Made Moll – Shedunnit’s first single and the soundtrack to Jailbird Detective

They say that everybody has a book inside them. I agree, but I have probably taken this to an extreme, having written seven books to date.

This is the story of how I discovered we can also have a song inside us.

When I was a teenager, my music teacher Miss Selsdon found me a ‘challenging’ student. She didn’t exactly approve of me.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in learning how to read and write music, I was just one of those students far more interested in the much more fun musical education of London nightclubs, live bands and record shops.

As a teenager in London in the 80s, musical subcultures consumed me and my friends. For me, it was jazz, blues, swing and rockabilly that were my big loves, the subjects that I really loved to study long into the night.

The musical loves that never die.

Cut to 2018.

I was publishing my first book Jailbird Detective: Elvira Slate Investigations Book 1 and I wanted to produce a book trailer. Not any book trailer, but one with glamour, emotion and style. An unforgettable trailer that I hoped would help launch my 1940s character Elvira Slate into the world.

The book follows Elvira as she leaves Holloway Prison in 1945, jumps probation and reinvents herself in Los Angeles as a private eye.

It’s a story of survival, of being an outsider, of being a disadvantaged young woman ahead of her time, defying the odds and living on her terms.

The novel had taken me over seven years to write, and by the end, I knew Elvira really well.
Her wounds, her flaws, her baggage, but also her potential. And in Elvira’s new life in Los Angeles, the music of the 1940s plays a big part in the world of the books.

She goes to a nightclub called Joyce’s, where all girl swing bands plays. Her friend Alberta is a sax player. Music is bringing Elvira back to life after years in a dank London cell.

While writing Jailbird Detective, I regularly listened to all my favourite jazz, swing and blues songs; they would help the creative process and inspire scenes in the book. There is something about 1940s swing in particular that conjures up the vitality and excitement of the era. And there is something about blues, and female harmony songs, that captures the longing in our hearts, of hurt and hope.

As someone who has developed adverts and film scripts, seeing the trailer in my ‘mind’s eye’ came easy. I wanted to show Elvira’s many identities, her former lives leading to her life as a private eye.

The lyrics just came to me, weirdly easily.

In the song, I tried to capture what Elvira would say not only to her younger self but to those people who have caused her harm, or thought her naïve, stupid or just a plaything. The song captures how she feels about herself, as an outsider, somebody judged not good enough, but how she has found her own freedom, and a new faith in herself. It’s a song of defiance, of trouncing your enemies, of getting free and doing great.

It’s a celebration of her new life in Los Angeles. A life she didn’t think possible. There’s a sense of triumph, of finally living a dream.

At its heart Made Moll is a survivor’s story.

The chorus equates Elvira’s many identities to the nine lives of a cat. Because each of her identities – abandoned orphan, street kid, juvenile offender, probation dodger, fugitive from justice – symbolize a death in Elvira.

Each identity has to die so she can evolve.

While writing, my musical unconscious – because I’m not a trained musician – created a distinctive melody, which found its way into my head in parallel to the evolution of the lyrics.

I had a song. But it was more than a just song. It was a soundtrack, and a soundtrack for my book, even. Words and music had danced together in my mind and turned into something that I felt was powerful and evocative, and which truly belonged to the Elvira Slate world.

Made Moll was first recorded in 2017 in Primrose Hill. My best friend Babs Moss sang the vocal.

About one minute of this version, a soulful acapella, was used on the first book trailers that came out. The plan was to release the full length single, but something stopped me. I was already very busy with writing the next novel, and a little voice was telling me that releasing an EP of several soundtracks would be a cool future project.

So Made Moll had to bide its time for six years. It was rerecorded in 2021, a bassline added, but I still waited to release it. It felt a bit Elvira Slate doing time in Holloway Prison. Not exactly forgotten, but certainly not ready, literally, for release!

2024 is finally Made Moll’s year. The time’s just right. It comes out as the first song in a series of soundtracks for each book in the Elvira Slate series. Shedunnit will release another 3 songs by June 2025 when the fourth Elvira Slate book comes out next Summer… so watch this space for all the soundtracks and music videos! (and make sure you join the mailing list so you don’t miss out!)

Made Moll celebrates that amazing private feeling that that you have somehow achieved something that the world – and you – never thought was possible.

Miss Seldon might not be overtly approving, but I think she would give a bemused smile.

I’d love to know what you think. You can listen to Made Moll on all streaming platforms.