Episode 500! In Conversation with Val McDermid and Jo Sharp: This Door of the Seas
A huge milestone — this is episode 500 of Quick Book Reviews! Thank you to everyone who's been listening since the very start (sadly the first few episodes were lost in a platform move years ago, but the memories remain).
To celebrate, I'm joined by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp to talk about This Door of the Seas, their first book written together, and the latest in Polygon's Darkland Tales series. It tells the true and largely forgotten story of the Darien Scheme — Scotland's disastrous 17th-century attempt to found a trading colony in Panama, an event so significant it helped push the country into union with England, yet one neither of them were taught in school. We talk about how the idea was born on a very long drive down the A9, why they chose to tell the story entirely through letters (including real historical figure Dr James Wallace), and the moment Val discovered — almost as an aside — that there was a murder in the story she hadn't been told about. Jo also describes the genuinely moving experience of holding one of the original 1698 letters in the National Library of Scotland, and we talk about what it's actually like to co-write a book with your spouse.
Plus: the Darien colonists' extraordinary questions from the era's leading scientists (yes, including one about an animal that breathes through its navel), what Val and Jo are both reading right now, and their verdict on the classic Quick Book Reviews question — the biscuit that powered the words.
Featured book:
This Door of the Seas, Val McDermid and Jo Sharp
This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.
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Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.
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