A Hundred Thousand Dragons

The big news of my week is that copies of my new book, A Hundred Thousand Dragons turned up. Yo! Much Rejoicings! It’s actually published on the 27^th May.  I knew that, and didn’t think there was any reason why it shouldn’t be out by then, but it’s terrific to hold the actual book itself.  It all seems a lot more real, somehow, when you’ve got the “proper” book in your hand.

Dragons is a little bit different from Jack’s earlier adventures because Jack himself is the focus of the mystery.  In one way that seems like a dumb thing to say, because, off the top of your head, you’d think that the detective always has to be the hero, right? A “rule” of literature is – classic literature, that is – that the hero/heroine/main character has to be changed by their experiences by the end of the book.  Jane Austen’s Emma, Hamlet, David Copperfield etc. (insert a famous literary character of your choice here)  are all changed in some way.  Perhaps they’re older, sadder, wiser, married or dead, but they’re certainly changed.  It’s all very satisfying for the reader as we accompany Elizabeth Bennet, say, through her various vicissitudes and, as Oscar Wilde would say, in that wonderful two-edged way of his, “The good end happily and the bad unhappily.  That is what Fiction means.”

However, when it comes to serial characters, there’s a hitch.

Serial characters, such as Sherlock Holmes (and thanks to Dr Watson for his observations last week) Hercule Poirot, James Bond, Bertie Wooster, Richard Hannay and Fu Manchu have to be more or less whole and entire for their next excursion.

If Elizabeth Bennet decided to ditch Mr Darcy and have another go at the matrimonial stakes we’d think a) she was off her chump (especially if Colin Firth is Mr Darcy) and b) short-changed by Pride and Prejudice. Hercule Poirot dreamed of jacking in detection and growing vegetable marrows; Agatha Christie was far too fly to let him have his own way.  When he did escape to the country in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? she gets him in back in line pretty sharply when the aforesaid Roger turns up  wearing a dagger in his neck.

I suppose the ultimate in Comeback Characters is Dracula.  He might be a pile of dust, Van Helsing might hang up his stake and relax about drawing the curtains in the evening, but we know that you can’t keep a good vampire down.  Somewhere, somehow, violins are shrieking a scary tune as blood drips on the dust… And Van Helsing has all the weary work to do again.

Serial characters can marry but being the spouse of a serial character tends to be a dodgy career move.  Bumping off Her Indoors is always an option (James Bond took this route) but spouses can be threatened, kidnapped or tread their own cloth-headed path, such as keeping the date with the one-eyed Mysterious Stranger down the fog-filled docks under the impression that it’s the partner of their joys and sorrows who has summoned them to the meeting.  Sherlock Holmes took a sterner view of women.  He permitted them to marry Watson but never took the plunge himself.

So how to square the circle?  In detective stories, desperately exciting things happen to other people and the detective gets drawn into the action that way. However, every so often, the character and the story come together so the detective is the story.  It can’t happen often, as there is a limit to how many life-changing events a protagonist, however willing, can go through without straining a reader’s credulity, but it can happen occasionally.  It happens in A Hundred Thousand Dragons – and I do hope you enjoy it!

The case of Bo-Peep and the missing sheep

This week, I’m glad to say, I’ve secured the services of a distinguished guest blogger, Dr J.H. Watston, M.D.

From the diary of Dr Watson

It is with a heavy heart I take up my pen – no, hang on, I think I’ll keep that line to use another time.  Here’s another opening line; I have never known my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, to be in better form than in the spring of 1894.

Yes, that’ll do.  It isn’t 1894, of course.   I only put that in to confuse the punters.  I had returned to Baker Street after my fourteenth marriage in a state of some ire (one of these days I’ll find a wife who can remember my first name) to update my website (www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com) a name that Holmes himself had suggested.

Holmes was in a good mood that day.  I knew he was feeling light-hearted when he suggested one of his jolliest games, the one where I stand against the wall and he picks out my outline in revolver bullets.  He has achieved several good likenesses of me in that way and the wounds take no time at all to heal.  He was just filling in the shading round my moustache when Mrs Hudson, our redoubtable landlady, burst into the room in a state of some agitation.

“Mr Holmes!” she cried, ushering in to the room a huge shepherdess.  “This is a friend of mine, Miss Little Bo-Peep.”

“Little?” asked Holmes, in his penetrating way.

“Get over it,” said the shepherdess, flexing her crook warningly.  “Anyone who’s called Sherlock shouldn’t make remarks about other people’s names.”

“I was entertaining Miss Bo-Peep in the kitchen,” explained Mrs Hudson.  “You know the sort of thing, sir.  I was balancing a cheese-grater on my nose and juggling pans as usual, but despite my best efforts, Miss Bo-Peep remained morose and distrait.”

At this point Miss Bo-Peep burst into tears. “It’s my sheep,” she explained.

“You’ve lost them?” asked Holmes.

Miss Bo-Peep nodded sadly.

“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration.  “You astound me, Holmes!”

“Why not try leaving the sheep alone, Miss Bo-Peep?” he asked, reaching for his violin.   Then, as the sound of a saxophone came from the street below, an expression of disgust marked his finely-chiselled features.  “Excuse me,” he said briefly.  “It’s that chap Gerry Rafferty again.”  And, walking to the window, he let off a fusillade of shots.  There was a yelp from below.  “It’s one of the problems of living on Baker Street,” he explained, shutting the window.  “If you leave your sheep alone, they will come home, and, unless I am much mistaken, they will be wagging their tails behind them.”

“But they haven’t come home!” wailed Bo-Peep.  She reached into her reticule  (which looked painful).“This is my only clue.” She drew out a knitted jersey. “It was left in the field.”

Holmes looked at it keenly.  “Ah-ah!  This explains everything, does it not, Watson?”

I shook my head, unable to follow the train of thought which was so evident to his keen mind.

“Have you, Miss Bo-Peep, seen a trampoline salesman in the neighbourhood?”

“Why, yes, Mr Holmes.”

“Find that trampoline salesman, Miss Bo-Peep, and you have solved your mystery.  Your sheep will be bouncing up and down on the trampoline.”

“Good heavens!” I broke in, unable to restrain my admiration.  “You astound me, Holmes!  But what is this villain’s fell purpose?”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” said Holmes with a smile.  “The trampoline salesman is turning them all into woolly jumpers.”

Raise A Glass

I’m sorry to have been away for a while. My computer’s been playing up and, because it’s Easter, Justin, the local computer guru, has been strangely unobtainable. However, I love Easter.  The weather’s improved out of all recognition so – and this is probably bad for my figure – we can have the back door open and Barney and Lucky (canines) and Snooker, Minou and Arthur (felines) can come and go without all the carry-on of barking, scratching and meowing to get out followed by barking, scratching and meowing to get in.  Yours Truly seems to act as an animals’ janitor from October onwards to April or thereabouts. Not that means the animals in question are particularly pleased with life; when they’re in they want to be out and when they’re out they want to be in and when the door’s left open they fuss about the draught.

The other thing is that, now Lent’s over, I can drink red wine with a clear conscience once more.  I usually try and give it up for Lent, spurred on by the incredulity of my family that I can do any such thing (not that I’ve got a problem or anything, it’s just that I love the stuff).  This year my Lenten abstinence was pretty spotty, even by my elastic standards.  It wasn’t I gave it up particularly, but I did whinge about it.

However, what with books to write and decorating to do, to say nothing of the Other Half being away for large lumps of March, I thought I had enough to be going on with without giving the elbow to the true, the blushful hippocrene, with beaded bubbles winking at the rim, as Keats, who obviously liked a couple as well, called it.  Keats was spotted as toper, I recall, by the Monty Python bunch in their immortal words:  Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and Keats was fond of a dram…

And then there’s eggs; lots and lots of choccy eggs.  I’m not that bothered about chocolate but I’d feel aggrieved if the celebration wasn’t marked with a certain amount of solidified cocoa-butter and the junior members of the family would feel as if the sky had fallen in.

Our Easter-egg giving had to be postponed – it’s usually first thing in the morning – as the Children’s Group at church was doing the Easter Garden and I was a prime mover.

A couple of years ago, moved by some obscure impulse or other, I decided that an Easter Garden would be nice.  Like any average guardian of the young, I spent years being covered in a mixture of PVA glue and water and clouds of flour as I made play-dough.  Once the taste for PVA glue gets into your system, it never really leaves.  I like making things and painting, and it’s always nice to have an excuse to do a bit. Anyway, a six-foot junk model of a more or less desert landscape backed up with a six-foot painting of a Jerusalem-ish place was the result, complete with miniature things, such as a spear (clay modelled on a skewer) and a Holy Grail (that’s a chalice, not Mary Magdalene!) and a little donkey nicked from the crib set.  The kids from the Children’s Group take it in turn to put the objects into the garden whilst other kids describe what’s going on to the congregation.  It always seems to work well, but it’s actually fairly loosely organized chaos.  Just like life, really.

Here’s what the completed garden looked like.  There’s another picture at the top of the blog.  It should be down here, but I got it in the wrong place – ah well! Now where’s my chocolate….