Tag: Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives

My writing year 2025

My Victorian murder mystery Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives was released in paperback in September, and its sequel, Jekyll & Hyde: Winter Retreat came out in hardback in October, both published by Titan Books. While the first book is a cat-and-mouse chase featuring Muriel Carew and body-sharing detectives Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, the second novel is a full-on country house murder mystery with a locked-room murder and a large cast of suspects. There’s even a floorplan on the endpapers! It was a head-scratcher to plot out, I can tell you.

My second short story collection, Great Robots of History, was published by Black Shuck Books in March. It’s a collection of weird tales that are not quite about robots, for the most part, but instead about automatons and robot-like figures from history and myth. I’m really proud of it, and I’m delighted that it’s shown up in various end-of-year roundups, including being selected as one of Happy Goat Horror’s favourite collections of the year.

I had twelve new short stories published this year.

Six new stories were published in my collection Great Robots of History:

  • The Funnel
  • The Ichor Ran Out of Him Like Molten Lead
  • Icarus and His Wise Father Daedalus
  • Ask and Embla
  • A Box of Hope: A Can of Worms
  • Milk-White

Those were the publications under my own name… but this year I also started a side project, writing mystery fiction under the pseudonym TJ Hext.

Game of Liars is a bit like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None or Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party, with the murders committed on the set of a challenge gameshow that’s rather like The Traitors. It’s a pacy read, and a big, complex mystery with multiple narrators and plenty of twists.

The Amateur Corpse and The Corpse in the Shambles are the first two short novels in the York Murders series, which revolves around cheerful retired amateur sleuth Hazel Hausswolff. The first book features a murder during a murder mystery party at York Treasurer’s House in the shadow of the Minster; the second book concerns a murder on York’s most famous medieval street, in strange circumstances: a river of blood on the cobbles, and ants scurrying from the corpse.

2025 projects

This year I wrote:

  • An 81,000-word draft of a (sort of) mystery novel set in the art world
  • The final 20,000 words of the first TJ Hext York Murders novel, the full 40,000 words of the second novel, plus the first 20,000 words of the third book in the series
  • Four short stories

In total, I wrote 181,950 words and spent 284 hours writing or editing.

Looking ahead to 2026

The first item on the agenda next year is to finish the third York Murders novel, and my intention is to add more books to the series throughout the year, in between projects written under my own name. Then I’ll set my mind to rewriting substantial parts of the art-world novel. It’s more ambitious than any of my novel-length work to date, and it’ll be difficult to get right, but I’m excited to take on the challenge.

My writing year 2024

My Victorian murder mystery novel Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives was published in hardback by Titan Books in Oct 2024.

I also had 8 short stories published:

My essay ‘The Problem of the Faithful Pastiche’, about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adaptations featuring well-known characters, was published in Writing the Murder: Essays on Crafting Crime Fiction, published by Dead Ink, Sep 2024.

I also won the Best Short Fiction Award at the British Fantasy Awards in October! The winning story, ‘The Brazen Head of Westinghouse’, was first published in IZ Digital (Interzone), then reprinted in Best of British Science Fiction 2023 (NewCon Press).

2024 projects

This is what I wrote this year:

  • The final 20,000 words of a murder mystery novel begun last year
  • The first 20,000 words of a cosy crime novel
  • A full 100k draft, then structural edits of a commissioned novel yet to be announced
  • Three short stories

In total, I wrote 181,450 words and spent 331 hours writing or editing.

Looking ahead to 2025

Early next year I’ll be able to announce two new books, both of which I’m very excited about.

As for what I’ll actually be writing, for the first time in several years I’ll begin the year with a relatively blank slate, which is also very exciting. Who knows what I’ll be reporting having written, this time next year!

Publication day! JEKYLL & HYDE: CONSULTING DETECTIVES

The time has finally arrived – I have a new book out… today!

When Muriel Carew attends a lavish society party, the last person she expects to bump into is her ex-fiancée Henry Jekyll, a man she’s not seen for many years. When Jekyll turns out to be investigating a series of missing persons in London, Muriel is intrigued. But Jekyll is not working alone, and if Muriel wants to aid in the investigation, she must work with both Henry and his partner, the monstrous and uncouth Mr Hyde.

JEKYLL & HYDE: CONSULTING DETECTIVES is a Gothic murder mystery that I absolutely loved writing…

…and it’s also a very lovely hardback book that would look very pretty on any bookshelf. It’s got beautiful endpapers, an embossed gold birdcage and even a sort of flickbook effect going on in the page corners.

Here’s what other authors have said about the novel:
 
“Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives is a fast-paced gothic thriller that is relentlessly engaging, entertaining, and (most important of all) terrific fun.”
Tom Mead (Death and the Conjuror / Cabaret Macabre)
 
“A wonderful concept, beautifully executed. Delightful and enthralling in equal measure. Replete with a delicious Victorian atmosphere, as thick as a pea-souper.”
Jeremy Dyson (The League of Gentlemen / Ghost Stories)
 
“Tim Major has come up with one of those ‘damn it, I wish I’d thought of that’ concepts: Henry Jekyll as a dissipated Sherlock Holmes to Edward Hyde’s demented Dr Watson. But this splendid novel is more than just a cool idea; it’s a rip-roaring, dark-hearted tale that yokes a cunning murder-mystery plot to the Gothic horror of Stevenson’s famed novella. The sequel can’t come too soon.”
James Lovegrove (Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors)
 
“Riveting, ingenious, original. I kinda wish I’d thought of this myself!”
Adam Christopher (Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town)
 
“Highly enjoyable, terrifically good fun, very well paced, and full of relish for Stevenson’s original story.”
JS Barnes (Dracula’s Child)

Jekyll & Hyde on NetGalley

My novel Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives is almost here! It’ll be published in a beautiful hardback edition on 3 September 2024. But perhaps you needn’t wait so long as that….

If you’re a reviewer or book blogger or similar, and if you’re signed up with a NetGalley account, you may be able to access the novel early here.

The first review of the novel is in, too. It’s from Kirkus Reviews, and it’s lovely! Here’s an excerpt:

“As in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, the solution to the mystery is even more horrifying than the mystery itself. Major does such an admirable job with the heaviest lift here—coming up with a case that fully engages Jekyll/Hyde’s double nature without being overwhelmed by it—that it’s hard to imagine how he’ll manage it again. But expectations are high.”

You can read the full review here.

And if this convinces you, maybe you’d like to preorder Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives right this minute!

Announcement – JEKYLL & HYDE: CONSULTING DETECTIVES

Exciting news is the very best way to begin a new year! I’m thrilled to announce that Titan Books will publish my novel JEKYLL & HYDE: CONSULTING DETECTIVES, and I’m very excited about it.

Here’s the Publishers Marketplace announcement:

More details soon! If you’re impatient to know more, please consider signing up to my email newsletter, as I’ll be including additional plot tidbits in the first newsletter, to be sent out imminently…