Back in December, I started writing another novel and it’s been a joy to do: I’ve never known a story to fly together quite the way this one has. Rust and Recuperation is the story of a resourceful underdog who owns a workshop where he repairs armoured fighting vehicles for collectors.

OK, I admit it: I was playing a lot of Tank Mechanic Simulator late last year. It’s not exactly a game – not least because there’s no real challenge other than coping with the alarming number of bugs – but the process of finding, cleaning, de-rusting, and reassembling a tank wreck into a fully restored vehicle is incredibly therapeutic. Despite the fact that there were only fifteen types of vehicle to find, I kept on digging them out and fixing them up… and as I did so, I started telling myself stories. Imagining the conversations with awkward clients; the challenges and the scrapes I might get into.

Inevitably (because I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t scribbling) I started writing. I listed a few of the ideas that I had for chapters, then added a heading that might have been a working title: “Lovejoy with Tanks.” That’s basically what I went with, writing about adventures and challenges where each involves neglected or abandoned armoured fighting vehicles.

There’s Simon, the self-confessed tank nerd who quit school because he was in a hurry to start working with tanks. There’s Alex, the reformed car thief who would hate for anybody to think that she’s succumbed to the “tank thing” (although it seems quite likely that she has)… and there’s Mike, who would tell you he’s trying to run a business: not a retirement home for tanks or a club for misfits. And then there are the Bad Guys, because life as a tank mechanic is about to get dangerous.

(Is there even a genre for this?)

In any event, it’s currently being read by a good friend and I’m nervously awaiting his feedback – the first time anybody’s seen it. (Yeah, I can write sixty thousand words on a whim…) He isn’t performing a proof-read exactly, because I don’t share half-finished documents and expect other people to find my typos – but more of a “what do you make of this?” kind of read-through.

If he says it sucks, kindly forget I mentioned it.

If not, perhaps the world is ready for historical vehicle restoration crime fiction after all.