When the research becomes the parent of the story – Chris Lloyd

When it comes to research, there are probably two types of historical crime fiction author – those who love it, and those who really, really love it, the ones like me for whom research is their equivalent of a social life. It’s both a source of inspiration for your stories and a rabbit warren that stops you from having to get down to the actual business of writing, which is always a daunting prospect. The truth is, it’s simply just too fascinating to forgo for long.

But to be serious for a moment, research is also the historical fiction writer’s best friend. It sets the parameters of your world – get the history right and all you have to do is create your story within the world that the history has given you – and it can get you out of a plot hole or a writing slump more times than you will ever imagine. If in doubt, just go back to the research and you’ll find the answer.

Having said all that, perhaps the moment I love most of all is when the research becomes the parent of the story. When you were looking for one thing and you suddenly come across something you didn’t know. It sets the alarm bells ringing and the senses tingling. Besides solving a problem when you need it, research can also give you a vignette that adds atmosphere and authenticity, a character, a scene, a whole thread running through the story or even the central theme to your novel itself.

In my case, the following opening scene in Banquet of Beggars – the third novel in the Eddie Giral Occupation series – came about when I discovered a curiosity about life under the Occupation and how some people took advantage of it. That opened up all sorts of bizarre scenarios in my mind. In the scene below, Eddie is in a cellar, but we’re not entirely sure why. I won’t tell you why here or in the extract – you’ll have to wait for the book to come out to find that out – but in the meantime I hope you enjoy the start of the next book in the series and that the reason behind his finding himself in the cellar intrigues you…

Entrée

1

Three hours in and I was ready to kiss the cellar wall.

With my fingertips I traced the cold bricks for the dozenth time. Water from a leak somewhere had run down them and along the gridlines of mortar and had frozen there, its texture uneven but smooth, a patina of ice over the coarse grain of the sand and lime. I touched it a moment longer than I should have. What lingering warmth I had in my hands melted the ice. I felt the water between my fingertips and almost weakened.

I had nothing to drink. Forget the whisky I could no longer get; right now water would have been a gift from the Teutonic gods. My mouth was so parched I was tempted to lick the wall for its moisture. But I held back. The grit embedded in the ice would have had me choking and gasping for proper water the moment I tried. There was a lesson to be learned there, but I couldn’t be bothered to go looking for it.

There is one thing I will say. The one good thing about being thirsty is that it takes your mind off the sheer, numbing, incessant cold. The gnawing ache that worms its way through to the bones and freezes the mind.

A shiver ran the length of my body. All I’d been given was a single grey blanket that was as thin as a Nazi promise and a palliasse sparsely filled with ancient straw. I had my coat, but no scarf and no gloves, so I’d wrapped the blanket round my legs and pulled the old overcoat tightly around my upper body, trying to tuck my ears and nose down into the collar. My bed of hay and sackcloth at least shielded me from the cold of the stone floor. I tried to ignore the scratching noises that came from inside it. The water on my fingers was beginning to freeze again. I wiped them dry on my coat and shrank them up into the sleeves. I lay back, resigned, and tried to let my senses do the work for me.

As I calmed again, my nose began to bristle. A scent of mushrooms withering in the dank earth stung my eyes. I blinked twice and the tears froze in their ducts. Sighing, I accidentally filled my nostrils and was surprised to find myself savouring the aroma. In the cold and dark, it wasn’t a sense of decay, but a memory of forgotten meals. I could almost hear the butter sizzling in the pan as, in my mind, I fried a reducing heap of freshly picked ceps. The sort I remembered from my childhood in the Pyrenees. My older brother, Charles, and I would go out to pick them, my mother would clean them and my father would cook them. I’d cooked them in Paris since. They were good, but they never had that sweetness that distance and longing gave them. I imagined now that I could taste the butter, rolling its gentle sheen around my tongue before biting into the tender flesh. It was a sad lifetime ago. My mouth began to water – finally – but then the hunger in my belly came knocking.

Smell and taste. I’d chosen the wrong senses.

In vain, I opened my eyes and stared at what lay above me.

Outside, it had been just a day or two short of a full moon. The last one before Christmas. A bomber’s moon, some called it. A night when whatever air force might be lurking overhead could see what they were looking for, even in cloud. A night when the city was vulnerable.

Not that I could see any of it. I was in complete darkness.

I shivered at the thought. That brought other memories.

Instinctively I looked around me, despite the pitch black of my world. There were no windows to let in any light or to give me a glimpse of the night outside. No bars made this prison. My ears strained to hear if there were any planes circling. During the day, we heard little but the incessant drone of Luftwaffe aircraft patrolling the sky. So much so, we’d ceased to notice them. But at night, the friend became the enemy and the enemy the friend. We wanted the RAF to bomb the hell out of the Germans. Just not in Paris. Not when we were around.

‘Quiet tonight,’ a voice nearby said.

I nearly jumped. I’d almost forgotten where I was.

‘Like last month,’ a second voice replied.

Elderly voices. Women. Talking in hushed tones across the blackness. Somewhere to my right.

‘Shh,’ a man’s voice admonished them.

A fourth voice joined in. Another man, behind my head. Close. ‘Not like last time, mind. In November. The sirens.’

‘The Boches,’ one of the women agreed. ‘Playing a prank on us. Sounding the sirens when there wasn’t any air raid.’

‘I heard it was so they could get all of us underground so they could see what Paris felt like with just the Germans in it,’ the man behind my head replied.

‘They wanted to search our homes,’ the second woman piped up.

The other man shushed them again. I just sighed. Nothing like the Occupation to get the imagination going. It’s not just truth that’s the first victim of war. It’s thought as well.

I sighed again and buried my face further into my coat. The low voices and occasional shushing were surprisingly sedative, and I felt myself drift off.

In one way they were right. There had been no sirens. It wasn’t an air raid. Or even a German prank like so many believed. That wasn’t the reason why we were all in this cellar.

---

After graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd lived in Catalonia for over twenty years, working in educational publishing and as a Catalan and Spanish translator. He has also lived in Grenoble, Bilbao and Madrid.

He writes the Eddie Giral series, about a French police detective in Occupied Paris. The first in the series, The Unwanted Dead, won the HWA Gold Crown for best historical novel of the year, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and was Waterstone’s Welsh Book of the Month. The second, Paris Requiem, was a Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023. The third in the series, Banquet of Beggars, will be published on 15th August 2024.

You can pre-order Banquet of Beggars from your local bookseller, Waterstones or Amazon.

Banquet of Beggars Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/banquet-of-beggars/chris-lloyd/9781409190356

Website: https://chrislloydauthor.com

Twitter/X: https://x.com/chrislloydbcn

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrislloydbcn

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrislloydauthor/

Hashtags: #BanquetOfBeggars #EddieGiral #OccupationSeries #Paris #Orion