Dear listeners,

My friend Helen Zaltzman, maker of The Allusionist and other excellent audio offerings, writes these wonderful "behind the scenes of the episode" posts for her Patreon supporters that I always read and admire. I love to know where her ideas come from and how they evolve into the finished piece I've heard. I've never tried to do this myself, though, because my brain while making Shedunnit tends to feel like an overstuffed suitcase that won't close and I wasn't sure how I would tidy that up enough to make sense to anyone else.

It turns out that there's a lot of power in just deciding to do something. Once I had entertained the notion that I might write a process post for today's new episode, "Battle of the Brows", I started hearing sentences in my head that would go in it. This is often how things come to me, like I'm listening to an internal audiobook that I then have to transcribe. Not always — sometimes I have to bash through blind with my fingers on the keyboard and it's so much harder — but when the words do talk to me unbidden it's generally a sign that it's something I really want to write. Is that how writing works for other people, like hearing voices? Maybe I don't actually want to know the answer to that question.

Battle of the Brows has been brewing for a long time. There were three different points of origin. The first was my interview from 2022 with Eric Sandberg for The Challenge of Dorothy L. Sayers episode. We talked about the critic Q.D. Leavis, the group of writers who published in the Scrutiny journal, and how they reserved special censure for writers of popular fiction that had "an appearance of literariness" (middlebrow, in the parlance of today's episode). Gaudy Night by Sayers came in for particular disdain for this reason, being as it is about the academy without really being of the academy.

A few months later, I listened to an episode of the Radio 4 series Archive on 4 titled "The Battle of the Brows". This is an hour-long look at the BBC's engagement with the ideas of high and low culture, as the broadcaster has grappled with its own place in the cultural firmament over the past hundred years. While it does touch on the events of the 1930s that interest me, it also ranges much more widely into Reithian notions of educational entertainment and access to culture. I gleaned a few more scraps for my nascent episode from here.

My third push to make this episode was less specific and more personal. As some listeners may know, as well as being a podcaster about detective fiction, I've written two non-crime-related non-fiction books, both of which were published by traditional publishers. Shedunnit is objectively the most successful thing I've ever done, yet as I moved through that literary world, I found that there was very little interest in it. It was treated as minor, insignificant, even though far more people listen on a daily basis than have probably ever read my books. I wondered why: is it because it's about crime fiction, or because it is popular, or both? I started thinking about "good taste" and what it means to have it, a subject that has only become more fascinating to me as culture's reliance on algorithmic recommendations has accelerated.

It doesn't always take four years for an episode to go from initial inspiration to release, although it does sometimes. I entered the episode idea in the database that my production assistant Leandra and I use in April 2024. Once I do that, there's a fair chance I will eventually make it. I'm lucky to have a part-time job editing The Browser, which requires me to read very widely, and I kept notes every time I came across a relevant quote or article. That's how I came to read about Virgina Woolf's involvement in this debate and how I came across eventual guest Tom Spencer's work on the subject. I did some exploring in library catalogues and found Middlebrow Literary Cultures, a very useful book of essays on this topic. And I knew in passing that the terms "highbrow" and "lowbrow" had race science origins because when I interviewed Subhadra Das for the Editing Agatha Christie episode in 2023 we touched on this briefly, so it felt obvious to me that she should return to add that context.

All of that was in place about six months ago. And yet I dragged my feet; the ideas in this episode are more complex than I've been grappling with of late and weaving together two interviews and narration is hard. I haven't been working at my full capacity for the last few months and I kept pushing Battle of the Brows further down the schedule because it felt too hard.

Then Shedunnit Pledge Drive time rolled around. I try to make the four episodes in which I plug the drive really high-quality, high-effort ones — it feels like the least I can do to make up for the fact that you have to listen to all of my "please support" messages. I committed to making Battle of the Brows one of this year's quartet.

You might be amused to know that I did the interviews in September and then was still working on the episode less than 24 hours before it was released. There are lots of stages in between: I transcribe the interviews fully, then cut them up into the portions I want to use and pull them into my own draft script. This is an old-fashioned technique called a "paper edit", where you turn your audio into written text before you switch it back into sound. It's probably inefficient but it suits how my mind works. And I don't make Shedunnit because I strive for efficiency, far from it.

The final product of all of this, Battle of the Brows, came out as just less than 30 minutes. Hopefully when you listen you won't be able to tell that it's been more than four years and probably dozens of hours in the making!

Until next time,

Caroline

P.S. What did we think about this as a format for the newsletter? Shall I do it again?

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation.

Dear listeners,

The clocks have gone back here in the UK, the evenings are drawing in, and the wind has certainly been howling. This can only mean one thing: it's time for Shedunnit to once more zoom in on the intersection of the supernatural and detective fiction. I have officially broken out the Halloween artwork, look:

This time, I'm looking closely at the work of one particular author: Ngaio Marsh. She wrote 32 mysteries and is probably best known for the many occasions where she set a fair play puzzle plot in the world of the theatre (she was also a stage director herself). However, my guest for this episode — the writer Alex Clark — makes an excellent case that Ngaio's great talent was for bringing the gothic into the whodunnit. And once I'd spent some time with Alex's suggested reading on this topic, I had to agree. Books like Surfeit of Lampreys, Death in Ecstasy, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Off With His Head and Vintage Murder are absolutely overflowing with witches, cults, creepy castles and cursed objects. In all of my reading of her before, I couldn't believe that I had overlooked Marsh's status as the queen of gothic crime.

This episode also marks the start of another very important season for the podcast: the Shedunnit Pledge Drive. This is the annual event where I make the case for why you should help to support the future existence of the show (and get some lovely bonus stuff while you do it). This podcast is completely independent, with no publisher backing or funding it, so paying all of the costs involved in making it falls to me. I have a few streams of income for the show, including distribution fees (mostly from BBC Sounds, yay), adverts (not sadly very lucrative at my size/level of non-celebrity), affiliate sales (when you buy a book from one of our links, we get a very tiny percentage for referring you), and the Shedunnit Book Club, the paid membership scheme that runs alongside the show.

The Book Club is by far the biggest contributor. By far. And that is the case because wonderful listeners who are in a position to make a contribution, do so, year after year. Because of them, I'm able to keep the vast majority of what I make free for everyone to listen to, and to turn down more egregious and invasive kinds of advertising. It also enables me to keep annoying plugs and requests for money to a minimum — I only do this once a year, and I'd like to keep it that way.

The goal for the Pledge Drive is the same as it always is: to add 100 new paying members to the Shedunnit Book Club before the drive ends on 15th December. Adding these new members helps me to offset cost rises, assist with inflation since I haven't ever put the prices up, replace those members who have cancelled in the last year, and so forth. 

There are lots of great benefits to being a member, including early and ad-free listening to the whole show, access to the book club community where we read a different golden age mystery together each month, bonus episodes where I do deep dives on those books, and, at the higher levels, audiobooks that I make of crime short stories. Plus, for the Pledge Drive, we have two additional, limited time benefits just if you join during this period. The first is the gift offer — if you join, you get an annual Amateur Sleuth membership worth £50 to give away to a friend, completely for free (so you could team up and get a 2 for 1 deal!). And we've also made a tool to help you find your next mystery to read — you answer a few questions, and it gives you a recommendation based on your preferences. All done with my expertise, no AI in sight. Members at the highest level, Seasoned Detective, also the get the chance to get a custom personal recommendation from me that I'll research for you.

So if you're in a position to help out and keep the show going for another year, I hope you will join us in the Shedunnit Book Club now! Your support is very, very much appreciated.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation.

Dear listeners,

There has been a lot going on chez moi, which is why I haven't been sending the Shedunnit newsletter as often as I would like. But earlier this month I got to do something very special because of the podcast and I wanted to tell you a bit about it.

I went to Torquay to take part in the 2026 Agatha Christie Festival! And I took almost no photographs of anything, which is how you know I had a really good time. Although I did wake up very early on the morning of my events and go for a walk by the sea, so we do have a couple of shots of that:

I started my busy festival day recording something with Mark Aldridge and Gray Robert Brown for one of their podcast projects, which you'll get to hear in a couple of months' time. I don't go to events like this very often, but whenever I do I'm struck by how nice it is to be in the physical presence of people I otherwise only experience as disembodied voices on the internet.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Sleeping Murder, the final Miss Marple novel (the one she wrote in the early 1940s and then kept on ice until after her death, which I covered in this podcast episode from way back in 2021). My first festival event was panel held in honour of this milestone, alongside Professor Michelle Kazmer from Florida State University and the historian Rachel Trethewey, with the journalist Sarah Ransome in the chair. The festival was kind enough to let me record it, so you can all listen on the brand new episode that just came out today.

Everyone say "thank you Euan" to my podcast editor, Euan McAleece, who did a wonderful job of making a live recording from an echoey stone barn so lovely and listenable. Also, hello to the listeners who came along and spoke to me afterwards. Your desire to have your photographs taken with me made me feel, briefly, like I was Hudson Williams or something.

After the panel, I headed for the Grand Hotel with a group of Shedunnit Book Club members to have tea. Again, it was excellent to put faces and voices to the people I otherwise only talk to online. We ate sandwiches, drank a lot of tea and shared unbroadcastable opinions about recent TV and film adaptations... Then I pulled out the two entire bags of spare detective novels I had brought to pass on and enjoyed watching them find new homes.

Then it was back to the barn for my evening event — the festival's fundraiser, "A Gameshow is Announced". The first half took its format from the BBC Mastermind quiz, with some very brave Christie experts taking their turn in the famous chair to answer questions. I felt like I learned some things about quiz tactics (if you ever have to do this, make sure your specialist subject is narrow rather than broad). Then it was time to take to the stage for my part of the evening.

This took the form of a fiendishly difficult quiz devised by Kemper of All About Agatha. Two teams of four faced off University Challenge style, with buzzers and everything. I feel like I got a few good answers in, but I spent most of the event feeling extremely unprepared and confused. Especially on the questions about niche Christie adaptation trivia. Jamie Bernthal-Hooker (star of early Shedunnit episode Queer Clues) really thrived there and ended up leading his team to victory. John Curran, myself, and the rest of our teammates retreated to the hotel bar to recover our dignity. I will do more revision before the next time...

The gameshow officially wrapped up the festival for another year and the next morning I got on the road for the long drive back north. To keep things going a bit longer, though, I did put the audiobook of Sleeping Murder on in the car and managed to get through the whole thing before I arrived. As it happens, the version I was listening to was read by Stephanie Cole, the beloved actor in many things including Cabin Pressure who recently died. I would recommend it, she really nailed both Miss Marple and the New Zealand accents, it's a delightful performance.

I hope you enjoy the live episode from the festival, and that I get to see you at one of these in the future.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation.