My Dear Watson

"Are there archetypes in crime fiction you wouldn't be without? Are there any you'd happily never meet again?"

By Catriona

I do love a sidekick. Holmes' Watson, Poirot's Hastings, Wimsey's Bunter, Myron's Win . . . the supporting character saves us ploughing through a lot of internal pondering and delivers instead my favourite element in any novel: dialogue.

"I wondered how much longer I could spin out this one drink, when the barman would swipe the glass with its puddle of ice-water out from my grip and show me the door."

OR

"Don't drink so fast."
"We're on expenses."
"Who pays the expenses, genius? Oh God, here comes the barman. Spit those ice-cubes out and let them melt."
"I'll share them if you don't stop bugging me."

I know which I prefer.

Some traditional sidekicks bumble and make the hero look even more dashing and heroic (Hastings and Watson himself), some do the technical stuff that's never going to make a scene sizzle (Bunter with his camera and his insufflator), and some do the dastardly deeds that might need done but which would tarnish the hero's halo beyond all re-buffing. Win, in Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series, is a psychopath by any way of reckoning. He's got a little wart on his psychopathy, granted, in that he loves Myron. But for the rest of us, who're not Myron? I'd rather spill Tony Soprano's drink than Windsor Horne Lockwood III's. Wouldn't you?

In my own writing, Dandy Gilver's sidekick, Alec Osborne, does the dull bits and spars with the heroine but he's not a bumbler. They get a pretty fair share of the lightbulb moments each (I think), and their crotchety, competitive, nearly good-humoured dialogues are the most fun I ever have writing these books.

When I started a new series (SCOT FREE: out in the US this Sunday!) it was supposed to be an ensemble piece. There's the heroine, Lexy Campbell, and six more people - wait, seven - who she befriends at the outset of her first case, when she checks into the Last Ditch Motel. By about a third of the way through, one of the seven had become her Watson.  And looking back now, it was inevitable from the get-go. Lexy meets Todd when he barges into her motel room, demanding that she help him dispose of a spider.

“Tis gone,” I said, coming back into my own room. Todd was under the covers again.

“I heard the faucet. Did you just wash it down the plughole? Because they come back.”

“I didn’t just wash it away,” I told him. “It’s dead.”

“What did you- No! Don’t tell me! But what did you- No!”

“It’s not out the window. It’s not in your bin. It’s not over the rail. It’s not back here with me. It’s gone.”

“Gone where? Don’t tell me!”

“Okay,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go. I need to bail a friend out of jail this morning and I’m running late.”

“Would you like to borrow a hat?” said Todd.

‘It’s too hot to wear a hat,” I said.

“Hot?” said Todd. “It’s not going to be hot today. I’ll get a hat for you,” he added, standing. “The judge is never going to let your friend walk free with your hair like that."

He's got a big heart, a big brain, a lot of free time, a car, and absolutely no boundaries. He's the perfect sidekick. I know I shouldn't say this about a character I wrote, but I love him.

Now, to the second half of the question. I was going to say I found "will-they-won't-they" a bit played out, but then I remembered Robert Galbraith's novels (three and tapping my foot: where's the fourth?). They've got a terrific hero in the shambling, ex-army misfit, Cormoran Strike, but I find Robin just as compelling and the relationship between the two has breathed new life into the venerable crime-fiction trope of unresolved sexual tension. The genius of the Strike novels is that none of the tension is in the characters. They're just offered to us: Strike with his horrible ex, and his ill-judged one-night stands; Robin with her passive-aggressive fiance and her kindness. It's us, the readers, who're screaming at them to go for it. Maybe it's just me. But I'm screaming pretty loud.

Just Add Elvis.

"How do you come up with titles? Do they change during the writing process?'

By Catriona.

Like Cathy yesterday, I'm sticking to titles because the process of naming characters is so different from the process of naming books. A character name comes while I'm writing, like the fourth name of the cat, from profound meditation and rapt contemplation. (see T.S.  Eliot's "The naming of cats" here).

The name of a book, in contrast, comes once the book's written. And it comes in various ways.

A: from a message exchange between me and Terri Bischoff (Midnight Ink) that goes like this:

C: Hang My Hat okay?
Terri: Sales don't love it. What else you got?
C: Lexy, Last Ditch, Last Ditch for Lexy, Caledonia Dreamin', Lexy and The Last Ditch.
Terri: Nah.
C: I dunno. A pun?
Terri: Likes of plaid, tartan? Are you serious about the Jimmy Wig? Even with no hat in the title?  I like the woman floating in the pool.
C: I do love a drunk woman in a duct-taped inflatable. Oh! Oh! Oh! Loch Ness Monster inflatable!
T: LMAO. What's the title.
C: Oh yeah. Scot Free? Forget I said that.
T: YES!
C: No way. I was just thinking aloud.
T: I love it.
C: Oh God.

B. A short text exchange between me and Krystyna Green (Little,Brown) that goes like this:

K: House.Tree.Person is the worst title I've ever heard. It's just three random words. Can you give me something better in twenty minutes?
C: Ha!
C: (twenty minutes later) Angels Unaware, The Dance of Angels, The Weight of Angels.
K: Weight of Angels! Ta.

Coda:
C: (emails Terri Bischoff): London is calling HTP The Weight of Angels. Waddaya think?
T: Won't work in the US market. Buyers will think it's real angels.
C: Real angels?
T: Inspirational Christian fiction.
C: Oh, jeez. It's really not.
T: House.Tree.Person is a great title.

C: Phone call with Francine Toon (Hodder & Stoughton)

F: Dandy word, crimey word, plotty word.
C: Dandy word, crimey word, plotty word.
F: Dandy Gilver and a Dandy word . . .
C: And a crimey word . . .
F: Dandy Gilver and  . . . unseemly, appalling, dreadful, distressing.
C: fearful, frightful, rather.
F: corpse, death, body, murder, crime, clue. And a plotty word.
C: Nun, convent, orphan, habit.
F: Ooooh, habit!
C: Dandy Gilver and The Rather Unseemy Habit?
F: But church people with bad habits? And an orphanage?
C: OMG. No way. That's dreadful. So not unseemly, or distressing, appalling and all that if it's habit.
F: Mysterious.
C: Misleading.
F: DANDY GILVER AND A MOST MISLEADING HABIT!

(Note: this book has been called The Nuns in every email since that day. )

The only one I still pine for was my working title on a book that ended up being called Growing Up Again. It was a time-travel caper - think Forrest Gump joins Friends Reunited on Groundhog Day - and I called it SAVE ELVIS. which is job one for a time traveller. Well, the publisher wasn't having it. I tried. I even handed out questionnaires to the core demographic readership asking which title they preferred. (They preferred Save Elvis.) But the publisher thought Elvis was a forgotten and,  even if remembered, then a sad, old, dead man. No good for a caper.

When Growing Up Again was published there had just been a self-help book out called Growing Up Again: parenting our children, parenting ourselves. Deeply caper-free. And at the launch event, the bookshop staff - in all innocence - set me up in front of a display for a new Elvis biography. Oy. God bless my mum for her sense of humour too. She always bakes a book cake. Here's the cake for Growing Up Again:

I'm still glad it happened, though, because no title change since then has had the power to hurt me. Whether it's a skoosh like the upcoming Go To My Grave. which was my working title and is a go in the UK and US, or a struggle like Lexy Campbell Bk 2 (watch this space) it rolls off me like split mayo.

Scot Free: 8th April (US only) Midnight Ink
Go To My Grave: 23rd October Minotaur (US) Little,Brown (UK)
The new Dandy? We're still having Dandy word, crimey word, plotty word phone calls.