Let’s face it, we’ve all been getting cosy over the past few years. Ever since Covid reared its head people have begun to value their homes more, both for living and working. And for some us it’s had an even greater effect.
When the first lockdown started, I was preparing to write my third Brigitte Sharp novel – a series of European spy thrillers featuring international travel and geopolitics. Before vaccines, though, it was impossible to guess what the world would look like in a year, or even six months. I had to put it aside.
But I’m a writer. I can’t not write – it’s simply not in my nature. So what else could I do?
Frankly, the first thing I wanted to do was cheer myself up. And I couldn’t get out to do any research, so it would have to be with something I already knew about.
I’m a lifelong lover of traditional mysteries. I grew up reading The Famous Five and The Three Investigators, before moving on to authors like Doyle and Christie, and I continue to read many lighter, puzzle-focused stories.
I’ve also always loved dogs, and we’d recently lost two in the space of a year just before the pandemic; they had good, long lives, but naturally I missed them.
Finally, when I was younger I loved acting. I was regularly involved in school, local, and community theatre, as both writer and director, and came within a whisker of studying drama at university. But for a different turn here and there, I might now be a working actor.
I didn’t think about these things in such direct, logical terms when I started to write. But I always write books I’d want to read myself. What better way to do that, and make myself smile, than by writing a light-hearted mystery about a former actress turned amateur detective… with a couple of dogs in tow?
The Dog Sitter Detective was born, and just a few months later I had a rough manuscript.
At that time I wasn’t thinking much about publication; in a sense the book was already a success because I had fun writing it, and made myself laugh. But when I re-read that rough draft, I wondered if there was something worth pursuing. Friends, and my agent, assured me there was…
So now here we are. The Dog Sitter Detective launches on May 18, starring retired actress Gwinny Tuffel, two haughty salukis, and a rogues’ gallery of larger-than-life suspects. (To give myself a challenge, though, I’ve decided that future books will each feature a different dog breed for Gwinny to look after.)
Setting out on this cosy journey has also made me think more about the attraction of cosy crime; something I’ve long enjoyed without ever really examining why. Historically it’s often been derided, or simply ignored, by critics – yet it seems more popular with readers than ever. Why is that?
I think a number of factors are at play. It’s well established that in times of economic downturn people seek escapism, to shut out the real world for a while. Covid – still with us, for all that the world tries to move on – has only increased that desire for many. There’s also the increasingly precarious state of international relations, which here in Britain inevitably makes people look inward for a utopian idyll. Such a place may exist only in our imagination, but isn’t that where all books take place?
Most of us aren’t consciously thinking these things when we reach for something to read. But the effect is real, and so we plump for a book that makes us laugh, and gives us hope for justice in the world.
That’s what I hope The Dog Sitter Detective does for readers. And in parting, let me reassure you: don’t worry, nothing bad happens to the dogs!
The Dog Sitter Detective by Antony Johnston is published by Allison & Busby on 18 May in hardback at £16.99, as an eBook and also as an audiobook.
