Christina Lynch’s Pony Confidential (Berkley, Nov.) follows a snarky pony as he tries to acquit his previous owner of a murder charge.
Where did the pony-as-amateur-detective idea come from?
Animals have always been a big part of my emotional life but never played major roles in my fiction. During the pandemic, when my dogs and horses and pony were my only companions, it felt like time to set that right. I’ve always been struck by the way ponies get passed around when they are outgrown—I wanted to tell that story from a pony’s point of view.
You use an alternating narrative structure, with parallel story lines that eventually connect. Who came first, Pony or his former owner, Penny?
The first draft was all about Pony. A Berkley editor suggested putting Penny at the center of a murder, and I couldn’t say no to the challenge. The tricky part is that Penny’s “present” covers a matter of months, from her arrest to the conclusion; Pony’s “present” is more than a decade. I made timelines, maps, and charts, taking courage from The Odyssey, with its long time frame and dual stories.
What do you want readers to take away from Pony’s exchanges with his animal confidants? The novel has surprisingly serious undertones about how humans treat animals.
I live at the so-called wildland-urban interface, where I encounter a lot of animals inside and out: mice in the attic, bears, foxes, owls. It’s too easy to forget all the creatures we share this world with. We miss out on so much when we do that—there’s something deep in our connection with the natural world. I think, echoing Thoreau, many people would benefit from taking a walk in the woods on a regular basis—no headphones, no screens, just them in nature.
The book is overloaded with absurd scenes. Do you have a favorite?
I really enjoyed Mrs. Calypso bringing the pony into her house, and it doesn’t go well. It’s a funny echo of Odysseus on Calypso’s island, with everything a man could ever desire, but he’s not happy. Poor Mrs. C. and I have things in common. She wants animal best friends but forgets that animals have their own desires that don’t always align with ours.
Which novelists influenced you?
I grew up reading Dorothy Sayers, Simenon’s Maigret novels, John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee, as well as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. I love how Richard Osman’s comic mysteries have broadened our vision of what life, and death, in assisted living looks like. Comic mysteries help us with something I see as essential: laughter as an antidote to pain.
