D.H. Smith's Blog
November 20, 2020
Introduction to London Crime Fiction
Let’s begin with a book to show you know more than you think you know about London and its crime novels. And that’s with 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, written in 1956, where London is virtually a character.
Many of you, I am sure, will have read the book as children and/or seen one of the two movies. The first was the Disney animation (1961), the second a live film (1996) with Glenn Close playing the dreadful Cruella de Vil. Our heroes are Pongo and Missis, two dalmatians investigating the kidnapping of 97 puppies to be made into fur coats by Cruella.
The dogs live on the outer circle of Regent’s Park, a park in the centre of London, where they take their owners for walks. Nearby is Primrose Hill, offering I think the best view over London, and where Pongo and Missis go for the Twilight Barking, an important part of the plot. Have I stirred some memories?
Enough of children’s books, let’s introduce the city. London is an old city, founded by the Romans two thousand years ago on a small Celtic settlement. They gave it the name Londinium. Their invading ships came up the river Thames from the Channel, and settled where the river narrowed. There were plenty of killings, but conquerors get away with such things.
Much of the city burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The thick stone walls of the Tower of London enabled it to hold out, while Westminster Abbey was to the west of the fire. St Paul’s Cathedral and other churches by Wren and Hawksmoor arose in the rebuilding.
Empire made London rich and brought a cosmopolitan population with the development of the docks and shipping. It is a city abundant in art and culture, theatre, music, and sport, surprising visitors with the number of parks. London contains the UK’s seat of government, the Houses of Parliament, while Buckingham Palace is the main residence of the Queen, the head of state.
Old cities, like London, have rambling roads and alleys. They were unplanned in their growth. New cities have straight roads, which are fine for cars, but of less visual interest, and from a crime writer’s point of view, limited for chases on foot.
London is a city of extremes, of poverty and billionaires, of royalty and the homeless. And consequently of crime, petty and serious, and of writers who have noted this and used it in their fiction.
As a Londoner, I am aware of the places that feature in London crime novels. They are rarely tourist haunts. A cop in a police procedural, for instance, is not going to go to the British Museum, the Tower of London or Trafalgar Square, unless he has to interview someone there.
Such tourist spots might be mentioned if our cop is passing them on a car journey, but not with any excitement as they are too everyday for him, and he has a job to do. So don’t expect a tourist guide in a London crime novel, but rather the city as a Londoner sees it. Varied through varied eyes. Mayfair and the East End are worlds apart.
A Little History
In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, originally published in episodes, 1852 to 1853, we meet London’s first fictional detective, Inspector Bucket. Though murder is a subplot, rather than a main thread of the novel, which deals with the never ending case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, attempting to ascertain the heirs of this doomed estate.
In 1887, London’s crime fiction took a quantum leap with the arrival of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr Watson in the first of four novels, A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle. Over the next thirty years, many Sherlock Holmes short stories followed along with the other novels.
Typically, a client came to 221B Baker Street with their tale of woe for the archetypal sleuth to solve. Most of the stories are set in London. All begin there, a few like The Hound of the Baskervilles venture further afield.
The popularity of Sherlock Holmes showed publishers that there was huge appetite for crime fiction. And writers weren’t slow to deliver. In the 1920s, we have Dorothy L Sayers’ sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, the epitome of the amateur sleuth, no need of money as he is filthy rich. Although an aristocrat, his brother a Duke, Wimsey, thankfully, is not a snob though he does have a manservant, Bunter, who proves a useful sidekick as well as cooking and cleaning.
Lord Peter lives in Piccadilly, not far from Oxford Circus, in the heart of London. My favourite of the series is Murder Must Advertise, which is set in an advertising agency. Although written in the 1920s, it illustrates the tropes of advertisers, all recognisable a hundred years on.
Christianna Brand wrote the wartime novel, Green for Danger, published in 1944. Inspector Cockrill must investigate murder as V1 rockets rain down on London. Hardly escapism, but the war mercifully was coming to an end, so most readers could read it in their sitting room rather than hands over ears in an air-raid shelter.
In her heyday, Margery Allingham was known as a Queen of Crime, though she’s not much read these days. A salutary reminder of the changes of fashions. Her Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is set in foggy London where a killer stalks the genteel squares and dark alleys.
The Clean Air Act of 1956 did away with the worst of London smogs. And nowadays there’s a congestion charge for vehicles that wish to drive into central London, giving us cleaner air, swifter buses, and better cycle lanes.
About the Police
London has 32 boroughs and the City, which is its financial area, akin to Wall Street. The police force are known as the Metropolitan Police, or the Met. There are subdivisions in the London boroughs.
The Met were established in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary (later to be Prime Minister). 1000 constables were created, affectionately called bobbies, or more warily, peelers.
In charge of the Met is the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is the highest ranked cop in the land, based at New Scotland Yard. Detectives are plain clothes police. Their ranks are, from low to high:
Detective Police Constable (DPC)
Detective Sergeant (DS)
Detective Inspector (DI)
Detective Chief Inspector (DCI)
Detective Superintendent (D/Supt)
Above this rank the appellation Detective is dropped. Uniform police have the same order of rank but without the ‘Detective’ prefix. A Murder Investigation Team (MIT) is led by a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), usually of D/Supt rank or above. The Crime Prosecution Service (CPS) decides whether the police have a strong enough case to take to court. If so, the CPS take on the prosecution.
In older books you will find WPC (Woman Police Constable). The W was dropped in 1999.
Modern Crime Fiction
Here are a few authors and their books which I have enjoyed, all set in London.
I especially enjoyed the Frieda Klein novels by Nicci French. The ‘author’ is a husband and wife team (Sean French and Nicci Gerrard). Their writing is seamless, I would not know the books were duo authored without being told. Frieda Klein is a psychotherapist who has regular clients but also does criminal profiling for the police. They usually find her too much trouble. She is a fascinating oddball, going for midnight walks around London, with a special interest in London’s underground rivers. Blue Monday is the first in the series.
Post Mortem by Kate London is written by an ex cop, and it shows. A well written, fast paced novel. You get the feeling of the police station and teamwork, as well as the hassles of the job. A newish writer, three novels to date. She left the Metropolitan police in 2014, after 8 years on the force.
Ruth Rendell (1930 to 2015) is always high on my list for a good read. Sadly no longer with us. Her best known cop is Chief Inspector Wexford. He, though, is not a London cop, based about 30 miles outside the city in a fictional town, Kingsmarkham in Sussex. I wouldn’t deny him a read for that sin.
But Rendell wrote many one-off crime novels (some as Barbara Vine) set in London, where she would walk the streets to get the feel of the area. One of these is The Keys to the Street, set in and around Regent’s Park, one gate of which is close to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes’ abode, and where Missis and Pongo took their ‘owners’ for walks.
Cormoran Strike is the creation of Robert Galbraith, better known as JK Rowling. Strike is a private eye who was wounded in Afghanistan, and so has half a leg whose prosthetis often causes him pain. He has a seedy office in Denmark Street, London’s Tin Pan alley, off Tottenham Court Road and close to Oxford Street, London’s main shopping street.
I ran a crime quiz last year in my local library, one question was: Which two crime fighters have sidekicks named Robin? One of course is Batman and the other is Cormoran Strike, with his partner Robin Ellacot, female in this case. There are, so far, five novels in the series. The first is The Cuckoo’s Calling.
Lynda La Plante has written a TV series, Prime Suspect, with the main character Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, a London cop, played by Helen Mirren. They are also available as novels. Recently, La Plante has begun a series of novels going back to the beginnings of Tennison’s life in the Met. We are in the 70s, and Jane has her work cut out as she has to face sexist gibes in her rise through the ranks. The first is Tennison with Jane as a 22 year old rookie in the London Borough of Hackney.
Barbara Nadel has a series set in East London. Her cops are private eyes, Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold. Lee is an ex cop, and Mumtaz a Muslim woman. An interesting partnership, Mumtaz can go places Lee can’t, and vice versa, of course. Their area is off the tourist track, working in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking, with a multi racial cast. The first book in the series is A Private Business.
I’ll add my own efforts to this list, The Jack of All Trades series is written under my pen name DH Smith, currently11 standalone novels. The main character, Jack, is a builder, sometime sleuth, sometime suspect, who also lives in Forest Gate, in the East End of London. There’s a little romance, a murder or two, plus some good puzzlers. The first in the series, Jack of All Trades, is 99¢ on Amazon.
I hope you have enjoyed this brief tour of London crime fiction. London is a fascinating city, which I love and hate. It gets me down and at other times lifts me. Such extremes are good for writers of fiction.
Many of you, I am sure, will have read the book as children and/or seen one of the two movies. The first was the Disney animation (1961), the second a live film (1996) with Glenn Close playing the dreadful Cruella de Vil. Our heroes are Pongo and Missis, two dalmatians investigating the kidnapping of 97 puppies to be made into fur coats by Cruella.
The dogs live on the outer circle of Regent’s Park, a park in the centre of London, where they take their owners for walks. Nearby is Primrose Hill, offering I think the best view over London, and where Pongo and Missis go for the Twilight Barking, an important part of the plot. Have I stirred some memories?
Enough of children’s books, let’s introduce the city. London is an old city, founded by the Romans two thousand years ago on a small Celtic settlement. They gave it the name Londinium. Their invading ships came up the river Thames from the Channel, and settled where the river narrowed. There were plenty of killings, but conquerors get away with such things.
Much of the city burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The thick stone walls of the Tower of London enabled it to hold out, while Westminster Abbey was to the west of the fire. St Paul’s Cathedral and other churches by Wren and Hawksmoor arose in the rebuilding.
Empire made London rich and brought a cosmopolitan population with the development of the docks and shipping. It is a city abundant in art and culture, theatre, music, and sport, surprising visitors with the number of parks. London contains the UK’s seat of government, the Houses of Parliament, while Buckingham Palace is the main residence of the Queen, the head of state.
Old cities, like London, have rambling roads and alleys. They were unplanned in their growth. New cities have straight roads, which are fine for cars, but of less visual interest, and from a crime writer’s point of view, limited for chases on foot.
London is a city of extremes, of poverty and billionaires, of royalty and the homeless. And consequently of crime, petty and serious, and of writers who have noted this and used it in their fiction.
As a Londoner, I am aware of the places that feature in London crime novels. They are rarely tourist haunts. A cop in a police procedural, for instance, is not going to go to the British Museum, the Tower of London or Trafalgar Square, unless he has to interview someone there.
Such tourist spots might be mentioned if our cop is passing them on a car journey, but not with any excitement as they are too everyday for him, and he has a job to do. So don’t expect a tourist guide in a London crime novel, but rather the city as a Londoner sees it. Varied through varied eyes. Mayfair and the East End are worlds apart.
A Little History
In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, originally published in episodes, 1852 to 1853, we meet London’s first fictional detective, Inspector Bucket. Though murder is a subplot, rather than a main thread of the novel, which deals with the never ending case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, attempting to ascertain the heirs of this doomed estate.
In 1887, London’s crime fiction took a quantum leap with the arrival of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr Watson in the first of four novels, A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle. Over the next thirty years, many Sherlock Holmes short stories followed along with the other novels.
Typically, a client came to 221B Baker Street with their tale of woe for the archetypal sleuth to solve. Most of the stories are set in London. All begin there, a few like The Hound of the Baskervilles venture further afield.
The popularity of Sherlock Holmes showed publishers that there was huge appetite for crime fiction. And writers weren’t slow to deliver. In the 1920s, we have Dorothy L Sayers’ sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, the epitome of the amateur sleuth, no need of money as he is filthy rich. Although an aristocrat, his brother a Duke, Wimsey, thankfully, is not a snob though he does have a manservant, Bunter, who proves a useful sidekick as well as cooking and cleaning.
Lord Peter lives in Piccadilly, not far from Oxford Circus, in the heart of London. My favourite of the series is Murder Must Advertise, which is set in an advertising agency. Although written in the 1920s, it illustrates the tropes of advertisers, all recognisable a hundred years on.
Christianna Brand wrote the wartime novel, Green for Danger, published in 1944. Inspector Cockrill must investigate murder as V1 rockets rain down on London. Hardly escapism, but the war mercifully was coming to an end, so most readers could read it in their sitting room rather than hands over ears in an air-raid shelter.
In her heyday, Margery Allingham was known as a Queen of Crime, though she’s not much read these days. A salutary reminder of the changes of fashions. Her Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is set in foggy London where a killer stalks the genteel squares and dark alleys.
The Clean Air Act of 1956 did away with the worst of London smogs. And nowadays there’s a congestion charge for vehicles that wish to drive into central London, giving us cleaner air, swifter buses, and better cycle lanes.
About the Police
London has 32 boroughs and the City, which is its financial area, akin to Wall Street. The police force are known as the Metropolitan Police, or the Met. There are subdivisions in the London boroughs.
The Met were established in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary (later to be Prime Minister). 1000 constables were created, affectionately called bobbies, or more warily, peelers.
In charge of the Met is the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is the highest ranked cop in the land, based at New Scotland Yard. Detectives are plain clothes police. Their ranks are, from low to high:
Detective Police Constable (DPC)
Detective Sergeant (DS)
Detective Inspector (DI)
Detective Chief Inspector (DCI)
Detective Superintendent (D/Supt)
Above this rank the appellation Detective is dropped. Uniform police have the same order of rank but without the ‘Detective’ prefix. A Murder Investigation Team (MIT) is led by a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), usually of D/Supt rank or above. The Crime Prosecution Service (CPS) decides whether the police have a strong enough case to take to court. If so, the CPS take on the prosecution.
In older books you will find WPC (Woman Police Constable). The W was dropped in 1999.
Modern Crime Fiction
Here are a few authors and their books which I have enjoyed, all set in London.
I especially enjoyed the Frieda Klein novels by Nicci French. The ‘author’ is a husband and wife team (Sean French and Nicci Gerrard). Their writing is seamless, I would not know the books were duo authored without being told. Frieda Klein is a psychotherapist who has regular clients but also does criminal profiling for the police. They usually find her too much trouble. She is a fascinating oddball, going for midnight walks around London, with a special interest in London’s underground rivers. Blue Monday is the first in the series.
Post Mortem by Kate London is written by an ex cop, and it shows. A well written, fast paced novel. You get the feeling of the police station and teamwork, as well as the hassles of the job. A newish writer, three novels to date. She left the Metropolitan police in 2014, after 8 years on the force.
Ruth Rendell (1930 to 2015) is always high on my list for a good read. Sadly no longer with us. Her best known cop is Chief Inspector Wexford. He, though, is not a London cop, based about 30 miles outside the city in a fictional town, Kingsmarkham in Sussex. I wouldn’t deny him a read for that sin.
But Rendell wrote many one-off crime novels (some as Barbara Vine) set in London, where she would walk the streets to get the feel of the area. One of these is The Keys to the Street, set in and around Regent’s Park, one gate of which is close to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes’ abode, and where Missis and Pongo took their ‘owners’ for walks.
Cormoran Strike is the creation of Robert Galbraith, better known as JK Rowling. Strike is a private eye who was wounded in Afghanistan, and so has half a leg whose prosthetis often causes him pain. He has a seedy office in Denmark Street, London’s Tin Pan alley, off Tottenham Court Road and close to Oxford Street, London’s main shopping street.
I ran a crime quiz last year in my local library, one question was: Which two crime fighters have sidekicks named Robin? One of course is Batman and the other is Cormoran Strike, with his partner Robin Ellacot, female in this case. There are, so far, five novels in the series. The first is The Cuckoo’s Calling.
Lynda La Plante has written a TV series, Prime Suspect, with the main character Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, a London cop, played by Helen Mirren. They are also available as novels. Recently, La Plante has begun a series of novels going back to the beginnings of Tennison’s life in the Met. We are in the 70s, and Jane has her work cut out as she has to face sexist gibes in her rise through the ranks. The first is Tennison with Jane as a 22 year old rookie in the London Borough of Hackney.
Barbara Nadel has a series set in East London. Her cops are private eyes, Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold. Lee is an ex cop, and Mumtaz a Muslim woman. An interesting partnership, Mumtaz can go places Lee can’t, and vice versa, of course. Their area is off the tourist track, working in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking, with a multi racial cast. The first book in the series is A Private Business.
I’ll add my own efforts to this list, The Jack of All Trades series is written under my pen name DH Smith, currently11 standalone novels. The main character, Jack, is a builder, sometime sleuth, sometime suspect, who also lives in Forest Gate, in the East End of London. There’s a little romance, a murder or two, plus some good puzzlers. The first in the series, Jack of All Trades, is 99¢ on Amazon.
I hope you have enjoyed this brief tour of London crime fiction. London is a fascinating city, which I love and hate. It gets me down and at other times lifts me. Such extremes are good for writers of fiction.
September 2, 2020
Review of The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei
This is a book that took some getting into. First, there were the names. Chinese, well the setting is Hong Kong, but unfamiliarity does make them harder to grasp. And there’s a big cast: the cops (main characters), and lots of civilians, including witnesses and suspects. A bundle of names. I recall with War and Peace, having my bookmark in the cast list at the beginning, but here you are on your own.
If I am putting you off, don’t let me as this book is a great read. A book I didn’t want to end, as I would lose the people, lose Hong Kong, lose the smart criminal bosses and the unravelling of who and how.
Ah! the puzzles. Things are not what you expect. The author plays a great game with us. I admit the explanations go on a bit as they confound, confuse, and turn everything upside down. But once I got through the first tale, that was the test for me, though the ending woke me up, I got to enjoy the book more and more. Superintendent Kwan and Inspector Lok are the main characters. Kwan is the Sherlock Holmes of the Hong Kong police force, but Lok is no bumbling Watson, but rising up to take his mentor’s place. Or that’s where we start, because each tale takes us back in time, the first in 2013, the last in 1967.
At the beginning, Hong Kong is a British colony, with Brits in all the senior positions including the police force. 1997 was handover to the China with a free Hong Kong. More recently, we have seen battles on the streets to keep Hong Kong free, with the cops very much an instrument of the Chinese government. But we don’t go there, as The Borrowed was published in Chinese in 2014. I’d like to credit the translator, Jeremy Tiang, one of the too often forgotten wordsmiths, for a racy read.
It’s an odd conceit going back in time, story by story, and I wasn’t sure how it would work, as it takes away some surprise. But it adds new ones with the tales themselves. We travel through Hong Kong in time and space, in the bustling markets, on the crowded roads, on the ferries, in the restaurants and shops. It’s a vivid picture of a Chinese city. Along the way, there’s corrupt elements in the police, keeping their triad paymasters informed on police activity, while their minions take any rap. A system Kwan and Lok are out to beat. There’s shoot-outs and chases. The whodunit aspect confounded me each time, and I write crime and so think I’m pretty sussed when it comes to whodunits, but these had me gasping in surprise and admiration.
If I am putting you off, don’t let me as this book is a great read. A book I didn’t want to end, as I would lose the people, lose Hong Kong, lose the smart criminal bosses and the unravelling of who and how.
Ah! the puzzles. Things are not what you expect. The author plays a great game with us. I admit the explanations go on a bit as they confound, confuse, and turn everything upside down. But once I got through the first tale, that was the test for me, though the ending woke me up, I got to enjoy the book more and more. Superintendent Kwan and Inspector Lok are the main characters. Kwan is the Sherlock Holmes of the Hong Kong police force, but Lok is no bumbling Watson, but rising up to take his mentor’s place. Or that’s where we start, because each tale takes us back in time, the first in 2013, the last in 1967.
At the beginning, Hong Kong is a British colony, with Brits in all the senior positions including the police force. 1997 was handover to the China with a free Hong Kong. More recently, we have seen battles on the streets to keep Hong Kong free, with the cops very much an instrument of the Chinese government. But we don’t go there, as The Borrowed was published in Chinese in 2014. I’d like to credit the translator, Jeremy Tiang, one of the too often forgotten wordsmiths, for a racy read.
It’s an odd conceit going back in time, story by story, and I wasn’t sure how it would work, as it takes away some surprise. But it adds new ones with the tales themselves. We travel through Hong Kong in time and space, in the bustling markets, on the crowded roads, on the ferries, in the restaurants and shops. It’s a vivid picture of a Chinese city. Along the way, there’s corrupt elements in the police, keeping their triad paymasters informed on police activity, while their minions take any rap. A system Kwan and Lok are out to beat. There’s shoot-outs and chases. The whodunit aspect confounded me each time, and I write crime and so think I’m pretty sussed when it comes to whodunits, but these had me gasping in surprise and admiration.
June 4, 2019
Confessions of a Self Published Author
My writing began with bad poetry. Fortunately, that has been lost. Thrown out more likely. Then came bad plays. Not intentionally, I just didn't know what I was doing. There were four of them, again all lost along the cliff path of time. Here's hoping they have fallen into the sea and decomposed. I have no illusions there were gems in that apprentice work.
At the time, I had the naïve belief in my genius as a writer. It's a common disease in writers but it is curable, though there are those who suffer it all their lives. My plays were sent off to various theatres, and given to friends and family to read. No one liked them. I was either a misunderstood talent, ahead of my time, or the plays were bad.
Coming to the reluctant conclusion they were not all I hoped them to be, I went on a playwriting course at the City Lit (abbreviation for City Literary College) in London. I was working at the time as an assistant gardener in a park. It was a good job for a writer as the job could be left behind when I left work. It didn't pay much, but enough to get by.
The City Lit course was a two hour evening class. The tutor on the course was Cathy Itzen, an American who had come through the US college system where they taught playwriting and theatre. I learned that I did have some talent, but needed to learn about the craft of playwriting. Good friends were made on the course, which is not a “by the way”, as fellow students appreciate what you are trying to do and can be very supportive.
After two terms, I submitted an idea based on an event that had happened in the park where I was then working. Cathy said: fine, write it. When completed it was a 45 minute stage play that was read in the class and went down well. I wondered what to do with it. Entitled 'Albert and the Mayor's Tree', it had about 12 characters. Great for a class, too short for theatre, way too many characters for any commercial set up. So it was changed to a radio play. And over the summer, when the course was in recess, I sent it to the BBC.
THE 70s
Within a month, the quickest response I've had, they accepted the play. It was performed on radio in 1972 and well received. Throughout the 70s, I continued writing plays. There were four on radio, one on TV, lots of short plays performed in theatres along with three full length plays. I went to work with Soapbox Theatre in the London Borough of Newham as their writer in residence. There, I wrote plays for the company, directed them, and ran a playwriting course. Some of my plays were naturalistic, some in a political vein, some absurd. They taught me about the importance of character, dialogue and surprise in a story.
Skills not limited to plays.
THE 80s
After three years with Soapbox Theatre, with my then partner Gill Hay, I set up a bookshop. Outside the theatre environment, I had stopped writing plays, and became involved in running the bookshop, as well as working in the vegetarian cafe that was also part of The Whole Thing, the name of our multifarious establishment. There, surrounded by books, I had a go at writing a novel, spending more than a year on it. But it was an impossible mess.
I went back to the City Lit. This time for a story writing class. I'd missed a term, and the tutor, Carol Burns, spoke in passing about things like point of view. What on earth was that? I had missed that session, so had to read it up. On discovering what it was, my fiction had more structure. I wrote some short stories. A couple were broadcast on radio.
With growing confidence, my next project was a novel for young adults, 'Rich Kids'. I'd read in a book for writers that you should send off four chapters to a publisher with a short covering letter. The novel finished, I did exactly that, sending off a letter with the chapters to four publishers. When one came back, another was sent out, until after more than a year 18 publishers had been contacted. All had turned the book down; not one of them wanted the full manuscript. And so, despondent, 'Rich Kids' was stuck in a drawer.
Around nine months later, I re-read it, being far enough away from the manuscript to be objective. I thought, this is good. But how was I to get a publisher to read it? Unsolicited manuscripts go into what is disparagingly known as the slush pile. There are many poor books in the slush pile, which makes it hard for any decent ones to be noticed. The office junior might take a bundle home to half scan. Not my aim at all.
I didn't want to sink in the slush.
THE 90s
There had to be a new strategy to sell the book. First of all, the title was changed; it became 'Hard Cash'. Then I persuaded my then partner's 11 year old son, Tom, to review it. Best handwriting, I insisted. And paid him a fiver for his troubles. His review was photocopied and sent off with a letter about the book, but with no chapters. The letter was addressed to a named person. Not to 'Dear Editor’, but to 'Dear Jane Brown' as it might be. My aim was to get 'Jane Brown' to ask me for the manuscript.
It worked. Four publishers were written to and each of them wanted the full manuscript. And one of those, Faber, accepted it. I didn't inform them they had already rejected it when it had been called 'Rich Kids' and sent to 'Dear Editor'. I had not changed a word bar the title.
All of which has made me somewhat cynical about publishers.
'Hard Cash' was well reviewed, and was read on BBC radio by Tony Robinson, now Sir Tony. It is a crime novel, though I didn't see it as such at the time. It's about two boys who find quarter of a million pounds in an empty house and decide to spend it. In my eyes, it was a family book, as much about their families as it is about crime, and I was surprised when the Faber editor called it a crime novel.
Faber published two more of my young adult novels. 'Frances Fairweather Demon Striker!' was shortlisted for the Children's Book Award. The other was 'Half a Bike', which was shortlisted for a French book prize. Walker Books published a book of mine for younger children, 'The Magical World of Lucy-Anne'.
From 1998, I began visiting schools as a children's author. I was also tutor for the Writing for Children course at City University. But as for publishing, everything mailed out was being rejected. It was 'The Good Wolf', a book for ten-year-olds, that altered my mindset.
This is the first paragraph of the reply received from Hodder & Stoughton:
'I found 'The Good Wolf' a thoroughly enjoyable story with great characterisation. You bring the serious issues of being different and not belonging into the story, which gives it substance. It is a well written, fluent piece with a good use of language.'
I distinctly recall thinking as I read this, I've sold it! They love it.
Maybe they did. But not enough. The next paragraph begins:
'Despite finding much to praise, I do not feel it is quite right for our list.'
Looking back on the letter, 21 years later, I find it somewhat unbelievable. Well written, great characterisation, enjoyable story... But you don't want to publish it. What on earth are you looking for?
A badly written, boring story, with weak characters perhaps.
This wasn't the only positive rejection received for 'The Good Wolf'. Other publishers told me how much they liked it. But 'it didn't fit their list' either. That unarguable phrase kept coming in the mail. The book was good, they told me, but they didn't want to publish it.
I was dejected. What could I do? The only possible thing.
Publish it myself.
Self-publishing wasn't that respectable in 1998. But it was do that or pulp it. I read up self-publishing on the internet. And learned it had to be done well. The finished book must be indistinguishable from mainstream books.
I hired a book designer and an illustrator. And printed 2000 copies, under my imprint Earlham Books. It was published in 1999 and won the David Thomas award for the best self-published children's book of that year. And has been popular in my school visits which I began around that time.
THE Noughties
Self publishing has worked for me. Taking control, no more waiting six months to find out 'it doesn't fit our list'. I used to think good authors would always find a mainstream publisher. I don't think that now. I know of good books that have been rejected, and the writers too discouraged to press on. That's depressing. But the self-publishing revolution puts the ball firmly in the writer's court.
My 'Lucy-Anne's Changing Ways' was the only self published book in the Book Trust’s 2001 list. Their editor recognised it as such and phoned me up to congratulate me. I was chuffed, but at the same time miffed, as mainstream publishers weren't interested in my books.
It's hard not to desire a pat on the back from the respectable. Every year or so in that decade, I self-published a book. Most were children's books to go with my school visits where I often did a book-signing after school and so had a ready market.
There were though big changes in the book trade afoot, especially helpful to self-published authors. There was print-on-demand; no longer would my bulging loft have to put up with thousands of copies, but just a few could be ordered when I needed them. About the same time came the ebook, which I thought would be ephemeral, but the Kindle's emergence in 2007 ensured its permanence.
FROM 2010
In this decade, my school visits began to tail off due to government cuts in education funding. Setbacks can be an opportunity. I turned to crime. And began my 'Jack of All Trades' series. The first three were published in 2015. As I write this in 2019, there are nine in the series, set where I live, with murders galore. They are in ebook and paperback editions. All the books are entitled Jack something or other. It's my marketing device. They are:
Jack of All Trades
Jack of Spades
Jack o'Lantern
Jack by the Hedge
Jack in the Box
Jack on the Tower
Jack Recalled
Jack at Death's Door
Jack at the Gate
Jack is a builder who solves crimes. Wherever he works someone gets murdered. It is a wonder anyone employs him.
TEACHING Experience
I taught Writing for Children for eighteen years, beginning at City University, then at the Mary Ward Centre in Holborn. I was co-ordinator of Newham Writers Workshop for twenty years, and have run poetry and general writing workshops in various places. In schools, from 1998 to 2016, I ran story-writing workshops in primary and secondary schools.
I am a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers Association.
So that's me, warts and all, writing on, and about to share with you my experience of writing crime.
[This is chapter 1 of 'Writing a Crime Novel', a book for would-be crime writers, published in June 2019.]
At the time, I had the naïve belief in my genius as a writer. It's a common disease in writers but it is curable, though there are those who suffer it all their lives. My plays were sent off to various theatres, and given to friends and family to read. No one liked them. I was either a misunderstood talent, ahead of my time, or the plays were bad.
Coming to the reluctant conclusion they were not all I hoped them to be, I went on a playwriting course at the City Lit (abbreviation for City Literary College) in London. I was working at the time as an assistant gardener in a park. It was a good job for a writer as the job could be left behind when I left work. It didn't pay much, but enough to get by.
The City Lit course was a two hour evening class. The tutor on the course was Cathy Itzen, an American who had come through the US college system where they taught playwriting and theatre. I learned that I did have some talent, but needed to learn about the craft of playwriting. Good friends were made on the course, which is not a “by the way”, as fellow students appreciate what you are trying to do and can be very supportive.
After two terms, I submitted an idea based on an event that had happened in the park where I was then working. Cathy said: fine, write it. When completed it was a 45 minute stage play that was read in the class and went down well. I wondered what to do with it. Entitled 'Albert and the Mayor's Tree', it had about 12 characters. Great for a class, too short for theatre, way too many characters for any commercial set up. So it was changed to a radio play. And over the summer, when the course was in recess, I sent it to the BBC.
THE 70s
Within a month, the quickest response I've had, they accepted the play. It was performed on radio in 1972 and well received. Throughout the 70s, I continued writing plays. There were four on radio, one on TV, lots of short plays performed in theatres along with three full length plays. I went to work with Soapbox Theatre in the London Borough of Newham as their writer in residence. There, I wrote plays for the company, directed them, and ran a playwriting course. Some of my plays were naturalistic, some in a political vein, some absurd. They taught me about the importance of character, dialogue and surprise in a story.
Skills not limited to plays.
THE 80s
After three years with Soapbox Theatre, with my then partner Gill Hay, I set up a bookshop. Outside the theatre environment, I had stopped writing plays, and became involved in running the bookshop, as well as working in the vegetarian cafe that was also part of The Whole Thing, the name of our multifarious establishment. There, surrounded by books, I had a go at writing a novel, spending more than a year on it. But it was an impossible mess.
I went back to the City Lit. This time for a story writing class. I'd missed a term, and the tutor, Carol Burns, spoke in passing about things like point of view. What on earth was that? I had missed that session, so had to read it up. On discovering what it was, my fiction had more structure. I wrote some short stories. A couple were broadcast on radio.
With growing confidence, my next project was a novel for young adults, 'Rich Kids'. I'd read in a book for writers that you should send off four chapters to a publisher with a short covering letter. The novel finished, I did exactly that, sending off a letter with the chapters to four publishers. When one came back, another was sent out, until after more than a year 18 publishers had been contacted. All had turned the book down; not one of them wanted the full manuscript. And so, despondent, 'Rich Kids' was stuck in a drawer.
Around nine months later, I re-read it, being far enough away from the manuscript to be objective. I thought, this is good. But how was I to get a publisher to read it? Unsolicited manuscripts go into what is disparagingly known as the slush pile. There are many poor books in the slush pile, which makes it hard for any decent ones to be noticed. The office junior might take a bundle home to half scan. Not my aim at all.
I didn't want to sink in the slush.
THE 90s
There had to be a new strategy to sell the book. First of all, the title was changed; it became 'Hard Cash'. Then I persuaded my then partner's 11 year old son, Tom, to review it. Best handwriting, I insisted. And paid him a fiver for his troubles. His review was photocopied and sent off with a letter about the book, but with no chapters. The letter was addressed to a named person. Not to 'Dear Editor’, but to 'Dear Jane Brown' as it might be. My aim was to get 'Jane Brown' to ask me for the manuscript.
It worked. Four publishers were written to and each of them wanted the full manuscript. And one of those, Faber, accepted it. I didn't inform them they had already rejected it when it had been called 'Rich Kids' and sent to 'Dear Editor'. I had not changed a word bar the title.
All of which has made me somewhat cynical about publishers.
'Hard Cash' was well reviewed, and was read on BBC radio by Tony Robinson, now Sir Tony. It is a crime novel, though I didn't see it as such at the time. It's about two boys who find quarter of a million pounds in an empty house and decide to spend it. In my eyes, it was a family book, as much about their families as it is about crime, and I was surprised when the Faber editor called it a crime novel.
Faber published two more of my young adult novels. 'Frances Fairweather Demon Striker!' was shortlisted for the Children's Book Award. The other was 'Half a Bike', which was shortlisted for a French book prize. Walker Books published a book of mine for younger children, 'The Magical World of Lucy-Anne'.
From 1998, I began visiting schools as a children's author. I was also tutor for the Writing for Children course at City University. But as for publishing, everything mailed out was being rejected. It was 'The Good Wolf', a book for ten-year-olds, that altered my mindset.
This is the first paragraph of the reply received from Hodder & Stoughton:
'I found 'The Good Wolf' a thoroughly enjoyable story with great characterisation. You bring the serious issues of being different and not belonging into the story, which gives it substance. It is a well written, fluent piece with a good use of language.'
I distinctly recall thinking as I read this, I've sold it! They love it.
Maybe they did. But not enough. The next paragraph begins:
'Despite finding much to praise, I do not feel it is quite right for our list.'
Looking back on the letter, 21 years later, I find it somewhat unbelievable. Well written, great characterisation, enjoyable story... But you don't want to publish it. What on earth are you looking for?
A badly written, boring story, with weak characters perhaps.
This wasn't the only positive rejection received for 'The Good Wolf'. Other publishers told me how much they liked it. But 'it didn't fit their list' either. That unarguable phrase kept coming in the mail. The book was good, they told me, but they didn't want to publish it.
I was dejected. What could I do? The only possible thing.
Publish it myself.
Self-publishing wasn't that respectable in 1998. But it was do that or pulp it. I read up self-publishing on the internet. And learned it had to be done well. The finished book must be indistinguishable from mainstream books.
I hired a book designer and an illustrator. And printed 2000 copies, under my imprint Earlham Books. It was published in 1999 and won the David Thomas award for the best self-published children's book of that year. And has been popular in my school visits which I began around that time.
THE Noughties
Self publishing has worked for me. Taking control, no more waiting six months to find out 'it doesn't fit our list'. I used to think good authors would always find a mainstream publisher. I don't think that now. I know of good books that have been rejected, and the writers too discouraged to press on. That's depressing. But the self-publishing revolution puts the ball firmly in the writer's court.
My 'Lucy-Anne's Changing Ways' was the only self published book in the Book Trust’s 2001 list. Their editor recognised it as such and phoned me up to congratulate me. I was chuffed, but at the same time miffed, as mainstream publishers weren't interested in my books.
It's hard not to desire a pat on the back from the respectable. Every year or so in that decade, I self-published a book. Most were children's books to go with my school visits where I often did a book-signing after school and so had a ready market.
There were though big changes in the book trade afoot, especially helpful to self-published authors. There was print-on-demand; no longer would my bulging loft have to put up with thousands of copies, but just a few could be ordered when I needed them. About the same time came the ebook, which I thought would be ephemeral, but the Kindle's emergence in 2007 ensured its permanence.
FROM 2010
In this decade, my school visits began to tail off due to government cuts in education funding. Setbacks can be an opportunity. I turned to crime. And began my 'Jack of All Trades' series. The first three were published in 2015. As I write this in 2019, there are nine in the series, set where I live, with murders galore. They are in ebook and paperback editions. All the books are entitled Jack something or other. It's my marketing device. They are:
Jack of All Trades
Jack of Spades
Jack o'Lantern
Jack by the Hedge
Jack in the Box
Jack on the Tower
Jack Recalled
Jack at Death's Door
Jack at the Gate
Jack is a builder who solves crimes. Wherever he works someone gets murdered. It is a wonder anyone employs him.
TEACHING Experience
I taught Writing for Children for eighteen years, beginning at City University, then at the Mary Ward Centre in Holborn. I was co-ordinator of Newham Writers Workshop for twenty years, and have run poetry and general writing workshops in various places. In schools, from 1998 to 2016, I ran story-writing workshops in primary and secondary schools.
I am a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers Association.
So that's me, warts and all, writing on, and about to share with you my experience of writing crime.
[This is chapter 1 of 'Writing a Crime Novel', a book for would-be crime writers, published in June 2019.]
October 18, 2017
How Many Get Away With It
I was asked a little while ago, if the murderers in my Jack of All Trades series always got caught. And my answer was: No. At the end of the book, the reader always knows who did it, but the murderer may evade justice. For this piece I have done the macabre exercise of counting the bodies.
In the seven currently published books of the series (Jack of All Trades, Jack of Spades, Jack o’Lantern, Jack by the Hedge, Jack in the Box, Jack on the Tower, and Jack Recalled) there are 10 murders in all. I am not counting the killings for self defence. Three of these murders are unsolved by the police. One was committed by three people, another by two, and a third by a single person. So six murderers get away with it. That’s a shockingly high count. Two of the victims though are thoroughly nasty people, so I believe readers will hope the murderers get off. The remaining one has not this let-off. The murdered person is not particularly bad. All I can say in its justification is that it is a clever murder, fooling the cops.
But not Jack.
The reader though is not left in the dark. That would be bad faith on my part. The reader expects to know who dunnit. And I will deliver. But stories often have a curious morality. In a cowboy movie, say, the goody shoots the baddy and we all cheer. Or take Robin Hood; he must have killed innocents galore, with all those flying arrows, in his philanthropic robbing of the rich to give to the poor. But then he’s a hard done by, good looking guy, and the King pardons him. So we are on his side.
Easy when it’s a myth.
In real life, I want murderers to get caught and to be punished, though there are a few cases that test this certainty. For example, take a woman who is battered by her husband for 15 years; one night she can’t take it anymore and kills him. There have been a few such cases in the last decades. By the letter of the law, in the UK, she would get at least 10 years in jail as that is the minimum sentence for murder. A good lawyer might get her off on self-defence, working on the jury’s sympathy. Though, if she has a poor lawyer she is likely to do the time.
In a crime novel, the writer can choose whether to let a murderer go free. That’s the theory, but in practice it is not so simple, as the writer has to satisfy the reader and come up with an ending that works.
In my three unsolved murders, in two of them, as I have said, a wicked person is killed. So in those cases rough justice is satisfied. In the third, I can’t claim that. Nor can I say too much without spoilers, but simply say real life is messy. We don’t live within the genre of cozy mysteries, where all murderers get caught. In the mean streets, some murders get away with it and the wrong person may be tried and sentenced.
Truth is often hard to ascertain, with police and lawyers serving their own interests as well as the public’s. Consider the OJ Simpson case back in the mid 90s. Most people now believe OJ committed two murders, but LA’s police force did a poor job investigating the crime scene, and their racism rebounded on them. While OJ’s highly paid lawyers played every trick in the book to get him off. And succeeded.
That case has been played out on TV extensively due to OJ’s celebrity. Lesser mortals evade such exposure and may never be caught. It happens. That’s the uncomfortable truth.
But, reader, though I may let a murderer or two off the hook, bear in mind, no one actually gets killed. We are not at the Coliseum watching Christians torn apart by lions, but reading a tale that is total invention.
DH Smith
Writer of the Jack of All Trades series
In the seven currently published books of the series (Jack of All Trades, Jack of Spades, Jack o’Lantern, Jack by the Hedge, Jack in the Box, Jack on the Tower, and Jack Recalled) there are 10 murders in all. I am not counting the killings for self defence. Three of these murders are unsolved by the police. One was committed by three people, another by two, and a third by a single person. So six murderers get away with it. That’s a shockingly high count. Two of the victims though are thoroughly nasty people, so I believe readers will hope the murderers get off. The remaining one has not this let-off. The murdered person is not particularly bad. All I can say in its justification is that it is a clever murder, fooling the cops.
But not Jack.
The reader though is not left in the dark. That would be bad faith on my part. The reader expects to know who dunnit. And I will deliver. But stories often have a curious morality. In a cowboy movie, say, the goody shoots the baddy and we all cheer. Or take Robin Hood; he must have killed innocents galore, with all those flying arrows, in his philanthropic robbing of the rich to give to the poor. But then he’s a hard done by, good looking guy, and the King pardons him. So we are on his side.
Easy when it’s a myth.
In real life, I want murderers to get caught and to be punished, though there are a few cases that test this certainty. For example, take a woman who is battered by her husband for 15 years; one night she can’t take it anymore and kills him. There have been a few such cases in the last decades. By the letter of the law, in the UK, she would get at least 10 years in jail as that is the minimum sentence for murder. A good lawyer might get her off on self-defence, working on the jury’s sympathy. Though, if she has a poor lawyer she is likely to do the time.
In a crime novel, the writer can choose whether to let a murderer go free. That’s the theory, but in practice it is not so simple, as the writer has to satisfy the reader and come up with an ending that works.
In my three unsolved murders, in two of them, as I have said, a wicked person is killed. So in those cases rough justice is satisfied. In the third, I can’t claim that. Nor can I say too much without spoilers, but simply say real life is messy. We don’t live within the genre of cozy mysteries, where all murderers get caught. In the mean streets, some murders get away with it and the wrong person may be tried and sentenced.
Truth is often hard to ascertain, with police and lawyers serving their own interests as well as the public’s. Consider the OJ Simpson case back in the mid 90s. Most people now believe OJ committed two murders, but LA’s police force did a poor job investigating the crime scene, and their racism rebounded on them. While OJ’s highly paid lawyers played every trick in the book to get him off. And succeeded.
That case has been played out on TV extensively due to OJ’s celebrity. Lesser mortals evade such exposure and may never be caught. It happens. That’s the uncomfortable truth.
But, reader, though I may let a murderer or two off the hook, bear in mind, no one actually gets killed. We are not at the Coliseum watching Christians torn apart by lions, but reading a tale that is total invention.
DH Smith
Writer of the Jack of All Trades series
October 11, 2016
Crime Series and Jack
This blog is about crime series (or mystery if you prefer) and how my Jack of All Trades series fits in. I’ve written five books so far in the series. Jack Bell is a builder and at the various places he works, murders happen. An alarming state of affairs. And quite unusual in crime series.
In crime series, 70 % of the main characters are cops. This figure does not have academic precision; it’s my rough and ready assessment from my own reading. There are lots of examples of cop main characters. I have been reading quite a few British crime novels recently, so here’s a few cops from British series:
Detective Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin, Edinburgh based
Detective Inspector Morse, by Colin Dexter, Oxford based
Detective Chief Inspector Roy Grace, by Peter James, Brighton based
Chief Inspector Wexford, by Ruth Rendell, Kingmarkham, Sussex
Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, by PD James, London based
The only exception in British fiction I know of a cop in crime fiction novels outside the higher ranks is Sophie Hannah’s Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse. He is part of the Culver Valley police force. Culver Valley is nominally in England but doesn’t exist; Sophie Hannah says she invented this county because of the British obsession with class. She could do things there without someone saying ‘That would never happen in Hampstead/Brighton/Edinburgh etc’.
Fifteen percent of Crime Fiction Series have as a main character what I call ‘associates’. These are the professionals, non cops, who become involved in crimes: the medical people, the lawyers, coroners and other experts. John Grisham usually has a lawyer as lead character in his novels, Patricia Cornwell has her pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. On BBC TV, we have Silent Witness, a crime drama focusing on the investigations of a team of forensic pathologists. One who should be better known is Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist, in Elly Griffiths series.
Ten cent of crime series have private eyes as main characters. There are amateurs and there are the professionals. Amateurs are less common these days as you need a private income. Amateurs include Sherlock Holmes who only ever asked for expenses. We have Agatha Christie’s Poirot, a Belgian with no money problems, and Miss Marple, by the same author, who lived in the village of Marymead and is happy to be called in to solve a murder or two, often for a friend or a friend of a friend. And of course to put the police right. Money is never mentioned. Nor by Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L Sayers sleuth. He is filthy rich and need never ask for cash.
Now the professionals. A more seedy private investigators is Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. And more recently Cormoran Strike who is Robert Galbraith’s detective. Galbraith is better known as JK Rowling, not short of money herself, but her tec has to sleep in the office. Another private eye is owner of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. McCall Smith’s private eye is the astute Mma Precious Ramotswe, the first female private eye in Botswana.
So to recap on crime series, we’ve had: 70% cops, 15% associates (lawyers and medicos), 10% private eyes. That leaves 5%. This small slice I call Jobs. It involves those whose work brings them into contact with crime accidentally. Which is where Jack, my builder, comes in. But here are a few others. There’s Lily Bard who works in Shakespeare in the Southern States as a cleaner. She is Charlaine Harris’s sleuth. A good choice as cleaners go into many different houses and see what’s left in the bins and what’s under the bed.
An earlier series by the same author has as its heroine Aurora Teagarden. She is a librarian to begin with, but then ventures into real estate, or estate agency as we know it in the UK. Rebecca Tope, a British writer, has as her main character a florist, Persimmon Brown who owns a shop in Ambleside.
That’s my short amble around crime series to show where my main character Jack Bell fits in. He is one of a few manual workers as a main character in this genre. The only other I know is Lily Bard, the cleaner.
Anyone have any others to add?
In crime series, 70 % of the main characters are cops. This figure does not have academic precision; it’s my rough and ready assessment from my own reading. There are lots of examples of cop main characters. I have been reading quite a few British crime novels recently, so here’s a few cops from British series:
Detective Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin, Edinburgh based
Detective Inspector Morse, by Colin Dexter, Oxford based
Detective Chief Inspector Roy Grace, by Peter James, Brighton based
Chief Inspector Wexford, by Ruth Rendell, Kingmarkham, Sussex
Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, by PD James, London based
The only exception in British fiction I know of a cop in crime fiction novels outside the higher ranks is Sophie Hannah’s Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse. He is part of the Culver Valley police force. Culver Valley is nominally in England but doesn’t exist; Sophie Hannah says she invented this county because of the British obsession with class. She could do things there without someone saying ‘That would never happen in Hampstead/Brighton/Edinburgh etc’.
Fifteen percent of Crime Fiction Series have as a main character what I call ‘associates’. These are the professionals, non cops, who become involved in crimes: the medical people, the lawyers, coroners and other experts. John Grisham usually has a lawyer as lead character in his novels, Patricia Cornwell has her pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. On BBC TV, we have Silent Witness, a crime drama focusing on the investigations of a team of forensic pathologists. One who should be better known is Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist, in Elly Griffiths series.
Ten cent of crime series have private eyes as main characters. There are amateurs and there are the professionals. Amateurs are less common these days as you need a private income. Amateurs include Sherlock Holmes who only ever asked for expenses. We have Agatha Christie’s Poirot, a Belgian with no money problems, and Miss Marple, by the same author, who lived in the village of Marymead and is happy to be called in to solve a murder or two, often for a friend or a friend of a friend. And of course to put the police right. Money is never mentioned. Nor by Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L Sayers sleuth. He is filthy rich and need never ask for cash.
Now the professionals. A more seedy private investigators is Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. And more recently Cormoran Strike who is Robert Galbraith’s detective. Galbraith is better known as JK Rowling, not short of money herself, but her tec has to sleep in the office. Another private eye is owner of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. McCall Smith’s private eye is the astute Mma Precious Ramotswe, the first female private eye in Botswana.
So to recap on crime series, we’ve had: 70% cops, 15% associates (lawyers and medicos), 10% private eyes. That leaves 5%. This small slice I call Jobs. It involves those whose work brings them into contact with crime accidentally. Which is where Jack, my builder, comes in. But here are a few others. There’s Lily Bard who works in Shakespeare in the Southern States as a cleaner. She is Charlaine Harris’s sleuth. A good choice as cleaners go into many different houses and see what’s left in the bins and what’s under the bed.
An earlier series by the same author has as its heroine Aurora Teagarden. She is a librarian to begin with, but then ventures into real estate, or estate agency as we know it in the UK. Rebecca Tope, a British writer, has as her main character a florist, Persimmon Brown who owns a shop in Ambleside.
That’s my short amble around crime series to show where my main character Jack Bell fits in. He is one of a few manual workers as a main character in this genre. The only other I know is Lily Bard, the cleaner.
Anyone have any others to add?
April 1, 2016
A Different Crime Series
The first in my series of crime novels, Jack of All Trades, was published at the end of September 2015. And now the fourth is out. Don’t panic. I didn’t write four in six months, but began writing them in 2013. The first three were published more or less at the same time. And now there’s a fourth out. They are:
Jack of All Trades
Jack of Spades
Jack o’Lantern
Jack by the Hedge
The main character is Jack Bell, a builder, an unusual character for crime stories. Such novels most often feature the police, or those associated with the police like lawyers and forensic pathologists. Then there are the private eyes, and the amateur detectives like Miss Marple. But every writer has to decide where to place themselves. I didn’t want to write a police procedural and get drawn into the science of crime scenes and the politics of the police station. So I could have gone for the private eye, as JK Rowling has, writing as Robert Galbraith, with Cormoran Strike (which always makes me think of a diving seabird), but I rejected that too. I might rethink that track, but not for the next year or so.
I went for a builder, a working class hero you might say. He gets around, and that is the point. I needed someone who could come across murders in different settings. The first book is set in a large house owned by a millionaire couple, the second in a house with apartments, the third at a private school, and the fourth in a park.
I am not a builder so I lack Jack Bell’s skills. From time to time, I get envious of Charlayne Harris whose main character, Lily Bard, is a cleaner. Everyone knows what a cleaner does, why you can even practise with the vacuum cleaner at home and claim it’s research! But a builder, that’s a whole range of skills. I’ve had to research bricklaying, fitting windows, working on roofs, and dry rot. Fortunately, the internet is a brilliant source of tradespeople and their videos, showing and explaining the skills, tools and materials of the trade. A few videos I’ve had to replay many times over to fathom out some detail in, for instance, making a soundproof wall. It’s necessary for me to understand what Jack is doing, but I have to bear in mind that I mustn’t bore my readers with the technical aspects. This is a narrow line as my reader must believe Jack is a builder. He has work to do, with all its associated problems: customers who can be difficult, snags he didn’t anticipate, and the needs to cost a job and be paid. For each book, I have to know exactly what he’s doing, even though I may not use half of it. .
A character though is more than a job. Jack is divorced and has a ten year old daughter, Mia. She ages through the series, by the fourth she is 12. Jack has a difficult relationship with her mother, Alison. They divorced when Jack had problems with alcohol. Now he doesn’t drink at all, as his heavy drinking in the past landed him on the streets. Building helped him put his life together.
In each book, there is romantic interest. As a rule in crime fiction, happily married main characters I find somewhat boring. There are notable exceptions, so I won’t damn them all. But I have decided to give Jack a hard time in the romantic stakes. Girlfriends end up as murderers or victims, they try to kill him, they set him up as the killer. They are not all nasty by any means, but somehow Jack loses out.
What pleases me is that the series has been well received by both men and women. Jack is not an unbelievable he-man or a wimp either. He is a parent as well as a builder. I am aware, from beginning to end, that I have to tell a compelling story, with tension, surprise and good characters. That’s how you hold readers.
I plan each book as a stand-alone novel. I think this is important in a series. There are those who will devour the series in a week or so, but others might read one and the next not for a year or more and won’t remember any plot that feeds through from the last novel. Little things will go from book to book, like Jack’s daughter is growing up, but nothing major. This means new readers can come in anywhere.
I have written seven of the series so far, the fifth will be published in October, entitled Jack in the Box. It features a siege with Jack at the wrong side of it. All the books are set locally. I live in Forest Gate, in East London, and Jack lives down my road. He has a van with Jack of All Trades painted on the side. The first three books were launched at Forest Gate Library in October 2015, and I hope the 5th will be launched there this October. Presently, I am trying to come up with a plot for the 8th. I need a setting, a job for Jack, and a suite of new characters, though his daughter and ex will continue in his life. So I shall walk the local streets and muse.
Good Reading!
DH Smith
Jack of All Trades
Jack of Spades
Jack o’Lantern
Jack by the Hedge
The main character is Jack Bell, a builder, an unusual character for crime stories. Such novels most often feature the police, or those associated with the police like lawyers and forensic pathologists. Then there are the private eyes, and the amateur detectives like Miss Marple. But every writer has to decide where to place themselves. I didn’t want to write a police procedural and get drawn into the science of crime scenes and the politics of the police station. So I could have gone for the private eye, as JK Rowling has, writing as Robert Galbraith, with Cormoran Strike (which always makes me think of a diving seabird), but I rejected that too. I might rethink that track, but not for the next year or so.
I went for a builder, a working class hero you might say. He gets around, and that is the point. I needed someone who could come across murders in different settings. The first book is set in a large house owned by a millionaire couple, the second in a house with apartments, the third at a private school, and the fourth in a park.
I am not a builder so I lack Jack Bell’s skills. From time to time, I get envious of Charlayne Harris whose main character, Lily Bard, is a cleaner. Everyone knows what a cleaner does, why you can even practise with the vacuum cleaner at home and claim it’s research! But a builder, that’s a whole range of skills. I’ve had to research bricklaying, fitting windows, working on roofs, and dry rot. Fortunately, the internet is a brilliant source of tradespeople and their videos, showing and explaining the skills, tools and materials of the trade. A few videos I’ve had to replay many times over to fathom out some detail in, for instance, making a soundproof wall. It’s necessary for me to understand what Jack is doing, but I have to bear in mind that I mustn’t bore my readers with the technical aspects. This is a narrow line as my reader must believe Jack is a builder. He has work to do, with all its associated problems: customers who can be difficult, snags he didn’t anticipate, and the needs to cost a job and be paid. For each book, I have to know exactly what he’s doing, even though I may not use half of it. .
A character though is more than a job. Jack is divorced and has a ten year old daughter, Mia. She ages through the series, by the fourth she is 12. Jack has a difficult relationship with her mother, Alison. They divorced when Jack had problems with alcohol. Now he doesn’t drink at all, as his heavy drinking in the past landed him on the streets. Building helped him put his life together.
In each book, there is romantic interest. As a rule in crime fiction, happily married main characters I find somewhat boring. There are notable exceptions, so I won’t damn them all. But I have decided to give Jack a hard time in the romantic stakes. Girlfriends end up as murderers or victims, they try to kill him, they set him up as the killer. They are not all nasty by any means, but somehow Jack loses out.
What pleases me is that the series has been well received by both men and women. Jack is not an unbelievable he-man or a wimp either. He is a parent as well as a builder. I am aware, from beginning to end, that I have to tell a compelling story, with tension, surprise and good characters. That’s how you hold readers.
I plan each book as a stand-alone novel. I think this is important in a series. There are those who will devour the series in a week or so, but others might read one and the next not for a year or more and won’t remember any plot that feeds through from the last novel. Little things will go from book to book, like Jack’s daughter is growing up, but nothing major. This means new readers can come in anywhere.
I have written seven of the series so far, the fifth will be published in October, entitled Jack in the Box. It features a siege with Jack at the wrong side of it. All the books are set locally. I live in Forest Gate, in East London, and Jack lives down my road. He has a van with Jack of All Trades painted on the side. The first three books were launched at Forest Gate Library in October 2015, and I hope the 5th will be launched there this October. Presently, I am trying to come up with a plot for the 8th. I need a setting, a job for Jack, and a suite of new characters, though his daughter and ex will continue in his life. So I shall walk the local streets and muse.
Good Reading!
DH Smith
December 11, 2015
Jack of All Trades
There’s more going on on this site than I realised, so I think it’s about time I contributed. I have no idea whether Goodreads sells books or is simply a place where readers gather. Have we any way of knowing? Let’s assume that at worst it does no harm, and at best it can give some publicity to writers, maybe sell books.
Now an offer. The first in my crime series, Jack of All Trades, is free this weekend (12/13 December). This is awfully short notice, so I wonder how many readers of this blog will take it up?
Two others in the series have been published so far: Jack of Spades and Jack o’Lantern. You will have noticed the pattern, I am sure. They are all Jack Something or Other, as will be the others as they are published. I have so far written six books and am working on the seventh. The fourth is coming out March 1st (Jack by the Hedge).
When I began to name them, I just gave them any names with Jack sayings. The first was Jack of All Trades, but the second was Jack be Nimble, the third Jack be Quick. I hadn’t got much further when I began to get confused about which book was which. I realised then that I couldn’t simply random title them. The name had to have some connection with what happens in the book or I wouldn’t know which book someone was talking about from the title.
I had a rethink. And decided to keep with the Jack pattern but the title had to relate to the incidents of the novel. So in the second, now Jack of Spades, bodies are buried in the forest. The third, Jack o’Lantern, a key scene takes place in the dead of night. The fourth (not yet published), Jack by the Hedge, is set in a park. I couldn’t have the situation where someone asks me about a book and I have to ask them what book is that. So the titles are as much for me as they are for the reader. Each is a standalone novel, though I have learnt that readers prefer to read them in order.
Official publication date was October 1st 2015, just over two months ago. Feedback has been good. The gateway novel, Jack of All Trades has 11 reviews on Amazon.com and 9 on Amazon.co.uk, averaging about 4.5 stars. Not enough reviews to make it a bestseller but I am still in the early phase of marketing, and I am hoping to double that number of reviews in the next three months.
There are 2.8 million ebooks on Amazon. A lot, you may already have found out, are not up to much, but there are good books buried under the weight of numbers. Some will never surface. It’s why Amazon reviews are so important to writers. But it’s hard to get them; I estimate about 1 in 500 readers actually leave a review of a book they’ve read on Amazon. So beyond friends and relations, that’s an awful lot of books you have to sell or give away to get say 20 reviews. This is not self pity, but a fact of life. A writer has to work with the system as it is, not the way he’d like it to be.
The main character in my series is Jack Bell. He’s a builder. I didn’t want to write a police procedural or have a private eye as my main character, so that meant having someone whose job takes them to different settings. And a builder fills the bill. So far he’s worked in a number of private houses, in a summer house, in a school, and in a park. He works where I live which is Forest Gate in London, not far from Stratford where the 2012 Olympic Games were held. The reader has to accept the fact that murders occur where Jack works. Sometimes a single murder, sometimes several. It is extremely unlikely that one man would be so unlucky, but my excuse is that it is fiction. And once immersed in a book, hopefully, you won’t care.
I have been writing for some time. All my other books, 16 of them, are under the name Derek Smith. There’s eleven children’s books, a couple of fantasies, a murder novella, a book of short stories and a poetry book. I decided to write my crime fiction under a pen name, DH Smith, to differentiate them from my other books. I did ask Goodreads to allow my pen name to be on the same page as Derek Smith, but after some correspondence and a promise they would or had, they hadn’t. And now I’m thinking it’s no bad thing to separate the works. But if you are curious, you can look at Derek Smith too.
I shall write an irregular blog and see how much interests it gathers. I might even get some readers.
Now an offer. The first in my crime series, Jack of All Trades, is free this weekend (12/13 December). This is awfully short notice, so I wonder how many readers of this blog will take it up?
Two others in the series have been published so far: Jack of Spades and Jack o’Lantern. You will have noticed the pattern, I am sure. They are all Jack Something or Other, as will be the others as they are published. I have so far written six books and am working on the seventh. The fourth is coming out March 1st (Jack by the Hedge).
When I began to name them, I just gave them any names with Jack sayings. The first was Jack of All Trades, but the second was Jack be Nimble, the third Jack be Quick. I hadn’t got much further when I began to get confused about which book was which. I realised then that I couldn’t simply random title them. The name had to have some connection with what happens in the book or I wouldn’t know which book someone was talking about from the title.
I had a rethink. And decided to keep with the Jack pattern but the title had to relate to the incidents of the novel. So in the second, now Jack of Spades, bodies are buried in the forest. The third, Jack o’Lantern, a key scene takes place in the dead of night. The fourth (not yet published), Jack by the Hedge, is set in a park. I couldn’t have the situation where someone asks me about a book and I have to ask them what book is that. So the titles are as much for me as they are for the reader. Each is a standalone novel, though I have learnt that readers prefer to read them in order.
Official publication date was October 1st 2015, just over two months ago. Feedback has been good. The gateway novel, Jack of All Trades has 11 reviews on Amazon.com and 9 on Amazon.co.uk, averaging about 4.5 stars. Not enough reviews to make it a bestseller but I am still in the early phase of marketing, and I am hoping to double that number of reviews in the next three months.
There are 2.8 million ebooks on Amazon. A lot, you may already have found out, are not up to much, but there are good books buried under the weight of numbers. Some will never surface. It’s why Amazon reviews are so important to writers. But it’s hard to get them; I estimate about 1 in 500 readers actually leave a review of a book they’ve read on Amazon. So beyond friends and relations, that’s an awful lot of books you have to sell or give away to get say 20 reviews. This is not self pity, but a fact of life. A writer has to work with the system as it is, not the way he’d like it to be.
The main character in my series is Jack Bell. He’s a builder. I didn’t want to write a police procedural or have a private eye as my main character, so that meant having someone whose job takes them to different settings. And a builder fills the bill. So far he’s worked in a number of private houses, in a summer house, in a school, and in a park. He works where I live which is Forest Gate in London, not far from Stratford where the 2012 Olympic Games were held. The reader has to accept the fact that murders occur where Jack works. Sometimes a single murder, sometimes several. It is extremely unlikely that one man would be so unlucky, but my excuse is that it is fiction. And once immersed in a book, hopefully, you won’t care.
I have been writing for some time. All my other books, 16 of them, are under the name Derek Smith. There’s eleven children’s books, a couple of fantasies, a murder novella, a book of short stories and a poetry book. I decided to write my crime fiction under a pen name, DH Smith, to differentiate them from my other books. I did ask Goodreads to allow my pen name to be on the same page as Derek Smith, but after some correspondence and a promise they would or had, they hadn’t. And now I’m thinking it’s no bad thing to separate the works. But if you are curious, you can look at Derek Smith too.
I shall write an irregular blog and see how much interests it gathers. I might even get some readers.
