RSBC Unseen Podcast | Uncovering Murder Mysteries with the Audiobook Club | S.04 E.10

Juliette  0:05  
Hello and Welcome to the RSBC unseen podcast. This week, we've got the Audiobook Club talking about a murder mystery series they've been making their way through this year. I'm joined by my colleague, Monique, who's one of our activities officers. Monique say hi and tell us a little bit about what Audiobook Club is.

Monique  0:24  
Hello. My name is Monique. I am an activity officer. So Audiobook Club is for young people of all ages, up to the age of 25 to come together and read any book of their choice. They've nominated the book, the book with the most votes, gets read in each session. And yeah, that's basically what happens. It's really nice each session we we try to discuss what happened in last time in the book, but most of the time we just sit listen and yeah, enjoy.

Juliette  0:57  
And these sessions run on Mondays and Thursdays, 5pm till 6pm on Zoom. Is that correct? That is correct. Lovely. Well, we've done a couple of these before, and I have to say they are some of my absolute favourite podcast episodes to record. So we've got a couple of our ABC members with us today, so I'm going to get them to introduce themselves. Freddie.

Freddie  1:16  
Hi, My name is Freddie.

Paris  1:18  
Hello, I'm Paris.

Juliette  1:20  
Fantastic. So let's dive straight in. So throughout this year, you guys have been reading a murder mystery series. What is the name of that series?

Paris  1:28  
It's called A murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens.

Juliette  1:33  
Is that the name of the series, or the first book? 

Paris  1:35  
That's the name of the series.

Juliette  1:37  
Wonderful. How many books are in the series?

Freddie  1:39  
I want to say 10, if I remember correctly.

Juliette  1:43  
Paris, do you want to give us a bit of an overview of what the series is about?

Paris  1:47  
Sure, I'd love to Juliette. So it's about two school girls from a posh school called Deepdean. They're best friends called Daisy and Hazel, and they go on these murder mystery detective adventures together.

Juliette  2:06  
Oh, amazing. So there's 10 books in the series. So Freddie, do you want to give us a little bit of an idea about, sort of some of what happens in each of the books that you've read so far, because I'm guessing the settings are a little bit different and things like that. 

Freddie  2:18  
Yeah, Juliette. So the first book is set in the Girls School Deepdean, where one of the teachers is murdered. The second book is set in Daisy's family's town, Manor, or mansion, and someone gets poisoned. The third book takes place on a train called the Orient Express, where someone gets murdered. The fourth book is also based, again, in Deepdean, the school. The fifth book, which we haven't read yet, because it's a Christmas special, is set in Cambridge, so we're going to read that at Christmas time. And the sixth book, which we've just started, goes to Hazel's home country of Hong Kong, and it goes into the culture of that, but we've just started it.

Juliette  2:56  
Oh, I like the variety there, and I love that there's an Orient Express, one that is a real nod to the master Agatha Christie, fantastic. Do any of you guys have a favourite book out of the series so far? Paris, I'm gonna throw it to you.

Paris  3:11  
My favourite book out of the series is, I think I see the first one because it's the introduction and it's the start to the whole series.

Juliette  3:23  
Love it. Do you think it just kind of sets up the series really well? It just like pulls you into the world?

Paris  3:30  
Yes, it does. And it gives me a really clear picture of what do the characters look like and what's going on. I always like to picture what's going on inside my head.

Juliette  3:40  
Oh, I love that. 

Paris  3:40  
Thank you. 

Juliette  3:41  
Freddie, What about you? What's your favourite?

Freddie  3:43  
I agree with Paris on that one. It's a very good book, but mine, funnily enough, is also set at Deepdean my favourite is the fourth one. Says a lot of drama, and there's a lot of suspects. And you like, Oh, I think it's them, but no, I think it's them, and it's just

Monique  4:00  
I'm actually surprised you said the fourth one, because I remember you saying how much you don't like the narrator, because there were Narrator change, right?

Freddie  4:06  
Yeah, but I'm used to it now, because, yeah, it was fine. No, no, no, it's still a good book.

Juliette  4:11  
I love that. And I like nearly, like the school setting is, like, quite appealing. I feel like it allows for drama. Monique, what's your favourite?

Monique  4:18  
I'd say I would agree with Paris. I think the first one's my favourite, because in the first one, I think Hazel discovered a dead body in the gym Hall, and then when she goes to tell Daisy, and they go back to the gym Hall, the body was missing. So it was really, like, suspenseful, like, oh my gosh, where did the body go? Who took it and all this stuff. So it just grips you from the start. 

Freddie  4:42  
I'm alone in my opinion.

Juliette  4:44  
Hey, look, all opinions here are valid. And actually, I really like the idea that you weren't sure about it at first, but it's now become your favourite. I like kind of a nice example of how books sometimes we're not sure why we're reading them, and then we finish and we think about them and they like what we think about them changes.

Freddie  5:01  
It's quite a big shock to the system when you're reading, because we've read, like, quite a lot of these back to back, and jump from the third book to the fourth, we're like, oh, it's just going to be the same again. And then the reader changes. And we're like, Oh, my God, it's changed.

 

Juliette  5:14  
So that brings us nicely on to everybody's favourite character from the series, or in particular books I open it up. Freddie. Do you want to start? Who's your favourite character? 

Freddie  5:25  
I think out of the two main ones, I'm probably going to go Hazel, because she's quite clever. And I like how she is quite clever. I think it's quite good.

Juliette  5:33  
How does she use her intelligence in the book then?

Freddie  5:36  
She's the secretary of they like give each other roles for the detective society, and she's the secretary, and she is normally the one that discovers most of the big clues, because, like, She is originally from Hong Kong, and she got to come over to England to do like, to go to school, and she had to learn all of like Daisy was like the popular girl at the school. And then she had to learn how to do like, all the culture in England and stuff, which I think was quite interesting.

Juliette  6:03  
That must be really interesting to explore throughout the books as well. That's a little bit different. Fab, Paris, who's your favourite character?

Paris  6:10  
My favourite character is Daisy, because she's clever and quite sneaky as well.

Juliette  6:18  
That's cool. What's her role in the detective team. 

Paris  6:21  
Her role is that she's the leader, and she thinks that, oh, I'm always right. I know what to do.

Juliette  6:29  
Okay, so sometimes she has to get taken down a peg sometimes.

Paris  6:32  
Yes, she does, and the person who does that is her best friend, Hazel.

Juliette  6:37  
I love that. I mean, who's best placed to kind of be honest to each other than two best mates. I love that. So we've got a team Daisy and a team Hazel here. So we've got a nice reflection from the two of you on both sides. I love that. 

Freddie  6:49  
Thank you.

Juliette  6:50  
So these are murder mystery novels, and my question to you is, did you see any of the twists coming in each book? Or, similarly, did you guys guess the murderer for any of the books?

Freddie  7:02  
I didn't do very well at guessing who the murderer was. The twists weren't very good. Not that the twists were not good, but I was not very good at guessing them.

Juliette  7:12  
Do you like to guess twists and murders in these sort of things? I know some people, they love to, like, suss it out along. But some people, they don't actually care about guessing. They're like, I'll be taken along the ride. 

Freddie  7:21  
Yeah. I like guessing. I think it's quite fun to see what everyone's opinion is. Someone's be- will be like, Oh, I think it's character. And you're like, why they're so they're such a kind person. Why would you think that?

Juliette  7:34  
Paris, what about you?

Paris  7:35  
So with me, I wasn't good at guessing. Oh, who's, who is the murderer or murderess? It was quite tricky, you know.

Freddie  7:46  
It was because the thing about murder stories is that it makes you, it gives you, like, 18,000 clues for it to be an innocent person, and then it's like, the person that's made to seem like really horrible and would kill someone. It's like, not them. 

Juliette  8:02  
There's always red herrings, isn't there? 

Freddie  8:04  
Yeah, a lot of red herrings. 

Juliette  8:05  
Monique, what about you? Have you guessed any of the twists on the murderers?

Monique  8:09  
In one book, They really heavily hinted that it was going to be one person, and then it was just some random side character.

Juliette  8:17  
Love that!

Freddie  8:18  
Oh yeah, yeah. That was the second one. Yeah.

Juliette  8:21  
So have you guys read any murder mysteries before, either in ABC or like yourselves? Is that a genre you have explored much before?

Freddie  8:29  
Not really. I did one book in school that was that was quite good because it was the first time I'd actually really read something. 

Juliette  8:36  
Okay. What about you Paris?

Paris  8:37  
So with me, I also haven't read or listened to any other murder mystery books. The Murder Most Unladylike series is my first and only one.

Juliette  8:50  
And you guys keep coming back to the series. So you must really like it, because you've been reading it on and off throughout the whole year, haven't you?

Paris  8:56  
Yeah, yes, we do.

Freddie  8:57  
I think that's I think, like probably 80, 75% of the books we've read this year have been Murder Most Unladylike.

Juliette  9:04  
And I hear good things about them all the time, so we must be enjoying them. 

Paris  9:09  
We are very much. 

Juliette  9:11  
And in honour of this, I know a little while ago you guys did like a murder mystery game session that Monique kind of created. So do you guys want to tell me a little bit about what that was, what it was like to do?

Paris  9:26  
Sure it's about a murder that's taking place at the LWLC, Life Without Limits Centre, and they one day find out that their colleague had been murdered, but later on, they found out that it was just a big April Fool's prank.

Juliette  9:44  
Oh, the twist. I love that twist. Freddie, you were at that as well, weren't you? How was it?

Freddie  9:52  
Yeah, I was at, I think a little bit of it, because I went on holiday, but the bit I was there, it was very good. And you didn't see it, wouldn't think. It was coming, that it was just going to be a little prank.

Juliette  10:02  
But so Monique, how did you come up with the original concept? And then how did you come up with the twist?

Monique  10:09  
It's actually these guys who gave me the idea. They were like, you know, we should have murder mystery that takes place at the Life Without Limit Centre. And I was like, really? And I'm like, Yeah, and you guys should be the characters, as in the staff, me and all of our colleagues, right? So I just, I just based the story off of a big Saturday event, which is an event that we hold once a month at the centre, and I gave everyone a part to play, and it just went from there.

Juliette  10:43  
That sounds like so much fun. I love that.

Monique  10:47  
Yeah, and I made the characters very obvious, so I didn't use our actual names. I can't remember what I think my name was, like Kayla or something, but I like was like, Can you guess whose character is who? And they did a good job. Actually. 

Juliette  11:01  
That must have been really fun for you to get really, like, imaginative of creating the session.

Monique  11:06  
It was, it was really fun, and it was also I really liked whilst I was creating it, thinking about how everyone was going to react to the story, yeah, so thinking about whether or not they would get the clues that I'm hinting at whilst the story was going on.

Juliette  11:22  
Yeah, yeah. And I'm guessing that you guys didn't see the twist coming. Then, then it kind of turned out to be an April Fool's joke.

Paris  11:29  
Yeah, that's right, while the story was going on. I thought, Oh, is this a real murder in the story? But then, dum, dum, dum, it was an April Fool's prank.

Monique  11:42  
You guys had the suspicions of who you thought it was, though, didn't you? 

Paris  11:46  
Yes, we did. 

Freddie  11:47  
I thought it was a good way that you did it, Monique, how was like, kind of like challenges to find different clues on who it was. 

Monique  11:53  
Yes.

Freddie  11:54  
That was quite cool.

Juliette  11:55  
Yeah, you guys think you'll do something like that again in the future. 

Freddie  11:59  
I don't know, maybe.

Juliette  12:02  
I guess I'm putting Monique on the spot here. Feel free to tell me to go away.

Monique  12:06  
I don't mind. It has to take place somewhere else, though, I guess add some new characters in. Maybe you'll be involved Juliette.

Juliette  12:14  
Oh, okay, I'm up for that. I hope. Well, I'll be involved as long as I'm not the one getting murdered.

Freddie  12:20  
Or it might just be another April Fool's joke.

Juliette  12:22  
It might, it might. That sounds awesome! I'm so like, I think it's so cool that these books kind of inspired this other creative activity. I think it's a great example of how like reading books and different genres can, like inspire you to do like different things. That's kind of out of the box.

Juliette  12:39  
So, that's everything I've got for today. So I just want to say thank you to Freddie and Paris for joining me and Monique as well. I will hopefully be recording another ABC podcast soon. If anybody has any suggestions for themes or discussion thinks they would like us to zoom. We are always open to suggestions. And with that being said. Freddie Paris, say, bye!

Everyone  13:02  
Bye. 

Monique  13:04  
Bye.

Juliette  13:06  
See you guys in the next one! Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai