A few weeks ago, I took a closer look at why I write murder mystery novels. Or, more precisely, what made me want to write about murder. At that point in my somewhat unremarkable writing career, I'd written an adventure, a romance, a humorous novel, and a psychological thriller.
Murder never entered my thoughts or imagination.
Yeah, right!
If you've read my Facebook posts, blogs, or email newsletters, you'll know I've talked about solving complex puzzles, a love of Miss Marple, and a dream of solving a murder.
Hang on. A dream of solving a murder?
Where did that come from?
Was it something I dreamt, or did I really want to solve a murder?
If I did, why didn’t I join the police or become a detective?
When writing the last Downland Murder novel, No Time for Doubt, I revisited my childhood, which was the blueprint for my sleuth's own youth. Thinking back to those interesting and sometimes painful times, I recalled when the teenage me became interested in solving a murder.
While my friends were preoccupied with girls and football, read James Bond. Secretly, I wanted to be like Bond. I liked the idea of pursuing bad guys and solving murders.
Whatever the reason, the idea lodged in my mind.
But when I left school, I studied to become an environmental health officer (EHO), not a police detective.
So, what drove me to this career choice?
Writing would never pay the mortgage. Back then, the market for humorous articles, short stories, and poetry offered limited opportunities. And while journalism and media studies looked like a more natural route for someone creative, environmental health appealed to me.
I had visions of clearing up pollution, protecting the environment, and making the world a better place.
Had someone told me how my experiences would one day inspire me to create a distinctive sleuth and murder mystery series, I would have laughed.
I mean, whoever heard of an EHO solving murders?
Was I simply writing about what I knew, as the textbooks like to suggest?
Or was there something deeper at work?
Once again, my childhood experiences, and the events that shaped me and my values, held the answer.
You can find out more about these experiences on my blog, How injustice helped me become a better crime writer, or by clicking the button below.
Then, one morning, after a food hygiene inspection of a pub kitchen, I sat with the owner, chatting about his business and the kitchen.
Then he paused. His brows dipped as if he were deep in thought. Or ready to challenge my findings.
Instead, he asked me why I'd become an EHO.
Without hesitation, I said, "I wanted to make a difference."
The answer came from the heart. It needed no prompting.
I wanted to help and protect people, to ensure businesses met their legal obligations, to ensure people were treated fairly and justly. My childhood experiences of unfairness and injustice underpinned these intentions, along with a broader wish to protect public health, the environment, wildlife, and nature.
Perhaps it started when I studied To Kill a Mockingbird for my English Literature O-level. Atticus Finch was an ordinary person, risking his life, reputation, and future to make a difference. To protect an innocent man.
I wanted to be such a person.
Thanks to the death of my father and living in poverty, I was already an outsider. At school, my appetite for fiction and a fertile imagination meant I wrote stories where an underdog changed lives and worlds.
My desire to show ordinary people making a difference never diminished.
It underpinned my work as an EHO, where I always encouraged people and businesses, showing them how improving standards could enhance their reputations and profits.
When it came to conflicts, I always listened to both sides, searching for common ground.
I saw how people could be driven to despair by problems.
And while resolving complex problems, investigating fatal work accidents, and dealing with all kinds of legal contraventions, not once did I realise the grounding it was giving me to write murder mysteries.
Until I sat watching Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced. It featured Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, an ordinary, unassuming woman with an ear for gossip and a razor-sharp mind. She picked apart the most complex puzzle to solve a murder.
As the closing credits rolled by, I wondered if an environmental health officer like me could solve murders.
It took time, several false starts, and unfailing determination before No Accident provided the answer.
From idea to published novel, the journey was fraught with challenges and dead ends, if you'll forgive the pun.
My blog, Creating a new kind of detective, will show you more about the difficulties an EHO faces when he investigates murders. Use the button below to view the blog.
But there were still more hurdles to clear before a poor food hygiene rating for a tearoom helped No Accident get accepted by a traditional publisher.
But that’s a story for a future blog.
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If you enjoy character-driven crime and would like to follow my reflections more closely, I keep in touch with readers once a month through my newsletter, Murder, Rob Wrote. It’s a quiet space for thoughts on writing, reading, and the world behind the stories.