Christopher D. Abbott has a background in human behavioral studies. He has gained a good understanding about people and their behaviors, and this has led to his interest in psychology. An avid reader of crime fiction, Christopher’s ambition has always been to publish a character driven crime story, in the style of the great Agatha Christie. With a fondness for quirky characters, such as Rodney David Wingfield’s Inspector “Jack” Frost, along with Agatha Christie’s Poirot, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The idea of Doctor Pieter Straay, his Dutch Criminal Psychologist, came about by integrating the qualities he admired best the characters he loved to read.
Christopher grew up in England and moved to the United States in 2010. He currently resides in Connecticut. He loves to write and play music, which has been as much of a passion for him as writing is. He also enjoys cooking and is currently working on his next Doctor Straay novel.
Thank you for joining me again today Christopher. So, how have things gone since we last spoke?
Great to be back with you, Alex. Things have gone very well. The book is selling around 7 books a day now, which is fantastic, and I’m currently writing the “prequel” to SLD (Sir Laurence Dies).
That’s great news. Congratulations.
Thanks.
Last time we talked about your favourite murder mystery characters, and we came down to Poirot vs. Holmes. Would you go as far as saying that the best Murder Mysteries are written by British Authors?
No, not at all. I don’t have a lot of experience with current American murder mystery authors, but I enjoy books by John Dickson Carr (who a lot of people think is British), and Edgar Allan Poe. I remember as a child watching Murder She Wrote, which was created by a great group of American writers. The British have always been spoilt with a number of fantastic authors though, and because of that, we were lucky to have a murder mystery of some kind on Sunday television every week. I used to look forward to Sundays because of that!
What is it do you think that makes British writers so particularly adept at this particular genre?
Well, let’s not forget that Conan Doyle and Christie were influenced by Poe, specifically his detective, Auguste Dupin. Conan Doyle said: “Each [of Poe’s detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed…. Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” Britain is very lucky to have authors like Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle, who in themselves developed such a culture and such a following of other writers, that they almost redeveloped the genre around themselves. I think the analogy can be also shown in the history of the Blues. Look at people like BB King – Can you imagine what it must be like to be BB King? To have spent your entire life doing what you love and seeing attitudes towards race, colour, creed, change? To unite people with music? To have inspired people like Eric Clapton? I mean… it doesn’t get much better than that!
Very true. Well, enough about other writers, let’s talk about you for a little shall we?
Sounds good.
You can read the rest of the interview over at Novel Ideas and you can grab your copy of Sir Laurence Dies, straight from Amazon!
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