An unusual writing partnership is flourishing in York, reports MATT CLARK.

SOMEONE called PJ Quinn just had to be a crime writer, in the same way Lady Ga Ga had to be a performer. But dispel visions of a Chicago confidante of the mafia, PJ Quinn is the nom de plume for York author Pauline Kirk and her daughter, Jo Summers.

Foul Play is their first in a planned trilogy of DI Ambrose mysteries and is set in a run-down, bomb-damaged theatre during the Fifties. It’s the sort of place you end up when you’re no longer popular, our hero muses.

Ambrose has been called to investigate an attack on the leading lady in the Chalk Heath players during a rehearsal. But no one can work out how the crime could have been committed.

It may be a classic sleuth novel, but don’t turn to the back page to find out who the culprit is. All is cleverly revealed before then.

“That was a conscious decision,” says Pauline. “You see people in a bookshop looking at the front page and then turning to the back, so why bother reading the rest?”

The pair wanted to write a crime novel that wasn’t violent, but with modern forensic detective methods changing so rapidly, they decided to set the book in the 1950s to prevent their book dating.

And Inspector Ambrose is no Midsomer’s Barnaby; he’s an ordinary man, someone whose son is causing him problems at home and with a raft of wartime memories, including a sense of guilt that he didn’t serve on the front line.

The inspiration for the novel comes from Pauline’s days in amateur dramatics and her fascination with other people.

But it’s not only a whodunit; Ambrose conducts his interviews in the stark setting of the theatre to reveal a thin veneer of cordiality among the cast that masks petty jealousies bubbling below the surface.

“Husband and wife writing teams are not uncommon but we never gave it a thought that we were doing something unusual,” says Pauline. “But the reaction we get suggests it is. People always ask ‘how do you do it?’ or ‘are you still speaking?’.”

Pauline and Jo insist they don’t quarrel; their relationship is based on mutual respect.

“You’ve got to stop thinking of them as your child,” says Pauline. “Or ‘I’m taking no nonsense now’ and move on from that relationship to one of equal adults.”

She believes two people working together was actually very helpful. One would say to the other ‘I think you’re giving away too much there.’ Or ‘if he did that, would he be likely to do that’. It is a relationship that tries to stay realistic by working things out together.

One thing that doesn’t help is distance. Jo lives in Surrey, Pauline in Dringhouses; that means much of their work is swapped by email. When the pair do meet up though, long dog walks in the countryside inevitably turn into yet another plot-hatching session.

Then there is the problem of different styles. Jo is a successful legal writer; someone used to employing short, pithy sentences whereas Pauline is a poet and story teller who relishes long, imaginative lines.

So a compromise was called for.

“When we began writing together it was clear there was a mismatch, so we decided to write not in our own style, but that of PJ Quinn,” says Pauline.

The result is a style where attention to detail, while paramount, is applied imaginatively.

“The funny thing is, as we went along, we started to merge,” says Jo. “By the end, we couldn’t even remember which of us had written what.”

Pauline and Jo will be reading extracts from Foul Play and answering questions at Acomb Library as part of York’s Big City Read on August 24.