Northamptonshire author Sue Bentley, best known for her hugely popular Magic Puppies and Magic Kittens children’s series, is turning her pen to something entirely different — and much darker.
Her anticipated new novel,The Making, is her first Victorian gothic crime story, aimed squarely at an adult audience. Set in the fictional town of Lastville, inspired by Northampton, it promises intrigue, danger, and a generous dose of Victorian social history.
“It’s where I always thought I’d end up — crime fascinates me,” Sue says. “This one’s about villains and people with secrets.”
The story follows Neva, a young Victorian woman with feminist leanings, much to the frustration of her socially ambitious mother. Mourning the death of her father, a prominent shoe factory owner, Neva is forced to encounter the death of another local shoemaker — setting in motion a chain of events that turn increasingly dark.
The novel is rich in local history. The victim is a shoemaker, drawing on Northampton’s heritage, and the backdrop is steeped in authentic details from the era. Perhaps the most unsettling historical element Sue has researched is “corpse medicine.”
The Dark Cure
In the 17th century and beyond, European physicians prescribed remedies made from human remains — bones, blood, fat, and even powdered skull. Though gruesome by today’s standards, it was once a common, if macabre, form of medicine among both the wealthy and the poor.
“King Charles II reportedly drank something called King’s Drops, made from powdered human skull, often from those who’d died violently, as they were thought to have extra vitality. As grim as it sounds, such practices were based on the medical belief that “vital spirits” could be transferred from the dead to the living.
“I love social history — what people did, how they lived — and I spend a lot of time researching it,” Sue says. Local readers may even spot nods to familiar locations, such as the area behind the hospital in St Edmunds Road, woven into her fictional landscape.
A versatile writer, Sue’s last two novels, We Other and Second Skin were dark fairy fantasises, weaving reality with fantasy elements.
Sue’s interest in Victorian Gothic had its roots at the start of her literary career. Writing under the pseydonym Cleo Cordell, she published women’s erotic fiction.
Across 14 novels, she explored dark, sensual, and often gothic-infused themes — forbidden desire, power struggles, decadence, and shadowy atmospheres that echo the themes of Gothic literature.
Sue says, “When writing for Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace, using the pen name Cleo Cordell, I was deemed ‘a specialist in tales of Gothic fantasy and the darker reaches of the sexual imagination.’ From those early days when I was first published,
that fascination with everything Victorian, mysterious and unusual was there. It lay dormant, brooding, and maturing like a fine wine, through a varied writing career, and has now surfaced in the shape of my first Victorian gothic crime novel, The Making.”
And if you’d like a taste of the genre while you wait for The Making, you can read exclusive extracts from Sins of the Flesh — a Victorian gothic romance steeped in atmosphere and intrigue.
The Following are three short extracts from Sins of The Flesh, a short story by Sue Bentley under the pseudonym Cleo Cordell in Pandora’s Box 2.
Author’s note: Séances were all the rage among the more bohemian thinkers of the Victorian age. Sins of the Flesh takes the central character, Flora, servant of a well-bred lady, into a world of erotic paranormal experience and depraved behaviour. They meet the enigmatic psychic, Joseph Hoffman at the graveyard of an abbey where he is holding a ‘secret meeting.’
It was a little before midnight, when the hansom drew to a halt outside the great wrought-iron gates of Christchurch cemetery. Flora Brennan alighted first, then stood by while her mistress paid the driver. Annaline was resplendent in velvet and furs, a warm hat topping her elaborate coiffure. Although Flora too was swathed against the cold, she shivered in the night air.
This is wrong. We should not be here. Only trouble can come of this […….]
“I wish that invitation had never arrived,’ she burst out. ‘Oh Miss Annaline, do let’s go back.’
Annaline tossed her head and kept on walking. ‘Go back to the house if you want to, but you needn’t think that I’ll come with you. I don’t intent to miss this chance. Do you realise what a privilege it is to be asked along to one of Joseph Hoffman’s private meetings? [….]
‘Well Flora, dear. Was that not thrilling? Annaline said, smoothing her gloves along her fingers. ‘I told you Joseph possesses a rare talent.
She was lying on the marble tomb, with her skirts raised, thighs parted widely and her bodice unbuttoned. All around her naked bodies were writhing. However she might struggle to deny what had happened, Flora’s body remembered every second of it; each caress, the scrape of teeth against her skin, feather-light pulses she had never before experienced… The sins of the flesh are there for the taking, such trophies are there for those brave enough to demand them… With a thrill of fear, spiced by dark desire, she knew Joseph was right…
‘Indeed,’ Flora murmured, not daring to look at Joseph. He had committed the ultimate act of intimacy, that of understanding her completely. Oh, if only she could leave this place without speaking to him or meeting his eye. He was far too wise, his powers too dark and dangerous, the whole experience had been devastating. No one must ever know to what depraved depths she had fallen.
But as she and Annaline began making their way out of the abbey, something he had said rose into her thoughts. The sins of the flesh are there for the taking, such trophies are there for those who are brave enough to demand them.
You can read the full extract from Sins of the Flesh — first published in Pandora’s Box 2, an anthology of erotic writing by women edited by Kerri Sharp and published by Virgin — .https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandoras-Box-Anthology-Erotic-Writing/dp/0352331518
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