Back to Normal

Well, that’s another festive season over and done with, and everything goes back to normal today. Ultra-normal, as it happens. Her Indoors is at the dentist’s today and I’m at the doctor’s tomorrow.

And the year has begun the way the last one ended, which is hardly surprising considering the other only ended the day before yesterday. On New Year’s Eve, nine out of the ten STAC Mysteries were in the Amazon UK Cosy Crime chart, this morning all ten of them are in there, and that’s a satisfying end to 2013 and an equally satisfying beginning to 2014.

Why are they so popular? Beats me. I only write them, and I have a lot of fun doing so. But a comment from A Jardine, made on The Filey Connection, soon after its release in 2012, gives a pointer.

The characters all seem like people you’ve met at some time.

That’s because they’re based on the hundreds, thousands of people I met during a working life which had me travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain. These are just everyday, ordinary folk who drag themselves out of bed, put in a day’s work, save their pennies and when they get out on a weekend jaunt, they enjoy it.

We can imagine Sheila passing her time dusting off her ornaments and hoovering the carpet. We can easily imagine Brenda spending hours wandering round the clothing stores, and it’s no stretch of the imagination to think of Joe doing the books of a night, and working out the bread order for the following day while watching Midsomer Murders and criticising Barnaby for his inefficiency.

The tales are easy going, light hearted, but essentially, they’re puzzles, challenging the reader to match Joe’s powers of observation and spot the tell-tale clues to the killer’s identity.

Do I stretch suspension of disbelief? Occasionally, I suppose I do, but almost everything which happens apparently by coincidence in the STAC Mysteries, has happened to me in real life. Take My Deadly Valentine, for example, where Joe is questioned on the Valentine Strangler inquiry. Would that really happen?

Why not? I was interviewed during the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry back in the 1970s for no other reason than I happened to own a white Ford Cortina at the time, and the police were questioning everyone who owned white Ford Cortinas.

The STAC Mysteries enjoyed an excellent 2013. So what for the future?

The next one is taking shape, and it’ll be with you sometime coming up to Easter. And I promise you there will be on or two surprises in it.

Happy New Year.