All my life I’ve loved visiting museums for the glimpse they give you of lives other than your own. My novelette The Clutch of Eggs, about the illegal collection of wild birds’ eggs, was inspired by a fascinating exhibition about birds’ nests at Bristol City Museum. In Murder in the Highlands, my eighth Sophie Sayers cozy mystery, a murderous chase takes place in a fictitious museum inspired by Scotland’s Highland Folk Museum, my favourite museum in the world.
So, when I was dreaming up a back story for Alice Carroll in Death at the Old Curiosity Shop, the first in my new Cotswold Curiosity Shop cozy mystery series, I gave her a job in Broadwick City Museum – from which she’s promptly made redundant. Then her long-term partner flits off to India in a mid-life crisis effort to find himself. Needing to find somewhere cheaper to live, Alice buys a derelict bric-a-brac shop in the Cotswold village of Little Pride. She’s planning to convert it into a house, but thanks to an incompetent conveyance, she finds out only after completion that she is legally obliged to keep the shop open. Ever resourceful, Alice turns this potential disaster into the opportunity to create a much-needed new job for herself.
The skills and experience she gained at the museum help her make a success of her new enterprise. Each mystery in this series will have at its heart a particular item in her shop. In Death at the Old Curiosity Shop, mosaic tiles trigger a murder mystery, which Alice must solve to save her shop.
Researching this story gave me the perfect excuse to revisit two wonderful Cotswold museums: the Corinium Museum in Cirencester, celebrating local history since ancient times, and Chedworth Roman Villa, run by the National Trust. Both trips enabled me to add colour and veracity to my story, which I hope will encourage readers to visit these and similar museums.
Whenever I’m asked by aspiring writers where to find story ideas, I always suggest museums as a great starting point. Here in the UK, we are blessed with a huge variety of museums, many of them free to enter, or affordable via annual membership of the National Trust or English Heritage. Such places usually have excellent coffee shops in awesome settings, which make great writing spaces!
What’s your favourite museum and why? I’d love to know!