Martin Davey's Blog: The Angels are Amongst Us

The opening scene for my 4th novel in the Black Museum is on a beach. I needed to find something unique, expansive and forlorn. As I was searching for the location, I came across this article. I had found my beach, but I’d also found something with an Olympics focus. Ian O’Riordan of the Irish Times asks the question, ‘Is there a better closing scene in any running film than Chariots of Fire? I’d say not.https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/is-there-a-better-closing-scene-in-any-running-film-than-chariots-of-fire-1.4502434

The London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company opened its doors to coffins and corpses on the 13th November 1854. A ‘Train for the Dead?’ It sounds fantastic, like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story or the title of a slasher movie. However, the London Necropolis was very real, and it was very popular too. London’s cemeteries and burial grounds had been suffering from overcrowding, and space for the recently, dearly departed was scarce. As a result, London’s dead were being buried so near the surface, they had become fodder for the foxes. The dead bodies needed somewhere to go. A plot under the branches of a weeping willow was preferable to a shallow grave and possibly being eaten by vermin. The London Necropolis was the answer. It ran until 11th April 1941 after being resited in 1902. I find it strange that there aren’t many stories about it. What if it started to run again, but this time, it brought the bodies back.  

The Blind Beak of Bow Street is my third full-length novel. I want to tell you all that I enjoyed writing it, but it has been like trying to stab a seal with a banana at times. I had heard about the London Necropolis through a friend over a beer, and I knew that it was the answer to my plot predicament. Here was a train and train service that ferried the dead from Victorian London’s overcrowded churchyards and cemeteries to the leafy suburbs. A train for the dead. A train that moved the evil beyond Zone 5 and far away from the lovely, ordinary people. It closed in 1941. What if it brought something back to the capital in 2021 with unfinished business? Something that wanted to kill the magic and all those that practised it? It’s a good thing that DCI Judas Iscariot is around – isn’t it. The Blind Beak is available on Amazon. I hope you enjoy it. No seals were injured during the course of its conception.

“This is more than just bloody murder Inspector, this is a race war, with magic on one side and a right evil monster who thinks it’s the devil’s work on the other.”

Archibald Strop. Editor. The Newgate Calendar.

DCI Judas Iscariot returns on the 8th July 2021

British beaches are packed. It’s true. I saw it on the news. Margate, Bournemouth and even the shingle beach at Sheppey are crammed full of milk bottles that have been isolating for months. Reporters stand in front of cameras with the throng visible over one shoulder and make predictions about how many have descended on that stretch of not quite yellow sand. Hundreds, thousands and even millions have come to their local beach to worship the sun. I can see red shoulders here and there; balding men’s pates are starting to glow, and legs are beginning to resemble the hot dogs you get in jars. Tonight, there will be much ‘ouching’ as after-sun is slathered on in significant quantities.

I can’t stop watching Michael Sheen perform Dylan Thomas’ poem, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’. I watch it and then wait for the silence to put a full stop on those beautiful words, and then I quickly click the replay tab. Again, and again and again. Elmo does not share my love of this video, though. There is jealousy in the studio, and the green-eyed monster has come to call. I used to press Elmo’s foot and wait for him to laugh and tell me a joke if I was stuck or lost. Now, Michael has taken his place, and I must avoid Elmo’s eyes. There is menace there.

When I lived in London, I would always see a single shoe, just one, half of a pair, on the street. I would see them in gutters, placed carefully on walls and hiding away in dank doorways. Why only one? Where was its friend? I started to think that there could be some sort of shoe, Highwayman.

“Stand and deliver! Your shoe or your life!” Or maybe there were vast numbers of urban pirates descended from Long John Silver, hiding in plain sight? In Tooting?

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I loved this book. I won’t give away too much that happens in it because I want everyone else to enjoy it as I did. There is a constant moving of the goalposts, or should I say yardarms, in terms of suspect and motive and it kept me guessing most of the way through.



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Hello one and all, thank you very much for signing up. So, what’s it to be? What would you like? Cat Tabby, Oliver Twisted, Judas the Hero or The Children of the Lightning? Let me know what you’d prefer, and I will send you a free digital copy. There is an alternative. Would any of you be interested in getting a sneak peek at the first chapter of the new Black Museum story?  

The Blind Beak is the working title for the next instalment in the Black Museum series. The Beak was a real person and I love his name. What does everyone think? I had a few other thoughts, one of them was ‘The Foe of the Fae’, if you had a choice what would you go for?