It took me a long time to realise I wanted to write murder mysteries.
I should have known when I was a child, moving on from the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis to Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
While the local librarian was happy to lead me through the children’s fiction section, she also realised that I yearned to read something more suited to adults. But she wasn’t about to let me loose in the adult library.
Miss Carter peered over her spectacles. “Choose your books and bring them to me. If they’re suitable, I’ll let you borrow them. If not, you return them to the shelf.”
I nodded and scampered into the maze of bookshelves, not sure what I would choose. Despite my appetite for books, I didn’t know many authors who wrote adult fiction. Until I stumbled upon Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.
I believe my hand had a slight shake when I placed the book on the counter. She stared at it for a moment, then looked into my eyes. “What drew you to this book?”
“James Bond. He hunts down the baddies and makes sure we’re all safe. I’ve seen him on television.”
Though her frown didn’t relax, she opened the cover, removed the ticket and stamped the book out to me. She slid it across the counter, gave me a sly wink, and said, “I like James Bond too.”
Not only was this my first venture into adult fiction, I loved James Bond and how he always overcame any obstacle put before him. His travels and dangerous missions fired my imagination, finding their way into the stories I wrote for English homework.
Naturally, I didn’t tell my teacher I read Ian Fleming. Or Alistair MacLean.
My appetite remained voracious until I took English Literature O-level. The novel we studied was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. When the teacher informed us that a twelve-year-old girl named Scout narrated the novel, I wanted to sneak off and lose myself in a thriller.
How wrong I was to doubt my teacher. By the end of the book, I was in a flood of tears. Anger rushed through my veins at the injustice of the verdict in that courtroom. If a young girl could see it was wrong, why couldn’t the jury?
But the story had a longer lasting effect on me.
I wanted to be like Atticus Finch. An ordinary person prepared to stand up for what he believed in. Willing to risk everything to make a difference.
His spirit lived inside me for many years to come.
He fought against unfairness and injustice. Yet he never judged others. He tried to understand them, to walk in their shoes.
It proved much harder than I’d expected to do this, but I could fight for fairness and justice.
Looking back, I wonder if this aspiration helped lead me into a long and rewarding career as an environmental health officer. My job was to ensure people observed standards and followed them, whether it was hygiene in a restaurant kitchen, or keeping the noise to a reasonable level in a block of flats.
But environmental health wasn’t about maintaining standards. It was about people.
People failed to keep kitchens clean. They could lie about the temperature checks they made, the records they kept.
But they couldn’t fool an officer who learned to look below the surface, or ask the questions they weren’t expecting. Or an officer who stopped to have a chat and a cup of tea, keen to build trust and help them improve their businesses.
Many years later, sitting in front of my computer, I realised how my years in environmental health had prepared me to investigate murder.
But it took Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to give me the confidence to create one.
An elderly lady from a picture-postcard village took the most complex puzzles and unravelled them with a calm approach and ice-cold logic. She saw the clues others missed. She made connections, based on her knowledge of people.
An ordinary person, making a difference, solving extraordinary crimes.
Could I create someone like that?
*****
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 place for thoughts on writing, reading, and the world behind the stories.
Use this link to receive Murder, Rob Wrote by email.
Or use the QR code below.
