Ten Years of Mystery-Adventure: an interview with Katherine Woodfine

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Katherine Woodfine’s glorious mystery-adventure debut The Clockwork Sparrow hit the bookshelves, introducing young readers to the Edwardian crime-cracking duo Sophie and Lil. Although Woodfine officially wound up the series in 2021 with book eight, Nightfall in New York, fans of the detectives have a treat in store to mark the anniversary. Secrets on the Shore is a mini mystery, previously only available as an e-book, that tells the story of Sophie and Lil’s first case for the Secret Service Bureau, as well as offering bonus material such as a special short story and case files. While fans will appreciate the chance to learn more of the teen detectives’ back stories, for Woodfine it’s also been an opportunity to celebrate her characters and their world, having thought she’d said a final goodbye to them.

Michelle Pauli interviews Katherine Woodfine for Books for Keeps.

‘I do miss them,’ Katherine admits. ‘And what’s really lovely about this 10th anniversary is that it feels like an opportunity to go back and reconnect with readers who love the series and those who are maybe finding it for the first time, but also to reconnect with the characters and the world. Seeing it come together in this package and having another fabulous Karl James Mountford cover is such a treat.’

Secrets on the Shore is set in the coastal town of Rye, replete with wild foggy marshes, a crumbling old castle, a pub with hidden passages and smugglers’ tales galore, and it’s a classic adventure story, teeming with spies and secret messages – and some fine humour as the girls try, unconvincingly, to disguise themselves as avid birdwatchers.

The story takes place in 1911 and acts as a bridge between the end of the Sinclair’s Mysteries series, which kicked off Sophie and Lil’s adventures in a glamorous London department store, and the Taylor and Rose Secret Agents series, when the girls start working for the shadowy Secret Service Bureau.

One of the delights of Secrets on the Shore is the historical notes from the author, revealing that elements of the story a cynical adult might think could not possibly be true…well, actually could be. We learn that there really was a Secret Service Bureau, set up by the British government in 1909, which grew to become M15 and M16, and it really did employ private detectives, and some children and young people, as secret agents.

‘I love the historical research element,’ says Woodfine. ‘I have often found that there’s so much in the historical material that’s a great starting point for storytelling, because there’s all these little titbits and seams you can mine and explore. There’s a pleasure in finding those threads and drawing them out and doing something with them, which I really enjoyed. And that whole period of history is obviously so rich.’

She points to the archetypal children’s books of the period, such as The Railway Children, The Secret Garden and Peter Pan, in which what seems like a cosy Edwardian world is a rich space in which young characters can have high-stakes adventures and face serious challenges.

It is also, of course, a fascinating moment in world history, which Woodfine makes the most of in the Taylor and Rose series with Sophie and Lil travelling to Paris, St Petersburg, Venice and New York.

‘While on one level it’s just fun and these are great stories, it’s also a brilliant thing for young people to know about the history of the 20th century,’ she comments.

We also learn that some women, perhaps unexpectedly, did enjoy successful careers as ‘lady detectives’, and some worked secretly for Scotland Yard and the British intelligence service.

‘There definitely are moments where we’re stretching what your typical young woman would be able to do in the Edwardian era, but there were these outliers,’ says Woodfine. ‘It seems to be something that resonates with a lot of young readers, both boys and girls, that there are these characters in the story who are not your stereotypical super daredevil girl heroine, who can shoot a gun, but are still a strong heroine. With Sophie and Lil I wanted to show different models of how to be a brave heroine, so that if you are a young reader who doesn’t resonate with that idea of ‘I am going to be really kickass and karate chop someone’, you could still see a model you might be able to aspire to.’

For Woodfine, her aspirations have always centred on books, from being the child in trouble for having her head in a book to studying English at university. But becoming a writer wasn’t a given. ‘It would’ve blown my mind when I was a child to know that this was what I get to do for a living,’ she says laughing, recalling her small village primary school on the moors in Lancashire. Authors never visited – ‘I’m not sure that I even realised that authors were real people – they seemed almost like these fictional characters themselves, they were so inaccessible. I knew that I loved books and that I loved to write, but the idea that you could actually do that as your job would have been amazing to me.’

Despite the publishing industry in London feeling remote and out of her reach after graduating, she always found a way of working with books, whether running an art gallery with bookshop in Manchester or working for the Arts Council Northwest. However, the turning point was a job with BookTrust, which included working with the children’s laureates. It showed her that there were many different ways of being a children’s author.

‘There is a one way that we’re often presented with, which is very much about being an extrovert and doing lots of school events and having a great performance and almost being a kind of children’s entertainer, a standup comic, all of that. But there was also a multiplicity of approaches and different routes to success. There were people who were quieter and people who were getting their head down in the studio and creating beautiful things. That was really helpful for me because if I’d thought I was going to have to suddenly transform into a standup comic overnight, I would’ve been very stressed out. But the fact that I could see there were these different ways was really encouraging.’

In the decade since she was first published, Woodfine has certainly explored different approaches – as well as the nine Sinclair’s Mysteries / Taylor and Rose books, she has also written for accessible publisher Barrington Stokes, written adaptations of different children’s classics, and created a longer-length picture book, A Dancer’s Dream. She’s currently working on an adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone, another longer picture book text and a possible story for slightly older readers.

But what about Sophie and Lil? Has Secrets on the Shore whetted her appetite for more Edwardian mystery adventures? Fans might need to temper their hopes – for now.

‘I didn’t want it to be a series that would go on forever,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want it to be the sort of story where every loose end would be tied up and we’d know exactly what happened to them when they grew up and how everything resolved itself. I really like the idea that there’s space for young readers’ imaginations to think about what might happen to those characters, to fill in the blanks for themselves. But I always say never say never. It’s certainly a world I always enjoyed spending time in and characters that I loved, but I think for the moment, it feels like it finished in the right place.’

Michelle Pauli is a freelance writer and editor specialising in books and education. She created and edited the Guardian children’s books site.

Secrets on the Shore is published by Farshore, 978-0008739560, £7.99 pbk.