MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Sometimes, crime thrillers are a slow burn. Other times, there is a dead body on Page 2. In the novel "Death At The White Hart," that dead body has been found upright, tied to a chair in the middle of the road, with deer antlers affixed to its head. The chilling discovery sends the village of Fleetcombe into a tailspin.
Well, author Chris Chibnall is no stranger to a murder mystery set in the U.K. He created the British TV crime drama "Broadchurch," and he is here with us now to talk about his debut novel, "Death At The White Hart." Chris Chibnall, welcome.
CHRIS CHIBNALL: Thank you very much. What a great introduction. I'm very delighted to be here with you.
KELLY: Well, introduce us to this body. Who is dead? What questions does this unleash in the tiny town of Fleetcombe?
CHIBNALL: The dead body is the landlord of the local pub in Fleetcombe - The White Hart of the title. And the landlord is called Jim Tiernan, and he's really just had a rambunctious night in his pub, where many things have gone on. And you could surmise that a lot of people in the pub that night in the village of Fleetcombe have reasons for wanting him dead.
KELLY: Yes. There's a whole cast of characters, all of whom are somehow connected to Jim and all of whom are acting fishy as your plot gets underway.
CHIBNALL: That's right, yeah. Yeah. And I think part of this is I really wanted to write a murder mystery where it had all of those sort of golden age, great page-turning, Agatha Christie-style setting, but with characters who live lives as we would all recognize them now.
KELLY: Yeah. I mean, who doesn't want to write a book like that?
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: Congrats to you on doing it. I'm right there with you. I will say, I mean, it's - the town, it's small. There are two pubs - and we're going to get to that in a second - The White Hart being one. It makes it, on the one hand, for a whodunit, you could introduce us to pretty much everyone in town. I felt like I would walk down every street and be saying hi to people as we went. On the other hand, it makes it tricky, maybe, to figure out who done it because everybody knows everybody. Everybody's looking out for everybody. Everybody's friends.
CHIBNALL: Yeah, everybody knows everybody else's business, where they come from, their histories, and so everybody is locked in together, looking suspiciously across the bar or the village street at each other. And that just becomes very delicious in terms of that pressure-cooker atmosphere.
KELLY: One of my favorite characters is the new detective sergeant of Fleetcombe. This is Nicola Bridge. She has just moved back here. This is her hometown. She's back. She's not quite sure how she feels about that. And suddenly she finds herself leading a murder investigation. What is her strategy? How is she looking for a suspect? How is she ruling people out?
CHIBNALL: Well, I think she is having to deal with a number of things. One of the things she's returned to Fleetcombe and the area for is to have a bit more of a quiet life, but what she's returned to is a police force that is not quite as was promised to her when she was recruited. Her boss has gone. The chief constable has been edged out in disgrace. The headquarters aren't working. And she partners up with a young graduate trainee, Harry, who is known as Westlife - nicknamed Westlife for his boyband good looks.
KELLY: (Laughter).
CHIBNALL: And really, I think what she brings in her methodology is simply the knowledge of the area and her understanding of people.
KELLY: So to summarize, she has moved back home looking to quiet down her life, and instead, she finds herself with no team and a really grisly homicide, where she is the lead investigator. So good luck, Nicola.
CHIBNALL: (Laughter).
KELLY: She - I love - you mentioned her kind of boyband, good-looking partner, who she keeps saying, look, don't worry about the motive yet. Don't try to figure out the why. Just figure out the facts - what happened, when, where, how - and then we'll figure out the why. It reminded me a little bit of being a reporter, in my job.
CHIBNALL: Oh, that's interesting. There's a lot of similarities, isn't there, in terms of that - putting the story together, putting the case together, and finding the narrative and not jumping to conclusions until you have the facts. So that's really interesting you kind of identify that.
KELLY: OK, so the pub, The White Hart of the...
CHIBNALL: Yes.
KELLY: ...Title. I mentioned this is one of two pubs in town. There is tension between them. Hovering over your whole story is this question of whether this town is big enough for both of them. Would you describe these pubs and how they function as the heart of this whole community?
CHIBNALL: Yeah. The White Hart is a drinkers' pub, a bit more spit and sawdust and wooden tables and is a little bit run down. And the other pub in town is The Fox, and that has become a gastro pub and much more known for its food offer, little bit more modern. And what I wanted to do with that rivalry between the pubs is - there's a bit of a crisis of the pub industry in Britain right now. Pubs are closing at a really swift rate, and that sense of the pub as a metaphor for the country and sort of the defining image of British life was something I really wanted to look into. What are pubs for? Why do we want them? What is the thing about gathering in a bar or a pub, and what do we expect from it? And how have they changed over the years?
KELLY: So in a way, your novel begins and ends with a death at The White Hart. At the start of the novel, it is Jim Tiernan, the pub's owner, who we spend the rest of the book trying to unravel how he ended up in this chair in the middle of the road with deer antlers on his head. At the end, it's the pub itself that is dying. It's closing its doors for good, which struck me as a lovely symmetry, and I also wondered if that was intentional. Were you trying to leave us, the reader, with something?
CHIBNALL: Yeah, I think it's the sense of change that is going through, I'm sure not just the U.K., but all around the world and in terms of how these communities function, what is at the heart of the community, how we find our community these days. Is it in buildings? Is it in people? Is it in traditions? And that's what the novel is hopefully - alongside the great twisty-turny mystery - is investigating.
KELLY: And this is your home - right? - Chris Chibnall? You've lived in Dorset, England, for decades?
CHIBNALL: Yeah, I've been here 20 years now, and I live a mile from the beach where we film "Broadchurch." I'm in the middle of the community that I'm writing about in "Death At The White Hart." So this area and these people and all of our lives are of, you know, profound and fundamental interest to me.
KELLY: And a lot of murders, as you would seem to tell it.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: Is there something about this countryside that inspires grim stories, or do you think wherever you lived, you would manage to come up with something?
CHIBNALL: I mean, I think the lovely thing about the countryside or chocolate-box village murder mystery is the dissonance between the two things. You know, you have the beautiful nature of the landscape and the idyllic nature of the village and then contrasting with the heinous act of a murder. So they are very, very rare, but I think the tension between those two acts is what becomes, you know, hopefully delightful to a reader, as well as interesting and provocative.
KELLY: Chris Chibnall is author of the new novel "Death At The White Hart." Thank you.
CHIBNALL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MASSIVE ATTACK'S "EXCHANGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
