Hello I'm Katy Watson I'm the author of The Three Dahlias, a contemporary murder mystery with a
Golden Age feel. It's basically my love letter to all the classic whodunits I loved when I was
growing up. It's the story of three actresses from three different generations all famous for playing
the same fictional detective: Dahlia Lively. We've got Rosalind King the national treasure
who played her in the original movies in the '80s, Caro Hooper who's famous for playing Dahlia for
the last 13 years on television and ex-child star Posie Starling, fresh out of rehab, ready
to star as Dahlia in the latest movie reboot. And this August bank holiday weekend they're
all gathered at the safety home of Aldermere, for a Dahlia Lively fan convention but when the
fictional murders start turning into real bodies, the three Dahlias have to ask themselves what
would Dahlia do, and use their experience of playing a lady detective on screen to solve a
real-life murder. Since The Three Dahlias has such a strong Golden Age feel I thought I would share
with you some of my favourite classic crime novels so I came here to the incredible Waterstones
Piccadilly to raid their shelves. I'm going to start off with Agatha Christie, The Murder at
the Vicarage I could talk about Agatha Christie all day but since she wrote 66 full-length novels
plus 14 short story collections I'm figuring you don't have that kind of time. So we're going to
start in with this one. Until really recently I was always a Poirot girl and as much as I still
love our Belgian detective, more and more I find myself identifying with Miss Marple. She is the
fluffy-looking, gentle little spinster he looks like she couldn't hurt a fly but actually has a
mind like a steel trap and is always willing to believe the worst about people. I think rereading
Marple's mysteries are part of what got me wanting to write about different generations of women
solving crime together. The Murder at the Vicarage is the first full-length Marple mystery and it's
my favourite because I love the picture of the village of Saint Mary Mead and all the people and
the quiet way of life they have and how it's all rocked by the discovery of a body at the Vicarage.
It's also a particularly clever solution. My second book is The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers.
It's actually the ninth mystery starring Lord Peter Whimsy but it's the first one I ever read
which means it's held onto a special place in my heart. I actually remember listening to it
as a book on tape from like a local library as a teenager and being completely taken into
this strange world of an English Village full of church bell ringers between New Year and Easter.
It's been described as Sayers's either finest ever work or an over-long encyclopedia entry on
bell ringing but I tend to come down on the former side. It is a wonderful demonstration of how she
could peel away layer after layer after layer of a story to get to the mystery at the heart of it.
And the solution is... it's a classic. And you'll learn a lot about campanology at the same time,
so give it a read. Written a little later than the others in 1951, The Daughter of Time by Josephine
Tey deals with a crime that's a lot more historic, that is the murder of the Princes in the tower.
In it, Inspector Alan Grant is confined to a hospital bed and bored out of his mind when
an actress friend, knowing his belief that he could tell a person's character
from their faith brings him a stack of photos of famous historical faces to look through.
He comes across one that catches his eye and when he's told it's Richard III he just can't believe
that such a face was capable of murder. And so begins an investigation from his hospital bed to
try and prove the innocence of Richard III. It's a fascinating read, taking history as a whodunit
and I remember I read it for the first time when my mother gave it to me and I discovered
my copy was missing 20 pages in the middle and I was cross about that for years until
I picked up another copy with the full story. But this one has all of the pages, I checked.