Fiona Veitch Smith on Clara Vale, Golden Age Mysteries and the Books She Loves

Fiona Veitch Smith’s Miss Clara Vale mysteries bring vintage style and Golden Age puzzle making together with darker emotional stories. In this Five Books conversation, the Newcastle-based author discusses the series, the books she returns to and her latest case, The Oxford Murders.

From a historical novel to a mystery series

Veitch Smith says she never set out to write crime fiction. Her debut, The Jazz Files, began as a historical novel about the death of a suffragette. As she wrote, the story became a murder mystery. Looking back, she can see that her childhood reading of Nancy Drew, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock, may have shaped the book, even though she wasn’t conscious of that influence at the time.

The Jazz Files introduced Poppy Denby, a young investigative journalist in London in 1920. The book was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2016, and the Poppy Denby Investigates series eventually reached six books. Lion Fiction first published the series; Embla Books has since reissued it under new titles, beginning with A Front Page Murder.

Her newer Embla series follows Clara Vale, a female forensic sleuth who inherits a detective agency in Newcastle upon Tyne. Set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Miss Clara Vale Mysteries have also reached six books. The latest, The Oxford Murders, is out now. Veitch Smith’s research reaches beyond the page: she makes vintage clothing from original patterns and collects vintage guidebooks and maps. She is also pursuing a PhD at the University of Strathclyde on feminist representation in neo-Golden Age detective fiction, and convenes the Crime Writers’ Association North East chapter.

A mystery writer beyond the cosy label

Of her own books, Veitch Smith names The Berlin Murders, the fifth Clara Vale mystery, as the one she’s most proud of. Reviewers have called it her darkest and least cosy novel. She says that, while the books are marketed as cosy, she never intended to write to that label. Her stories combine recurring characters, humour, Golden Age conventions and period fashion with feminist concerns, social commentary, historical analysis and emotionally difficult material.

For Veitch Smith, The Berlin Murders brings those elements together especially well. The story is set at Berlin Fashion Week in September 1930, against a tense historical backdrop. The book had been out for nearly a year at the time of the interview and was her bestselling title after The Picture House Murders, the first Clara Vale mystery. Its darker mood, she observes, hadn’t discouraged readers.

The books that stay with her

Among contemporary crime novels, Veitch Smith singles out Janice Hallett’s The Appeal for its structure and plotting. Its epistolary form draws readers into working out who is responsible and why, a kind of participation she admires and is experimenting with in her own writing. She sees a connection with Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in the Case, one of her favourite Sayers novels.

The interviewer, known as Puzzle Doctor, adds a brief dissenting note: he enjoyed The Appeal, but strongly disliked The Documents in the Case—though he did enjoy writing his review.

Her favourite non-crime novel is Richard Adams’s Watership Down, one of the few books she rereads. Its personal meaning goes back to when she was ten and read it on a flight as her parents emigrated to South Africa. She identified with Fiver, who must leave home for an unfamiliar place where life is organised differently. The journey felt close to her own, she says, and led to adventures both good and difficult.

Clara Vale’s Oxford case

The Oxford Murders, the sixth Miss Clara Vale mystery, is Veitch Smith’s homage to Sayers’ Gaudy Night. On May Day, 1931, Clara hopes to enjoy her brother’s wedding in the Cotswolds and then attend her Somerville College reunion in Oxford. Instead, she and her mother find the body of a young research student at the Rollright Stones.

The apparent ritual killing draws Clara back into detective work. She calls on her assistant Bella, who is visiting for a romantic weekend with an archaeologist, and joins forces with WPC Rosie Winter. Their investigation moves through academic rivalries, dangerous extremism and secrets long kept out of sight. With Celtic mythology woven into the case, Clara must distinguish legend from murder as the May Day festivities approach.

The book was scheduled for release on November 5 in paperback and ebook. The interviewer says a review would follow on publication day and, after meeting Veitch Smith and hearing her speak about the series, plans to return to her earlier books. Readers can find more about the author and her work at her website.

Fiona Veitch Smith bibliography

Poppy Denby Investigates

• A Front-Page Murder aka The Jazz Files (2015)
• Murder At The Old Vic Theatre aka The Kill Fee (2016)
• Murder On Lexington Avenue aka The Death Beat (2017)
• Murder At Winterton Hall aka The Cairo Brief (2018)
• Murder At The Art Gallery aka The Art Fiasco (2020)
• Murder Of An Oxford Scientist (2021)

Miss Clara Vale Mysteries

• The Picture House Murders (2023)
• The Pantomime Murders (2023)
• The Pyramid Murders (2024)
• The Penford Manor Murders (2025)
• The Berlin Murders (2026)
• The Oxford Murders (2026)