Tea, Tonic & Toxin
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin
You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder with Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper!
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Maureen and Jay join us to discuss their wonderful interactive whodunit, You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder. It’s 1933, and your job is to help Scotland Yard solve an impossible murder. Are you up to the task?
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November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing.
Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? An interactive murder mystery from the bestselling author and illustrator of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
Dear Detective, Have you seen the story in the papers about the dreadful murder of the American novelist? The crime is so devious, so logistically impossible, that it seems to have been committed not by a person but by a disembodied hand. I must confess that we are at a loss. Who wrote the poison pen letters that lured these seven people to this deadly gathering? What do a poet, an earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and a lothario have in common? And how can a man be stabbed in a room full of suspects when none of them went near him or saw a thing? We have had our best people on the case, Detective, and we still can’t make heads or tails of it. We are giving this case file to you. Can you decipher the clues, decode the witness statements, and identify the murderer? You are our last hope. Can you help us crack the Creeping Hand Murder? Yours truly,
Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police
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Sarah Harrison:Carolyn, we have another really fun book to talk about today.
Carolyn Daughters:It's been a good year. We've really had a lot of fun with these interviews this year.
Sarah Harrison:And this is one of my favorite kinds. We don't get a lot of these, but it's an illustrated graphic novel, it's, it's a lot of stuff, and it's beautiful. So, I can't wait to start talking about it.
Carolyn Daughters:You show, you hand-picked You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder from a list, and then you were like, we have to do this book, and I think you didn't even give me an option, which is awesome, because I'm very excited that we're doing this, but you were like, nope, weird.
Sarah Harrison:This is it.
Carolyn Daughters:We're doing this. This is it.
Sarah Harrison:All right. Today we are excited to talk about You
Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, an interactive witty young adult mystery by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. London, November 1933 Seven people received mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse, where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? You are the detective. The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper is an interactive solve it yourself mystery presented as a 1933 London case file. It features immersive mixed media clues, interviews, photos, and maps that offer a challenging golden age style whodunit experience with dark humor and a sealed solution envelope, which is an awesome touch,
Carolyn Daughters:it is. It is Maureen Johnson is the number one New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of many young adult novels, including the very murderous Shades of London series and the Stevie Bell mysteries, Truly Devious, The Vanishing Stair, The Hand on the Wall, and The Box in the Woods. She has also done collaborative works, such as Let It Snow with John Green and Lauren Miracle, now a movie on Netflix, along with several books in The Shadowhunter Universe with Cassandra Clare. Her books have been translated into more than 35 languages. Now, Jay Cooper's books don't normally include grisly murders, nefarious deeds, or corpses of any kind. He has written or illustrated more than 20 books for kids, including The Spy Next Door, The Pepper Party, and The Bot series. He has also contributed work to the New York Times best-selling series The Last Kids on Earth. Currently, he's illustrating a graphic novel entitled Super Atomic Wombat girl, that sounds amazing. He is also a graphic designer of theatrical advertising, and has worked on over 100 Broadway musicals and plays, which happen to have heaps of deaths. Now, before collaborating on You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, Maureen and Jay had worked together to write and illustrate Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, which I throw out here very quickly. I own and have owned for several years, because my husband and I were in London a couple years ago, and he saw the book title, he saw the title of the book and grabbed it for me and then surprised me with it when I got home from our London trip to say I know I saw you looking at this and pulled it out and so when Sarah said we're doing this book and I was like oh okay this is going to be cool and then I saw that you guys were the author of not getting murdered in the Queen English Village I was super excited. So, welcome Maureen and Jay. Thank you so much.
Jay Cooper:Thank you so much. It was Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village. It was so much fun, which was all based on a blog piece that Maureen wrote, and they expanded upon it for the book. It was just. A tremendous delight to work on that one.
Sarah Harrison:How did you guys get connected with each other in the first place before writing You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder? It sounds like you're from differing backgrounds.
Maureen Johnson:We are not so Jay and I went to college together, and he was my last college boyfriend. And then we moved to New York together, and we lived together, and our third roommate was my friend Kate, our friend Kate, but who is my agent?
Jay Cooper:It's a wildly incestuous endeavor.
Maureen Johnson:We were just one little cluster of people that have been working together for years, but Jay was always Jay has many skills, whereas I only have the one, so but he would always draw, and he drew lots of pictures, like I have pictures of me that he drew, and like, like he was always like,"Wow, what's it like to have talent? That sounds amazing.
Jay Cooper:Wait, now let's be fair. So when we were dating, Maureen was writing this ongoing, the craziest fiction epic of all time, that she would, like, give me, like, like pages periodically of that, and I would occasionally give her back, but she wrote so much more for me than I ever, I ever drew. I did write it, I did write that novel. It was a funny novel, of which he was the star.
Maureen Johnson:Every day I like it was supposed to be like he just wanted to be like this noble lad that was, but like just incredibly insane stuff kept happening to him, and it was involved everybody that we knew would be somehow put into it. It was like a fairy tale, but it took place in the modern day world, and it was maybe the funniest thing I ever wrote, but it was only for like five people.
Jay Cooper:I still have it too.
Carolyn Daughters:That's awesome.
Sarah Harrison:That is very cool.
Carolyn Daughters:Wow, okay, the two of you, and then your agent, that's yes, a dream come true from a like future profession, like the direction all three of you are heading, for the three of you to know each other, and to, I'm presuming, I don't want to presume too much, like each other. Jay, can you confirm?
Maureen Johnson:We like each other a lot. We work together really well. It's always been a real tight knit group, but we all moved into an apartment and the same area that I currently live in now, and we just went and started doing things like we were like, let's, we're moving to New York, let's go, and then we did.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh, wow, incredible.
Maureen Johnson:We're still here. I am, and Jay is a Kate runs her agency, but she runs it from another location.
Jay Cooper:I think the thing that makes all of us work well is that we're all extremely motivated people individually, and so when we're together, we're all ramping each other up in the motivation, as opposed to stepping on each other's toes. It's always like lifting, as opposed to pushing.
Sarah Harrison:This is a really cool book, and I mentioned in the transition, like, how is working together on You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder similar and different from Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village?
Maureen Johnson:Well, one thing about this is that actually it's not young adult, it's for it's like all ages, it's really adult, and it was based on the fact that so the murder, how not to get murdered in acquainting this village is based on when I was promoting one of my last books, my last two books have been The Nine Liars and Death at Morning House, and for one of those, I was asked by, and I think it was probably Non Liars, which was the last Stevie Bell. I was asked to write a piece for Crime Reads, and I decided I was like, well, I had this funny list of my head of like ways not to get murdered in a quaint English village based on these shows, but also based on the fact that my husband is English, and he comes from a place called the New Forest, which is basically murder. Like, this village that he's from is like one of those villages. You think it's a joke, but it's not. It is absolutely not. And the first time I went there, they have wild horses that wander around, wild ponies. He took me down the lane first, he almost got me charged by a horse, and then he walked me down the little path, like through the forest, and he's like, and there's some wild ponies over there, and then he put, and there's the church that my parents, like, helped take care of. They were, I don't. What role they play, Blake. His mom's the organist, his father was the something or other, and he's like, and that's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He's just buried there, he's just buried there.
Sarah Harrison:Perfect.
Maureen Johnson:And there are always these battles in the village with the vicar, or what size was the gravel on the path, and where the village pond used to be, and it was all these, these little stories were always so insane that I realized that truly those, like Midsummer Murder. I've always been a murder mystery reader, watcher, and there's so much truth, there's so many low stakes battles going on in these villages that are 100% real, that I just made this little list, and then it was the article, and then we, I was asked by an editor, like, do you want to make this into a book, and I was like, okay, but then I was, but it needs to be illustrated, and then I called Jay, I was like, well, Jay has to do it. Because Jay is super funny, and so Jay brought so much more humor into You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder, because everything we did meshed together really well, like if I write something down, Jay just like knows exactly what to do that's funny, like every time he is physically incapable of not being funny with his cartoons, like it is not possible. So then they wanted another book, and I was like, well, I'm not going to do another guide, like I only really had that. I thought about the fact that there used to be these things called dossier mysteries. They came out in the 30s, and what they are is case books. They're literally just the documents of the case, letters, photographs, maps, sketches, evidence, etc. And I was like, those should come back. Those are great.
Sarah Harrison:I agree.
Carolyn Daughters:Let's do that. And that's what we decided to do with this. This is a case file. That's all You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder is. It's just a case file, but the photographs, everything are drawn by Jay, and you just read it, and they're all the documents are there, and then you just have to solve the mystery.
Jay Cooper:And I would say that the I think the main difference between the working together on the first one and the working together on this one is that because that first one was very loose in a list. I could illustrate anything, and even if it didn't necessarily match the text, it still jived well in this case, because it was such a specific mystery. There would be moments where I would draw something more, like, you can't put that there, there's not windows in that room, there you have to take the windows out, and so there was a lot of back and forth of like detailing things, so that everything matched perfectly with the text, and as, as it, as it should, so it was a much more clinical, is that the way I don't know what the right term is for that, but it was, it was a much more detail-oriented process the second time than the first time,
Carolyn Daughters:but also there's, I don't, we're not going to spoil anything, because we want everyone to read this book and solve it, solve the mystery. There are some places where the images that you're drawing, the pictures you're drawing, are doing some of the heavy lifting. Would you say,
Maureen Johnson:The pictures are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The way we did it was, we used an online, like an online whiteboard. Our program, we used this Miro. Basically, I sketched out first, I had to design the mystery, so I had to build the engine. This is how I write mysteries as well. I build the engine first, but I didn't have to write it as scenes. I wrote first. I just made notes, like, okay, Jay, this is what it looks like. And then got more specific, like, here's what I'm going to need art wise. And then I put, like, inspiration panels, and I'm like, like, this is going to be this is something like, because You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder has a lot of poison pen letters in it, so there was a lot of like letter typing when Jay can describe his letter typing, what he does is amazing, but what I would need, and then we went back and forth, so I might write something out at night, like, okay, this is what the, and I have to write very specific art notes, and then I wake up in the morning, and there would be a picture, and then I would look at the picture, and I would like, scroll in, scroll in, and be like, okay, there's a candle that shouldn't be there, like this. I'm looking at all the pictures on the wall, because sometimes they were amazing, but very slightly there'd just be one thing, and I'd be like, you have to change the wallpaper.
Sarah Harrison:Really.
Jay Cooper:There was one image where I kept, I kept, thought I'd fix this detail, like I think four times, and where it was like, Jay, you have to change the detail, and then I was like, okay, and then she's like, Jay, where's that D? Why is that D? Every time she'd read it, and then I got terrified that, like, I went back and checked that one detail. Maureen, in the final, I think, like 25 times, just I
Maureen Johnson:I don't even remember what it was.
Jay Cooper:I can't say because it's important.
Sarah Harrison:It must be. Oh, I do so much.
Carolyn Daughters:I bet I know.
Sarah Harrison:Well, I'm in a weird spot, so I read You Are
the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, and then I opened the flap and back for the experience, but I haven't read the answer yet, because I wanted to think some more.
Maureen Johnson:That's what it's for. It's designed to be like that, you get to think about it, and you can even share it, and like I've heard about people doing as a group, like they've read it, and then they discuss it, and they pass it around. We just got the Ital, the first of the translations has just come in, so we just got the Italian version.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh, that's amazing.
Maureen Johnson:And they've done a cool little booklet. The French cover is astonishing. You get a little booklet in the back. The French cover is nuts.
Jay Cooper:The French cover is so good, it makes me angry. It makes me angry because I illustrated the cover of the US edition, and frankly, they kicked my ass, they just French, you have no idea how good the French.
Maureen Johnson:We don't have it yet, we just got the images.
Carolyn Daughters:Wow.
Jay Cooper:I hate being shown up.
Maureen Johnson:Jay is like that character from Sesame Street that plays the piano, that every time he hits a wrong note, he just starts banging his head against
Jay Cooper:I should know what his name is, because that's it.
Maureen Johnson:Jay's like, "I made a mistake. Hold on, just punching himself in the face like something on a fight club. Then he comes back, he's like,"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm like,"Hey, it was fine."
Carolyn Daughters:It was just, no, no, I deserve it.
Jay Cooper:Okay, wait, I got a quick antidote. Actually, because we're talking about how it's for all age groups, and yet people pass it around. So, yesterday I was at a children's book festival. I haven't told you this, Maureen, I love this story. I was waiting for this moment, because it's just happened yesterday. I was down in Delaware for a children's book festival, the Sussex County Children's Book Festival in Milton, Delaware. This charming little idyllic town and library, and, and I happen to bring a couple. I always bring, even if it's a kids festival, a couple of copies of You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder and Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, because there's always a couple of adults that are coming around, they're like, oh, that's interesting. And so this guy come came up yesterday, and Delaware has the Dover Air Force Base, there's a big Air Force military base there. A guy comes up, he had very much a military build, a way of holding himself, and they had their kid, but he was looking at the detective books, and came back, he's like, I'd like to buy both of these books from you, and I was like, okay, sure, I'll link, let me sign these to you. Have a particular way of inscribing the books, and that's a good way to make it out to you, or is it a gift for somebody else? He's like, it's for the entire family, like I'll read it, and then my wife will read it, and we'll have fun working on it together. Um, he's like, so could you sign it just to the Faust family, and I went, your name is Faust. Your name is Faust, and he said yes. He said, actually, I'm a combat medic, so technically I'm Dr. Faust. No, that's like, I don't know, I'm more excited right now than you could possibly about the fact that you are.. I'm gonna write this to a Dr. Faust.
Carolyn Daughters:That's amazing. Before we talk more
about You Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, I want to hear more about Faust.
Maureen Johnson:Jay, I can do you one better. Our local mortician from my hometown was named Faust. It's the Faust Funeral Home.
Jay Cooper:Do you have signage?
Maureen Johnson:Oh, of course. Like, they have.. it's always been like..
Jay Cooper:I mean, but do you have signage?
Maureen Johnson:Signage.
Jay Cooper:You should get like Carter.
Maureen Johnson:And they did something shady, like I think one of the Fausts went to jail for some shadiness. It was as a kid, I always used to laugh, and everyone's like, "What are you laughing at?" "Nothing. Book joke."
Jay Cooper:It had been in the family.
Carolyn Daughters:There are many Fausts. There are many Fausts.
Jay Cooper:I bet if you go back, there's a good tin type sign or something like that, like carnival, like fortune teller signage, all that neat stuff.
Maureen Johnson:This is why we get along.
Carolyn Daughters:Maureen, when you were in college, did you finally feel like people got the book jokes? Because I mean, I felt that way at times in my life too, where my people aren't around me, but eventually your people increasingly are around you. Did you feel that?
Maureen Johnson:Probably. I don't know what I was doing in college.
Jay Cooper:Crazy stuff. Maureen was always just doing her thing, and you either would jive with it, or never have a spotted if you didn't.
Maureen Johnson:I don't know what I was like.
Jay Cooper:Energy, her own wavelength, and her own speed, and it was generally sixth gear.
Maureen Johnson:See, I don't know, I have no perception of myself, from like, I assume, as far as I'm concerned, I'm ahead on a wheel, like I don't know, like I don't know what I'm like out there, so I'm like I don't know, I don't, I'm sure I was doing something. Jay was very polite.
Sarah Harrison:You were writing the story and illustrations.
Maureen Johnson:Jay wore a tie every day.
Sarah Harrison:Did you? I love that, did you have the same mustache?
Maureen Johnson:No, any, a lot of Converse, and they would frequently match.
Sarah Harrison:Did the tie match?
Maureen Johnson:Yes, he had a little mini mini Converse, and he wore a tie, and he drove a little tiny car called Drizzle Drizzle.
Sarah Harrison:Geo Storm.
Jay Cooper:I didn't think I was manly enough for a storm, so I caught a drizzle.
Maureen Johnson:Because it was so tiny. I can't believe they called that car a storm. It was a tiny little car.
Carolyn Daughters:Is that the little three cylinder car, the little Geo?
Jay Cooper:I don't know, cylinder.
Maureen Johnson:It looked like a little Corvette.
Carolyn Daughters:It would have trouble going up a steep hill.
Maureen Johnson:This looked like a sports car, but it was like tiny little, was like a peep, it was a little like a Richard Scary car, like it wasn't that he was driving around in an apple.
Jay Cooper:I have that worm sticker on my computer right now,
Sarah Harrison:I love all those awesome. Speaking of illustrations, I'm glad you guys brought up the importance of the drawings as photographs. I've been poring over that as my brain is trying to solve it. It's so unusual for me and everyone probably to be seeing drawings of photographs or photographs as drawings, and I feel like I'm not assimilating them right. I'm like, I know there's details in here, like there's one I don't think it's giving anything away to say, and one it shows a box and not a box, because they bring that up
in You Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder. And I was like, right, there's a box and not a box. I wasn't paying attention, like, how much in these drawings am I not paying attention to, have you run into that? Did you know it would feel surreal? Like, talk to me. Yes, more. That was part of it, the idea that he was going to have to draw something that was going to have to be read as reality.
Maureen Johnson:Except sometimes you were drawing things that were supposed to be drawings, like advertisements and things like that.
Jay Cooper:Right?
Maureen Johnson:I don't know how I did. I'm always like, Jay, draw thing here, Jay, make things, Jay, do this now and make things. And the thing is, you could always count that it would happen, you'd be like somehow Jay did.
Jay Cooper:It's all a creative exercise, and you don't know if it's something's gonna be successful or not while you're doing it, you just make the best attempt you can, and you hope that it reads. I will say that we were talking about the poison pen letters, that was the one thing I wasn't confident that I could, I could just do with my hand, because my hand typography skills are part of the language for shit, and so for those I ended up sourcing all kinds of magazines from the 1930s.
Sarah Harrison:Oh, period-level magazines.
Jay Cooper:Cutting them up, and like gluing them onto pasteboard, them scanning them in with my giant scanner. Scanly is a great scanner, does one good member, my super team. Is it as successful as I wanted to be visually to match the awesome storytelling, this is what he's like.
Maureen Johnson:This is what he's like.
Jay Cooper:This is my best design.
Maureen Johnson:He's always like, it's not good enough. I'm like, Jay, it's amazing. He's like, don't worry, I'm just, I'm gonna go outside, I'm gonna hit my head against the wall bunch, come back in, I'm gonna tell you I'm sorry again, and then I'm gonna draw all night long.
Jay Cooper:Well, if you look at the back, the photos in the back
of You Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, I tried to add at least a little hint of like a Photoshop reflection, as though you're looking at a glossy photo, even though I know photography from the 1930s would all be matte, and you actually had gloss.
Maureen Johnson:There was a lot of stuff like that that he would talk about, like the finish, like he did so much stuff.
Sarah Harrison:I'd like to hear about some of the research. I had no idea that these were actual typefaces from the 30s.
Jay Cooper:Some were from.. I bought a trove of London Times newspapers from the 30s that were all came in a giant bound book. And I tried to be a little bit delicate with what I killed of those, because I feel like that's historical.
Sarah Harrison:historical,
Jay Cooper:but I did, I did, there was actually one newspaper that had a whole advertising section of cruises you could take, because that was obviously the rage, and everybody was all the traveling was done by yacht, and they had just the most beautiful deco type faces scattered throughout, and every variation you could possibly think of, and I just killed it, things like that, but like things like ladies' home journals and farmers' almanacs, music sheets, and all that stuff, because I wanted it to be only typography that you would find at the 1930s because every decade has very specific typographic styles to it, and that I know that's a little nerdy, but it is.
Sarah Harrison:Awesome.
Maureen Johnson:Every detail in this was sweated to death, like truly we would, we would like hold up every image, a piece of writing side by side, and we would check it. Also, sometimes I would say, like, she has a lighter or something, and Jay would like go out and buy an antique lighter, or like a perfume bottle.
Jay Cooper:Well, mostly for size, for size comparison. Like, I wanted to make sure that, like, the book of matches was properly sized for the 1930s and the way that it sat beside, like, somebody's, like, makeup container or cigarette or cigarette case. I wanted it to be as accurate as I could be. I still have all that stuff in a box.
Sarah Harrison:Awesome advertising did figure into You
Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder pretty frequently. You had a lot of drawings of advertisements.
Jay Cooper:My personal favorite part of the book is Maureen's New Yorker interview. I love that so much.
Maureen Johnson:That was fun to write.
Jay Cooper:That was a great one.
Maureen Johnson:We wrote it. There's a New Yorker-esque piece. There's an interview with the man who's killed, and then I was like, well, we're gonna have to put illustrations into it, so we had to think like, but we wanted every single thing to be not everything is informational, but a lot is informational, and sometimes even things that you don't realize are information, so there's like these little, well, there's like a, there's a Slumber Aid ad, there's a car, and so Jay got to, do so many types of draw.
Carolyn Daughters:That the funny thing for me in reading that interview is that it reminded me of a few interviews I have read, like a in Rolling Stone or New York or something, where you can just tell like the interviewer is doing everything they in their power to bring some information out from the person they're interviewing, and then like in that same interview, like he's Roy Peterson is skewering all these other writers, including the woman who's interviewing him, right, like he's he's basically tearing them all apart. It was just so interesting. He's like, oh, they're all these literary darlings are really hacks, and he goes to like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dos Passos and Evelyn Waugh. I feel like I've read interviews like that, which is why it was really interesting for me to read in You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder, as it felt very real, and also delightfully awkward.
Maureen Johnson:Also, not for nothing, I am a woman writer, which, and I've been so for a long time, and let me tell you, I've sat through some stuff.
Sarah Harrison:Okay, more, please.
Carolyn Daughters:No, I can't. Just saying, there's, there's a bunch of men, some male writers out there that you're just like, okay, buddy, good for you.
Maureen Johnson:A lot of men that want to give advice about stuff when they're like, well, when you have an agent, I'm like, my man, my man, I do, I have, I've done sit down, but I had a guy pat me on the head once.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh, really?
Sarah Harrison:From standing up, or were you seated? And he was standing logistics of this.
Maureen Johnson:I was seated.
Carolyn Daughters:Was he like 104 years old, or what was the deal?
Maureen Johnson:No. No. There's a lot of experience there. Some, some male writers are really a breed apart. So, like, I was talking from the heart.
Sarah Harrison:So, you've done that interview before.
Maureen Johnson:100% And I didn't kill the guy either, so I think that I deserve a lot of credit.
Carolyn Daughters:Somebody we would know. I mean initials.
Maureen Johnson:There might be people there that you know of, but I'll never tell.
Jay Cooper:Did he immediately know that he'd like. I done something horrible. Do you have you seen my face? I knee jerk.
Maureen Johnson:This is me smiling. Note to listener, I am I'm one of those people that has a face that's just a rock, just like a stereo, it's like smile, and I'm like, I don't know how to smile. Do you like this? Like, and they're like, ah, that's terrifying. What are you doing? I don't know why people want to see specific parts of your skull, so like, I don't understand it. I'm like, is it this easy? And they're like, oh, it's so grotesque. What are you doing?
Carolyn Daughters:Amazing. So the fair play element of You Are
the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder is really important. It's the 1930s it's golden-agey. So, like, do you have any advice for our readers as they're reading? Like, what should, what should they do to, as they're going through to prepare themselves to figure out this, this crime, because they can figure it out.
Sarah Harrison:Yes, I live or die by fair play. I write a lot of mysteries, and I'm very like fair play - it's all the way. I am very obsessed with the fair play aspect. You don't need any special information, you don't need any outside information, you don't need to look anything up. I would say read it more than once if you have, like, make marks or put like a little like post-it or something.
Maureen Johnson:Just give yourself a little bit of time. We also want it to be like you can be totally offline, like you can just go outside or the beach, or whatever, or sit in bed, and just do this, and you will solve it, like if you give it, like it's possible, you just have to keep looking at it, but you don't need anything else but You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder.
Sarah Harrison:I've clearly missed a lot, that's why I got to the end, I was like, I don't want to look at the folder yet, because I feel like I've missed everything looking. You have pictures,
Maureen Johnson:it's fun, and also just to, because when I started looking at the pictures, I'm like, man, every picture really does have 500 points of information in it. And I would have to sit and be like, there's a spoon, do I have to think about? Let me think about the spoon. Spoon's okay. There's a fork, as a fork, forks. Okay. Next thing, there's a cup.
Jay Cooper:I'm going to respectfully disagree about one thing. I actually think there's a couple of places where I wish I'd filled up with a lot more visual information than was there, and really threw in some red herrings here and there that I wish I'd done that. I mean, I think there's one place where we really, we really filled it out, like there's a lot to take in, but there's other places that I feel like I just, I rushed through it too quickly, and I wish I'd spent a little more time on it.
Maureen Johnson:This is genuinely what he's like.
Sarah Harrison:His humility is overpowering.
Maureen Johnson:He, I would have it.. I would genuinely like write a small note, like maybe we need this, and I would wake up in the morning, and that would be at 11 o'clock at night. I would wake up, and there would be seven new drawings.
Jay Cooper:It's because one of those was going to be right. Um, I will say that I've heard of people going through and taking a notepad and making, making notes alongside. That's been very helpful to people, I think. But I think what Maureen said about just reading it a couple of times, I think that that, because it's not - it's not going to take, by the way, listeners, it's not going to take you very long to read You
Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder.
Maureen Johnson:No, it's a case book, it's a case file, so it's, it's, it's a, it's the cover letter from Scotland Yard, it's maps and floor plans, and it's a series of interviews, and a couple other things, like the short, like the New Yorker articles, three pages long, and you'll see a bunch of poison pen letters, and things like that.
Sarah Harrison:I think that's what's getting me. I'm used to the narrator or someone's thought pattern pulling me along to know what's important, but I'm looking at, like, here's a bunch of pictures of statuary, right? I don't know, am I.. is this just for context? Am I getting clues out of it? There's a drawing of a map, I'm just like.
Maureen Johnson:It's exciting for me, it's exciting, because as the, as the writer of mysteries, I have to pull your eye, I'm like, now you look here, now you look here, now I'm taking you here, now you're gonna look down here, and this, it's like, here's Jay's picture, look at
Sarah Harrison:it, how is it different for you, like not necessarily like you must have had a story arc in your head, but then distilling all that into artifacts that we need to get the clues out of.
Maureen Johnson:I write mysteries in a very highly organized way, so I always start from the mystery out, the why all. Why first always leads to the how and the who, and I build very much from the center out, and so I built that, and then I just started pulling little bits out, basically like I imagine a murder, I always imagine as a central event, then time wise time spirals out from that, and you get pieces of information that fly off the center, that you get fewer pieces as time goes out, as you spiral outwards. So your job is to reach in and pull out, like what can I pull out, what do I need to pull out, what needed to happen in the original crime, what is everything that had to be there, what had to be done, how could it be done? And then I just start structurally building out from there. So then I distilled that into a series of basically a grid of little post-its that I would shift and rearrange, and then I would like, because sometimes in every interview that only thing that's important is a word or a sentence, but then you build, but you would then you build your character around that, you're building everything else around that, and so much of the character in the story is drives into the why, like you have to have the full picture of why this is what me drawing making mysteries is very like I imagine making a little clock and then there's there's bits coming out, so and then I didn't have to do it, I had, and then Jay drew it, and I was like,
Jay Cooper:why? I was probably privileged in a way that very few people have been, because I got to actually watch it all get built in real. What a privilege, true? I saw what a privilege it was, really cool. So we was, he was this online Miro board, and it was so it's just slowly that you saw that, just that it be created piece by piece over time, and I was just cool.
Maureen Johnson:And then poor Jay would be like, I have to draw what? Okay, okay, so that's 15 more pieces of art that you need. I'm like human, the art. Okay, okay. So, Yunji, you need a.. I can do this. I can do it.
Carolyn Daughters:The sculptures are amazing throughout You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder.
Maureen Johnson:My favorite bit is at the end, a character, so you were led in the beginning by a Scotland Yard inspector who's passing you the case, but then his nephew, Nigel Stickley, gets involved, and Nigel Stickley is my favorite part, and I was like, Jay, you got to draw pictures of this kid, Nigel Stickley, and he drew a picture of Nigel Stickley that made me laugh so hard, I think about it once a week, like, I just start laughing when I think about Nigel Stickley. I was like, he knew exactly what I meant when I said Nigel Stickley, the nephew that wants to be a detective.
Carolyn Daughters:Yes,
Jay Cooper:Well, that's because we also write a lot of.. so Maureen was one of the people that introduced me to Terry Pratchett in the day, and it gave me a real Terry Pratchett a vibe, you're right about the statuary, so she threw out this name at one point, Morgana Froude, which is to me was such a, was such a rich, really crazy, awesome, perfect, wacky ass name, and I just like, oh, I could just, I could just see what sculptures Morgana fruit would be into, and it's that modernist forms melody into other forms. There's a couple of Morgana fruits that are sprinkled throughout, because, because then in my mind, it's like that. Oh, that's the guy who owns the townhouse, that's his favorite, that's one of his. He has Morgan, friend of her, or he just loves her artwork.
Maureen Johnson:in the second book we're gonna have to make sure there's a Morgana fruit.
Jay Cooper:I was gonna ask for that. Oh, yay, please. I would love that.
Maureen Johnson:There's going to be another
Sarah Harrison:one. Oh, yay,
Maureen Johnson:very much not really even started yet, but very much happening.
Carolyn Daughters:Okay,
Sarah Harrison:so it sounds like you guys are a winning combination, and your publishers keep asking for more collaborations, is that correct?
Maureen Johnson:And Jay hasn't killed me yet, which
Sarah Harrison:no, he's filled with privilege and humility. Happy to be here.
Maureen Johnson:He is very happy to be here, but truly, I did think a couple times, can you just, can you just change all of this, and he'd be like, yes, I can do
Jay Cooper:it. I thought I came down with shingles one day with shingles the first time because I was so stressed out. I thought there was one day I started to experience like back pain that felt like shingles, and I was like, "Oh no, no, no, I'm like, oh
Maureen Johnson:no, we've killed Jack, we've finally done it, we've killed it, because there is also, in development and near completion, a this new news flash, there's going to be a game, a based on, oh,
Carolyn Daughters:your guide to not getting murdered and.
Maureen Johnson:Getting it's been play testing now, but doing one time was a gift to chicken. He's like, oh my god, I'm fine, I can do this shingles,
Carolyn Daughters:but I'm sure I can pull it out. It was a shingles, though. I did take just in case. Oh, by the way, please, PSA to everybody out there. If you are like over 50, go get the shingles vaccine. For day, but better than getting it. Agreed.
Maureen Johnson:I got COVID on my book tour, not for You Are
the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, but the book before. Was like my first time out after COVID started. And I had never gotten Covid, and it must have been for nine liars, and I don't remember, I think it was nine liars, and I got Covid when I was in California, and so I ended up in a hotel for a week on the beach in Pismo Beach, California, which was the best possible place to have Covid on tour, because I got a, so I was in a hotel on the beach. I just opened, like, the sliding door, so I had sea breezes coming in all day. I didn't get anybody else sick, but I was like, I can make, I can make this work. So I did an interview with, like, the Fresno Bee or the Sacramento Bee, weird author, like living in hotel, flicking lights at night, you signal, okay, you can make anything work, like even if you get sick on tour, and then you're quarantined in a hotel, you can make something that is our ethos, it's like we can do this. We can make this work, we'll make a little thing about it.
Carolyn Daughters:I can see them photographing you from the wind, you're up in the window in the hotel, or whatever, and like on the sidewalk, there she gave me a hotel.
Maureen Johnson:They gave you a little telescope in your room, and I would go out at night, I'd be like,
Sarah Harrison:Oh, that's so nice.
Maureen Johnson:I'm looking at this, I'm looking at the lights of Pismo Beach, really, um, anyway, uh, and then I would get delivery. I'd be like, leave it, leave it outside. Outside the door. When you're gone, I'll reach for it. They're like, "Are you in there? I might just go hand would come through. I get back inside.
Sarah Harrison:Each of you should be a character in one of your books, I think.
Maureen Johnson:We are sometimes. I think Jay has put little versions of.. I feel like in Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, Jay is the bartender with the handlebar mustache.
Jay Cooper:But you are the.. you are.. there was a note from Maureen in the beginning of it, so I did do a version of Maureen, and
Maureen Johnson:There's a little drawing of me. But I have a lot of my artwork on the wall, like there, there, there, there's a lot of Jay Cooper originals in this room.
Carolyn Daughters:Nice.
Maureen Johnson:This room is rich in Jake Cooper originals. Now I just have to kill him, but they're worth a lot.
Carolyn Daughters:But then, who would illustrate the book that you would write after that?
Sarah Harrison:She's training an agent now.
Maureen Johnson:By the way. He does all this while being mr. Broadway, so like, I don't know how he does any of these things. Jay has worked. What is it? Over 100 shows, Jay?
Jay Cooper:It is 158 as of The Ballusters opening on Broadway last week.
Carolyn Daughters:158. Wow.
Maureen Johnson:One day he came into work on You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder, and we were going to lay it out on the table, look at it, and he runs in the door, and he goes, 'Here's Paul Bellamy's turtleneck, and because he'd had to do a photo shoot, he had to get all these turtlenecks to find the right turtleneck. Paul Bettany, sorry.
Jay Cooper:It was Warhol, right? And in Basquiat, Warhol, and I had to source a bunch of turtlenecks.
Maureen Johnson:He's doing the drawings, he's like, but I just have a big, I have a wicked photo shoot, and once we do that, then I just have these shingles, and then I'll do these 39 drawings.
Jay Cooper:Chaos works.
Maureen Johnson:This is how we do it. This is how it gets done.
Sarah Harrison:It's working. It's working for you. So, you have a game coming out. What else is like next up for you guys after You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder?
Maureen Johnson:Do you want to go first?
Jay Cooper:No, I want you to go.
Maureen Johnson:Okay, let's take last. So I am just finishing book seven of the Stevie Bell Mysteries. Nope, book six, and then seventh will be the last of those Stevie Bells. So book six is called The Velvet Knife. It'll be out in October, and then right on to book seven. This book, a different book, another book from, besides that, a thing I can't talk about yet, game like it's just a bunch of stuff. Always write, always, always be writing, always be working. I don't understand, I don't. I have a lot of fun at home, so I'm always like, why go. Wow, when you could stay home and work, that's my fault.
Jay Cooper:Oh my gosh, I finished up that Super Topic one by girl, actually like a month ago. That bio is a little outdated. That's turned in, and I have another project that I'm working on that, I'm not, I'm not allowed to talk about various reasons, but I'm excited about it, and the card we're working on, the card game, and then some point I just got a couple of other books, oh, I've got to start a graphic novel about the Loch Ness monster, fun, so actually that's a lot of the stories are in the early 1930s so a lot of that style research is already done from our work on .
Carolyn Daughters:It's paying off.
Maureen Johnson:Jay has lots of cool stuff in his office, and he just has lots of books, fashion books from the 20s and the 30s, like all of that's really necessary. He just got a copy of the first edition ever of The New Yorker that he brought to show me. He bought an original first edition, like, here it is. I caught it. Like, he's a, he's a book collector. He's, he always says something interesting that he just brought me this, which is called Here's England, and it's this amazing guide to England from 1952 that reads a lot like the murder mystery guide, but as if it was completely serious. Jay always has like a, like a rare book he brings, or turtleneck from a Broadway actor, or you never know what Jay's gonna pull out of his clothes
Sarah Harrison:With the prop, that's awesome.
Carolyn Daughters:So you're keeping the Paul Bettany turtleneck.
Maureen Johnson:We have it.
Carolyn Daughters:You have it?
Maureen Johnson:My husband doesn't wear turtlenecks, but he put it in his drawer because my husband is a video game man, and so if you give him a shirt, he just keeps it and wears it, like, so his shirt, his wardrobe was like 95% video game shirts, and now he's got this turtleneck, so, but basically, if you hand him something, he's like, okay, and he just like puts on, can basically hand him anything, it's a lot of video game stuff.
Jay Cooper:He's a very charming man.
Maureen Johnson:He's a nice Englishman who, who makes video games, and will wear anything you hand him.
Sarah Harrison:Has a lot of advantages, I think.
Maureen Johnson:And knows a lot about quaint English villages, and has a lot of like just casual stuff that they would tell, and I'd be like, what are you talking about? You'd be like, well, my father was under the sea, and like, his father was a commander of a submarine.
Sarah Harrison:He was under the sea.
Maureen Johnson:He was under the sea, and so when he and his mom first got together, his mom got sick of it and broke up with him, but he was under the sea, and so he didn't know, and then she decided that they weren't broken up anymore, and he came back, and she's like, "Well, I broke up with you, but then I got back together with you, and he was like, Okay, and he didn't know, because the whole time he'd been under the sea.
Carolyn Daughters:The best breakup
Maureen Johnson:His family is very like that, or his brother was thrown over a fence by a horse, or a horse broke into their house on Christmas, so this is where it all comes from.
Carolyn Daughters:Yes, I can see that.
Sarah Harrison:That sounds like great source material. I did want to ask for you, Maureen, are there any like other specific mystery books like you read from the time period or anything that inspired you when writing You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder?
Maureen Johnson:I mean, I read a lot of classic mystery. I read modern mystery too, but I've read the best marketing list I ever got on was the British Library's crime classics list. I got every book that came out, but a lot of classic mysteries, definitely the dossier series by Dennis Wheatley. I was looking over because I was like Dennis, right? It is Dennis Jay also got me an original one of those that actually had cool, like, see, this is he always shows up with like a book. It was like from the 50s, and it, but in the, in the some of the originals, you get in the newer ones, you get like a picture of hair, but they actually would like clip hair and stick it in.
Sarah Harrison:Are you gonna put hair in your next book?
Jay Cooper:Hair, and that has to be real. Real hair.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh my god, it's real hair.
Maureen Johnson:There was a subscription service. I don't know if it's still around to hunt a killer. It was like you got an envelope. It was recent, like it was like every month you got like an envelope that was part of a case, and it had physical items on it. At one of the things they actually mailed out was a scalpel.
Sarah Harrison:Whoa.
Maureen Johnson:like a real scalpel.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh, okay.
Maureen Johnson:I was like, okay, wrapped in a lot of bubble wrap, but it actually had a scalpel, so it's a lifetime of reading every single mystery that I ever saw or was around or was within five feet of me.
Carolyn Daughters:It also, like, weirdly reminded me a little bit of the movie, the old movie Clue, there, the quirky characters, and how it's paced, and like, I don't know, it just, it reminded me of that, which itself is honoring the Golden Age idea of everybody in one space. How did this murder get committed? Who committed it?
Maureen Johnson:I wanted what.. what is at the core of this one is a.. it's the version of the locked room that everybody's in. So the idea is this murder happens, everybody's in the same room, and the person is murdered, he's stabbed, but everybody was in the room when it happened, and nobody went near him.
Carolyn Daughters:so how could it possibly happen? And there are.. that's a.. that's a type of.. that was the challenge I said to myself, how could I stab somebody in a room full of people?
Maureen Johnson:And have, and have nobody have any idea of how it was done.
Sarah Harrison:They have figured out the solution to You
Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder?
Maureen Johnson:A few people have written to say, and even some people are like, we didn't get all the way, but we got a lot of the way. It is possible, but I set myself these kinds of challenges, like I've written the Stevie Bell mysteries, the truly devious starts off with a locked room of like somebody's just dead, and a lot. I've played with the idea of ice as a murder weapon, like lock room ice. I use dry ice, that was a lot of learning about the sublimation rates of dry ice, and how much carbon dioxide it takes to kill somebody going into areas. Reading a lot about people, reading a lot of forensic journals, forensic science journals.
Sarah Harrison:Cool, awesome.
Jay Cooper:My daughter, Annie, wants to minor in forensic science.
Maureen Johnson:I'm so mad. I just found out that at my high school they have a class in forensic science.
Jay Cooper:That's cool.
Maureen Johnson:My high school was not cool when I was there, and now I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I could have been taking forensic science, and instead I had to take a mandatory marriage class taught by my nun.
Carolyn Daughters:You did?
Maureen Johnson:I went to a Catholic girl's school.
Carolyn Daughters:Oh, wow.
Maureen Johnson:A marriage class taught by a nun, mandatory. I was so mad.
Carolyn Daughters:There's so much wrong with that, that I don't even know where to start.
Maureen Johnson:Listen, I'm this way for a reason. I'm still angry. Instead of four days a week, four days a week, I had to do that. I could have been taking criminal, I could have been taking a forensic science and learning to solve cases, and instead I was like, here's Sister I was, it was Sister Dolorina teaching us, who's who appeared to hate us, was teaching us now, our girls, when you are married, flip to page 37 of your book, but the book was called Loving. I was so mad, I was so mad, like every day. Yes, but instead of that, I could have been taking forensic science.
Jay Cooper:You could have been learning about how to kill your husband, instead of
Maureen Johnson:you should have seen the little evil drawings I was drawing in that book. Like, I was so mad about it. So, maybe I wasn't. I will someday I will get my revenge.
Carolyn Daughters:Amazing, that's amazing.
Sarah Harrison:Well, you guys have been incredible. I know we are at time, but where can folks find you if they want to learn more? What's what's the best way to keep track of what you're working on?
Maureen Johnson:I do my best not to be found. If people try to pursue me, I will hide behind trash cans and in the sewers, but at Maureen Johnson books.com and a blue sky at Maureen Johnson Books, and on Instagram at Maureen Johnson Books. There's a lot of at Maureen Johnson Books,
Sarah Harrison:perfect.
Jay Cooper:And I'm my incredibly outdated website is J Cooper books.com and I think I'm I'm Jay Cooper Books on Instagram, I think, or maybe Jay Cooper Art, and I think your books,
Carolyn Daughters:Instagram, your Jay Cooper books on X, your Jay Cooper Art.
Jay Cooper:I don't even do the, what I have not killed that account, but I don't, I have not touched it.
Maureen Johnson:Yes, I also have stopped using X, even though. I very much was on there, but I primarily use Blue Sky and Instagram.
Carolyn Daughters:Gotcha.
Jay Cooper:Can I ask one question before we close?
Sarah Harrison:Of course.
Jay Cooper:I have a non-You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder question. So, who is the tea? Who is the toxin? Who's the tonic in your relationship? I think that I'm the tonic at all times, and I mean, not restorative, I mean, like a gin and tonic. So, what are you?
Sarah Harrison:I think I'm all three. I'm a multi-beverage person. I'm always rotating between three beverages while we're podcasting.
Carolyn Daughters:That is correct. She's always got three glasses.
Maureen Johnson:Respect, respect. If you don't even have four cups on your desk, what are you even doing?
Sarah Harrison:You're just sitting there, not drinking enough beverages.
Maureen Johnson:Exactly.
Carolyn Daughters:And it's got to be a range of beverages too. She can't have, oh, I like ice in my water, and maybe, like, no, she's got to have a sparkling water, and an ice water, and a tea, Earl Gray, preferably.
Sarah Harrison:Thanks, Carolyn. Good memory.
Maureen Johnson:Smith's tea makers. I found this out because when we just flew back from England last time, when we were going to see his family, we got like our flight got canceled, and the airline sent us on this like crazy 25 hour adventure instead of a direct flight home. They're like, we can't fly you home, but we're gonna fly you to like Toledo, or like it was bananas, but I was sleep deprived and in a lounge somewhere, I don't remember what state I was in, even, and I was just wandering the lounge, and I was like, look at all these tea bags, they're so cool. And I made myself a cup of this, it was a black tea with lavender, and it was so good that apparently I stood there and went, oh, almost stick all these tea bags in my pocket. I was so out of it. It was like I was drunk. I was so tired, and I got back, and the next day I was like, why do I have all these tea bags in my pocket? What was I doing last night? But I'll tell you that tea, if you, that Smith tea, that black tea with lavender is dynamite. Recommend
Carolyn Daughters:Cool.
Sarah Harrison:All right, I'm gonna look for it. Carolyn, I would say you're a tonic, but that's because you do have like a sparkling personality. I don't know if that's how you self-perceive yourself.
Carolyn Daughters:God, Sarah, thanks. No,
Sarah Harrison:she is. She's like the sweetheart of the two of us, for sure.
Carolyn Daughters:Depends on the day, you're often a sweetheart, but you, you have a lot of different Sarah's, so we,
Sarah Harrison:I'm all three.
Jay Cooper:You contain multitudes.
Carolyn Daughters:But I'll take it. Thank you, very kind.
Sarah Harrison:Thank you, thank you both so much for being on.
We loved You Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder. I'm gonna read it a second time before I pull anything out of that envelope.
Maureen Johnson:And you could always just stick it back in and give it to someone else to go use of it.
Carolyn Daughters:We have an extra copy of You Are the
Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder that we're going to give away to one of our very fortunate listeners as well. So, we're excited to have that. I know our listeners are going to want this book.
Maureen Johnson:You guys can do it, just give it a good look through, trust your instincts, let your, let your eye wander, and let you see what it fixes on.
Sarah Harrison:All right, I'm doing,
Carolyn Daughters:get offline, stay offline, read a book.
Jay Cooper:It's been fun. I enjoyed it so much. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure I go and listen to some other podcasts of yours. Thank you.
Maureen Johnson:You guys have been amazing. Thank you so much.
Carolyn Daughters:Thank you very much. This has been wonderful. Thanks so much for listening to our episode on You
Are the Detective:The Creeping Hand Murder. Please help other mystery lovers find our show with a like, subscribe, share, or rating. It's totally free, and it means the world to us. If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written. Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, stay mysterious.
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