This is another of my posts reminding visitors to my website about one of my older crime novels that they may have forgotten, on this occasion Death List. (The Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) one of the DCI John Blizzard series – and it comes with an example of the many elements that go into the birth of a book.
| I know from what readers say that a lot of them are fascinated by the moment a story is born and the catalyst for this novel was, in part, the author’s favourite phrase ‘what if?’, in this case what if someone declared war on the forces of law and order? How far would they go? How far could they go? Could they really win if they got their act together? These thoughts interested me but there was another creative force at work at the same time and there was deliberately no indication in the early pages of the novel that this was a ‘big’ story, with all that mayhem to come, rather one that was exactly the opposite, somewhat claustrophobic – and that part of the process was inspired by ‘sense of place’, which is where most of my stories begin. I am reminded of all this when I look back at the opening pages and recall that myself and my wife had just moved onto the Scottish hillside where we still live (the cottage is pictured here) because several of the incidents in the opening novel were inspired by our new home. For instance, at the beginning of the book, an undercover detective is shot in the kitchen of his hillside cottage (except it’s our cottage and Frances was not entirely enamoured by the thought of attempted murder most foul in our newly-decorated kitchen!). Adding to that inspiration, the assassin waited for his victim in the a copse near our new home and made his getaway across the hillside on which our cottage. After that, the story quickly gets big as the two elements fuse into one, taking in the nearby city of Hafton and widening the story’s vista. A routine police patrol is fired on from close range, there are threats to others and Blizzard discovers that there’s a list of names of officers to be assassinated – and he’s on it, ensuring that the stones are terrifyingly personal. With the undercover officer hovering near death and public confidence spiralling, the inspector launches a wave of raids on the city’s most dangerous criminals and it’s all put war. So, who did win? To find out who won, you can purchase the novel in various formats at Amazon on www.amazon.co.uk |
John Dean - Crime Writer 
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