
In 2016, I signed a book deal and moved to the US. Three years down the track, I had a trilogy about a sad Japanese detective in the bag. But I needed something new. Once again, driving deep through America’s rust belt, I found myself wondering: where to next? And who will be dying there? I knew that I wanted to tell a story about a closed society. Perhaps, one in which a character was trying to escape the destiny they had been born into. It was around this time that I had read an article about the Zankou Chicken murders.
For non-Angelenos, it is a hugely-popular fast-food chain, with locales dotted around LA. In 2003, its patriarch—seemingly inexplicably—rose one morning, put on a white silk suit, then murdered his family, before turning the gun on himself. As well as being a compelling read, one particular line flicked a switch for me: …to answer this question of why Mardiros Iskenderian killed his mother and his sister and then himself, Armenians had to reach back to their pagan past, to a way of seeing older than the Bible itself: Pakht, they called it. Fate. Jagadakeer, it was muttered. Your destiny is etched into your forehead at birth. What is written no one can change. I asked myself: what if you created a world in which people lived their lives according to their own Pakht, their entire society governed by this? I was taken with the notion without really understanding it. Lost in the Appalachian wilderness, I didn’t see a way in—narratively—to such a world.
That was, until, somewhere in the depths of Pennsylvania, I stopped the car at an old railroad viaduct, once the tallest in the world. Though it had been half-toppled by a tornado years ago, today it stands as a ‘skywalk’ for tourists. And it was on this skywalk that I found my way in. Standing on the precipice, a strong wind ruffled my hair, and I heard voices in German. But it was like no German I’d ever heard. Turning, I saw a group of Amish. The women were in cobalt-blue dresses and white kappen, the men wore overalls, straw hats, and long Lincoln beards. That day, I learned they had been speaking Pennsylvania Dutch—a dialect the Amish brought with them to America 300 years ago. They are (largely-speaking) born into lives that reject the ‘outside’—modern technology, lives of luxury, pleasurable pursuits. They live and die by the word of their God, untroubled by all else. Driving along those country roads, you will encounter them riding horse-driven carriages. See them at dawn hunched over their crops. In local newspapers, births will often be announced already determining the baby’s vocation—the same as that of their parents (Mr. Yoder welcomed a young wood-cutter this Tuesday).
Of course, no group is a monolith and each community will adhere to different practices but, broadly, we are talking about some 400,000 people, living agrarian lifestyles beyond the notice of the world, whose lives which have not changed—give or take—since roughly the time of the Renaissance. Different communities are stricter than others, some more comfortable with ‘outsiders’ and their ways. A few are completely cut off from the ‘modern’ world, living out their lives in accordance only with the rising sun and the word of their God. Perhaps unsurprisingly, across all such communities, crime is highly rare (though not unheard of). As my Detective Dakota Finch would later say: wherever there are people, there is violence. And in that moment, on that bridge, I wondered: what would happen if someone from the inside were to go outside and be found killed? In such a circumstance, quite logically, given that these communities have no concept of police, someone from the outside would then have to go inside to find the truth. That’s when I realised: I had my way in. I realised that my next novel would take place in a closed religious community. That it would be near to but separate from an American town (or Englisch, as they call it). But a crimson, blood-soaked thread would link the two worlds. And that my detective, a drifter with scars inside and out, would have her past—violently torn between the two.
So. Where are you headed this year?
May I suggest Nectar, Catoonah County?
We have the picturesque Lake Sweetness where witches were once ‘tested’ for the blackness of their souls. (Kayak classes run in warmer months). Glistening cranberry bogs surround the town, like blood pools. Roadkill Ray stalks the forests for deer with his compound bow. The billboard for a missing preacher silently begs for understanding. Speedy’s Mountain Plaza draws in infinitum of trucks, the 18-wheelers like steel wildebeest to water. (Just don’t wander around to the rear lot). And this year, the famous Heritage Fest returns, where punters can enjoy rides and treats with an ancient Germanic backdrop.
So, welcome to Nectar, Catoonah County. You’ll find one body. Two towns. A thousand lies. And one question hangs in the cold air: is the Sugar Man back?
