Former University of Leeds professor swaps facts for fiction with new cosy crime novel

It was 50 years ago when David Fairer first became a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Leeds.

He then became a professor in 1999 and has spent decades talking about books.

It’s fair to say the academic knows a thing or two about fiction.

And when he retired in 2017, David decided he wanted to write his own.

“When I retired, I thought, you only have one life. Why don’t I write something?” David told the Yorkshire Evening Post.

“I thought I’d just give it a go.”

David began by creating The Chocolate House novels, a dark murder-mystery trilogy set in the eighteenth century.

But now the 79-year-old is moving from the past to the present in his new book Graham and the Flitchcombe Murders.

The novel tells the tale of macho thriller writer Graham Tomlinson, who is forced to rebrand by his agent as a cosy crime writer and move from his familiar Yorkshire noir world to the picture-postcard Cotswolds.

As Graham seeks inspiration, he soon finds himself trapped in his own novel idea and charged with murder.

His only hope is to follow the plot and find the real culprit.

David said: “I wanted to get behind the idea of crime writing itself.

“Crime writing can be dangerous, exploitative, you’re there deciding who lives, who dies, and who has done it.”

With an amateur sleuth, small-town setting, and puzzling case, Graham and the Flitchombe Murders fits firmly into cosy crime.

It’s a subgenre which has experienced a resurgence over the past few years, and David believes this is because it enables you to experience danger from a comfortable distance.

David said: “I like to think of it as appeasing something that is threatening.

“It’s like inviting some evil satanic figure into your room but inviting them to tea.”

Yet, true to the Hull-born author’s passion for all forms of crime fiction, Graham and the Flitchcombe Murders also has a darker undercurrent inspired by noir.

Earlier this year, the Yorkshire Evening Post launched our Leeds Reads campaign to encourage children and adults alike to rediscover their love for reading.

In David’s opinion, reading isn’t just a life skill but it is a way of encountering a new world.

“Why read? To widen your sympathies, to expand your imagination to get your mind discovering new things, to meet people that you would never meet.

“I’d never meet Elizabeth Bennet and I’d never meet Mr Quilp. I’d never meet all the people I do in fiction.”

Perhaps unexpected for a crime writer, David doesn’t completely plan his novels before he begins writing.

Instead, he immerses himself into the impulsive thinking of his weird and wonderful characters.

David said: “It’s like playing chess with yourself - you’re turning it round, you’re playing both sides.”

Now, the author has set up the board, it’s the reader’s job to solve the puzzle and win the game.

Graham and the Flitchcombe Murders is released today (June 28) and available to buy now.