PINTEREST
BLOGLOVIN
GOODREADS
(A Cissie Partridge Mystery Book 1)
It’s November 1958 and Dagenham is excitedly awaiting Bonfire Night. Cissie Partridge isn’t too keen on fireworks but she generously donates to the local children doing Penny for the guy. Cissie is content with her lot. She loves her husband Harold. She shops, she cooks, she reads at every opportunity and she volunteers at the Dockland Settlement. Observant and sharp, she gets on with all her neighbours. Then, one morning, she finds a body…
My thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for the tour invite and to Elaine for providing a great guest post. I had no idea what this context of a ‘Banjo’ meant even though my family – both sets of grandparents and parents originally hailed from nearby Romford.
The Body in the Banjo was published on 9 December 2025 and is available in ebook (including Kindle Unlimited) and paperback formats.
AUTHOR POST
A Banjo Is A Dagenham Thing
by Elaine Spires
Two of the books in my Dagenham Story Series caused many a raised eyebrow when they first came out. They were entitled The Banjo Book One and The Banjo Book Two. My latest book — a cosy mystery, A Body in the Banjo — has had the same reaction, unless of course, you come from Dagenham or that northern section of the Thames Estuary from Barking to Thurrock where many people have Dagenham connections. If You Know You Know!
But many people didn’t know and I was forever being asked “Why have you written books about a musical instrument?” I would give a wry smile and say, “Give it a go. The books will explain everything.”
A banjo may be a musical instrument to many, but to Dagenhamites it means only one thing: a pedestrianised cul-de-sac with houses along both sides, leading to a circle or sometimes a square at the end. Often there were gardens running along the centre; sometimes there was pavement or grass. When the Becontree Estate was built in 1920s — the largest Council owned estate in the country at the time — it contained many banjos. These provided a safe, traffic-free area for children to play in, but they also became their own little, tight knit, communities. Banjos consisted of anything from 10 to 20 houses and each house was a family home. Neighbours knew each other well and were usually — but not always! — firm friends.
As someone who grew up in Dagenham, I had a great childhood, full of freedom, friendships and wonderful memories of this tight, working-class community and it was always my ambition when I started writing to write novels set in my home town. And it followed, logically, that a banjo would feature. I decided to write about a fictional banjo — Cromwell Close — and I set it on a piece of Council land opposite where I’d grown up known as “the Green”. In one of those life-is-stranger than fiction turn of events, while I was writing The Banjo Book One, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham decided to build on “the Green”. What they’ve built isn’t a banjo, but it is a cul-de-sac.
Last year I went ahead with a long-held ambition to write a cozy mystery and there was never any doubt where I was going to set it: in a Dagenham banjo. Called A Body in the Banjo, it’s set in another fictitious banjo in an older part of Dagenham, Heathway Close, in November 1958. Our amateur sleuth is Cissie Partridge, who I hope embodies all the positive qualities and strengths of the working-class women I grew up among. It would be easy to write Cissie off as just another 1950s housewife. But she is very astute. Nothing gets past her. She loves her husband Harold, knitting, cooking, helping out as a volunteer at the Docklands Settlement, and reading murder mysteries. She is a voracious reader who races through the two-books-only rule of the local libraries of that time. And as the story progresses, her observations of her neighbours and fellow townsfolk as she takes the bus to neighbouring Romford and Goodmayes prove vital in helping the local detectives — DCI Grainger and DS Riley solve the murder of a teenage girl.
So, there you have it. Now you know. A banjo is a Dagenham thing.
Elaine Spires is a novelist, playwright and actress. Extensive travelling and a background in education and tourism perfected Elaine’s keen eye for the quirky characteristics of people, captivating the humorous observations she now affectionately shares with the readers of her novels. Elaine also writes plays and her short film Only the Lonely was made by Dan Films and won the Groucho Club Best Short Film Award 2019 and two Silver Awards at WOFFF 2019.
Author Website | X | Facebook | Insta | AmazonUK
Purchase links: Amazon UK | Amazon.com
My current read!
I hope you’re enjoying it, thanks for stopping by