A new novel takes readers back to Guernsey in the Tudor times.
‘The story is set in 1556,’ said Kelvin Whelan, author of A Trace Of Corruption. ‘It is set during the reign of Bloody Mary, a tumultuous time. You’d had Henry VIII, her father, the change in religions, and his son, Edward VI, a staunch Protestant. Mary, whose mother was Catherine of Aragon, was a staunch Catholic. There was a lot of religious change with the Protestants feeling very oppressed.
‘Guernsey was primarily Catholic, but with a very strong and vocal but very small group of Protestants.
‘Also Huguenots from France, who were followers of Jean Calvin, were coming to live on the island. Calvinism was a stricter form of Protestantism.’
A Trace Of Corruption is Kelvin’s fourth book, but his first fiction. He is also the author of Guernsey: A History (2023), Guernsey: A Short History (2024) and Last Man Hanging (2025), about John Tapner, the last man to be hanged in Guernsey.
‘The research for this book comes out of the first two. The background is the three martyrs who were burned on Tower Hill. There’s a really famous text called Foxe’s Book Of Martyrs which covered all the stories of Protestant martyrs under Mary’s reign.
‘I wanted to set it in a wider context, looking at the secret dealings going on in the background. This execution was just a symptom of what was going on. I’ve invented quite a lot but history is the kernel and then the imagination takes over.’
Kelvin’s main protagonist, Louis de Vic, is based on a real person.
‘In the book he’s 18 – he would later become procureur and bailiff – and he is assistant to the constable of St Peter Port. A body turns up in the woods at Fermain and they start to investigate.
‘The body turns out to be a French Protestant. This is before the execution of the three martyrs but he has a connection to them. They get implicated in a theft and the theft and the murder become intertwined.’
Kelvin said the great thing about historical fiction is you can take a story further.
‘You can work out a character’s motivation, work out what was on their mind, and give them a real narrative.’
Working in this genre must attract people who question certain details?
‘You can get that. But it is important for me to get as much right as possible. What they wore, how they acted, how they moved. During that time men wore a doublet and hose [jacket and leggings] which are tied together. You have to untie them if you need to bend. In one scene Louis has to dig out a corpse but he ends up ripping his clothes. It’s little details like that I like to include.’
Louis de Vic was from an upper-class background.
‘He lived where Les Granges de Beauvoir is now, by the Ivy Gates, and his father was a seigneur and a landowner. He’s very reluctant to do the job as the constable’s assistant. He’s never even been to the seedy side of town.’
Guernsey looked very different during this time, particularly St Peter Port.
‘Town Church and Castle Cornet would have been there, though there was no breakwater to the castle. St Barnabas Church wasn’t there but a fortification called Beauregard Tower, hence Tower Hill where the execution of the martyrs took place.
‘There would have been a settlement at St Sampson’s and St Martin’s village. In fact pockets of villages across the island. The population then would have been around 10,000.’
A Trace Of Corruption is the first instalment of a trilogy.
‘It’s one of the periods that are really overlooked,’ said Kelvin. ‘The next couple of books are going to cover events that are not well known.
‘In 1564 there was a riot started by three drunken jurats. It’s really fascinating. Things go so wrong. There’s a royal commission because there is a big scandal to clear up.
‘The second book is set in 1558 when Queen Mary is dying and Elizabeth I becomes queen and flips the religious tension. A lot is changing very quickly. Back then religion was incredibly important.’
Kelvin said it took around a year to complete A Trace Of Corruption.
‘I started writing it in February last year. I wrote the first draft quite quickly – in fact, I wrote the drafts of all three books in six months, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone – and then I polished up this one.
‘Hopefully the second in the series will be out in autumn. The good thing about starting with a protagonist who is 18 is that there’s a long life ahead.’
A Trace Of Corruption by Kelvin Whelan will be launched on Thursday 28 May at Writer’s Block, Commercial Arcade but is available now to pre-order at writersblockgsy.com.
