Interesting Times

After my first novel, BACKLASH, was finished, I didn't want to write a series of novels based around the same central character. I knew that was the commercial thing to do, but, quite frankly, I didn't want to put poor Mo through any more torment. (Mo was the first-person narrator of that novel).

In a moment of madness - I suggested a series based on a single time period, a single place. Three novels tied together by the same set of external events, but following different characters. The people at Simon & Schuster were enthusiastic about the idea. It was settled.

But think for a moment - one period of 2 weeks in Leicester. Three crime novels. They say Oxford had a high fictional body-count after Colin Dexter's wonderful Morse novels. But Leicester had horrendous body-rate once BREAKBEAT and BURNOUT were written - at least for that fictional two week period.

Interesting times. If anyone has counted up the bodies, please let me know.

The trick, of course, was to make sure that not all the bodies were discovered during that two week period. Otherwise it might give Leicester a bad name. Fictionally, at least.