An INCREDIBLY spoiler-filled series recap of The Undetectables

A lovely reader asked for a spoiler-filled recap of the series. I’ve listed out some useful information at the beginning – a recap on the Ternion and some basic information on magical DNA typing that could be useful, and then I’ve gone deep on spoiling the entire plot of all three books, should you need the reminder ahead of reading The Unsolvable Case.

Fair warning, I am SPOILING THE PLOT. THE WHOLE PLOT. NOTHING BUT THE PLOT.

Are you ready?

PREVIOUSLY ON… THE UNDETECTABLES

BOOK ONE (THE UNDETECTABLES): THE WHISTLER 

In a flashback we meet THE UNDETECTABLES – Mallory Hawthorne, Diana Cheung-Merriweather and Cornelia Broadwick, fourteen and dying to solve a murder. They happen upon the body of Theodore Wyatt in the basement of Broadwick Mansion – but also upon his ghost, which emerged because he died on Samhain, thus creating a little-seen but still known phenomenon known as the the, eh, Samhain ghost (inventive name). He reports he died while touching a lightbulb inside a lamp in the basement when the electricity went out. He suggests he did not do this of his own free will, leading to suspicion that he was coerced with demon magic (see MAGIC TYPES below). Nobody believes him (except the Undetectables) and he’s given a new place to live (and a lab), in the basement of Broadwick Mansion.

Summoned to the office of Night Mayor Vincent Van Doren via hand-delivered letter from his personal aide, Jacob Gabbott, the Undetectables are hired to investigate the murder of Edward Kuster, an Apparent (non-magical being) who died in a locked room in the neighbouring town of Wrackton. He was found with interconnecting circles carved into his chest, and died from an unseen cause of asphyxiation (he also bit off his own tongue). 

Of course, the Undetectables aren’t really a PI agency – that was something they tried to do together as teens. It’s six years since Theodore Wyatt died (and returned) on Samhain wearing a cat costume, and while Malllory Hawthorne hasn’t been idle with her magical forensic inventions, they’re not sure they’re the witches (and ghost) for the job. 

When their friend Ben DeLacey dies in the basement of The Larix (Wrackton’s only authentic dive bar/music venue) with his tongue bitten off and those same carvings in his stomach, they also find a CODED LETTER addressed to The Undetectables. Meanwhile, Mallory’s struggling with her fibromyalgia symptoms and all this running around solving murders has been a bit much for her. Cornelia very kindly offers to do a modified binding spell, which adds compression to Mallory’s legs and helps with her pain. Mallory’s also given a crystal necklace that contains another binding spell for later (OOH, it’s CHEKHOV’S BINDING SPELL).  The letter reads: 

More brownie points to you,

 for I have noticed your efforts and am

sorry to bear message: your time will end.

you have until I strike at midnight, Samhain.

these executions are just. you will all accede

when you understand. courage is for those

obediently following orders. Blair’s bell

protects none. (more will succumb.)

(do you see what the killer did there??)

Obviously at this point in this story this means NOTHING to our intrepid investigators except pointing out the obvious deadline and the fact the killer is clearly doing all of this intentionally, so they pick out the clues they can find – focusing particularly on the ‘Blair’s bell’ part, which brings them to meet with Observer Johnson, the Observer who covers the pseudo-religion of Occulture (there are many religions/spiritual beliefs within Occulture), particularly when it pertains to the Ternion (Elisabella, Hexana and Blair. Please see below for more on THE TERNION). Observer Johnson says that the circles, lines and stars cut into the victims is a particular pattern only found on a piece of stained glass that makes up part of the Observatory wall, and that the symbol was cut into the glass by Elisabella with something called a DEATH BLADE. (ominous!). They work on the theory that the killer – known as THE WHISTLER, thanks to a clue brought to them by sort-of-ally (because Cornelia staunchly believes in ACAB) Detective Inspector Alyssa O’Sullivan, who shares a recording pulled from Edward Kuster’s phone that is the most goddess-awful whistling sound anyone has ever heard. The murders make no sense because nobody can figure out how the killer is getting in and out of locked or incredibly public crime scenes without being seen.

Following this, Cornelia’s sort-of-boyfriend and genuine asshat Beckett Kingston, a vampire with an attitude problem, dies not long after biting Cornelia on the neck (forbidden, decades after the creation of the Do No Harm charter following the hazy events of the Vampire Wars. Rule number one of the Vampire Wars is don’t try to think about the Vampire Wars or you’ll you’ll find your train of thought— what was I saying?). Unfortunately he dies right after Theodore snaps (don’t bite his friends) about Beckett draining Cornelia of magic (because blood appears to be where vampire magic comes from, but nobody knows, on account of the Vampire Wa—) and drags him off to a graveyard, where Beckett is later found dead, Whistler-murder style. 

Theodore is arrested on suspicion of murder (and threatened with being put inside a ghost light (a special prison thought up by the UML and the Ghoul Council (see DRAMATIS PERSONAE below for more) and thrown in the bottom of Bonemarrow Lake forever, which, as he says, ‘is a long time, Mallory’), freed (because he didn’t do it), and then becomes Whistler victim numero quatro. This is obviously very hard to prove because he’s a ghost, but the Undetectables can’t take much more of this. Time is ticking and they’re rapidly running out of time. Diana figures out that the killer has been getting in and out of crime scenes unseen via WITCHLIGHTS, a ubiquitous crystal lighting device that everyone in Occulture has been using forever and ever, often instead of traditional lighting (they’re ghost-safe, for one). Mallory performs a sacrifice of the heart spell to try bring Theodore back from the dead, pretty sure she can summon a ghost, but nothing happens.

Their suspects in this case end up being narrowed down to DI ‘Sully’ O’Sullivan and Vincent Van Doren, because they find a PINK trace of magic that points to it being someone with witch and Apparent heritage. Cornelia disappears on the morning of Samhain and Diana and Mallory panic, eventually tracing Cornelia’s steps to the place Beckett died. They find a coat button and a terrible poem from the Whistler, and Mallory is sure she knows who the killer is. 

They rush to the Mayoral Offices (closed, because of a mysterious giant creature issue that crops up ever Samhain) and head to Vincent Van Doren’s office for a big confrontation… but Van Doren is dead, his heart carved out and stuck on the table with a blade. This leaves them with one other option: Jacob Gabbott. They find a secret passageway through the underbelly of the Mayoral Offices and Mallory finds what she thinks is dead Cornelia, but turns out to be ANOTHER SAMHAIN GHOST called Katherine, who doesn’t say much of use except to reveal she knew Theodore before and after he died. Weird! Diana and Mallory rescue Cornelia, confront Jacob Gabbott, who transpires to be Van Doren’s son (who used Blair’s ring he rescued from goddess knows where to magically disguise his identity and appear as the Night Mayor to escape detection) and defeat him with Chekhov’s Binding Spell by using it to shatter the Elisabella’s Death Blade. Before he dies he reveals he wasn’t planning on SUMMONING the Ternion, but on joining them instead, by sacrificing seven souls with the death blade. The souls trapped in the knife kill him and cut out his tongue, and Mallory, Cornelia and Diana wake up in the hospital. (and in the process of this, Diana kills one of the aforementioned giant insects that roam the halls of the Mayoral Offices around Samhain.)

At the very end, when Mallory is back home and has tested the lightbulb that killed Theodore, confirming there’s a trace of WITCH magic on it, Theodore comes back.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE 

THEODORE WYATT – former Apparent para-anthropologist, now cat-eared Samhain ghost

VINCENT VAN DOREN – witch (with Apparent heritage) Night Mayor of Wrackton, schmoozer with a secret son. DEAD
GREY QUINN – mildly greasy demon hotelier, will do anything that will extract a favour from the asker

IMOGEN BROADWICK – mother to Cornelia, Agatha and Ethel. Co-head of the Ghoul Council, the special ghost branch of the Unified Magical Liaison

EZRA BROADWICK – father to Cornelia, Agatha and Ethel. Co-head of the Ghoul Council, the special ghost branch of the Unified Magical Liaison

AGATHA BROADWICK – witch, sister to Cornelia and twin of Ethel
ETHEL BROADWICK –  witch, sister to Cornelia and twin of Agatha

CORNELIA BROADWICK – witch, the Undetectables’ resident entomologist
MALLORY HAWTHORNE – witch,  the Undetectables’ resident forensic scientist

DIANA CHEUNG-MERRIWEATHER – witch, the Undetectables’ resident social butterfly and magical miniature crime scene re-enactment specialist

JACOB GABBOTT – witch with Apparent heritage, Aide to the Night Mayor. Also his secret son. Also known as the Whistler. DEAD

DR PRIYANKA RAY – witch, town pathologist, object of Cornelia’s undying devotions

IZNA – ex-girlfriend of Diana’s 

FELIX COLE – faerie, close friend of Mallory, Diana and Cornelia. Founding member of Crown and Hemlock, local electro-metal-questionably genred band

LANGDON ERICSSON – faerie with troll heritage, Felix’s best friend, Founding member of Crown and Hemlock

CLOUD – faerie, Crown and Hemlock member 

BEN DELACEY – faerie, close friend of Cornelia and Diana, Felix’s other best friend. Founding member of Crown and Hemlock. DEAD 

BECKETT KINGSTON – vampire, sort of boyfriend to Cornelia. Has an attitude problem. DEAD

OBSERVER JOHNSON – troll, leads Observations of goddesses at the Wrackton Observatory

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR ALYSSA ‘SULLY’ O’SULLIVAN – witch with Apparent heritage, a reluctant ally to the Undetectables

HAYLEY EASON – witch, girlfriend of Night Mayor Vincent Van Doren. Inappropriately aged, in Cornelia’s opinion. Serves as shaky alibi for Van Doren. (we don’t meet her on the page)

BOOK TWO (THE UNDEAD COMPLEX): THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERERS

We begin with a flashback to 100ish years ago, Oakpass Manor, and an Apparent man named Howard Larkin, holding a meeting on behalf of his wife to assess actress Delfina Sackville, a potential new member for the Appoccult Society. A difficult task; he had to avoid setting them up for a repeat of a situation where a much-respected demon who had been on the Ghoul Council was excommunicated for giving increasingly implausible ‘information’ that contradicted the knowledge of even the vampires in the Society. Delfina offers him a black stone object she insists is haunted as the required trinket that would grant her access to the Society, and suggests he also admit her ‘friend’ (read, ‘gal pal’. But actually read ‘wife’). This ‘friend’ would build him a perfect replica miniature dollhouse model of Oakpass Manor she claimed would be magical, on condition he give it to one of his children. He accepted, they got the dollhouse, and the family went missing four years later. All they took with them was the dollhouse.

Five months on from the events of The Undetectables, business is booming – they’re just not getting good cases. Mrs Blackburn keeps calling to insist her husband Paul (who was 103) died of poisoning, and Diana starts to get itchy for her old life as a prop maker on film and TV shows. 

She gets a call from her ex-girlfriend Taylor, who asks for her help in a case involving a dead body found on a set, laid out like Ophelia at the lake – who happened to be wearing Taylor’s face. Diana has already applied for a sneaky propmaking job on the pilot episode, which is being shot at Larkin Studios not far from Wrackton, and is attached to the grounds of Oakpass Manor, a former museum that’s recently been privately sold. Mallory and Diana go undercover as a featured extra and prop maker respectively in order to get access to the crime scene and take samples to examine for magical traces. They meet the entire crew (including Sandi Clementine, an eccentric actor) and Diana reports to Rachel Lyons, the head of the prop department. They discover DONNY BAKER is missing, and Diana is shown a purchased prop –a dollhouse built by none other than Francine Leon (who is based on real life mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee). It’s a perfect miniature replica of Oakpass Manor (and where have we heard of this before??) 

 They dig into the current owner of Oakpass Manor who turns out to be none other than Wrackton’s own hotelier Grey Quinn (who happens to be Theodore’s mortal enemy ever since his first death, as Quinn put the cat whiskers and ears on him that he has been forced to live with forever). Grey Quinn is a close personal friend (read: on-off multi-year situationship) of Hollis Hadley, the writer of the Undead Complex comic. They learn that there is a whole story around the disappearance of the Larkin family, and that Lady Larkin supposedly had some long-lost treasure that folk have been desperate to find.

Then Kingston shows up, the spitting image of Cornelia’s dead ex Beckett, wearing his face. They turn out to be cousins, and Kingston’s just learned Beckett is dead. This causes Issues for Mallory, who feels enormously guilty about being kind of glad Beckett was out of the picture, and is sure Cornelia and Kingston are going to get closer over their shared mutual grief. Kingston helps them understand that Oakpass Manor was a former vampire stronghold during the Vampire Wars, and explains a concept known as the undead complex, or the King Me Principle - a form of necromancy involving trading a soul, and using another type of magic to do it. Kingston also reveals that vampire magic, which was largely given up after the vampire wars, is about obtaining knowledge from blood. He’s been (illegally) microdosing blood for some time, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the world he can attempt to disseminate if he’s asked direct questions. 

The case confuses them for a long time - they get details wrong whenever they go to the set, nobody seems to know anything. Dead!Taylor turns out to be Donny Baker, the missing director of photography, and Dead!Orson has shown up posed in imitation of another scene and turned out to be Hollis Hadley. They can’t identify a motive or reason for any of this - why would someone kill the DP and pretend it was Taylor? Why would they kill Hollis and pretend it was Orson? They start wondering if there is demon magic involvement - if they’re being somehow persuaded not to think about the case in some way. They make a connection between the bodies being laid out and the dollhouse, which ultimately contains a false bottom beneath the stairs in the main entrance with a number of dead preserved insects. They get permission to rummage around Oakpass Manor, where they discover Lady Larkin’s ‘lost treasure’ is most likely Blair’s ring that Jacob had, which the rest of the Undetectables believe is lost in the Mayoral Offices, but that Diana actually has had hidden in a diorama at home for the last five months. Oops! They also take a strange black stone they think the killer dropped that Theodore confirms is tremendously haunted. They almost catch the killer in the act, and get a demon trace from the scene.

They narrow their suspects to demons involved in the case - both of the security guards, Nathan Tate and Lyle Whitlock, are demons, and Nathan Tate disappears off the job after the first murder, and is suddenly a DI on the Oughteron force very determined to stop them investigating further - suspicious, when they’re considering demon magic. Mallory eventually realises nothing in the case is adding up because they are likely looking at TWO suspects - one person carrying out the murders, one posing the bodies. One killer, one gruesome artist. One using straightforward force to kill, one using magic they don’t understand. In an attempt to think outside the box, Cornelia (with the help of a large moth called Horrible Travis) identifies a very rare, very difficult to obtain plant called Atropa miasma, a magical plant not dissimilar to Belladonna, nicknamed Belissima - that happens to grow on the grounds of Oakpass Manor. With Cornelia’s help (which is really indirect help from Cornelia’s twin siblings, who had an interest in botany), they determine that someone who is NOT OCCULT could harness the paralytic murdery effects of a high dose of Belissima, leading them to think that the Dollhouse Murderers are an Occult–Apparent pair.

Grey Quinn throws a spring equinox party at Oakpass Manor where everyone is poisoned with Belissima, and on the way they discover that Jacob Gabbott’s body has been found in the Mayoral Offices, right as a giant centipede escaped. There’s a town-wide lockdown and Theodore helps them break through the barriers. Diana steals a car, they make it to Oakpass Manor, they open the floor the same way they opened the miniature floor in the dollhouse, find the bodies of the missing Larkins, and discover Whitlock and Rachel trying to perform a ritual in a secret chamber beneath the Oakpass courtyard. They identify Lyle as Whitlock as the descendent of the demon excommunicated from the Appoccult Society over 100 years ago, who had been attempting to make Apparents afraid of Occulture again and reclaim their power by connecting with Morrigan by performing an undead complex ritual with sacrificed souls. His plan was to combine the five bodies of the Larkins with five victims. They kill Kingston (who is able to reanimate due to his blood microdosing). They are saved by the sudden appearance of the giant centipede from the Mayoral Offices, who takes Lady Larkin’s body and fucks off with it. Lyle and Rachel are arrested. Diana and Taylor get officially back together, and Diana decides to stay in Wrackton and keep being a PI.

Meanwhile, Theodore is acting really weird, and Mallory thinks it’s her fault. After all, she cast the sacrifice of the heart spell to bring him back as a ghost after the Whistler got him in book 1, and she was partially responsible for the explosion of the Mayoral Offices that made him redundant at work, but he won’t answer any questions about who Katherine the other Samhain ghost in the Mayoral Offices is, or how he knows her. He advises Mallory to stop digging, but she doesn’t want to. Diana and Mallory see Theodore try to go into the (closed) Mayoral Offices, flickering and fighting against something, and seamlessly passing through what is meant to be a warded doorway. Odd! Along with Langdon Ericsson, Mallory takes a side quest to talk to Katherine, who insists she won’t tell Mallory a thing until she finds out where her sister Rose is. Perfectly simple, except all she has is a first name and no idea how old Katherine is or when she died. She gets nothing out of her except something about a baby. Langdon kisses Mallory after they have a semi-romantic picnic in the ruins of the Offices, and he knows instinctively what Mallory hasn’t been able to say - that she’s in love with someone else (ie, Cornelia) and they part amicably.

Eventually, with the help of Observer Johnson and a little bit of help from Kingston, they find Rose’s grave, and identify her as Rosemary Vane, and determine that Rosemary and Katherine Vane died sometime during the Vampire Wars. Katherine asks who won the war, and Mallory says the Ternion. Katherine seems confused and says that they ‘allowed Morrigan and Hecate’s daughters’ to live. As a reward for their assistance, Katherine shows Mallory, Diana and Cornelia a memory from close to the time of Theodore’s death. Van Doren, in conversation with Imogen and Ezra Broadwick, which seems to implicate the Broadwicks directly in Theodore’s murder.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Undetectables: Mallory, Diana, Cornelia and Theodore

TAYLOR ROSE O’GORMAN - Diana’s Apparent, Irish ex girlfriend. DEAD(?)

GREY QUINN - hotelier with a heart, current owner of Oakpass Manor

HOLLIS HADLEY - creator and writer of the Undead Complex comics

FRED - AD on the ill-fated pilot of Undead Complex

NATHAN TATE - demon, former night security, current DI of Oughteron police

ALANNAH - Taylor’s ex, a prop maker 

JENNA - head makeup artist on Undead Complex, has rheumatoid arthritis

DONNY BAKER - director of photography. Missing at the beginning of the case. DEAD.

ORSON WEBB - showrunner. DEAD 

XANDER CRANE - beloved actor

LYLE WHITLOCK - security guard, one half of The Dollhouse Murderers 

RACHEL LYONS - head of prop department, one half of The Dollhouse Murderers 

SANDI CLEMENTINE - beloved Apparent actress, eccentric to the extreme

EGBERT ATTICUS KINGSTON (Or just ‘KINGSTON’) - Beckett’s cousin, know-it-all who’s earned the title, DEAD (but not anymore) 

BOOK THREE (THE UNFATHOMABLE CURSE): THE WICKERMERE REAPER and the WRACKTON DIGGER 

A flashback shows us the very day the Broadwicks packed up Cornelia, Agatha and Ethel and brought them to Rowan House in Wickermere, Cumbria, to take over as heads of the Ghoul Council after the death of Cornelia’s grandfather. Cornelia and the twins get into an argument, and Cornelia wishes that they’d disappear. 

It’s now just over a year after the events of book 2 and Cornelia has been freezing their family out, and they’re cut off from Broadwick funds for the first time in their life. The Undetectables (minus Theodore) attend the funeral of Jacob Gabbott, only to see that he’s been put into the ground for good. They’re alerted to a case involving bodies being dug up – an Apparent and a witch who died around the time of book 2 have been grave robbed. They’re not taking it particularly seriously, but Theodore latches on to it and sends the rest of the team out to investigate. They find little bits of paper and discover only the Apparent gravediggers are authorised to dig burial grounds in Wrackton. Then they get a call to say that Agatha and Ethel have been taken by the Wickermere Reaper, a case that has been ongoing since the events of book 2. They travel via witchlight directly to Rowan House, the headquarters of the Ghoul Council, and meet the council - Dorothy Early, Harry Foster, Lucy Caldwell, Olivia Reid and Nova Khan. The Undetectables insist on investigating the case - Cornelia is shocked by how their parents are seemingly willing to let Agatha and Ethel die for the sake of rules. 

The Ghoul Council is situated next to Lake Wickermere, aka Bonemarrow Lake, where Theodore insists he will be thrown if he does anything wrong as a Samhain ghost. After much investigation, they conclude the Reaper has to be an inside job and is most likely someone on the Council. The Wickermere Reaper gives them an extension to find the twins, if they can produce the remains of Elisabella. The Broadwicks are insistent they don’t have them, and the gang eventually figure out the remains are a ghostlight, likely in the bottom of the lake. Despite how dangerous it is, Mallory and Cornelia both enter the lake, dive to the bottom and find Elisabella’s ghostlight (and a second, seemingly empty ghostlight) and bring it to the Council to demand they do something to save the twins. During a staged seance, Cornelia accidentally releases Elisabella, who puts a Besiegement Curse on them - a curse that, if enacted, condemns everyone in the vicinity to death by ghost possession. All anyone has to do is say their name within the next few days. 

Furious and determined to get answers, Cornelia forces a confrontation that results in the discovery that Dorothy is behind the murders, and has been killing for some time. She was tired of being overlooked because of her age, and was, ultimately, bored. She’s been in communication with Lyle Whitlock and is very interested in Jacob Gabott. In order to save them all, Mallory say’s Cornelia’s name. Mallory, Diana, Cornelia, Agatha, Ethel, Imogen and Ezra are all condemned to death. They throw the ghostlight back into

They return home and Mallory figures out why Theodore was so insistent on solving the Wrackton Digger case – he’s the digger, and he’s dug up four bodies, including his own and Jacob’s. He reveals this in front of practically the whole town. He storms out and explodes all the glass in Broadwick basement, breaking that second seemingly empty ghostlight in the process. They’re face-to-face with yet ANOTHER Samhain ghost, this one a beautiful woman with her heart torn out, who says that her name is Rosemary Vane - but that she’s better known as BLAIR. 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE UNDETECTABLES - Cornelia, Diana, Mallory and Theodore 

AGATHA BROADWICK - sister of Cornelia, twin of Ethel, victim of the Reaper
ETHEL BROADWICK - sister of Cornelia, twin of Agatha, victim of the Reaper
EZRA BROADWICK - co-head of Ghoul Council, is a bit of a ghoul himself.
IMOGEN BROADWICK - co-head of Ghoul Council, is a bit of a ghoul herself.

OLIVIA REID - member of Ghoul Council, a scientist. Reminds Cornelia of Mallory.
NOVA KHAN - member of Ghoul Council, is their in-house antagonist

HARRY FOSTER - member of Ghoul Council, practically an uncle to Cornelia, is the most steadfast rule follower

DOROTHY EARLY - member of Ghoul Council, practically an aunt to Cornelia, the Wickermere Reaper
MRS BLACKBURN - wife of Wrackton Digger victim
PAUL BLACKBURN - Wrackton Digger victim

FREYA EVANS - Wrackton Digger victim

THE TERNION (AND MORRIGAN AND HECATE)

Thought to be the daughters of Hecate and Morrigan (the goddesses that came before the Ternion), Elisabella, Blair and Hexana are revered in Occulture for putting an end to the Vampire Wars. They are credited with linking Occulture beliefs together and homogenising the distinct Occultures together. 

Very little is actually known about the Ternion, though they are thought to have been buried in Wrackton, in the memorial gardens behind the Observatory. Little is also known about Morrigan and Hecate, or their involvement in the Ternion’s story, despite the Observatories being home to scholars on the subject. (Perhaps this has something to do with the Vampire Wa— what was I saying?)

There is a pattern carved into the glass of the Observatory (and the stomachs of the Whistler victims) that is essentially circles, lines and stars for each of the Ternion:

• Elisabella had a knife (death blade)

• Blair had a ring (used by the Whistler) used to bring forth something known as the ‘shrouding’ (presumably by disguising her appearance)

• Hexana had ?? (currently unknown) 

Jacob Gabbott tried to summon the Ternion by making his own death blade, so that he could join them (like a crap boy band), and failed. The Dollhouse Murderers seemed to want to go over the Ternion’s heads and go back to Morrigan to ask her help in making Occulture scary again, or something equally dreadful and distasteful.

THE MAGIC SYSTEM

Occulture is made up of WITCHES, FAERIES, DEMONS, VAMPIRES, TROLLS and GHOSTS (Although ghosts are sort of on the outskirts, being that there’s a whole government department for them, and there is only officially Theodore around…). 

• 
  Witch magic is sort of organic, everyday magic (and produces a RED trace in the Magic Magical Machine)

• Faerie magic is glamour magic - mostly cosmetic, short-acting (and produces a GREEN trace in the MMM)

• Demon magic is persuasion - convincing people to change their mind or topic of conversation (and produces a BLUE trace in the MMM) 

• Vampire magic is knowledge, obtained via the consumption of blood (and produces a SILVERY GREY/SOOTY trace in the MMM) 

• Troll magic is memory, and the ability to never forget a face (and produces a GREY-BLUE trace in the MMM) 

• Ghost magic is the ability to walk through walls and appear semi-corporeal (and produces a YELLOW trace in the MMM)

Heritage determines how magic presents and the DNA signature it has. Faerie/troll heritage would produce a TEAL trace, while Apparent/witch would produce a PINK trace, and so forth. 

Have any more questions? Shoot me an email at cswritesbooks[at]gmail.com and I’d be happy to answer!

BOOK LAUNCH: THE UNSOLVABLE CASE

I’m heading to Hodges Figgis on 25th September at 6.30pm to launch THE UNSOLVABLE CASE, the finale in the Undetectables series, with the help of authors Amy Clarkin, Dave Rudden and Ruth Frances Long. Come hear us chat about writing series (among some excellent tangents) and get your book signed. More info here, all welcome - just send an rsvp to rsvp@gillhess.ie so we know you’re coming!

THE UNFATHOMABLE CURSE EVENTS

Here’s where you can catch me in celebration of The Unfathomable Curse launching:

26th September – CHAPTERS BOOKSTORE @ 7pm

13th October – RED LINE BOOK FESTIVAL, RUA RED @ 7.30pm

26th October – MCM COMIC CON, LONDON @ 2pm

TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW

THE UNFATHOMABLE CURSE launch!

on September 26th at 7pm join me and special guests for a CURSES & CHAOS panel in celebration of the launch of The Unfathomable Curse at Chapters Bookstore Dublin!

Tickets are available here

2024 post-mortem

Winter heralds the death of the year, and it’s time for an autopsy…

Books and such 

Brat summer gave way to Undead Complex autumn as the second instalment of The Undetectables Series made its way to shelves – it is a relief to be able to talk about the series as a SERIES and not me wildly trying to maintain the illusion that I didn’t know if there would be more books. I did! I am just a terrible liar! I imagined The Undetectables with a four-book arc from the beginning (I contemplated five, but four feels right) and it’s been a dream to get to do this, especially on my first go. 

One thing I will say is that in retrospect I didn’t really think about what it would mean to get to write four books in the same series on my first go – it's the furthest into a story I’ve ever committed to paper. I had written books before where I intended to keep going with the story, but it never left my head. Here, I’ve been playing 4D chess against myself trying to keep all the moving parts going as the series progresses, the decisions becoming more permanent with every book published. While I was polishing up book 2 with Titan earlier in the year, I have been deep in writing book 3. Somehow I find myself moving into polishing mode again while my thoughts turn to book 4. It’s coming to an end in a way that felt very far off when I signed the first contract. 

I can’t tell you what I’m doing with this next phase of the series, exactly, only this: I care about these characters like they are my friends, and I can promise I will make the ending worthy of our friendship. But until we get there… the next time we speak like this, everything will be different. 

(This has been your one and only warning) 

Other news: The Undetectables $1.99 kindle sale for the month of January. Get ‘em while they’re hot. Leave a little review somewhere if you do grab it. It all helps!

Writing 

Every year I imagine I will be able to use my time not spent on my contracted work wisely and write lots, and every year I forget I’m human. I’m a chronically ill human (who is admittedly doing a great deal better these days, but still not quite at regular-people standards) with hard limits and I had to be reminded by my friends that taking a break was not only recommended, it was required. It’s helped – I’ve thrown myself into research for something that isn’t anything (yet). I’m enjoying doing it at my own pace with no pressure to imagine it as a book. It’s a story I’m piecing together bit by bit, similar to how I wrote The Undetectables back in 2019. I don’t know if you’ll ever get to see this story, but I’m having a lot of fun with it. 

Events 

There were fewer events this year but I had a lot of fun doing them – the first was a Trinity Lit Soc Path to Publishing panel with Sheena Wilkinson and Helen Corcoran back in March, which was excellent. My favourite part of any event is when the panel really finds sync, as the final question from a student was related to writing to market (specifically, if they should), and the three of us in unison said “no!!” (I have thoughts about this, but for another day)

The second event of the year was in celebration of The Undead Complex and Irish Book Week but was really a chance for me to assemble a room of extremely cool and talented people to talk about horror and hyperfixations for about an hour (my timekeeping skills are wanting at the best of times but I swear I could’ve sat there all night chatting) 

Podcasts! 

In October, Meg Grehan and I launched Four Seasons Writers Retreat, a cosy chatty fireside podcast where we discuss often-debated writing topics. The first 6 episodes are available here, and we’ll have some news on the next season very soon… 

I also appeared on an episode of Crime World Book Club with Clodagh Meaney talking about my favourite nonfiction book, When the Dogs Don’t Bark by Professor Angela Gallop, and on an episode of Hyperfixations talking about Frances Glessner Lee. You can listen to them both here. 

Personally Speaking 

I’m still not one for sharing much publicly, but this year has overall been… not so great? Back in January I had imagined what this year would look like to the point of expectation that it would turn out that way, and those expectations were almost matched, then got ripped away in a manner that I haven’t quite recovered from. I am hoping 2025 will look a lot different. (And better. Better, universe. I said better!) 

I struggle immensely with uncertainty, and with the absence of clarity. When you’re trying to make big life changes, they tend to all go hand in hand (I wish they didn’t), and when you’re someone who is is constantly trying to make things certain and clear, there’s always a sense that you should’ve known it wouldn’t work out, or that it wouldn’t happen. And for that, instead of trying to talk myself out of this deeply irrational way of making things I can’t control my fault (as strangely, that doesn’t work. Ask me how I know) I like to remember this line by poet Hannah Emerson: 

It is ok to be the fool you are helping this great universe explode 

Favourite reads

I managed to read 102 books this year (nobody is more surprised than me) and here are some of my favourite reads in no particular order. As is always the case when one reads lots of books, I have definitely missed ones I really enjoyed, but here is a list of 28 I really liked/loved:

1. Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub

2. Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes

3. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 

4. Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kölsch 

5. Down the Drain by Julia Fox 

6. Spirit Level by Richy Craven 

7. I’m Glad my Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

8. A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock 

9. The Kissing of Kissing by Hannah Emerson

10. Who Watches This Place by Amy Clarkin 

11. Trouble by Lex Croucher

12. The Hollow and the Haunted by Camilla Raines 

13. Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly 

14. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes 

15. The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle

16. Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle 

17. Bear Season by Gemma Fairclough 

18. Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson 

19. Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater 

20. How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

21. Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner 

22. Starling House by Alix E Harrow 

23. Smothermoss by Alisa Alering 

24. Idolfire by Grace Curtis* 

25. Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens 

26. Under the Mistletoe with You by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

27. Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race* 

28. One Night Only by Catherine Walsh

29. Private Rights by Julia Armfield

* = 2025 release

Here’s to a new year and new possibilities. My main resolution is to chase opportunities and be ready to welcome them with open arms. I’ve got some cool things in the works, and I promise TU3 is gonna blow your little gay socks off xx

Notes on Stories

Sometimes I stumble upon stories buried in old files or scrawled in forgotten notebooks, and I know instantly that they are mine. Not from the handwriting – though for me that’s a dead giveaway; a chicken-scratch scrawl that has been the bane of every educator’s existence from the day I stepped foot in a school until I completed my undergraduate degree – or from particular recognition of the notebook cover. Often I don’t even recognise the subject matter. Most of the time, the story doesn’t end. An idea, pounced upon and discarded. 

But the voice of it. 

That’s mine. 

I have had the same writing voice since I started seriously trying to write books. My first attempts when I was ten or so – ideas I’ve clung onto, because child-me wasn’t bad at concepts – were filled with the sort of humour that today, I can’t write without. Puns, banter, terrible jokes. The things that make my work feel complete. My first proper book I wrote – age fourteen, buried now in the bottom of a drawer and too embarrassing, even still, to read in its entirety – has my cadence. My preferred paragraph structures. My love of starting sentences in odd places, ending them wherever. Fragments. Beats I feel my way through, rather than write with any sort of intentionality. It is all intentional, and yet it isn’t. These are words that leave me, unconnected ribbons, that I smooth and piece together line by line, writing, rewriting. 

I think this is what they mean by craft. My hands are glue on construction paper, brush on canvas, chisel on stone, moulding and shaping something that is meant to be finished by me. Handmade. Filled with love. 

I’ve been a writer for more of my life than I haven’t been. It takes up space in every part of my day – as a reader, I am deconstructing, examining, being surprised on the daily by choices that writers far more capable than me, far more experienced than me, make. I’m learning every day how to be better. I watch episodes of TV and try to predict the arcs that will come based on the information that I’ve been given. And it’s fun – all of this is fun. Every day I am writing, even when there’s no keyboard beneath my fingers. 

And every day I have ideas. Ideas I babble at my agent with all the poise of that one scene in Elf (premise: asparagus children, self-conscious. Plot: vibes). Ideas that I will excitedly tell my partner in stumbling fits and starts right before I go to sleep when the brain worms turn their attention to something new, or when I rush out of the shower, hair dripping down my shoulders because the urgency of the idea, of what the story will be as I see it in my head, is more important than anything else. 

I want to tell the story. 

The story starts with an idea. 

I’ve only been doing this professionally for a handful of years. But I’ve learned in those years that the idea is the beginning; the telling is the bit where I come in. Where I sit down at my desk and type, or stare out the bus window, or ask myself ‘would my character like this’ when I’m trying a new drink or eating a new meal. The telling is in the jokes I think up while standing at the kettle, or in the precipitous slip between wake and sleep, where the choice is between searing my retinas with my phone screen or risk losing the joke. 

(Usually the phone wins; usually I’ve typed something like ahdht tsauys jugglig?? and I risk losing the joke anyway. Perhaps there wasn’t one to begin with, but it becomes a joke in itself.) 

Sometimes it is painful. Sometimes I want to lie on the forest floor and scream because what I want to do is bigger than what I am able to do in the moment (being chronically ill is part of that; my limitations are more than what I believe they could or should be, and it is a constant balancing act in accepting this over and over again). But often it is magic. Often I have really, really good writing days. They get better the more I practise telling stories. The more confident I get in my ability to stumble through the pictures I’m seeing in my head. To take the feeling I get when I think of a concept, a premise, and trust my ability to turn that into plot. 

All stories have a beginning, a middle, an end. Some will tell you there are only a certain number of plots – probably true, I bet it’s been researched – and that there are only a certain number of story structures. This is the bit anyone can learn. When I hear someone say ‘everyone has a book in them’, I think it’s true twofold: I think anyone could learn the basics of craft, and I believe everyone has enough of a rich inner world, enough of a life lived, that they have a story or stories they could tell that would fill an entire book. 

But in fiction, those experiences shape your stories. Those experiences make it so the story you are writing is yours. And because it’s you, the more you practise, the more your voice comes through. Some writers use a different voice for different works, but you still know it's theirs at the end of the day – and not because their name is on the cover. 

Your ideas come through you. Your plotting and crafting can be learned (and some writers never do; they feel their way through each and every story without ever structuring it, but that is a skill that has to be honed through trial and error and effort, again, again, again). There are millions of stories in the world, and millions of unique voices. There are millions of ways to tell a story, to write people, to dream up places, to use a real place to create something new. There are objectively good books and objectively bad books and books not to your personal taste and books you will tell everyone and anyone about, and what they all have in common is all of the above. 

There are as many reasons to write a book as there are to read one, but imagine, if you will, the process of creation: the idea that sparks it all. The trying, again and again. The learning, the shaping. The experience. The heart that goes in it. The hope that someone wants you to tell them a story, and will pick it up. Releasing it into the world for scrutiny, for enjoyment, with all that effort behind it. The triumph of it finding the ideal reader – the person who laughs and cries and likes your obscure references or the real places or that one line you couldn’t stop thinking about. And that hope blossoms each time you do it. You hope that that reader will pick up the next one and the next one and the next one. That of all the books in all the world, yours spoke to that reader.

They want your stories.

They want it to be yours. 

To offer up something that isn’t throws yours into contrast. To write is not just to write; the alternative is stories about people written by machines who can only copy what came before. Who can only tell you a story borrowed from other parts of stories. It might have a beginning, a middle, and end. It might have an idea – but it doesn’t have a heart. 

As a writer you offer up your heart. You offer up your jokes, your lines, your sentiments, your perceptions. Your characters drawn from experience who say things you’d want them to say in scenes you wrote for them. You offer time clocked and progress made and the highs and lows and all the parts of it, good and bad. And at the end of it, you have something you’ve made. Something you love, that someone else will love too. 

Without that, finding a story in a drawer – one with a beginning, a soggy middle, an almost-ending – will be a story without a voice. An unclaimed thing. An absence of the key component of being a writer: writing. 

2023: Post-Mortem

I thought I might try out writing long-form posts again sometimes. Not many; some sprinkled snapshots, or if I have some particularly good thoughts I want to share. This is just a little retrospective (a post-mortem, if you will) on my debut year, some work and personal life stuff, and a few of my favourite reads. 

Debuting

2023 was the year of The Undetectables. It’s a year I’ve been waiting for since I was 10, and been trying to make happen since I was 14, but it still feels absolutely bonkers to think that it’s actually happened? A really real thing. 

Whenever people ask what it’s like to have a book published, I don’t know what to say, because I still don’t think I know. It’s at once both the most incredible thing in the world, and the thing that makes the most sense. A life-long goal realised with a book I’m immensely proud of in a world I absolutely adore being in, with a publisher that has been a dream to work with.

Getting to publish a book with a chronically ill main character is everything – I would love to go back to 2018 to tell the version of me who finally got a diagnosis of fibromyalgia (among other things) that it was all going to work out pretty okay, actually. I would love to tell 2018 me that they’d get emails and DMs and tweets and comments from other people with fibro who could relate to Mallory. I’d love to go back even further and tell kid me that a lifelong obsession with forensic science would be useful for a fantasy world and that readers would be just as enthusiastic. And I’d love to go back to the tiny version of me that was scared to assert their queer identity and tell them they’d get BE GAY written on the front cover.

Because I’d had no expectations other than ‘I hope this goes well’, there’s virtually nothing I’d change about my debut year. Maybe a bit less airborne virus adding a layer of difficulty to everything, but I did so many events, met readers and booksellers, signed books (and bookplates), got into a book box and just generally had a blast with a genre that doesn’t tend to sell well in my country. 

 To absolutely every single person who was involved in making this the year of The Undetectables, THANK YOU! 

Writing 

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get a whole load of writing done this year besides what I was contracted to do. I started out 2023 working on The Undetectables edits while simultaneously working on an outline, and then a draft and another and another of what is now officially titled The Undead Complex. I started trying to untangle a first draft of a middle grade book I was writing in between rounds of edits and drafts, but didn’t get very far. I’d been practising writing drafts on a tight turnaround in the years leading up to getting a book deal, knowing it wasn’t a skill I’d want to have to develop from scratch, but actually juggling edits and drafts was a really interesting experience and one I think I can improve on next year. (It seems planning is a good 80% of it, the rest is down to my energy levels!) 

For some absolutely unknown reason I thought it would be a great goal to aim to write 12 short stories across the year, but that’s an absolutely laughable aspiration in hindsight. I wrote one and a half stories and a few paragraphs of others, but the ideas are sketched out for when I next get a chance to get them down on paper.

I also blurbed a nice handful of brilliant books and worked on some sensitivity/authenticity reads which is always so rewarding (and I’m open to doing one or two next year, authors/publishers don’t be afraid to hit me up!). Otherwise, I’ve got a handful of book ideas and documents where I’ve sketched out bits of plot, and they’ll be waiting for me when I’m ready to work on something new. Maybe in 2024, maybe later on. We’ll have to see what the future holds… 

Personally Speaking

I’m not really one for sharing private life online much anymore – I used to be a lot more frank and honest, but when I became chronically ill I found it harder and harder to share what used to come naturally, my desire to be private (and maybe not having much energy to put thoughts into words) outweighing any benefit it might’ve brought me and anyone reading about it. But this is important, I think. 

A specific event many years ago caused me to develop agoraphobia (a story for another day, perhaps) and I’ve never been quite right since. While it waned a lot by 2019, it came back with a bang in 2020, and I couldn’t rationalise it because my fears of going outside were tied up in the very real fear of getting sick and losing some (or all) of the progress I’d made in managing my chronic illness. In 2022, I moved across the country and had no real need to go very far from home, so I was happily sitting in and writing and reading and rarely setting foot outside my little village without someone with me. It was a nice place to write and read books and convalesce near the sea like a sickly Victorian child. 

Fast forward to January 2023. My book had been announced. I’d seen a rough cover. I had edits to complete and it was going to be a real book. There were going to be events. I was maybe going to have to travel outside of Ireland, but certainly up to Dublin, on a train, on my own. There were going to be other people around. It was absolutely happening.

 And I still couldn’t go outside by myself. 

I look back on the start of the year and don’t recognise that person. The original agoraphobia, despite being a huge problem, went untreated until I took matters into my own hands (something I understand is not possible for lots of people, but worked for me in lieu of anyone helping me out) and designed a way for me to go outside and do things, again and again, until it became easier. This year I tried that same method, a slow creep of exposure to other people and to places on my own – which brings us to events!

Events 

So I’d expected to maybe do, like, a book launch? Maybe do an in-person event, maybe be invited to something in England, though that was never a given, and I never really expected it to happen. I honestly had no idea what to expect aside from the nebulous sense that I needed to be ready to go places on my own by the time September rolled around.

It was certainly not a given that I got chosen as an Irish Book Week Ambassador (thanks to Sans Press, who’ve published me twice in two of their anthologies and thought I’d be a good nominee!). It was not a given I’d do events for IBW (including an event at Chapters Dublin with the SYP, and an in-conversation with JF Murray), that I’d be asked to chair VE Schwab at the Dublin date of the Fragile Threads tour, or that I’d be asked to do a panel at MCM Comic Con with David Fenne and Juno Dawson (chaired by Alwyn Hamilton), but I was and I did all of these things and it was wild and wonderful and incredible. I chaired an event in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop in Galway with my impossibly talented friend Meg Grehan, which was my first time chairing and cemented the possibility that I could chair events – and even like doing it. 

Edit: so focused was on I events where I had to actually go outside, I forgot to mention the wonderful events I did where the eyes were on me through phones and tablets and laptops… and TVs! I did an excellent panel on writing disabled characters with Lillie Lainoff at CampYA, a Fantasy Fellowship panel with fellow Titan authors Trip Galey, KJ Dell’Antonia and Kell Woods, and appeared on VirginMedia’s What’s the Story? tv show and had a chat with Tom Dunne, where he let me ramble on about science a lot. (it was great)

I think how I see myself is not how others see me (I’ve been told this by those closest to me on multiple occasions), but January 2023 Courtney and December 2023 Courtney are worlds apart in terms of confidence in their ability to do things. It was challenging physically and mentally to get here, but while I was in the moment… god was it fun.  

Favourite Books

In spite of the wild year I had, I somehow read 133 books this year. (Lots were research books, or for the purpose of me studying craft, and this list does not include books I’ve blurbed for next year!) These were some stand-outs across adult, YA and non-fiction. 

Fiction (adult):

The Last House on Needless Street – Catriona Ward

In Memoriam – Alice Winn 

Floating Hotel (March 2024) – Grace Curtis 

My Hot Friend – Sophie White 

Vicious – VE Schwab

Penance – Eliza Clark

Masters of Death – Olivie Blake

The Nothing Man – Catherine Ryan Howard

Feed – Mira Grant

Orlando – Virgina Woolf 

YA: 

What Walks These Halls – Amy Clarkin 

Iron Widow – Xiran Jay Zhao 

Mindwalker – Kate Dylan 

One For All – Lillie Lainoff 

Sixteen Souls – Rosie Talbot 

Overemotional – David Fenne 

The Honeys – Ryan LaSala 

Wise Creatures – Deirdre Sullivan 

Heartstopper vol. 5 – Alice Oseman 

Nonfiction: 

Takeaway – Angela Hui

18 Tiny Deaths – Bruce Goldfarb  (a re-read) 

But What I Really Want To Do Is Direct – Ken Kwapis 

Murder: the Biography – Kate Morgan

Night Terrors – Alice Vernon