Jeez, Louise!

A murder mystery with no body, no crime and no killer? And at least two pervy relationships? Writer LOUISE WELSH explains what motivated her to write a whodunnit with a difference.

Anne Sexton, 30 Jun 2010

Everyone has been telling me: 'I found your book very interesting'", says Scottish mystery writer Louise Welsh. "I want to ask: 'Did you like it?'"

You can't really blame the readers because "interesting" sums up Welsh's Naming The Bones pretty well. Furthermore, you'd be hard pressed to find a more suitable adjective to describe a murder mystery which refuses to conform to the conventions of the genre. For most of the novel there's no body, no discernable crime and no killer. What's more, Welsh's befuddled academic protagonist, Murray Watson, is perfectly safe for the bulk of the book's almost 400 pages. Despite that, Naming The Bones feels like a mystery and you will want to keep reading to the end.

Even Welsh is unsure how exactly to describe the book.

"I guess it is a mystery or there's a mystery at the heart of it. But whether it fits into the crime canon, I'm not sure. There's definitely a quest and I think most crime books are quests. So there are points of contact… I don't know – it's usually up to marketing where it gets put!"

She warms to the topic. "I like the idea that this book starts quietly. I wanted something that began in a safe place and then pushed the boundaries," she says.

This is indeed the basic structure underlying Naming The Bones, and fans of crime novels should not be put off by the fact it is not a conventional murder mystery. There is, as it turns out, a body – it just takes a while for Murray to discover it. When he does, it's not the one the reader may have been expecting. Like Welsh's much-lauded debut The Cutting Room, the body is not contemporary to the rest of the story.

"I love traditional three-act crimes, but I think in a way I'm squeamish about the body. Often, in crime novels, the body is used as a plot point and it's usually a female body. You have this body that has been abused, raped, murdered and it's put centre-stage. It's there just to be a point in the plot and I've always avoided that – using the victim as an object."

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