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AJ Blythe: Welcome to the Down Under Mystery Club.
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AJ Blythe: I’m AJ Blythe and joining me is fellow mystery author Ava Ness.
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AJ Blythe: Every week we dive into curious cases, cracking good reads and all things mystery.
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AJ Blythe: Grab a cuppa, settle in and let’s get sleuthing.
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AJ Blythe: Hello dear listeners, I’m AJ and I’m joined by the amazing cosy author Ava Ness.
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AJ Blythe: Welcome Ava.
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Ava Ness: Hi AJ.
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AJ Blythe: In a moment, I’m going to outline an Aussie mystery.
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AJ Blythe: I’ve done the research.
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Ava Ness: And I’m coming in blind-ish.
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AJ Blythe: After we’ve discussed the case, we’ll talk about mystery novels it brings to mind.
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AJ Blythe: And the reason that Ava said ish is this is a fairly well-known story in Australia.
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AJ Blythe: I don’t think there could be many Aussies who aren’t aware of this one.
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Ava Ness: Correct.
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Ava Ness: I think especially for those of us who grew up in the 80s, I think myself.
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Ava Ness: I think it was a lot in popular fiction and in TV and movies.
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Ava Ness: There was a lot of adaptations around that era when we were growing up.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right.
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AJ Blythe: It has become one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries, but there’s A twist.
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AJ Blythe: And that is that the story is in 1900, a group of schoolgirls climbed a strange volcanic formation known as Hanging Rock on the Valentine’s Day picnic.
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AJ Blythe: By the end of the afternoon, several had vanished without a trace.
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AJ Blythe: And the twist is, the disappearance never happened.
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AJ Blythe: So the mystery is whether the original story ever existed at all.
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AJ Blythe: In this episode, we’re going to explore how Joan Lindsay’s novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, became so convincing that generations of readers believed it was based on a true event.
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AJ Blythe: We’ll look at the myths, rumors, and questions surrounding the book and the real Hanging Rock itself.
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AJ Blythe: Why do so many people swear it’s a true story?
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AJ Blythe: What is it about the landscape that continues to inspire unease?
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AJ Blythe: And how did a work of fiction become part of Australia’s folklore?
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Ava Ness: I have to admit, until you said that, I hadn’t really realised that I had, I did think it was based on a true story.
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Ava Ness: I just had assumed.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, I had to, and I’d heard the story that was based on these two missing girls from the 1800s.
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AJ Blythe: And it was actually only when I was doing research around that did I find that there was this big twist.
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AJ Blythe: Once we have discussed this mystery, we’re going to look at other crime novel that echoes the haunting atmosphere and isolated setting and unanswered questions, proving that sometimes the most powerful mysteries are the ones that refuse to be solved.
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AJ Blythe: I do have to give a spoiler alert.
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AJ Blythe: To discuss this one, we’re going to have to talk about how the book ends.
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AJ Blythe: So for those of you who haven’t read Picnic at Hanging Rock or watched any of the many movies or TV series about it,
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AJ Blythe: I’m going to have a spoiler, but I will give you a summary now so that it brings you up to speed.
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AJ Blythe: At the turn of the 20th century, students from Apple Yard College, a strict girls boarding school in Victoria, go on a Valentine’s Day picnic to the mysterious volcanic formation known as Hanging Rock.
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AJ Blythe: During the outing, 4 girls and a teacher go exploring the rock.
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AJ Blythe: Three students, Miranda, Marion and Irma,
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AJ Blythe: and mathematics teacher Miss McCraw wander off separately into the rock’s strange formations.
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AJ Blythe: They’re seen climbing higher and higher into the rocky landscape until they disappear.
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AJ Blythe: Only one girl, Irma, is later found alive days later but has no memory of what happened and the others are never seen again.
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AJ Blythe: After the disappearance, the school falls into chaos and decline.
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AJ Blythe: Students withdraw, teachers leave.
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AJ Blythe: The headmistress, Mrs.
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AJ Blythe: Appleyard, becomes increasingly unstable.
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AJ Blythe: As rumors spread, the school reputation collapses.
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AJ Blythe: And eventually, Mrs.
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AJ Blythe: Appleyard dies after falling or jumping, no one sure, from Hanging Rock.
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AJ Blythe: The fate of the missing goals is never explained, and the novel ends with a deliberate absence of resolution, no discovery, no explanation, and no closure.
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AJ Blythe: That is the story.
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AJ Blythe: as you will read it if you pick up the book, Picnic at Hanging Rock.
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AJ Blythe: But there is so much more around this that I felt it was really worth discussing, particularly because I did think it was based on a true story.
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AJ Blythe: And how can something become so enduring that it does become part of our folklore?
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Ava Ness: Absolutely.
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AJ Blythe: In all the interviews that I’ve read,
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AJ Blythe: with the author.
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AJ Blythe: She definitely pushed that intrigue as to whether or not it was true or not.
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AJ Blythe: She wouldn’t say where she got the story from.
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AJ Blythe: It was very clear from her interviews that Appleyard College
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AJ Blythe: was based on the school that she went to as a child herself, which I guess as soon as you start adding elements of truth, such as the fact that Picnic and Hanging Rock is based on a place called Hanging Rock, which is a real location, when you have those elements of truth, I think that it’s much easier for rumours and so on to start.
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Ava Ness: Yeah.
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AJ Blythe: I think that Picnic and Hanging Rock mystery has like several ingredients that make it
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AJ Blythe: such an enduring part of our folklore.
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AJ Blythe: The first is the author’s insistence that readers decide whether or not the story was fact or fiction.
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AJ Blythe: Obviously it’s realistic historical setting.
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AJ Blythe: The existence of Hanging Rock being a real place, the author’s connection to a real girl’s school, and the lack of a solution to the disappearance.
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AJ Blythe: In fact, one of the enduring myths is that there was a real disappearance at Clyde Girls Grammar School, which is where the author attended, and that was the inspiration for her book.
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AJ Blythe: And that is a story that I’d heard.
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AJ Blythe: I’d always heard that there had been a disappearance at her school or some school girls, and that was the thing that inspired her to write the book.
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AJ Blythe: But apparently, despite the story’s persistence, researchers have never uncovered evidence of such an event.
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AJ Blythe: And apparently research continues to this day.
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AJ Blythe: People are always going back and trying to find the names, police records and so on.
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AJ Blythe: But if you go back and look at interviews from people at the school, even some of them believe that there were some girls who went missing because of
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AJ Blythe: of the question mark over this book and the fact that she insisted that readers had to decide whether or not it was true or not.
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Ava Ness: And I think it’s just the possibility seems so real.
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Ava Ness: It seems so likely that it could have been a true story.
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AJ Blythe: Absolutely.
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AJ Blythe: The other thing that I discovered though when I read it was I always remembered when I was a child reading a second book in the series, but I don’t really remember much about it because the original book and the movie and TV series are so big that that’s the things that I remembered.
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AJ Blythe: But apparently she originally published a novel without its final chapter and her editor actually advised her or said it was going to be left off, meaning the mystery was left completely unresolved.
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AJ Blythe: But
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AJ Blythe: The additional chapter was later released called The Secret of Hanging Rock, and it was published after Joan Lindsay had passed away.
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AJ Blythe: And in this extra ending, it suggested the girls may have merged with or entered another realm of existence, that time behaves strangely on the rock, and their disappearance is framed as something beyond human understanding rather than a physical crime or accident.
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Ava Ness: So we’ve seen this time after time, haven’t we, with these mysteries that are unsolved, that eventually they seem to then cross into the supernatural as a possible explanation when there’s no other logical explanation, then supernatural factors start to come into it.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, absolutely.
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AJ Blythe: And I guess at the time as well, when the book was published, people were probably more likely to wander into that
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AJ Blythe: immediately, but I can see why the editor suggested they leave off that last chapter because if you read Picnic at Hanging Rock there is nothing really to suggest that there’s something supernatural happening apart from the fact that these girls mysteriously disappear.
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AJ Blythe: So then to suddenly in the last chapter have the fact that there was another realm of existence that they’d wandered through and that’s it, that’s the end of the story.
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AJ Blythe: It isn’t as compelling as having the big question mark about what happened to them.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, it’s much more interesting to think about what could have happened rather than probably what did happen.
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Ava Ness: And again, I’m still thinking about it in terms of a true story.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, that’s right.
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AJ Blythe: And there have been so many other crimes at the time that had been put forward as the inspiration for it.
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AJ Blythe: But the author insisted that she actually had a dream herself, much in the same way as we’ve heard the story about how Twilight came to be.
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AJ Blythe: The author woke up from a dream and had this dream of these girls disappearing and hanging rock and so on.
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AJ Blythe: And that’s what made her write the story rather than an actual crime itself.
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AJ Blythe: But even though she did report that,
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AJ Blythe: in her interviews, she still very much pushed the idea that readers had to decide if the story was fact or fiction.
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Ava Ness: Well, you’d have to say this was a masterpiece in marketing from the author and the publisher from the get-go, and then it’s, you know, endured all these years.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right.
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AJ Blythe: I don’t think that if it had just been, had that extra chapter at the end that explained it, I don’t think the book would have done anywhere near as well or endured all this time, as you said, because
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AJ Blythe: It’s that question mark.
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AJ Blythe: And the fact that we honestly believed that it was based on a true crime shows how big the story and the mystery around it has become.
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Ava Ness: Well, I feel like I need to go back and read the book again now.
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AJ Blythe: Well, there was another series done in 2017 if you’re wanting something a little bit more, you know.
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Ava Ness: Is that the one with Elle McPherson?
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AJ Blythe: No, I don’t think so, because it was 2017, so I’m not sure, unless she was a teacher.
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Ava Ness: There was the one with her and
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Ava Ness: I can’t think who the other actress was.
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Ava Ness: Kate Fisher, I think.
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Ava Ness: That was her name then.
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Ava Ness: She goes by a different name now.
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AJ Blythe: No, I don’t believe that is the one from 2017 and I’m just looking it up now.
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AJ Blythe: So the first film was in 1975, but the latest iteration was a TV series from 2017 with Natalie Dormer and Lily Sullivan.
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Ava Ness: Okay.
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AJ Blythe: There was also in 2017 a stage adaptation which toured internationally after premiering in Melbourne in Australia.
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AJ Blythe: Then there was the original movie and then obviously the series that you’ve just talked about.
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AJ Blythe: It has definitely got a lot of iterations out there.
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AJ Blythe: It’d be interesting actually to look and see if they all give a conclusion to the story or whether they leave the question mark hanging for the audience as well.
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Ava Ness: I mean it’s like a
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Ava Ness: story within a story.
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AJ Blythe: It is.
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AJ Blythe: I mean, and that’s why I still decided we should talk about this today, because even though I found that there wasn’t necessarily a real crime behind it, the whole mystery of, is the book a mystery?
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Ava Ness: Exactly.
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AJ Blythe: I found fascinating.
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AJ Blythe: And in fact, I’d love to hear your theories on this, dear listener.
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AJ Blythe: Have you read the book or seen one of the movies or TV series?
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AJ Blythe: And do you have a theory?
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AJ Blythe: Do you believe that it’s based on something true or is it just a great yarn?
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Ava Ness: It’s always something that I’ve always been interested in the story, but now I’m sort of looking at it from a completely different angle.
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AJ Blythe: When I watched the movie and I read the book first,
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AJ Blythe: because it doesn’t have a conclusion, it always made it seem like it had to be real because in real life, mysteries don’t always get solved.
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AJ Blythe: There’s not always a lovely bow to go around them, which is why they do endure because people go, what happened?
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AJ Blythe: And so you think that in a book, we’re so used to the end of the book having a conclusion.
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AJ Blythe: We know what the ending is.
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AJ Blythe: You know, the bad guy gets caught, the mystery gets solved.
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AJ Blythe: The romance has the happy ever after.
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AJ Blythe: So to have a book where there is no conclusion, we don’t know what happened.
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AJ Blythe: You go, well,
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AJ Blythe: That’s because she didn’t know what happened because it’s a real story.
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AJ Blythe: These days I can’t imagine.
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AJ Blythe: imagine a publisher letting you publish a book that doesn’t actually resolve the ending.
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Ava Ness: I don’t think so.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, I’m just like, it’s just so fascinating.
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Ava Ness: It’s so weird to have your assumptions about the whole thing completely turned on their head.
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Ava Ness: As I said, I think I need to read it again now with completely different eyes.
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AJ Blythe: I know, like to have gone my whole life and thought that it was based on a true story so that it wasn’t a true completely, but that there was elements of truth throughout it to find that that’s just been completely
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AJ Blythe: turned on its head is quite a shock, I guess.
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Ava Ness: I just think it’s a real credit to the author that she’s created something that seems so realistic that millions of people throughout many generations have believed it.
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AJ Blythe: I know, exactly, But I think for now we can say about that one, case closed.
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Ava Ness: Case closed.
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AJ Blythe: The fact that the mystery we talked about today is actually a novel is rather unique, but there are definitely other stories that echo Picnic at Hanging Rock and other situations that also echo Picnic at Hanging Rock.
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AJ Blythe: I’ll hand over to you, Ava.
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Ava Ness: While you were talking about the controversy with the author, I started to think about some modern examples of similar situations with books.
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Ava Ness: And the one that came to mind most recently was the novel and the movie Argyle.
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Ava Ness: But that was a little bit different in the sense that I think the movie came out and it was sort of portrayed that it was based on a book and then there was a lot of mystery around did this book actually exist before the movie got made and was it just a marketing ploy?
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Ava Ness: And then the book was supposedly written by someone using a pen name and then there was a lot of mystery around who the actual author was and I think everyone from Taylor Swift.
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Ava Ness: to I don’t know who was suggested as the possible author.
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Ava Ness: So I think it was an absolute marketing masterpiece.
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Ava Ness: But it kind of feels like that with Picnic at Hanging Rock, that was just a very early iteration of this, that to tell such a convincing story and then to then really play into people’s ideas and beliefs about that book, that people believed that it was a true story.
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Ava Ness: and then to leave them, excuse the pun, hanging with the secret chapter and was it real or not?
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Ava Ness: And so many unanswered questions.
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Ava Ness: is really impressive that the author and the publisher work together to do that even after she had died.
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AJ Blythe: I know she must have had really good insight into like, people’s psyche to be able to play that line between not saying it was true because that would have been, an outright lie, but actually just walking that fine line with the implication that it was true.
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Ava Ness: She must have had so much fun though.
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Ava Ness: She must have had so much fun with all the theories.
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Ava Ness: I mean, but I wonder like,
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Ava Ness: how those discussions happened because obviously there’s no internet.
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AJ Blythe: No, that’s right.
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AJ Blythe: And so it makes no record because it probably were done in person or over the telephones.
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AJ Blythe: there’s no record anymore of what was said.
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Ava Ness: Yeah.
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AJ Blythe: But I think that the example you just gave is definitely the modern version of it because
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AJ Blythe: that would have had to have been planned in the same way that the editor decided to chop that last chapter off and to really lean into the mystery of it.
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AJ Blythe: And then the author followed suit with the, fact or fiction.
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AJ Blythe: And I mean, the same thing with Argyle is it like the marketing ploy to get that people talking about it.
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AJ Blythe: So I don’t know that it’s going to have the endurance that Picnic at Hanging Rock has had in Australia.
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Ava Ness: No, but I think the fact that Picnic and Hanging Rock is somewhere you can, like the rock is somewhere you can visit.
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AJ Blythe: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
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Ava Ness: And because it’s a real place, you can really imagine it is a real thing.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, and I think it is a bit of an unsettling setting.
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AJ Blythe: They’re very large, like rocky outcrops.
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AJ Blythe: It is easy to hide around and amongst them.
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AJ Blythe: And I think that lends itself to a definite mystery air.
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AJ Blythe: And there’s been quite a few books that have used that sort of unsettling
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AJ Blythe: setting as the premise for their stories.
00:16:26.000 –> 00:16:28.000
Ava Ness: I think that’s right.
00:16:26.000 –> 00:16:30.000
Ava Ness: I haven’t read the novel, but I have watched a little bit of the movie.
00:16:30.000 –> 00:16:34.000
Ava Ness: It’s not really my cup of tea because I’m a bit of a wimp.
00:16:34.000 –> 00:16:41.000
Ava Ness: But I did think of Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, which is, I don’t know if you’re aware, it’s sort of like a horror.
00:16:41.000 –> 00:16:45.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, it’s not my cup of tea.
00:16:45.000 –> 00:16:59.000
Ava Ness: Where 4 women enter a strange sort of wilderness area called Area X and the reality seems really unstable and the novel sort of apparently from what I’ve been told never really settles on a single explanation about what’s going on.
00:16:59.000 –> 00:17:03.000
Ava Ness: There’s a mysterious landscape and
00:17:03.000 –> 00:17:07.000
Ava Ness: that they have to navigate, but you’re never actually quite sure what the outcome is.
00:17:07.000 –> 00:17:08.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, okay.
00:17:08.000 –> 00:17:15.000
AJ Blythe: That does sound intriguing, but I’m not a horror fan at all, so I don’t think I’ll be rushing to find out.
00:17:15.000 –> 00:17:21.000
Ava Ness: No, I think I only watched the movie because it had Oscar Isaac in it and I like him.
00:17:21.000 –> 00:17:27.000
Ava Ness: And Natalie Portman as well, but I couldn’t watch the whole thing because, as I said, too much of A wimp.
00:17:27.000 –> 00:17:34.000
Ava Ness: And then I also thought of Pyreneesi by Susanna Clark, where a man lives in an endless labyrinth house.
00:17:34.000 –> 00:17:41.000
Ava Ness: And as the mystery unfolds, you’re left questioning the setting and their understanding of realities.
00:17:41.000 –> 00:17:43.000
Ava Ness: Absolutely.
00:17:43.000 –> 00:17:51.000
Ava Ness: But I feel like it’s a little bit different in the sense that with both of those books and probably with a lot of others, you do understand that that’s what’s going on.
00:17:51.000 –> 00:17:56.000
Ava Ness: Whereas with Picnic and Hanging Rock, it’s only now that we’re really looking back and thinking about it in that light.
00:17:56.000 –> 00:17:57.000
AJ Blythe: Absolutely.
00:17:57.000 –> 00:18:01.000
Ava Ness: Your experience of reading the book is that it is a true story.
00:18:01.000 –> 00:18:02.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, absolutely.
00:18:02.000 –> 00:18:05.000
AJ Blythe: She’s written it like it is and it seems so real.
00:18:05.000 –> 00:18:07.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, it is.
00:18:07.000 –> 00:18:12.000
AJ Blythe: I guess maybe something that we can all learn from with the way she did that.
00:18:12.000 –> 00:18:17.000
Ava Ness: There’s obviously a lot of books and stories that follow similar themes.
00:18:17.000 –> 00:18:30.000
Ava Ness: And there’s also some that have been directly influenced and referenced Picnic and Hanging Rock, but I can’t really think of another one where you have actually read the mystery and.
00:18:30.000 –> 00:18:33.000
AJ Blythe: No, I can’t think of any either.
00:18:33.000 –> 00:18:40.000
AJ Blythe: When it comes to unsettling settings like that, the one that comes to mind for me is Agatha Christie and Then There Were None.
00:18:40.000 –> 00:18:41.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:18:41.000 –> 00:18:49.000
AJ Blythe: You know, 10 strangers invited to a remote island and they’re all accused of past crimes, but then one by one they’re killed off in ways that mirror the nursery rhyme.
00:18:49.000 –> 00:18:53.000
AJ Blythe: There’s no obvious killer, there’s no way off the island.
00:18:53.000 –> 00:18:59.000
AJ Blythe: and paranoia escalates as the group number dwindles as one by one they’re killed off.
00:18:59.000 –> 00:19:11.000
AJ Blythe: And I remember when I read that, same sort of level of, what’s happening and suspense that I think kind of comes through with Picnic a Hanging Rock when suddenly these girls disappear and you’re left with what’s happened.
00:19:11.000 –> 00:19:12.000
AJ Blythe: There’s no one else here.
00:19:12.000 –> 00:19:14.000
AJ Blythe: We’re isolated.
00:19:14.000 –> 00:19:15.000
AJ Blythe: How can they have just disappeared?
00:19:15.000 –> 00:19:17.000
AJ Blythe: It doesn’t seem right.
00:19:17.000 –> 00:19:23.000
Ava Ness: Yes, and I think similar to that is The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley.
00:19:23.000 –> 00:19:28.000
Ava Ness: that has a similar old mansion house, the folklore of missing people.
00:19:28.000 –> 00:19:30.000
Ava Ness: Is there something supernatural lurking?
00:19:30.000 –> 00:19:36.000
Ava Ness: There’s a lot of great books that follow that sort of folk horror, gothic fiction.
00:19:36.000 –> 00:19:38.000
AJ Blythe: Absolutely.
00:19:36.000 –> 00:19:40.000
AJ Blythe: I mean, I can think of The Lost Village by Kamala Sten.
00:19:40.000 –> 00:19:48.000
AJ Blythe: It’s a documentary crew go to an abandoned Swedish village and the entire population mysteriously vanished decades earlier.
00:19:48.000 –> 00:19:51.000
AJ Blythe: And as they investigate, they uncover fragments of what happened.
00:19:51.000 –> 00:19:52.000
AJ Blythe: But
00:19:52.000 –> 00:19:55.000
AJ Blythe: they don’t really know and the suggestions that they may not be alone.
00:19:55.000 –> 00:20:06.000
Ava Ness: Yes, But again, it is just really different in the sense that you know, you the reader know and understand that these are all works of fiction.
00:20:06.000 –> 00:20:15.000
AJ Blythe: There’s no question when you’re reading these books that they’re not real, but Picnic Hanging Rock is written as if it’s a retelling of something that truly happened.
00:20:15.000 –> 00:20:32.000
Ava Ness: It would be interesting though to ask somebody in their early 20s, late teens who read the book now, who maybe hasn’t been influenced as we were by those TV and movie adaptations, what their take would be on it.
00:20:32.000 –> 00:20:40.000
AJ Blythe: They’re so more exposed now with social media and the internet to these sorts of things that maybe they’ll quickly see through it.
00:20:40.000 –> 00:20:46.000
AJ Blythe: Whereas before we had the digital world, maybe we weren’t a little bit more naive, I guess.
00:20:46.000 –> 00:20:48.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, but I also wonder if.
00:20:48.000 –> 00:20:52.000
Ava Ness: coming in cold, whether they would read it as a work of fiction.
00:20:52.000 –> 00:20:53.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, I guess.
00:20:53.000 –> 00:21:00.000
Ava Ness: Perhaps we read it as a work of fiction to start with, but then over the years, we’ve come to believe it was real.
00:21:00.000 –> 00:21:02.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, that’s quite possible actually.
00:21:02.000 –> 00:21:04.000
AJ Blythe: That’s a really good way of looking at it and I don’t know.
00:21:04.000 –> 00:21:06.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah.
00:21:06.000 –> 00:21:14.000
Ava Ness: And obviously the people that read it at the time it first came out were then influenced by the marketing campaign and what the author and the publisher
00:21:14.000 –> 00:21:17.000
Ava Ness: had to say and whatever was printed in the media at the time.
00:21:17.000 –> 00:21:27.000
Ava Ness: So I just feel like they had influence and our generation had influence from the TV and movies that were made and other discussions about it.
00:21:27.000 –> 00:21:31.000
Ava Ness: But perhaps young people reading the book today might not.
00:21:31.000 –> 00:21:32.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, that’s true.
00:21:32.000 –> 00:21:37.000
AJ Blythe: And I guess over the time, had time to hear stories about, it was based on something that really happened.
00:21:37.000 –> 00:21:45.000
AJ Blythe: Whereas when we read it right that very first time and hadn’t heard the stories, then maybe we would have believed it was a work of fiction.
00:21:45.000 –> 00:21:47.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, fascinating.
00:21:47.000 –> 00:21:50.000
AJ Blythe: Because the only other thing that I guess comes remotely close to thinking, is this real?
00:21:50.000 –> 00:21:55.000
AJ Blythe: And I don’t think there’s a book about it, but it is an Australian movie called Wolf Creek.
00:21:55.000 –> 00:22:00.000
AJ Blythe: which is a serial killer sort of in outback Australia.
00:22:00.000 –> 00:22:08.000
AJ Blythe: And we have had quite a few real cases of, sadly, of murders happening on remote outback roads.
00:22:08.000 –> 00:22:19.000
AJ Blythe: And so I think that one definitely has a sense of is this based on collective of all of these killing that happen on our outback roads or is this just something completely made up?
00:22:19.000 –> 00:22:25.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, because I feel like we’ve all been gaslit by this book.
00:22:25.000 –> 00:22:27.000
Ava Ness: I’m so impressed.
00:22:27.000 –> 00:22:29.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, I am too.
00:22:29.000 –> 00:22:34.000
AJ Blythe: I’m still quite stunned that I could not find a real case that it was based on.
00:22:34.000 –> 00:22:38.000
Ava Ness: It just feels like it must have been, but then it’s not.
00:22:38.000 –> 00:22:42.000
AJ Blythe: No, And I mean, obviously the author has passed away now.
00:22:42.000 –> 00:22:49.000
AJ Blythe: So we can’t go back and say, okay, in light of modern times, do you want to talk more about your story?
00:22:49.000 –> 00:23:00.000
AJ Blythe: But right through till when she passed, she stuck to the narrative of you decide whether the story is fact or fiction, because it was only after she passed that final chapter was published.
00:23:00.000 –> 00:23:02.000
Ava Ness: I think she’s wonderful.
00:23:02.000 –> 00:23:04.000
Ava Ness: I think she’s just was fantastic.
00:23:04.000 –> 00:23:07.000
Ava Ness: I’m going to have to look into her a little bit more, I think.
00:23:07.000 –> 00:23:14.000
AJ Blythe: I think I want to go back and revisit the story as well and read that extra chapter again because I really don’t remember much about it.
00:23:14.000 –> 00:23:15.000
Ava Ness: Yes.
00:23:15.000 –> 00:23:18.000
AJ Blythe: Well, I think that is all for this episode.
00:23:18.000 –> 00:23:21.000
AJ Blythe: Sadly, this is the last episode of series one.
00:23:21.000 –> 00:23:25.000
AJ Blythe: I’ve had so much fun chatting with you, Ava, about all things mystery.
00:23:25.000 –> 00:23:27.000
Ava Ness: It has been an absolute pleasure.
00:23:27.000 –> 00:23:33.000
Ava Ness: I have really, really enjoyed finding out more about mysteries I kind of knew about.
00:23:33.000 –> 00:23:34.000
Ava Ness: or had no idea about.
00:23:34.000 –> 00:23:38.000
AJ Blythe: In fact, I’ve learned a lot as well in doing the research about the mysteries.
00:23:38.000 –> 00:23:41.000
AJ Blythe: And also my to be read list has grown significantly.
00:23:41.000 –> 00:23:46.000
AJ Blythe: So I know what I’m going to be doing in the downtime between this series and our next one.
00:23:46.000 –> 00:23:48.000
Ava Ness: I was just about to say the same thing.
00:23:48.000 –> 00:23:52.000
Ava Ness: I have a lot of books now to read as a result of this series.
00:23:52.000 –> 00:23:56.000
Ava Ness: So thank you very much for all the research that you’ve done into all of them.
00:23:56.000 –> 00:23:58.000
Ava Ness: It’s been fantastic.
00:23:58.000 –> 00:24:04.000
AJ Blythe: It’s been a lot of fun, and I hope, dear listener, that you’ve enjoyed our series and will join us again when we return in April next year.
00:24:04.000 –> 00:24:09.000
AJ Blythe: If you have any good books in the meantime, drop them in the comments, but for now, goodbye.
00:24:09.000 –> 00:24:10.000
Ava Ness: Bye.
00:24:10.000 –> 00:24:12.000
AJ Blythe: Thanks for joining the Down Under Mystery Club.
00:24:12.000 –> 00:24:17.000
AJ Blythe: If you enjoyed the show, follow so you never miss an episode and share it with a fellow mystery lover.
00:24:17.000 –> 00:24:23.000
AJ Blythe: We enjoy hearing from you, so drop us a comment at ajblythe.com forward slash podcast.
00:24:23.000 –> 00:24:26.000
AJ Blythe: Until next time, club adjourned.