'All through the early days of 2020 and into 2021, when the world was uncertain and I was doing my utmost to not put myself at risk, I sat and wrote...'
Author Courtney Smyth introduces their debut novel, a 'fantasy mystery' entitled The Undetectables.
I was ten when I woke up and decided I'd be an author.
Just like that; the way you might decide to eat toast for breakfast, or what socks you’ll wear. I’d read plenty – devoured every book I could take home from the library, using the adult library card I’d convinced the librarian to give me (in those days kids could only borrow six books, whereas adults got ten – an injustice that has since been corrected!) to inhale as many stories as I could. Writing them myself felt like the logical next step.
How I was going to do it was another story. I knew I wanted to write fantasy, and I had an idea for a book (it’s still hanging around; I drafted the grown-up version recently!). That turned into another idea and another idea and another and another as years passed and the desire to be an author did not change.
Before I sealed my own fate, I’d had a previous fleeting desire, which was to be the next State Pathologist (spoiler: not even close). I was nine years old, mildly morbid and obsessed with all disciplines of forensic science. I’d found something comforting in the idea of combing an area for evidence. Tests on biological matter. Microscopes. The lab coats. Possibilities of finding a dead body, maybe, and figuring out how it might’ve happened.
It took me sixteen more years to realise I could combine my two great loves – forensic science and writing fantasy books – to make something new. In 2019, I had a crumb of an idea: three witches who solve crime in their small magical town. It was a crumb I presented to very encouraging writer friends with this rumbling sense that I was going to make something out of it. (Spoiler: I did.)
All through the early days of 2020 and into 2021, when the world was uncertain and I was doing my utmost to not put myself at risk, I sat and wrote, creating a team of semi-amateur forensic scientists with different specialities. I researched forensic machinery and tools, forensic entomology, and went down a rabbit hole learning about Frances Glessner Lee (who is credited with being the founder of modern forensic science). I figured out ways to take real-world applications of fingerprint identification and mass spectrometry and apply a fun magical twist. While I'm sure it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny by an actual scientist, I had a blast creating a magical CSI-esque team of crime-solving best friends. I injected as much warmth and as many terrible jokes as I could into it, and in 2022, Titan Books picked it up.
The Undetectables is a fantasy mystery about three witches and a ghost in a cat costume who restart a childhood PI agency in order to track down a serial killer committing grim magical murders. In the week before Samhain, Mallory Hawthorne and her friends are in a race against the clock to catch the Whistler – before they become victims themselves…
The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth is published by Titan Books.
