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Victoria Dowd

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Victoria Dowd

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Member Since
April 2020


Victoria is a crime writer and her first novel, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, won The People’s Book Prize 2020/2021. It was also In Search of the Classic Mystery’s book of the year 2020. It’s the first in the Smart Woman’s mystery series. The second is Body on the Island and the third, The Supper Club Murders is out on 16th September. They are a dark comedy take on the classic whodunnit.

She is also an award winning writer of short fiction, having won the Gothic Fiction prize for short fiction by Go Gothic. She was the runner up in The New Writer’s writer of the year award and her work has been short listed and Highly commended by Writers’ Forum magazine. She was also long-listed for The Willesden Herald International Short Story Compet
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Victoria Dowd Hi Linda, Thank you very much! I do outline the stories on large pin boards a lot of the time. So for instance, with book 3, it’s set in a village on …moreHi Linda, Thank you very much! I do outline the stories on large pin boards a lot of the time. So for instance, with book 3, it’s set in a village on Dartmoor and the starting point was to draw out the village and the houses. Then I moved on to the characters living in those houses and how they relate to each other. However, the driving force behind the visit is the Smart women. They guide us around the new world and, in particular, Ursula is our eyes so what she sees is incredibly important. What she doesn’t see is also very important. I layer it really. I give them a setting and all the characters set out and they then drive the action forward. I go over and over it though putting very small clues and red herrings in. I hope that makes sense. Sometimes it does! Thanks so much for the question and I hope you enjoy the series. Best wishes, Victoria(less)
Victoria Dowd I’m currently working on the second book in the series. This time the Smart women embark on a survival course on an uninhabited island.
Average rating: 3.53 · 2,364 ratings · 474 reviews · 18 distinct worksSimilar authors
The Smart Woman's Guide to ...

3.28 avg rating — 1,038 ratings — published 2020 — 10 editions
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The Supper Club Murders (Sm...

3.58 avg rating — 362 ratings7 editions
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The Smart Woman’s Mysteries...

3.81 avg rating — 271 ratings
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Body on the Island (Smart W...

3.49 avg rating — 289 ratings8 editions
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A Book of Murder (Smart Wom...

3.95 avg rating — 200 ratings — published 2022 — 3 editions
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Murder Most Cold (Smart Wom...

3.92 avg rating — 87 ratings — published 2023 — 3 editions
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The Complete Smart Woman’s ...

3.83 avg rating — 46 ratings
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Death in the Aviary (The Ch...

3.72 avg rating — 47 ratings3 editions
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The Painter of Siena

4.71 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2016 — 2 editions
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The Ghastling: Book Seventeen

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4.83 avg rating — 6 ratings
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The Smart Woman's Guide to ... Body on the Island The Supper Club Murders A Book of Murder Murder Most Cold
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Death in the Aviary
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3.74 avg rating — 46 ratings

The Supper Club M...
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The Smart Woman's...
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“I know why it is called ‘loss’. Not because that person has gone, abandoned you, but because you lose pieces of yourself. I’ve lost so much of myself and had to replace so many pieces that I don’t even remember what the original me should look like. That person has been swept away on black dreams.”
Victoria Dowd, The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder

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