Alan Titchmarsh as inspiration
The initial inspiration for Inspector Hobbes
came from seeing a television programme in which Alan Titchmarsh, made up to
look like a Neanderthal, walked through a busy street. If I remember rightly,
only one person, a young woman, really noticed him, and stared for a moment.
This gave me the idea that Neanderthals, or possibly individuals from some other branch of the
human tree, might still exist, living in our midst, generally unremarked. Then, one
evening, sometime later, I visited a local video store, where a family renting
videos struck me as so strange in their manners, appearance, and speech that it
brought the Titchmarsh Neanderthal, and the concept that they are still among
us, back to mind.
Shortly
afterwards, Inspector Hobbes came to life as a character in a short story. He,
concealed behind the façade of a police detective, was not quite human, being
of extraordinary strength, and having retained certain animal characteristics
and senses. People hearing the story seemed to find the character appealing, so
I wrote a couple more, playing around with the character. Although these went
reasonably well, I thought they weren't really going anywhere, but that Hobbes
might be able to sustain a novel.
And Sherlock Holmes
An early
problem was that I found I was unable to get into his mind, in the same way I
would be unable to comprehend what is happening in the mind of, say, a dog.
Although I could have used a third person narrative form, I thought about the
Sherlock Holmes stories, being a fan of them. In these, since Holmes' thought
processes are obviously so different to those of normal people, Conan-Doyle
used the device of a narrator, Dr Watson, to carry the story. I decided to do
something similar, and Andy Caplet became my narrator. Since I needed a reason
to get Andy involved with Hobbes, I made him a local reporter. Andy's name came
from an old photograph I'd seen of composers Claude Debussy and Andre Caplet
together. Debussy was large and hairy, a bit like I imagined Hobbes, whereas
Caplet appeared small and insignificant. As the novel developed, Andy,
struggling against his many flaws, became the central character.
Mrs
Goodfellow, the eccentric, tooth-collecting housekeeper, appeared fully formed,
and apparently out of nowhere. She just seemed to be essential, and the sort of
woman who would look after and care for an outsider like Hobbes. As for Dregs,
Hobbes's big, bad dog, I wasn't sure why he appeared, but knew he was
necessary. Even so, it was only as the plot worked itself out that I understood
why.
Other
characters, particularly the non-human ones, developed from the sort of people
Hobbes, would know. After all, if you accept the possibility of one non-human
being living in town, it is a small stretch to accept there may be others, even
if they are not all the same, and mythic beings may have had some basis in
fact. The plot developed from these characters, as well as those Andy knew. I
made up the word unhuman to describe
Hobbes, rather than using inhuman, which carries connotations of cruelty.Cotswolds setting
I set the action in and around Sorenchester, a fictional Cotswold town. All the characters and the locations in the book are entirely fictitious, arising from my own warped mind.
At the end of Inspector Hobbes and the Blood, realising there was still potential for stories with Andy, Hobbes, Mrs Goodfellow and Dregs, I began the, now completed, second book in the unhuman series, Inspector Hobbes and the Curse, and am now editing the third in the series.
Available from
Inspector Hobbes and the Blood is published by The Witcherley Book Company on 26 July 2013. It is available in paperback (ISBN: 978-0-9576351-0-4 £7.99) or kindle (ISBN: 978-0-9576351-1-1 £4.99) and is available from amazon, or it can also be ordered from bookshops. As well as amazons worldwide it is being distributed by Adlibris.com, Bertrams, Blackwell, Book Depository, Coutts, Gardners, Mallory International, Paperback Shop, Eden Interactive Ltd., Aphrohead in the UK and worldwide, and by Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble in the US. It will also be available to createspace resellers (https://www.createspace.com/pub/l/createspacedirect.do?rewrite=true).
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