This week's blog is from bridge player and novelist Helen Erichsen, her debut novel "Murder by natural causes" launched this week in London.
It’s difficult to include bridge in a novel. Describe the technicalities of the game and there is every chance that non-bridge players will fall asleep after three sentences. Better perhaps to concentrate on the emotions; the heady highs and crushing lows that come from winning and losing at cards. Given that this is true, it seemed natural to use TGR’s, The Great Rose, one of the few bridge clubs where a high stakes money game is still played, as a setting for the action in my debut novel: Murder by Natural Causes. Take one gangster owner of the premises, add his pet assassin: Cilla, throw in a few murders along the way, ones where the victims are never identified as such because the executions are disguised as deaths by natural causes, and you have yourself a plot.
The story is set largely in the 1980’s and early 90’s. Cilla is the main protagonist, a 22 year old professional hitman, ex KGB, who would like reinvent herself before her luck runs out. Standing in the way is her boss, Vladimir Haugr, known as Haugr the Ogre, or Vlad the Impaler, due to his aggressive style of bidding and play at the bridge table. Cilla is a valuable commodity to him. She does all his dirty work and he doesn’t want to let her go. Can she extricate herself from his control and how many people will she have to kill to do so?
During the course of the novel Cilla herself learns to play bridge. As a clever stone cold killer, she has a natural aptitude for the game. A number of bridge superstars also make cameo appearances in the story. I was thinking of creating a competition to see if anyone could spot all the well-known known bridge players who are mentioned, either explicitly or implicitly, within the pages of the book. If he’s willing, I’ll offer up a game with Espen as the prize.
Murder by Natural Causes is not high literature. It’s more of a ripping yarn. If it does well I might embark on a prequel. I’d like to like to write about bridge in the 1950’s and 60’s when the game was still glamourous and people dressed for the occasion. I’ll make sure to include a few more murders, just for the non-bridge players you understand.
Murder by Natural Causes is published by Muswell Press and comes out on May 25th 2023. It is available via Waterstones and all good bookshops.
by Helen Erichsen