Sound by Catherine Fearns
Can you hear it?
A professor of psychoacoustics is found dead in his office. It appears to be a heart attack, until a second acoustician dies a few days later in similar circumstances.
Meanwhile, there’s an outbreak of mysterious illnesses on a council estate, and outbursts of unexplained violence in a city centre nightclub. Not to mention strange noises coming from the tunnels underneath Liverpool. Can it really be a coincidence that death metal band Total Depravity are back in the city, waging their own form of sonic warfare?
Detective Inspector Darren Swift is convinced there are connections. Still grieving his fiancé’s death and sworn to revenge, he is thrown back into action on the trail of a murderer with a terrifying and undetectable weapon.
But this case cannot be solved using conventional detective work, and D.I. Swift will need to put the rulebook aside and seek the occult expertise of Dr. Helen Hope and her unlikely sidekick, guitarist Mikko Kristensen.
10
Books That Influenced ‘Sound’
Sound
is a police procedural with a difference. You can try and solve the
mystery along with the detectives, but you can also explore the
interlinking themes that the book introduces – from psychoacoustics
to black metal to chaos theory. I did a lot of wide-ranging research
before writing Sound, but here is a list of the books that influenced
me the most.
Friedrich
Gottlieb Klopstock, The Messiah
I used this obscure epic written in the 1740s by
the German lyric poet Klopstock, because it is one of only a handful
of literary sources that reference the demon Adramelech, who has an
important role in my books. To be honest, it’s incredibly tedious,
and less beautiful than the other main literary source for
Adramelech, Milton’s Paradise Lost. But I referenced that
tediousness in the pastiche grimoire excerpts I created for my book.
And I also noticed, on reading Klopstock, the variety of sonic images
he employed throughout – trumpets, thunder, booming voices etc –
which no doubt had an impact on the concept for Sound.
As with the Bible, and with Paradise Lost, Klopstock’s heaven and
hell are both very noisy places.
Finally,
I stole The Messiah title as the name of my black metal vocalist
character.
Aldous
Huxley, The Devils of Loudun
This
is a non-fiction novel written in 1952 about religious hysteria and
repression in C17th France. It was made into a controversial film by
Ken Russell, and it concerns the true events surrounding Catholic
priest Urbain Grandier and a convent of nuns who allegedly became
possessed after Grandier made a demonic pact. This is another book
that has some tedious philosophical parts. But I’m glad I trawled
through them to get back to the salacious priests and nuns. Because I
also came across a philosophical section so profound – few passages
have ever resonated with me that strongly. Huxley pauses the
narrative for a while to consider the nature of possession, the
importance of belief, and why we need the supernatural.
Dayal
Patterson, Black Metal: Evolution
of the Cult
This
is probably the best, and certainly the most comprehensive, book
about black metal.
I’m
a heavy metal journalist, musician and fan, so I know a lot about
metal music and culture. But black metal is something quite specific,
and I wanted to make sure I was fully versed in its history before I
wrote about it.
A.S.
Byatt, Possession
The
1990 Booker prize-winning novel uses an extremely ambitious bricolage
technique, as well as multiple timelines, to craft a literary mystery
that is packed with romance and suspense. I was completely captivated
by this novel in my teens and wrote about it for my English
Literature A-level. I have never forgotten its ambition and conceit,
and I have no doubt that the bricolage, pastiche and time-hopping
techniques I employ are a result of my reading AS Byatt.
Phil
Hine, Condensed Chaos: An
Introduction to Chaos Magick
Chaos
Magick is a contemporary magical practice, defined in the 1970s by
the occultist Austin Osman Spare. I used this short book as a primer,
because I hadn’t heard of chaos magick before. I have to admit, I
wasn’t completely convinced by this as a way of life – it’s all
rather convenient. But I was very taken with two of its tenets:
belief as a tool, and the central motto that ‘Nothing is true;
everything is permitted.’ I felt they were very relevant to what I
am trying to do with my books. I introduced the Chaos Magick ideas
into the book using Mikko and his band Total Depravity, who write a
concept album about it.
Trevor
Cox, Sonic Wonderland: A
Scientific Odyssey of Sound
Trevor
Cox is a Professor of Acoustic Engineering who also write some
brilliant popular science. This book was unputdownable and I made so
many notes that I filled a whole notebook. Revelations on every page
about the invisible world of sound waves.
Patrick
Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer
Perfume
was an enormously successful novel written in 1985 (and made into a
successful movie) which explores the sense of smell - Perfume is
renowned for its vivid descriptions of scents and smells, which come
alive on the page. Obviously I was writing about sound rather than
smell, but I was inspired by the way he rose to the challenge of
describing a human sense so fully, and I wanted to attempt something
similar.
Jim
Moore, Underground Liverpool
I
already knew I wanted to write about the tunnels of Liverpool before
I ordered this local history book. But I didn’t know how
fascinating the subject would be. With its porous sandstone base and
its colourful industrial past, Liverpool is a city that lives
underground more than most. And how appropriate, given that I am
writing about hell! Beautifully illustrated and meticulously
researched, this has to be my favourite history book about Liverpool.
David
Toop, Ocean of Sound: ambient
sound and radical listening in the age of communication
This
was a bit of an outlier. I had already written most of Sound by the
time I read this book; sometimes when I’m at the later stages of
writing I like to take a step back and do some more reading and
research, to see if there’s anything I’ve missed or got wrong. I
wanted to read something about ambient sound, and I was drawn to the
book because I loved the idea of ‘radical listening’. I also
wanted to consider how our listening has changed over the past
century. David Toop has a way of describing music that is uniquely
beautiful, and I found myself reading passages over and over again.
Twitter: @metalmamawrites
Website: https://www.catherine-fearns.com/
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