Inspiration and a name
I’d written non-fiction – so knew I could go the distance – but never fiction of any kind. So why set out to create a private detective and write a crime novel? Why take on this challenge? Maybe just because, like Everest, it’s there. And also, perhaps, because I read and like crime fiction.
I’ve been reading it since I discovered the green-bound Penguins, and those Pan paperbacks with lurid covers, when I was a child. Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers: I enjoyed their books. I was a little older when I discovered Raymond Chandler. His books were more than enjoyable. They were exciting: his writing style, dialogue, settings, characters – especially, of course, Philip Marlowe, a tough private detective who is both a knight in shining armour and a man who isn’t afraid to go into the mean streets to solve a mystery and right a wrong.
Might my detective take something from Marlowe; might he be a good man working, unafraid, in London in the 2020s? Marlowe is admirable but not realistic – a mythological hero, akin to Sir Gawain, Robin Hood and James Bond. He appears to have no friends or family and to earn very little money – as far as the reader can see, not enough to live on.
I think about creating a realistic version of Marlowe and remember V.I. Warshawski, the female Chicago-based detective created by Sara Paretsky. In book after book, Warshawski’s family and friends play important roles in the action. And there are frequent, albeit brief, mentions of Warshawski taking on dull routine jobs to fund her altruistic adventures and her frugal, though far from puritan, lifestyle.
My man could combine elements of Marlowe and Warshawski – and do something neither of them does: make a living by running a detective agency, a business, and employing people who are, or become, his friends. And he could have a middle-aged girlfriend and a family life. He could be a widowed grandfather, whose daughter is a single mother and a jazz singer who works at night; so grandfather babysits, sleeps over and becomes close to his grandson, who is six years old – and unusually visually acute. Occasionally this boy might notice something that grandfather has missed and thereby help to solve a mystery.
My imaginings of success as a writer can go the full distance, right up to that phone call from the Nobel Prize committee – even though reality goes a much shorter distance, or nowhere at all – so I’m seeking a name for my detective that conjures TV series and movies, and household names. Something memorable, like . . . Columbo, Kojak, Rebus, Sam Spade, Jim Rockford.
Domino comes into my mind: Jim Domino. The jazz singer is Laura Domino. Her son is Danny Domino. That’ll do.
It had better. The Lady in the Park has been printed and will be published any minute.
The Lady in the Park is published by Muswell Press
