#damp squib headlines
The detective novel game is somewhat oversubscribed. But it’s worth getting into. If you get it right, the sales can be colossal.
Even in the Twenty-First century air travel is an unconscionably dull affair. Passengers, in the main, prefer not to spend half a day staring through a small reinforced-glass porthole at endless vistas of cloud and sea. Instead most elect to while away the journey with some Cluedo-themed literature.
Why mysteries win out in the war of the airport spinner racks is still something of a mystery itself. Perhaps it’s because in war or sci-fi novels there’s always the danger of some sort of aircraft crashing somewhere around page 52, just as the seatbelt demonstration has finished and there’s no chance of getting off.
It’s easier to relax when you know your book’s definitely about someone else getting dismembered.
And you can’t read erotic fiction if you’re seated three abreast. Not without being invited to sign the sex offenders’ register as you disembark.
But because of the potential size of the detective novel market, there’s a lot of competition. It’s a veritable soup of sleuths
All the front runners have a USP. Some gimmick that elevates them above the gazpacho of generic gumshoes.
There are elderly English lady detectives and tubby Swedish detectives. There are Jewish detectives and Catholic detectives. There are detectives that are really doctors and detectives that are in fact professors of symbology, whatever that is.
There’s even a Belgian detective. The only thing that they have in common was that they each have a characteristic that makes them unique.
Some have more than one. That Colin Dexter really gilded it. He gave his detective character opera, crosswords and a nice car. Oh and beer. And a rather irascible nature. But, crucially, Inspector Morse worked in Oxford.
There aren’t many professions left that haven’t had their own detective these days. But you can always get away with specifying a geographical region. The regional detective is by far your easiest route to the big ‘bored airline traveller’ bucks.
But I‘ll tell you what’s wrong with every regional detective novel ever written. They’re too fanciful by half. There are very few regional newspaper headlines about rogue psychiatrists with a taste for lightly sautéed postmen. Most newspaper headlines look like this.
And that’s where I come in. Inspector Gurnard, a brilliant sleuth based on the Isle Of Wight, doesn’t concern himself with serial killers. There are hardly any of those in Ryde. And none at all in Cowes.
But there are lots of disagreements over beach huts, and shoplifting sprees in bucket and spade emporiums. Every Inspector Gurnard story really will be ‘torn from tomorrow’s headlines.’
As an example, here’s a pivotal scene from Chapter 12 of the first Inspector Gurnard Novel — Mister Softee Leaves At Four;
Gurnard eyed the suspect. All he knew so far was the man’s name. Michael Moran. Moran claimed that he was in Ventnor on holiday, and that he’d only been on the beach for 45 minutes.
Every cell of his detective’s brain told him the man was lying. But he needed proof. The last time he’d hauled a villain before the local magistrate talking about a hunch she’d thrown the case out of court. Then again, thought Gurnard ruefully, it didn’t help that Margot did have a touch of Kyphosis. She was probably a touch sensitive about that, being only 63.
This was no time to use up valuable brain time on the delectable Margot though. He looked again at the man in the chair, who shifted uneasily in the striped canvas. Gurnard circled the chair menacingly, then — expertly hitching up the knees of his slacks to prevent unsightly bagging — squatted down next to the probable scofflaw. “Tell me again,” the detective said, softly “what time you started using this deck-chair.”
Moran’s eyes gleamed with eagerness, or fear, or perhaps just a slight excess of contact-lens solution. “It was definitely quarter-past, because I’d just seen the ferry go out, and they go at fifteen past the hour on weekdays.”
Gurnard rose, and circled the chair once more. But this time, as he did, an incredible transformation came over the detective. Larger forces might be able to afford two detectives to play ‘good cop bad cop’ but the cash-strapped Isle Of Wight force made even their best men multitask.
So, as he reached the fluttering canvas windbreak his shoulders relaxed, his face softened and the beginning of a smile dawned on the inspector’s tanned, careworn face.
“Fancy a 99?” he said to the momentarily discombobulated villain.
“Um….yes please” Moran said. He’d obviously never played this game before.
“Chocolate sauce?” Gurnard purred silkily. “Sprinkles?”
Moran swallowed, lumpily. “The one I had before, they had some new sauce. It was blue. Bubblegum flavour. Can I have that?”
Gurnard’s smile vanished, like a small puddle on a hot day. “You had the bubblegum sauce from the ice-cream van on the promenade did you?”
“Yeah…” said Moran, unwittingly sealing his doom.
Gurnard crouched down beside the suspect again, in his haste omitting to hitch up his slacks. “Then you must already have been here for an hour when Ray the deck-chair man asked you for payment. Mister Softee leaves at four.”
Did you notice how I introduced myself as a character? Post-modern that is. That’s the kind of flannel brainy people give you prizes for. Imagine. Not just a standard detective novel. A detective novel with ‘Booker Prize Winner’ written on the front.
Commission this one and we’ll be rolling in cash. You may as well pick out the luxury beach hut you’re going to buy right now.
