How Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti embraced midlife through the lens of a 'whodunit' mystery novel
CBC Books | Posted: March 22, 2024 7:27 PM | Last Updated: March 22
The Canadian authors reflect on co-writing new novel Bury the Lead
When friends and authors Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti first realized their shared love of whodunit mysteries, they jumped at the chance to write one together. As they started writing Bury The Lead, it became apparent that they also sought to reflect their own scary yet exciting experiences of being women, particularly mothers, in the transitional period of midlife.
In the first book of the Quill & Packet mystery novels, Bury The Lead, Cat Conway returns to the cottage town of Port Ellis in search of new beginnings. Leaving behind a bad divorce and her career as a journalist in the big city, Cat becomes a reporter at the local paper. When she's sent to interview the arrogant theatre actor, Eliot Fraser, what she least expects is for Eliot to turn up dead on opening night and suddenly be thrown into a murder investigation.
As Eliot's past abuses and town secrets come to light, Cat investigates further, all the while trying to prevent herself from being the true perpetrator's next victim.
Kate Hilton is a Toronto-based writer and works in psychotherapy and life coaching. Her other books include The Hole In the Middle, Just Like Family and Better Luck Next Time. Elizabeth Renzetti is a Canadian British writer and former journalist for the Globe and Mail. The Toronto-based author's other books include Shrewed and Based on a True Story.
From their writers support group to publishing Bury the Lead, Hilton and Renzetti share their journey as co-authors with The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan.
Kate, let me ask you first, where did the idea for this novel come from and how did you team up with Elizabeth to write it?
Kate Hilton: During the pandemic, Liz and I were gathering together in a park to talk about how difficult it was to read and to write and how bleak it all seemed. It turned out one of the things we were doing to get through the long dark days was reading mysteries.
We discovered that we were both huge mystery fans and had been since childhood. It struck us that maybe we should try to write a mystery together.
Our narrator Cat Conway is recently divorced, her teenage son doesn't want to spend time with her, she's just lost her high-profile job after getting into a physical altercation. What inspired her character?
Elizabeth Renzetti: Kate and I are both women in midlife. We were both very interested in that period when you can kind of feel like you disappear both personally and professionally — that the world has lost interest in you because you're no longer a hot young thing.
Kate and I are both women in midlife. We were both very interested in that period when you can kind of feel like you disappear both personally and professionally. - Elizabeth Renzetti
That's where Cat finds herself, her marriage is on the rocks, her formerly high-profile career is in tatters. She has to reinvent herself.
As everybody who writes fiction or makes any art knows, the most fertile period for an artist is when your character is going through a period of reinvention; they can either dive bomb into the ocean or they can spread their wings and soar.
The story centres around the murder of Elliot Fraser. He's the lead actor in the town's theatre production of Inherit the Wind and it's pretty clear off the bat that Elliot abuses his power and his fame. What did you want to say about men like him and the and the structures that hold up men like that?
KH: So Liz and I are both lifelong feminists; Liz has written extensively about the #MeToo movement and structural power abuses by men. I think mysteries give you an opportunity to exercise your own brand of justice in the little world that you're playing in.
There's sort of an orderliness to a mystery that allows you to create a world as you think it should be and so there's a reason why Elliot Fraser, notorious skirt chaser, finds himself dead early in the book … because he's the sort of person who has it coming.
I think mysteries give you an opportunity to exercise your own brand of justice - Kate Hilton
Elizabeth, in this type of genre, how do you navigate around writing about sexual assault?
ER: Yes, it's actually really tricky! When you're a reporter and you're talking to people who have been involved and who are survivors of, let's say, domestic violence or sexual assault, you have to take a really trauma informed approach to talking to them.
In fiction you have more liberty; you can imagine your way into the minds of people who have suffered like that. A lot of what we wrote about was underpinned by the reporting I'd done. But you also get to imagine places that you couldn't go when you're talking to real people because it's too painful for them, it's too difficult, things like that.
So it was a wonderful exercise in exercising your fiction writing muscles.
How do you balance both the dark and the humorous aspects of this story and make it seamless?
ER: I am firmly of the Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down philosophy of life, and it was.
I used that in my columns as well, which is that you can use humour to make very serious points and it's not off-putting for readers. You welcome them gently with humour.
Cat's point of view is quite wry. In that way you bring people in and then you can gently give them the darker material. I think of all the writers I love like Hilary Mantel [who] blends dark humour and dark material or Martin Amis, people like that.
Humour and crime go together like peanut butter and chocolate if you ask me!
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.