Karen Heenan on Dorothy Dunnett
Karen Heenan, author of The Tudor Court series
My introduction to Dorothy Dunnett occurred in the summer of 2000, when a friend who knew that I enjoyed historical fiction gifted me with both the Lymond and Niccolò series, as well as the Companion books. I was thrilled. I’d heard about these books for years but I’d somehow never got around to reading them. I was in for a surprise. I started with The Game of Kings and even though I was hooked by that iconic opening, I found that I didn’t much like Lymond. I didn’t like him for most of the book, even though the writing and the characters – Christian! Will Scott! – pulled me along in a way I could scarcely believe for a book that I wasn’t really enjoying.
When I finally finished, sighing with satisfaction at the ending, I put the book aside and thought to myself, I don’t have to read the rest of them. I can just tell her I did. But that night, sitting on the couch, trying to get into something that would remove the lingering traces of Francis Crawford from my brain, I found myself wondering what happened next.
What happened next was Queens’ Play, which I read even faster than the first book, followed rapidly by books 3 through 6. By the end of the second book, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t fallen in love with Francis Crawford from page one. I read Lymond everywhere. In bed, in the car, in the bathroom at work when I hadn’t finished a crucial scene on the train. On the train, where a badly timed chess game which caused me to sob in public.
It took over my life, and as a writer, I knew I needed to learn to do what she did. But what did she do? And more importantly, how did she do it? That has been the question that has pulled me along, like her writing, for the past twenty-odd years. I learned so much about character development and plot from her books, about how, even when your main character is, say, somewhat unsympathetic, if you have an absolutely killer plot and a group of supporting characters who elicit sympathy, you can get away with everything short of murder. Certainly, you can get away with setting your mother’s castle on fire.
I wouldn’t say I’m there yet, but Dorothy Dunnett is a high bar to climb over. Five books into my own publishing journey, one of the best compliments I’ve received is on the main character of my second book, A Wider World. Robin Lewis is prickly, introverted, and not particularly likeable – until you get to know him – but he leads an interesting life surrounded by interesting people. When readers told me they didn’t like him until the end of the book but they couldn’t stop reading, I thanked them.
And then I thanked Dorothy Dunnett.
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