Kit Fielding will be a new name to most crime fiction lovers. He enters the genre with an interesting background – his family moved around a lot and when he left home and became a builder that itinerant lifestyle carried on. The mindset of a traveller is reflected in Kit’s fiction. One of his previous books is entitled The Undead Gypsy, which sounds fascinating, and on 30 September he releases Under Vixens Mere. This is a book that features travellers of a different sort – namely canal boat occupants at a quiet mooring where things are about to get… mysterious.
It all begins when police divers plunge into the mere to retrieve the body of Harry Jones. In doing so, another corpse is discovered. And from there we follow Kit’s unique storytelling method to meet the residents of the boats on Vixens Mere and learn their secrets. And, boy, do they have some secrets.
We love discovering authors who bring their own voice to the crime fiction genre, and we know you do too. So we had to invite Kit over for a chat about his latest novel…
First of all, can you tell us a little about your background and what led you to writing and specifically writing crime fiction?
I was a precocious reader and writer throughout a disjointed education. My employment record – nearly always self-employed and from a very young age – took me across the UK, and occasionally into Germany. I have rubbed shoulders with some fascinating people – good and not so good – and my interest in what makes them tick has led me to an understanding of aspects, and motives, of characters that not all writers are lucky enough to discover. In these circumstances – for me anyway – imagination and fiction can marry together to enhance crime writing.
What are crime fiction lovers going to love about Under Vixens Mere?
I trail the individual stories but link them together so hopefully the readers’ interest is maintained on several fronts. I also wanted to present conclusions that are credible and that readers can relate to in the sense of understanding where chance, coincidence and momentary lapses of judgement, can lead. This is as well as presenting a perpetrators’ view of what is necessary – to them – to achieve their aims. It is a world that the likes of violent drug dealer Carl Thomson can never leave.
Who is your main protagonist, if there is one?
There isn’t a clear main protagonist – it is more of a collective – but each individual inhabits their own space in the frame of the story as a whole. But, as always, characters are not be presented fully formed and need back stories to show how they end up where they do.
There’s a body in the water… and something more? Tell us more about that.
The woman’s body – Sandra Day – revealed in the recovery of Harry Jones is a long-submerged secret that starts a train of questions of who and why and how? This plays alongside the killing of Carl Thompson and the disposal of his body. A slip of the tongue, an unnoticed clue, could have terrible repercussions for most of Vixens Mere’s inhabitants.
I think in both these cases there are moral issues to address. Is a killing sometimes justified and who do we trust to make a judgement? Is it worth ruining more lives through disclosure when the dead are dead?
You’ve created a whole community of characters living on and around the mere. Who are some of the other characters we’ll meet there?
We’ll meet Dinah’s father, who’s been a single father for most of Dinah’s life. There is also Marlene – Pigman Pete’s girlfriend – who shares Pete’s interest in copious amounts of food and drink and who offers him the comfort of her ample bosom to lay his weary head. Then there’s Petra, vivacious and scheming, and ex partner to Laurie. I like the rapport between Laurie and her bouncer colleagues, Tony and Marvel. I have also included a cameo of Lennie Lines to illustrate the brutal enforcement of the rules of the game.
Where is Vixens Mere, what inspired you to create this setting and how have you developed it?
Vixens Mere exists in my imagination. The book’s setting is my residual impression of seeing canal boats moored in marinas and wondering at the happenchance that has brought them together at the same time. Every boat or barge has – again in my imagination – a different story and with Vixens Mere I have tried to blend together past and present, deed and misdeed, and ongoing influences, into a coherent story of people who live on the periphery of society.
How has your love of traveling and the itinerant lifestyle or sensibility informed this novel? Does it play into the narrowboat life many of the characters lead?
I think it does show in the characters of Milly and Big Ed who, although settled now, always wistfully hark back to when their life was much more free. Brodie, the woodcarver, is more like the Flying Dutchman who reappears, and disappears, over the years. Karen Jones needs to return periodically to see her secret child.
Although itineracy is not the theme of this novel I tried to convey a sense of impermanence to the inhabitants of Vixens Mere in the knowledge that, if anyone wanted, all they have to do is start the engine and float away.
What are some of the big themes you wanted to to explore?
I didn’t set out with any intention of exploring themes but sometimes it happens without awareness. What I intended to tell with the story of Vixens Mere is that the past is ever present, whether physically – even though secretly – or seeping from emotional outlets. My theme would probably be that terrible acts, even accidental ones, will bruise the persons involved and stretch forever into the future. They’re like Sandra Day’s body, laying there waiting patiently for discovery. Concealed and out of sight but never out of mind.
Which crime books and authors have inspired or influenced you in the past and what are you reading at the moment?
I suppose I always come back to the classic crime writing and plotting of Dame Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But of course there’s Raymond Chandler and, more recently, Ian Rankin, John Grisham and David Baldacci. I think admire or inspire suits me better than influence.
However at the moment I’m reading – rather enviously – Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum before I start reading another crime novel.
What’s next for Kit Fielding?
I’ve a partially completed novel – set in the seamier side of life where crime is part of the culture – that needs tidying up. It illustrates how easily it is to be drawn into the higher echelons of violence and murder when needs must and events make it unavoidable.
Under Vixens Mere comes out on 30 September 2025 from Inkspot Publishing. You can order a copy with the buttons below, or visit Kit Fielding’s website here.
