Sometimes novels inadvertently reflect some aspect of the current zeitgeist, and Irish writer Claire Coughlan’s first one is this kind of story. Set in 1968 during the Christmas season, Where They Lie is a complex tale with a large cast—both living and dead—about the mysterious disappearance in 1943 of a theatre actress, Julia Bridges, and a former mid-wife, Gloria Fitzpatrick, who may or may not have played a role in that disappearance. Gloria was also a patron of the theatre where Julia performed.
While never charged with a crime related to Julia’s disappearance, in 1956 Gloria was sentenced to hang for performing a backstreet abortion.
Fast forward to the night before Christmas Eve 1968, and young, competitive, aspiring journalist Nicoletta Sarto is listening to the few staffers in the newsroom at the Irish Sentinel talk about the biggest Christmas Eve story in the paper’s history:
“Gloria Fitzpatrick, the very last woman in the history of the state to get the death penalty, though of course it was later commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of insanity,” according to Duffy, the editor of the Sentinel. Duffy then points out that Gloria was also suspected of being involved in Julia’s disappearance.
As a junior reporter, it’s Nicoletta’s job to make calls to the local Garda stations around Dublin, to ask if any newsworthy events have occurred. It’s a quiet time, but a local Inspector, David Morris, phones back the newspaper with some startling news: A body has been dug up in the yard of a prominent family and there is a wedding ring among the remains. It’s identified as belonging to Julia Bridges.
“When Inspector Morris rings off, Nicoletta can feel her world flip on its axis. A flicker of static snakes up from the pit of her stomach to sit tight at the crown of her skull. This story is hers for the telling.”
In an email interview, Coughlan mused about the evolution of her story, and how the writing process can take an author to unexpected places.
“My story had many inspirations so it’s difficult to pinpoint one and say it’s based on a real-life occurrence. I did a lot of research around the subject of backstreet abortion in mid-century Ireland – reading contemporaneous newspaper archives, academic papers, court reports.
“The character of Gloria Fitzpatrick, the abortionist in my novel, came to me first. I wanted to find out what made her tick, and I wrote lots of fragmentary pieces around the interiority of her life. I thought I was writing literary fiction. Then I revisited the character of a journalist from something I’d written for work submitted during my MA and MFA courses at UCD (University College Dublin), and I combined them, realizing that Nicoletta was my protagonist, who would follow the thread of the story, whereas Gloria worked better as the antagonist.”
The journalist as detective is a popular crime fiction subgenre. I asked Coughlan if she made that choice based on her own past work as a journalist.
“I felt I knew that world. Though because I’ve made my journalist-as-detective a 1960s sleuth, there was a remove from my own experience in the 2000s-2010s, and I hoped the character of Nicoletta wouldn’t be read as autobiographical.”
And why crime fiction? “I had a story I wanted to tell, and crime fiction seemed to be the best vehicle for it, quite apart from being a big reader in the genre. I love the structure of crime novels; there’s freedom in being able to play with that. Anyway, I think at heart all novels are mysteries; crime fiction just goes bigger and better with the stakes.”
Where They Lie, as with so many Dublin-set novels, revels in the history, speech and milieu of the city. Although Coughlan was not around during the era the story unfolds in, she didn’t see that as a problem.
“I’m very familiar with Dublin as I lived in Dublin city centre for 10 years and walked everywhere – it’s a city that’s easily traversable on foot. Many of the buildings haven’t changed that much; it’s a blend of old and new, the grimy and glittering. I don’t think Ireland of the 1960s had changed that much from the 1980s I remember when I was a child, so I didn’t have to do that much research when it came to things like vernacular and food, for example.”
Where They Lie is brimming with memorable characters and a labyrinthine structure. It’s as though Nicoletta is on a journey she isn’t cognizant of until very late in the story. It’s also a plot that’s impossible to summarize without revealing the life-changing stepping stones Nicoletta must navigate as she encounters one startling, revelatory twist after another.
About that expansive sea of humanity populating the story…why so many? Coughlan laughs, “I agree there’s a large cast of characters in Where They Lie! To be honest, I didn’t intend to have so many, but Nicoletta speaks to so many people in the course of her investigation [of Julia’s demise] that it grew and grew. Creating characters is something I really enjoy doing, along with plotting, and once I had the main character relationships figured out, everyone else followed. I started with a deep dive into who the main characters were and the rest came in increments.
“New characters would appear on the pages in the course of drafting, and then I’d have to figure out what to do with them. Usually, I’d make copious notes both on my laptop and the Notes app on my phone ‘telling’ myself the story, so I’d have some idea of the direction they were going to take.”
Coughlan conveys an evocative sense of place, and offers the reader lovely, sometimes melancholy, descriptions of Dublin. After an emotional encounter with a peripheral character, she trudges home in waning light:
“The sky is dark and leaden as Nicoletta wanders listlessly back in the direction of town. The windows of the grand Victorian squares and neat Edwardian terraces of Rathmines and Ranelagh are swaddled at this hour, though it’s only midafternoon. A premature dusk has already descended, hanging limply over the rust-colored brick chimneys like residual smoke after a conjurer’s final act.”
In another scene, she goes to the home of a man named Gerard, who is the brother of Gloria Fitzpatrick. The power is off, and Gerard says it’s because of a storm. He’s hitting the sauce, and “…grunts and shuffles back over to his position against the wall, looking out on the brambles in the back garden, which are cast in a hallucinogenic glow. Nicoletta marvels at their sheer scale. The spikes twist and turn inward, forming a series of cavernous tombs.” When she asks Gerard a key question in her quest for truth, just before he replies, the power returns and “the room is flooded with light, bringing each shabby corner into chaotic relief.” It’s a nice touch.
Is she working on the next book? “Yes! It’s a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster UK and Harper in the US, so I’ve re-immersed myself in Nicoletta’s world to meet the looming deadline for book number two, which is a sequel, set a year and a half later in the summer of 1970.”
Where They Lie is a striking debut – perhaps a bit overstuffed with twists and that large cast, but in the end, Coughlan cunningly handles it all with a confident aplomb.
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