CLAIRE LADDS

Author of character-driven psychological literary fiction and other darker books, all with an emotional pull

short story collection

The Labours of Hercules (Read Christie Challenge, May 2026): Best Short Story Collection

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Image shows The Labours of Hercules facing outwards, amid a bookcase full of Agatha Christie books, all on a black background. Text on image reads: Read Christie Challenge 2026, May, my choice for best short story collection - The Labours of Hercules.

May has been ‘short story month’ and yet, ironically, this piece is a long one. I am a huge advocate for the short story in general; this was the form that began my writing career, when I was fortunate enough to get the very first story I wrote (in a serious capacity) published as the winner of a competition. As a lifelong Agatha Christie reader, it has been an immense joy, therefore, to choose and once again devour one of her short story collections for the Read Christie challenge during May. The Christie team chose, very appropriately, ‘my choice for best short story collection’ as the theme for this month.

What constitutes ‘best’, though? Judging any book necessarily involves a huge amount of subjectivity, as what one reader might like another does not enjoy so much, even if they are both readers of that author’s work generally. Over the years, I have really enjoyed reading The Mysterious Mr Quinn, a collection with a slightly speculative edge in which we find Mr Satterthwaite (also a lead character in Three Act Tragedy) assisted by the rather strange character of Mr Quinn. On a different and generally more lighthearted note, my first connection with Tommy and Tuppence Beresford was through the collection of stories, Partners in Crime, in which the duo open a detective agency. To satisfy my dark little soul, I have poured over the stories in Hound of Death numerous times. This is just three of the numerous Christie collections I have enjoyed. However, being the Poirot addict that I am, and also a reader who always wished that he would, one day, find his happy ending with Dame Vera Rossakoff, the unrequited love of his life (and equivalent to ‘the woman’ for Sherlock Holmes or, more particularly the BBC’s Sherlock), I have chosen The Labours of Hercules. This collection houses a story which reunites Poirot with Rossakoff. If you have seen the TV filmic adaptation of the same name starring David Suchet, then maybe you lost your heart to the tragedy of their love story. While the adaptation is a very different animal to the original collection of stories, it it with pure indulgence to this unfulfilled love story that I pick The Labours of Hercules. And that is about as subjective as I could get in deciding what I constitute as ‘best’!

The Labours of Hercules is set up in a very particular way, with a ‘Foreword’, part narrative fiction and part intervention by the author, which I found intriguing. At a plot level, we discover that Poirot is set to retire soon and indulge his wish to grow vegetable marrows (which, indeed, he does in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). After a conversation with a man named Dr Burton, who calls into question why Poirot should ever have been called Hercule to the point of being derisory as to the detective’s lack of comparison with the Ancient Greek ‘hero’, Christie dismisses the doctor, but not the idea that he leaves behind him. Poirot now considers the notion of Hercules, himself representing a ‘new age’ hero, yet one who will, before retirement, set himself twelve labours of high importance, cases chosen specifically to fit this remit.

I shall, then, take each of Poirot’s self-induced ‘labours’ in the order they appear in the collection.

The Nemean Lion

It is, therefore, quite ironically comical that the first case saved for him by Miss Lemon in his pile of letters is one of complete unimportance. It frustrates and irritates Poirot – until he realises there is something not quite ordinary about the case of a ransomed Pekinese dog. It is the owner’s husband who has communicated with him, and this seems strange. Even stranger is that the dog has already been returned, and the wife paid the ransom money. When questioned by Poirot, Lady Hoggin states that her companion help, a real dog lover who had been granted care of a previous employer’s Pekinese on her death, had been walking the dog and had stopped to admire a nurse’s child in a pram, when the dog lead had been cut. This was not the first case, either.

Of course, Poirot has ideas: who the perpetrator might be, where to find them, how the crimes against little dogs are being committed, and why. It is this ‘why’ which brings us to a Poirot who shows himself to have extreme empathy with the plight of ordinary people. If you have read many Poirot books, you may have noticed that, despite being a strongly verbal proponent of justice, he is sometimes seen to bend the rules of justice for certain individuals. This is one of those cases.

This is a tale with many twists and turns, all seemingly disparate but all fitting together in actuality to make Poirot’s plan and pathway of detection perfect. And so, who is the Nemean Lion in this story? Sir Joseph Hoggin? Not at all. But I’ll leave you to discover this beautiful nugget in the story.

The Lernean Hydra

This story deals with a premise which features heavily in Golden Age mysteries, and historical cosies in general: did the living, breathing husband/wife poison their spouse because they wanted to marry someone else? Rumours about in a village that a doctor has killed his wife in order to marry his young dispenser. The doctor himself is devastated by these rumours and feels they are slowly destroying his life entirely.

In a microcosmic world of ‘guilty regardless’, how is Poirot supposed to do battle against all the rumour and deliberate false trails placed before him? As he always does: with order, method, and an acute sense of those things that ‘feel’ right, psychologically. Poirot sees the mythical Hydra as his problem to overcome in his labour here. For, every time he goes to chop off one of its nine heads (or reduce the possibilities, or crack the clue), another two grow up in its place. This story is littered with a myriad of tittle-tattle and bit-parts of eyewitness accounts, surmises and suspicious actions, both useful and red herrings.

I really did feel that I was in the thick of it with Poirot here, and that there were so many rumours and falsities (if only I could figure out which they were), that I felt that I had become ravelled in those tangled balls of wool which Miss Marple so often mentions in the TV adaptations (incidentally, if you want to watch a Marple adaptation which references tangled wool as her allusive process for solving a crime, look no further that The Blue Geranium). Yet, as things seemed to get more and more complicated, they actually began to lead to one place – the true murderer. I found this a very adeptly handled story, with some strong characterisation.

The Arcadian Deer

If you have seen the TV adaptation of The Labours of Hercules, starring David Suchet as Poirot, you will immediately recognise this story as the subplot storyline which enables Poirot to visit the Swiss Alps for the purposes of finding a missing maid, and thus attempting to rectify a love story gone wrong. In the adaptation, this also places Poirot in the right place to be able to solve the main plot: to catch the killer, Marrascaud. It is, perhaps, my favourite Poirot TV film due to the ‘love interest’ reasons I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. If you have not seen it, I – and my soft heart – very much recommend it.

‘The Arcadian deer’ sees Poirot stranded in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, with the onset of snow and a broken down car. A mechanic comes to him to give him an update but there is more to this man’s twisting of his cap in his hands. He is anxious, heart-broken. The maid of a famous Russian dancer has vanished, not replied to his letter, and he is concerned for her safety. Indeed, he admits he wants to marry the maid, no matter what Poirot discovers about her circumstances. And so begins Poirot’s third labour.

This is such a simple yet intriguing case, made so by so many open threads that become dead ends. To my mind, it seems that, the more dead ends close up, the more Poirot’s intuition leads him to the only conclusion that there could be regarding this missing maid, and her whereabouts. (of course, I am not going to spoil that here). And only Poirot, with his immense capacity for seeing the possibilities in every forlorn love affair, could find a way out of the dark for the poor unfortunates here. I very much like this story, and am delighted that the TV adaptation gave it life on the screen.

The Erymanthian Boar

It is to my eternal delight that I have had the opportunity to re-read ‘The Erymanthian Boar’. There is much in this particular tale which has been utilised in the filming of the David Suchet adaptation, although not all plot points are the same, or carry equal weight, but it is enough to make me extremely excited about this one.

This story takes Poirot to an isolated Alpine setting, where he is contacted by his old friend, Lementeuil, Commissaire of Police, who tells him that the killer, Marrascaud, is believed to be planning a meeting with his gang in this strange choice of location, presumably to split their ill-gotten gains. It is in this story that Poirot is able to finally come face-to-face with Marrascaud. But it certainly takes plenty of ingenuity on Poirot’s part.

Not everyone is who they seem. And not everyone is on the side of right or wrong that we believe they are. Everyone becomes a suspect as the guests at the hotel remain cut off by a landslide in the funicular, and danger mounts as the hours tick by. Poirot is able to use all his former professional knowledge as a policeman in this case of constant misdirection, which I find really interesting, and it is, of course, set up wonderfully by Christie. If you are at all a fan of the TV adaptation, then this is a must-read.

The Augean Stables

This is very much a political tale on the surface, layered with a private one once Poirot is involved. Poirot is approached by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to salvage the reputation of the ‘People’s Party’ from the underhanded tactics of a scurrilous newspaper. To save the Party, prevent disruption to the country (and it falling into a possible Dictatorship), Poirot can either try to discredit the stories the newspaper is spreading – or he can opt for something wider-reaching and much more permanent: the discrediting of the newspaper itself. And what he does is, to my mind, brilliant.

The story focuses very heavily on the reference to the particular Herculean task Christie has allotted Poirot here, namely the cleaning of the Augean Stables, bringing in a force large enough to wash away the dirt completely. Christie explains the task as the story progresses, for those unfamiliar with it, or maybe to focus the reader on the way everyone, from politicians to Poirot, believe that this kind of washing away the filth is imperative to preventing political catastrophe.

Poirot is particularly inventive here, modernising the ancient task and swapping the water of a huge river for the tidal wave of people and their penchant for gossiping about the sex scandal that seems to have invaded the private life of the new Prime Minister. Although I don’t want to spoil the story for you, I will say that Poirot’s manipulation of this ‘tidal wave’ is superbly effective, and also places him firmly in the grey areas of morality. He is certainly not against employing intrigue and bending the moral rules in order to achieve success in this case. It is a very well-plotted and impressive story.

The Stymphalean Birds

We return to a story which makes up yet another element of the TV adaptation starring David Suchet. If you have seen it (and once again, I do wholeheartedly recommend it if you haven’t), parts of this form the sub-plot in which Harold Waring, politician and man who has kept a very clean political and private sheet, becomes embroiled with two ladies who cause him a great deal of problems.

The women, mother and daughter, are on holiday in the same isolated location as Waring. He has become friendly with them, while simultaneously taking a strong dislike to two other women of bird-like appearance and wearing black cloaks, whom he believes would gleefully do evil if given the opportunity. Waring develops the beginning of an emotional attachment to the daughter, Elsie Clayton, whose husband is a jealous man – and who arrives, threatens her, and who finds himself dead at hands of his wife in self-defence. The women beg Waring for financial help in covering up the death, and again when the mother tells Waring she is now being blackmailed by the two bird-like women.

This is a story of not judging a book by its cover. I shall say no more. You have probably already figured out how it progresses, and how it ends.

The Cretan Bull

As you are, no doubt, very aware by now, I have a particular fondness in this collection for the stories which make up the TV adaptation of the same name. ‘The Cretan Bull’ is not one of those, yet is is one of the stories I particularly like and found thoroughly interesting to read. The entire plot centres around hereditary madness in the family of Admiral Chandler. Diana Maberley, engaged to Admiral Chandler’s son, Hugh, pleads for help from Poirot. It appears that madness has begun to define itself in Hugh, which would explain the strange way he left the Navy without full explanation, and recent other dreadful occurrences which have caused death to animals and which are being attributed to Hugh, also. Yet Diana does not believe for one moment that Hugh is mad, but that something else is going on.

Is Hugh mad? Or is someone deliberately trying to get him out of the way by any means necessary so they can inherit his money – maybe Diana, who is named in his will? Or is there something – or someone – much more malign at work? Poirot goes to stay at the home of the Chandlers so that he can discover the truth. And that truth is bitter, twisted, and cruel.

This is one of the stories in this collection that threw me both onto the scent and off it simultaneously. I was so right about what I thought – and so wrong about how it all comes together as a tragically macabre tale of what happens when visceral hatred binds itself to intelligent planning. For me, this story is absolutely worth the read.

The Horses of Diomedes

Poirot acts for love in this ‘labour’. Not his own, but on behalf of a friend, Doctor Michael Stoddart, who has formed an attachment to a woman whom he fears has become unwittingly embroiled in parties at which drugs are not only being taken but are being dealt. Poirot, of course, investigates.

For me, this is one of the more disappointing stories in this collection. I didn’t quite connect with it in the way I have done with many of the others. I am struggling to pinpoint exactly why, and it could be that, for me, it falls a bit flat in the characterisation. There are many levels of superficiality in this story, and it seems to rub off on me, leaving me with an overall feeling that I would have liked very much to have been able to delve further into the murky depths of the villain and their manipulation of people in their power, and that I should, in its absence, move onto the next story. Please understand that this is my subjective view of this particular narrative, and the way it affects me as a reader. You may love it.

The Girdle of Hyppolita

Aha, a story full of intrigue, a stolen painting, and a schoolgirl missing from a train! There is a pace to this story that sweeps you through it as you read. A Reubens (in which a semi-clad Hyppolita gives her girdle to Hercules) has been stolen and is likely being fenced somewhere in Europe. The link to Poirot’s ‘labours’ is, then, obvious. At the same time, a very respectable girls’ school has a new student go missing on a train where she is travelling with other students and a member of staff who has never met her before, on their way to the school. This is a fabulous romp through the clever and simultaneously devious handling of a stolen painting, which relies upon the complete an unwitting participation of the innocent.

It is extremely difficult to discuss this story without giving away the development of the two plot lines, which become wonderfully interlinked, so I am not going to try. If you have read Christie’s Cat Among the Pigeons, set in a girls’ school, you will notice at least some resemblance in the way certain parts of the deception here is pulled off. If not, then I offer you another recommendation for a Poirot novel! It may be that Christie was, indeed, experimenting with an idea which she later used in a full-length work, just as she did when she expanded the essence of the short story, ‘Yellow iris’ into the intricate workings of the novel, Sparkling Cyanide.

The Flock of Geryon

We see the return of a previous character in the collection here: the companion to Lady Hoggin in ‘The Nemean Lion’. Instead of being embroiled as a suspect, this time Miss Carnaby comes to Poirot for help, and becomes his assistant. Her friend has become entranced by a religious sect, one seemingly all about sheep and pastures – all very peaceful and idyllic – and one which captures the interest of lonely, wealthy women. And, as it turns out, some of these woman have died of various causes, all leaving their legacies to the Flock of Geryon.

I have to say that I particularly enjoyed the narrative insight into the thoughts of Miss Carnaby as she goes about her undercover work. There are times when she is vulnerable, or in danger, or has to completely use her ingenuity and quick-wittedness. And all the time, we experience her thinking these through, counter-balancing emotional susceptibility with detached intelligence. This story is very much as testament to the strength of character of the female. Miss Carnaby puts her life at risk to assist Poirot by going undercover and to ensure her friend escapes the clutches of the leader of the sect where she could quite easily have been murdered for her money.

It also throws light on the position of womanhood in domesticity at the time. The collection was written in 1947, two years after World War II. Despite the true and undeniable horrors of war, the capability of women in action had been proven, just as it had in World War I, yet women were expected to return to domesticity. Miss Carnaby, for me, represents the woman who has within her the capacity for action and is desperate to be able to put it to good use. Her elongated time undercover on this assignment, the danger she risks, and the level of intuition and intelligence combined that she uses throughout gives her this opportunity. She does a great job. And yet, I find the situation unsatisfying. What does she have beyond the story? She has had her moment of adventure, and now she returns to her domestic life. Will that be enough for her?

The Apples of the Hesperides

Poirot is approached by an exceedingly wealthy art collector, Emery Power, to recapture the lethal drinking cup of the Borgias, which he bought at auction, and which disappeared and has never reappeared in the last ten years. This golden cup, favourite drinking vessel used by Pope Alexander VI – Roderigo Borgia – and given to visitors who invariably died, depicts a tree, a serpent, and emeralds which represent apples. The object brings together Poirot’s Catholicism (which, in this collection, is mentioned as being his birth religion) and the Ancient ‘labour’, and they remain intertwined throughout the story as Poirot searches for the cup in various places, including those which have religious significance.

While I do not want to spoil the story for you, I will say that it is the notion of ‘good’, of sacrifice, that plays out against the backdrop of the Ancient Herculean ‘labour’ as Poirot draws this case to its conclusion. It very much portrays a Poirot who, while the ever-proud and determined detective who refuses to be beaten, is also the benevolent Christian man who is on the side of the angels in trying to help a rich man gain the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a story full to the brim with religious symbolism and narrative, and there is much to be absorbed here. Just do not drink from the cup!

The Capture of Cerberus

And so, to the final story in the collection, and the last of Poirot’s ‘labours’. It was the story I was waiting for throughout the entire collection, soft-hearted creature that I am, as this story sees the return to Poirot’s life of the Russian ‘sometimes’ jewel thief, Countess Vera Rosakoff. Poirot’s admiration for her is long-standing, and the moment he recognises her as she is going down the escalator in the London Underground and he is going the opposite way, he turns tail and tries to find her. She calls to him that he can find her ‘in Hell’.

Hell, as it transpires, is a nightclub, replete with a giant black hound (if ever Poirot needed a nudge towards this being an excuse for Cerberus, this is it!). The Countess owns the place, and is accompanied by a young, bespectacled psychiatrist, Alice Cunningham, the partner of her son who is working in America. All is not as it seems at the nightclub, as the police are convinced that it is the headquarters of a drugs ring. There is even a detective planted among the customers, gathering intelligence.

Poirot neither wants the Countess to be mixed up in this, nor does he want her being framed for the drugs racket. In typically brilliant Poirot style, and employing the assistance of various slightly unscrupulous helpers reminiscent of the tactics of Sherlock Holmes, he brings this case to a conclusion most satisfying to him. There are elements of this story which make up the main love interest and villain threads of the TV adaptation of The Labours of Hercules, yet the treatments of both are vastly different. If you have watched the adaptation and not read the story yet, then I would urge you to read this for a completely different story and thematic experience. I adore this story.

There you have it: all the ‘labours’ of Hercule Poirot. As with any short story collection, I have my favourite tales (as I think you may well have gathered!). The Ancient and the Modern combine continuously throughout, giving Poirot a mythological tale on which to base his final group of cases before retirement – and if you believe he is going to retire, then definitely think again. It is absolutely not at all necessary to wait until Short Story Month to read this collection, as I have done, but it has been a fabulous excuse for me to re-read it. If you have not yet experienced these stories, or the TV adaptation, which I have referenced incessantly and unapologetically, then I recommend both. If you can read ‘The Arcadian Deer’, ‘The Erymanthian Boar’, ‘The Stymphalean Birds’ and ‘The Capture of Cerberus’ in close succession to each other and to watching the film, so much the better. I hope you enjoy The Labours of Hercules.

You might also like:

‘Joy is a bubble’ (complete short story) written by me and included in my collection, The Reason for Everything

‘Instinct’ (complete short story) written by me and included in my collection, The Reason for Everything

Short story month: I’m addicted to short stories (as relevant now as it was when I wrote this post in 2021)

Short story: Instinct

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Image show an iron with its cord tangled on the floor. There is also an icon of a pile of books. Text reads: Claire Ladds, psychological literary fiction. Instinct, a short story.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the writing I love. About the characters I become invested in. About the stories that develop as a natural, organic extension to these characters. Maybe that happens because I particularly feel close to those stories I write which involve single moments in the life or ‘ordinary’ people, yet which reflect something identifiable, relatable, and evoke some emotional connection with the reader.

The following short story is one which I have been fortunate enough to have had published some time ago. ‘Instinct’ is my title for the story, although it was reproduced under a different one. If you, or someone you know, has ever felt overwhelmed by being a mother, or by the expectations of being responsible for a young child and the confusing, sometimes heartbreaking emotions which can come with it, then this story may resonate with you.

Trigger warning: reference to the serious illness of a young child.

Instinct

Kieran waves at me through the window. As a matter of instinct I wave back, but my mind is a platter of ironing and unfolded washing, teatime food and the little secret I harbour deep inside my head, about the way Kieran makes me feel.

‘You just can’t face growing up, Kate, can you?’ Dad had said when I last saw him a couple of months ago. ‘You’ve got to realise that everyone has responsibilities and yours are to your family now.’

My family. Gary spends all his time at work, out of the way, probably, so I don’t start another row. I close the dustbin lid and stare with a screwed-up face at my dirty hands. I never have enjoyed getting dirty. The time Kieran had that tummy bug wrenched my stomach. And Gary came in and took over. Wonderful Gary, Superdad, again.

I return to the back door and get ready to kick off my shoes at the doorway, so I can continue with my ironing. And I won’t have to think about caring for Kieran. He’ll be occupying himself. He’s very self-sufficient like that.

I go to open the door – except it doesn’t move. I rattle the handle, but the door just doesn’t budge.

‘Mummy, look.’

I bolt back around to the window where, through it, Kieran points his chubby finger to the door. I’d left the key in the lock, I know, but I was only gone for a moment.

‘Have you touched the key, Kieran?’ I call through the window. It’s open a fraction, enough to let the steam out. I know Kieran can hear me as he’s pushing his car up and down the furrows in the doormat.

‘Kieran, can you let Mummy in, please?’ He must understand, well I know he does, but he just looks at me and smiles.

‘Let me in, Kieran.’ I can hear the tone of my voice beginning to sink to urgent depths. It must have some kind of effect inside his little brain because he reaches with his baby hand and hangs onto the key. He fiddles with it, and I can hear it jingle against the metal hoop on the key-ring.

‘Twist the key, Kieran.’

But he doesn’t. Or can’t. All I know is he leaves me there, my little boy who’s three at the weekend, who I hadn’t realised could reach the key and move it, because I wallowed in self-pity and didn’t want to see. I am left on the outside while Kieran pushes his car away from the door mat, into the centre of the kitchen.

‘Nee-nah, nee-nah.’ The toy races round the ironing board. It’s like a set of sickening still frames from a film, right in front of me each time I blink: Kieran; the car; the ironing board; the lead from the iron coiled in front of him and his imaginary police force. All I can do is play voyeur as my little boy heads straight for the wire.

A flash of an image from the mother and toddler group bites into my brain. Normally, I don’t really mix with the women there. Comparing babies’ weights, eating patterns and the best type of pushchair seems to be the main focus of their lives. I have struggled to fit in. My pushchair was third-hand, and Kieran has always had problems gaining weight since he came out of the special care unit. Nights spent asleep are still scarce, and I sometimes don’t notice that Gary has actually gone to work in the mornings until I talk and he doesn’t answer.

But I remember a couple of months ago, one mother had been absent from the usual twittering conversation. Someone had enquired where she was.

‘Oh, haven’t you heard?’ The group leader seemed genuinely delighted that someone had noticed. ‘She’s been at the Children’s Ward for the last few days. Little Nicky pulled a boiling pan over onto himself. He was burned very badly, but the pan handle imbedded itself into his head as well.’

As she ranted on, triumphant, I just remember feeling queasy at that moment, wondering how I would have felt if it had happened to Kieran. Would I have felt anything at all?

Kieran’s playing around the cord on the iron – round and round it he goes. I see his shoulders knock against it, and his right leg sticking its toes into the hoop of flex.

And, at that second, I know exactly how I would have felt if I’d been that poor, talked-about mother. I feel as if the world’s closing in around me, and all I can see is my boy, my baby, who could pull that burning metal plate on the iron onto his tiny head with one scuff of his foot across the kitchen floor.

‘Kieran.’ He looks over to me, frowning. Has he ever heard me talk gently and encouragingly to him? Maybe he hasn’t, and the thought of it makes me choke on tiny arrows that come up in my throat and force themselves out of my eyes, all wet and blinking now. ‘Sit very still. Mummy’s coming.’

I stretch my hand through the gap in the window, pushing, forcing it through and skinning my forearm on the wood. Right now, I’m grateful for the single pane of glass and the old arm mechanism. I flick it up off its peg, and my fingers tremble.

Kieran giggles. He begins to shuffle away from the cord to investigate my clanks and grunts. My hair is dangling across my face, but through it I glimpse a reflection of myself in the window. Still the same blonde hair, the same grey eyes, and the same look of fear that I had when they told me that Kieran had only a few years to live.

‘There’s a heart defect. There’s a possibility he might not live until he’s six. Not unless there’s a donor.’  I’d not heard what else the consultant had to say. My brain just wouldn’t – didn’t want to – take it in. I just remember screaming, and pulling on Gary’s shirt.

‘Tell them to get one, then. Find one; they’ve got to find one!’

He couldn’t speak to me. He just held me, and rocked me, like a baby. And my brain switched off the part which allowed me to love my new-born, telling me there was no point in feeling anything, just in case. Dad said it to me once, when he’d brought home a puppy and Mum had told him to take it back.

‘Don’t get attached, love. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be here for long.’

Kieran’s leg is completely entangled. I fight my way through the window and onto the draining board. My eyes are fixed on the iron, wavering on its stand. With one thrust forward, Kieran pulls the iron downwards. It’s like watching all those still frames come together in one sickening slow-motion film, seeing that iron fall from its platform as he looks upwards towards the noise. That’s the second, right then, when, no matter how long my boy is here, I know I want to love him and protect him as I should always have done, and so I try to ask for forgiveness. My body falls between the iron and my son, and it rolls off my back and onto the floor.

I cling onto Kieran like a life buoy in an unrelenting sea, and he stares at my streaming wet face and touches the tears with his tiny, soft fingertips.

‘Why are you crying, Mummy? Did it hurt?’ I can’t speak. I just hold him and I stroke his mass of straw-like blonde hair. And then he asks me – that same question he asks Gary, when he cuddles him at bedtime. ‘You love me, don’t you?’ His words gurgle in my ear, as his little face looks with puzzled eyes at my tears.

I whisper back, right into his hot, pink ear. ‘Yes.’ There’s no need for more.

* * *

Gary comes in from work. His eyes scan my face, trying to judge what kind of a day I’ve had, and whether he dare risk asking. Kieran flies out from the living room. But he doesn’t run to Gary – for the first time ever, he doesn’t choose his dad. And I’m elated as I hold him on my knee in the hallway.

I don’t tell Gary about the iron. Not then, although I’ll have to let him take a look eventually. But as he looks down at our boy, already in his pyjamas, he raises his eyebrows and smiles.

‘You’ve already been in the bath, then, kiddo?’

‘Yep, Mummy and me played with all the toys. My toes went all squashy.’

Gary looks at me.

‘So I don’t miss out,’ I say, as I stroke Kieran’s damp hair, and I hold in my heart the hope that, just maybe, someone may be able to donate a heart to my boy, and I won’t lose the one part of myself that I love more than I believed I could love anyone.

I cry, silently at the years of inertia, the fear of getting too close and of being hurt.

‘I want Mummy to put me to bed.’ Those strange words bombard me and stir me into movement. As I carry him up the stairs, and his arms and legs koala all around me, I am enveloped by the realisation that this will be the night that I’m not afraid of saying goodnight to him. I’m sure, finally, that he won’t be gone when I wake tomorrow. And we’ll deal with tomorrow together.

This story is included in my short story collection, The Reason for Everything, and other short stories.

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Finding a writing process: how I write my books

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When you read (or listen to) novels, novellas, short story collections and any other fiction or non-fiction, I wonder if you can possibly guess the processes the writer might have used to write the book you hold in your hand, or read, or listen to on your device?

I have been thinking a lot about my writing process, recently. I think this has been sparked by the realisation of just how many books I have on my computer that are in partial states of completion and that I’ve been saying I’m going to finish ‘this year’ or ‘next year’. For some of them, I’ve been saying it since 2014! I also have an absolute stack of story ideas and partial plots.

Some people have said to me that I should just write a non-fiction book for writers and put all these ideas in a ‘story prompts’ book, and actually, I would really like to write a series of books on this topic. I’m one of those people who find it extremely easy to begin projects, and I have fantastic starting energy. I also have extremely strong finishing energy. The issue comes once the first excitement of a new idea has passed and the ending is nowhere in sight. In talking to other writers, I know I’m not the only one who, left to my own devices, would have nothing but a string of story starters!

But I’m now a full-time author. ‘Oooh, I’ve got a great idea for a story,’ followed by eating a Twirl and making three cups of tea, and forgetting the book I’m meant to be working on because I want to play around with new places someone could find a corpse, or a whole new setting, or (and I’ve been known to do this numerous times) think that I can write a whole load of books in a completely different genre and play around with that for a while – none of this is going to get novels in any reader’s hands.

I heard someone say recently that if you have all the time in the world to write a book, then that book will take all the time in the world. For me, this couldn’t be more true. It took me ten years to put together The Reason for Everything, even though many of the stories in it had been written several years before I finally published it in 2019. Likewise, it took a similar length of time to write and publish the book that finally became The Secrets That Haunt Us. I put this down to all sorts of factors. I said that it was because I was nervous of the publishing process and I had to figure it out. Publishing is, in fact, very straightforward, so I had to rule this out as an excuse.

I also had to rule out the other ‘reason’ that I had been using to tell myself that any book I write is going to take me a decade. I write out of order, so that must mean that I have no idea what is happening in the book and it takes forever to try and piece the scenes and ideas together. Okay, this is true to a certain extent, but the main conclusion I came to was that I was just plain scared to get the books finished. Because being finished means it can be published, which means it can be judged. And this can be a very scary thing when you’ve poured your heart and soul into your book.

Being a full-time author doesn’t mean I’m not scared anymore. It doesn’t mean that the fear of judgement has miraculously gone away. I’m still the same person I was before, but I’ve experimented with lots and lots of different ways of working and I’ve finally found some processes that work for me. Some work for longer writing projects, some for short ones. But for me, they all start in the same place(s): character, and the ending.

Characters develop in my head long before I write about them. Eventually they have enough ‘life’ about them for me to start thinking about what might happen to them in a story. Whatever that turns out to be, I always know how I want the story to end. So I get paper and I scribble. A lot. I put the story title (a working one will do) in a circle in the centre, then I spider out from there. I put the ending in an adjoining circle and join them together. Then I look for the main plot points: the inciting incident that sets the story in motion, the high points, the twists and turns, the point of no return, and any others that I can see are important. This mind mapping is great if I’m writing a short story, but it gets pretty confusing on one sheet of paper when I want to add in all the extras that you get in a novel. So I use two things: Scrivener, which is a fabulous piece of writing software and allows you to move chapters about easily, and a pen, strips of paper and blu tac.

I love the tactile nature of pen and paper, so with a novel, I write each of my plot points on a strip of paper, and then I stick them on a board (or in my case, currently, my fridge door) and move them around until I’m happy with the order they are in. I also have markers to ensure I have the inciting incident, the point of no return, the highs, the lows, and the other points that make up a crime or suspense novel – discovery of clues, the aha moments, the showdown. That’s the point I turn them into chapters in my writing software.

So far, so good. But then what? I’ve got a story idea, yes, but no book. And I’ve got enough story ideas already, without another one falling by the wayside! Well, because I now know what each of my sections are about, I can start filling in with details. Some people will write a complete story outline, like a summary of the entire book, covering one or two sheets of paper. For some reason this doesn’t work very well for me, so I now do a ‘skinny draft’ to start off. This involves writing each section of the book if I can at this stage, and if not, then I write notes about what will happen.

Once I’ve got a complete skinny draft, I can begin the process I love best: the rewriting. This is where I can throw everything at the book that I want to include, and make it as detailed as I want. I have fun with the book, which keeps the middle part of the process alive for me – an important motivation trick for this author! I can still do this in any order I like, which suits my mentality, and because I edit the book into shape after this step anyway, filling in any plot holes and anachronisms – and hopefully eradicating plainly stupid mistakes.

So finally, this gets me to the point at which the book can have its final edit, picking up on word choices and grammatical errors, and then it gets a proofread, before I format it for e-book or paperback, or other formats. For me, too, the most important thing is that this whole process gets the book written in weeks, for the first full draft, and a few months from start to finish. That’s definitely better (for me) than a decade.

It’s taken me since 2007 to discover that this process works for me, every time. That’s a long time, and has involved a lot of trial and error, and a lot of giving up on one way or doing something and trying a new one. It may or may not work for you. Everyone has to find their own writing processes. There is an awful lot of help and advice for new writers and experienced ones alike, and some of the advice may be useful to you. And some may not. The thing is, you have no way of knowing what kind of processes work for you until you try them out. It may even be that the process you discover works for one kind of story or book but doesn’t work for another, especially if the story is in a different genre to the previous one, or it’s a novel instead of a short story, or a play instead of a novella.

All a writer can really do is take note of all the good advice out there and sift through it, trying out different ways of working until one, or a few, work for you. From personal experience, too, I would have to say listen to your instincts. If you know you’re the kind of writer who likes mind maps instead of lists, then use them. If you know you like being clear on the end of the story and then figuring out how the characters get to that point, do so. Everyone works differently, everyone has different demands on their time. Writing is a creative process; if you’re a writer, let yourself be creative in ways that you discover work best for you.

Joy is a bubble: complete short story

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When a reader wants to try out a new author, or a new series by an author, I’ve often wondered what it is that makes someone want to give that book they’ve found online or in a bookstore a whirl. I know that, for me, it’s sometimes the cover that attracts me, and sometimes it’s the book title. The blurb on the back, or on the online store page, can be the factor that intrigues me, too. It’s also possible (because I’m human without an indefinite depth to my wallet, like many people) that I might well be intrigued by a price that seems reasonable to try out the book I’ve found. It may even be that I’ve managed to find a snippet of the book posted by the author and decided I really fancy giving the rest of it a go. I have to say that I’ve made a number of audiobook purchases by listening to the free sample first.

Like any author, I love people to want to read my books. I love to be able to tempt new readers to try out my series. Most of all, I love to find the right readers – those who feel that my books resonate with them. If you’ve never come across my short story collection, The Reason for Everything and other short stories, then I thought today’s blog post would be a good place to share a complete short story with you from this collection. So here you go…

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Joy is a bubble

There’s a man sitting on the riverbank, gnome-like, with a fishing rod in his hand. All he needs, she thinks, is a pointy red hat and he’ll look just like the ugly little statue in next-door’s garden. She hadn’t noticed him as she went down to the newsagent, muttering her list of things-to-do to herself. She stands now, holding the newspaper, the packet of cigarettes she was expected to fetch hidden in her handbag, and a mental note to ask for the money this time, watching the little fairytale action taking place right below her.

The human gnome stranger casts his line then sits in silence, with a Tupperware box of sandwiches waiting their turn on top of the wicker fishing basket, not to be confused with the second tub containing a Dolly Mixture assortment of maggots. She hadn’t realised they came in so many colours. She can see them, wriggling en-mass in the tub, their sense of desperate urgency mimicking the squirming that’s going on just below the surface algae in the deep green secret land of ‘keep net’, while the white float with the psychedelic orange tip bobs half way across the water.

Suddenly the white vanishes, and the man proves he’s better, cleverer than the fish; she watches, gripping tightly onto the newspaper as the scaly sliver whirls past her vision and into the man’s hand. She watches him remove the hook from the fish’s face then hurl the creature into the keep net to join the rest of the mystery in the green pool. Catching sight of a big stone, she has the urge to throw it and hit the man on the head – see how he likes being bashed about, having his skin damaged, cast aside to keep for later – but she knows she won’t.

Her fingers hurt and she realises how tightly she’s holding the newspaper that’s not for her, either. The sweat has seeped into the print and left grubby smears in regular oval patches on the front page. Something for him to have a go at her about over breakfast, and he won’t even need to look hard this morning. She starts to feel ever so slightly sick; it’s the empty belly, she tells herself. She needs to get some breakfast. She needs to go home. She sighs, but it’s an inaudible one because she’s used to making them that way. Her face adopts its invariable impassive ghostly expression, ready for the kitchen and the multitude of sins she’ll commit at breakfast.

But then, just briefly, she catches sight of something on the water. There, in the keep net, expanding on the river’s surface, a series of penny-sized bubbles catch the early morning shards of sunlight. They wink back up at her in a glorious rainbow of colour, and she smiles back at the sign of life under the water. As a kid she used to sit on the bank and watch the bubbles rise to the surface when the fish came up to gobble the air. Little bubbles; she’d had to concentrate to see them. Once she sat there for over an hour, waiting. She spotted one. It sat, alone on the surface, and a wet tear surprised her cheek as she smiled at it. Then he came along with his school shirt rolled up to his elbows and scudded a stone across the surface, and the bubble was gone. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t even notice she was there at first. Then he grinned, and scooted off on his bike. She didn’t see any more bubbles on the surface that afternoon.

Without warning, the fisher gnome gathers in his line, and grabs the keep net, hurling his captives back into the algae. All at once the bubbles are forced into the algae, too, and they burst on contact. And she thinks how sad it is that the bubbles must burst and that things must end.

She leaves the gnomish sadist and makes her way back along the dirt track where the grass bank stretches beyond her vision, then round the curbing pathway in front of the cul-de-sac of Council bungalows and its artificially planted beech trees, that grow haphazardly on the patches of grass in between the parking bays. The milkman is still out on his rounds, such as they are now, and she stops to listen, eyes closed momentarily, to the chink of glass against hard plastic as he lifts the bottles from the deep ocean blue crate and takes them to number 27. He catches her eye and smiles, waves, and she returns the gesture. He’ll have been to her house already and the milk will still be sitting in the doorway, already in the sun, by the time she gets home. It’s already heating up outside. Another scorcher due. She sighs. She hopes it won’t taste funny. He’ll let her know in no uncertain terms if it is. It’ll be her fault. And her job to clear up the cereal running down the wall, and the bits of broken bowl. She should have got home quicker. He’ll tell her that it’s not worth having the milkman, that they can get their milk from the supermarket. No one relies on the milkman anymore. But she does. He brings her what she needs every day. Just like the postman. Just for a moment she glances up and down the street, wondering whether he is already on his rounds, too.

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Short Story Month – I’m addicted to short stories!

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Addicted to short stories

May has been Short Story Month. Anyone who knows me well is aware that I’m a real short story fan, so I’ve loved this, and I’ve been popping images of short story collections that I own on Instagram on and off all month. That’s been great fun. At the last count, I have 79 paperback editions of short story collections, and if I add in those on my Kindle, then I’ve got way over a hundred! It won’t come as any great surprise that almost all of them are pretty dark in some way.

I grab them from anywhere: in bookshops, online – even once at a toddler group where they had a second hand bookshelf to raise funds. I remember the very first collection I read. I was ill and in bed as a twelve year old, and I was given a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. Each of the tattoos on the man tells an individual story. I loved these stories! They told a tale in a confined amount of space, and it made everything about each one really punchy, especially the end. This way of grabbing a moment in time and wringing it for every thought and emotion to create a powerful ending is what fascinated me, as did those which left me with a dark twist or consequence, and left me pondering the rights and wrongs.

As I got older, I became fascinated with the blurred lines of moral and emotional choices in collections by great writers such as Graham Greene, Jean Rhys, Ian McEwan, Carol Joyce Oates and Agatha Christie (who wrote many more short stories than you probably realise. I have 16 collections of her stories!). This blurring, and the inner wrangles of the characters, was the thing that got me totally hooked. People are complex, and those events, thoughts and emotions which lead up to a choice between what is right and wrong can make all the difference to the outcome.

It may well have been this endless collection and devouring of short stories (which I think might be my guilty, addictive pleasure) that has enabled me to be fortunate enough to get short stories published in magazines and anthologies worldwide, and to win several competitions. I even got a trophy once! But when I tried to ‘write to market’ for the women’s magazines, I just couldn’t get it right. Envelopes kept winging their way back and dropping through my letterbox, sometimes with explanatory letters that the stories were too dark for the women’s magazine market, and consequently only one or two were accepted (one of them twice in two different countries, which was pretty great!). I had much more success with the literary magazines and anthologies, where the topics can be much more varied, not to mention darker. This suited me perfectly.

The Reason for Everything by Claire Ladds ebook

When I began publishing my own work, I always knew that I would continue writing those dark short stories – the ones full of crimes of the heart, of moral and emotional grappling with right and wrong, and those in which ordinary people are driven to the edge and crime spills over into both reality and the dark deeds which follow. This is what I achieved with my first collection, The Reason for Everything. I’m truly proud of that book. There are stories in it that make me well up and give me chills and heart-thumping moments. Even better – if a reader can leave one of my stories thinking, ‘I woudn’t have done it like that. Would I?’, or ‘I totally get why they did that,’ or it leaves them pondering those blurred lines, then that’s what makes me feel I’ve succeeded in telling the story.

Readers have contacted me and told me which are their favourites, and this always fascinates me. For a start, it always makes me thrilled that someone has taken the time to read my work(!). What interests me are the stories that they pick as favourites. There is usually something that has caused that particular reader to identify with the character in the story – although I’ll add a caveat to that: if your favourite story turns out to be ‘The death of Mr Ackworth’ and you identify fully with the main character there, then I’m more than a little concerned about you! 😂

If you’d like to grab yourself a copy of the collection which left me dubbed with the nickname ‘Mistress of Melancholy’ (I really LOVE that description! I’m very proud of it! 😁), then you can find it on your preferred store here. If you’re quick, it might even be priced at 0.99.

Happy reading!

Sneak peek at new book cover for my short story collection

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The Reason for Everything by Claire Ladds

I’m very excited today because I have been waiting for ages to give you a sneak peek at the new cover for my short story collection, The Reason for Everything. Finally, I’m able to do it!

This new version, dominated by black and red (two colours which I happen to love, especially together), is much more in keeping with the dark, emotional noir and suspenseful feeling that I’ve incorporated into all of the stories, be they actual physical crimes, emotional deviance and difficulties or murky memories and experiences.

The Reason for Everything will be getting its new look very soon. I’ll also be offering the collection for a VERY limited time, at a special price, to celebrate the new cover. Watch this space! 😊