To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.
But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.
That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.
It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years. Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?
My private detective, Harry Walthenson
I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.
But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it. Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.
Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life. I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.
Then there’s the title, like
The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello
The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister. And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.
But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.
Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.
Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.
I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021. It even has a cover.
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
How many of us would ever get caught up in a dangerous situation ever in a lifetime?
How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we don’t know about?
I had been thinking about it a lot when I discovered my mother’s previous boyfriend, the man whom was the love of her life.
Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, a half brother or sister.
There were many ways of putting a spin on this premise.
Then, in the back of my mind I remembered a story an acquaintance at works was once telling us over morning tea, that a fried of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other knowing of their half brother only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.
It was an enormous coincidence.
And we all wondered what the sisters had planned as retribution for the man who had lied to them both.
Of course it could also be said that they could have spoken to each other long before it came to that, but like a lot of families, small problems become much larger ones when allowed to fester, and cause almost unhealable rifts. It had n this case.
Sometimes the backstory can be just as interesting as the story itself.
Today’s effort amounts to 2,573 words, for a total, so far, of 49,443.
Usually, from a very early age, you have some idea of what you intend to do with your life.
Those early choices of fireman, policeman, doctor, fighter pilot, slowly disappear from the list as the education requirements become clearer, and their degree of impossibility.
Then you have to factor in academic achievement or failure, hone situation, what blows life has dealt you, and your financial ability to fund any it all of your hopes and dreams, especially for that all-important university education, and even then, it has to be the right one.
Then there are the family aspirations where parents really want you to follow in their footsteps, as a doctor or a lawyer or in the military.
And if you get past all that, and everything has fallen into place, and you’re ready to head out on that highway of life, you should be fully imbibed with the knowledge and the drive to make everything happen.
…
Now I was lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling wondering at what point it all went wrong.
Right on the starting line where everything I had worked for was about to come to fruition, it had all come to an abrupt halt.
My memory got as far as driving home from a work party where we had been celebrating the company’s most recent success, and my progression to the next level of management, when a car failed to stop at a stop sign and T-boned me.
The car was a write-off. I was still not sure what happened to me, but I had heard someone say, in that murky twilight of pain medication, that if I was a horse, they would have to shoot me. It was the only thing I remembered between the car hitting mine and waking up in the hospital bed.
But that was not all the story, and I had plenty of time mull over everything that had happened in that last week. There was a certain symmetry to it all, as if one event led to the next, and then the next, and it was the last straw, on the last day, that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
…
And here’s the thing.
I would not have been in that accident had I not taken the car. I wasn’t going to, I had intended to take the train to a friends place and stay there for a few days, what the boss had told me would be a well earned rest.
Even then, I might have not taken the car, except for a cryptic text message I received from my sister, about needing to be ‘rescued’ from a bad date.
Nothing unusual for her, she was currently on a dating site binge, and after half a dozen bad experiences, I thought she had given up.
That was the thought that ran through my head as I watched her curled up in the chair next to the bed, half asleep.
Her first words, on arrival, and when she was allowed to see me, was to apologise, believing it had been her fault. She knew I hated driving in the city, so coming to get her, as I always did, had been preying on her mind, and I could see the tangible effects of it in the worried expression, and unkempt manner which was so totally unlike her.
“It was simply an accident, and could have happened to anyone,” I told her.
“You were going to Jeremy’s, I should have sorted my own problem out for once. IT’s not as if I couldn’t just call up an Uber, and now look what’s happened. I’m so sorry.”
She wouldn’t accept that it was not her fault, nor would she leave until she knew I would be OK. I didn’t understand what she meant by that because in the three discussions I had with the head doctor, I was going to make a full recovery.
He had used the work lucky more than once, and seemingly the sequence of events, and other factors like the car safety features, the angle the car had struck, and where, the fact the other driver had to dodge a pedestrian, all of it played a part.
Had they not, quite simply I would be dead.
My sister and her dating was only one aspect of how my life was being driven.
Another memory returned, from that week, that of another text message, from a girl I used to know back at University.
Erica.
She was what some might have called a free soul. She didn’t conform to what I would have called normal. Her clothes sense was somewhat odd, she always looked as though her hair needed combing, and she never had any money.
And, for a while, she lived with me, in a small, cramped room ideal for single University students on a budge, but not for two. Yet, for some strange reason, she never seemed to get in the way, or mind the closeness of our existence.
In that short period, she became my first real love, but she had said that while we were together, it was fine, but she was not seeking anything permanent. Nor, she said, did she believe in monogamy. Until she left, studies completed, I wanted to believe she would stay, but a last lingering kiss goodbye and she was gone.
Now, the message said, she wondered if I was still free, and like to meet. Of course, ten years of water had passed under that bridge, so I was not sure where it would go. I hadn’t replied, and the message was still sitting on my phone.
That invitation, however, had been n my mind moments before the crash, and I had to wonder, thinking of her, contributed to it.
Then, on top of all that, there was my parents. Married for 40 years, and the epitome of the perfect marriage.
Or so I thought.
That morning, before I went to work, I had called in to see them after my mother had called the day before saying she wanted to talk to me about something.
Before I knocked on the door, I could hear yelling from behind the door, and it seemed the perfect marriage had hit a rocky stretch.
Or simply that my father had chosen to have an affair, and had been caught out by the simplest of means, my mother answered his phone when he was out of the room thinking it was important work matters, only to discover it was his ‘floozie’.
No guessing then why my mother had called me. After hearing all I wanted to, and not wanting to face an angry couple I just headed on to work.
My mother had yet to come to the hospital to see me. My father had been, but he made no mention of her, or anything else, except to tell me if there was anything I wanted, all I had to do was ask. Then he left, and hadn’t come back.
Then, last but not least, were the rumours.
The owner of the company I worked for was getting older and didn’t have an heir. One thing or another had managed to foil his succession plans, and in the end, he did not have a son or a daughter to pass the reins to.
With the latest success, the company was about to have a bigger profile which meant more work, and plans to open branches in other cities. It was too much for one man, now in his 70s, and looking to wind down.
A rumour had started about a week before the accident that he was looking to sell, and there were at least half a dozen suitors. There was supposed to be an announcement, but it hadn’t happened while I was at work, but, considering how long I’d been in hospital, and the two weeks in an induced coma, anything could have happened.
Louisa stretched, and changed positions.
“You look better,” she said.
“Relative to what, or when?”
“Half an hour ago.”
I shook my head. Sometimes Louisa was prone to saying the oddest stuff. “What’s the deal between our parents. Dad was here for all of five minutes. Where’s our mother?”
“She left.”
OK. Blunt, but plausible. “Why?”
“Dad was being an ass.”
“Does she know I was in an accident?”
“I told her.”
“So, you’re seeing her?”
“She calls. I don’t know where she is. I think she might have gone to stay with one of our aunt’s.”
I sighed. Louise had an awfully bad memory, and I was sure one day she was going to forget who I was.
There were four sisters, mother the youngest. She had a love hate relationship with the middle two, so the best bet would be the eldest sister, Jane. Jane was also the crankiest because she hated children, never got married, and was set in her ways.
Then, there was something else lurking in the back of my mind. Another item I’d overheard when I suspect I was not meant to be listening.
I might not have a job to go back to if the company had been sold, I might not have a home to go back to if my parents had split up, and I might not be able to do anything for a long, long time. Recovery might be complete, but it wasn’t going to happen overnight.
I had a sister who blamed herself for my accident, and an old girlfriend who wanted to see me, though I suspect not like this, broken and useless. What else could there be.
Oh, yes. Another snipped from the shouting match behind the door. And an explanation why my father had all but abandoned me. My mother had also had an affair, and his son, well he was not his son.
No surprise then I had a father who didn’t want to know me.
What else could go wrong?
There was movement outside the room, and raised voices, one of which was saying that whoever was out there couldn’t go into the room. It didn’t have any effect as seconds later, a man and a police officer came in. The officer stood by the door.
Louisa looked surprised, but didn’t move.
The man, obviously a detective, came over. “Your name Oliver Watkins?”
It was, and hopefully still is. “Yes.”
“I need you to answer some questions.”
“About the accident?”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then realised what I was referring to. “No. Not the accident. About the embezzlement of 50 million dollars from the company you work for. It seems you didn’t cover your tracks very well.” He turned around to look at Louisa, “You need to leave now, miss.”
“I’ll stay.”
He nodded to the officer, “You leave now, or he will remove you.”
She looked at me, a different expression, “You didn’t tell me you were a crook, Olly.”
“Because I’m not.”
The officer escorted her from the room and shut the door.
The detective sat in the recently vacated chair. “Now, Mr Watkins. It seems there is such a thing as karma.”
Everyone knows what a stick is, it’s a lump of wood that you throw out in front of you, and if your dog is inclined to, he will run out and fetch it back.
Of course, there’s the obstinate ones who just lie down on the ground and look at you like you’re foolishly throwing away something useful.
For instance, that stick, and a few others that would be very useful to light a campfire, or just a woodfire in the house, during winter.
Or it can be a stick of wood needed for something else, like a building project, of of those highly secret affairs that go on in the locked shed at the bottom of the garden.
I’m sure the dog who refuses to fetch sticks knows exactly what is going on there, but is disinclined to say.
But..
If you are looking at the gooey sense of the word, there is an old saying, if you throw enough mud, some of it sticks’.
Yes, you can stick stuff to stuff, such as words cut out of various newspapers to make up a ransom, or warning, note.
Too many mystery movies, I know.
Paint will stick to timber, or any surface really.
Mud sticks to the bottom of shoes or boots and then becomes analysable evidence.
I can stick to you like glue, which means, really, where you go I go, quite handy if you are trying to stop an opposition player from scoring in a game.
I can use a walking stick, beat someone with a stick, use a stick to fly a plane, or a gear stick to move a car.
I’m sure, if you think about it, you can come up with a dozen more ways to use it.
Jack finally gets to spend those moments with Rosalie that were so tantalisingly close before he left.
The question is, would he had got the courage to do so if it had not been for the events that had just occurred. There always seems to be an element of danger that spurs people on to do things they might not necessarily do if life had not taken a particular turn.
But, it was everything he expected, and more.
Of course, as advised yesterday, there are problems, not of their making but of the intrepid Maryanne, who reveals herself now as an agent working for an organisation that is equally after the package that Jack’s mother had left in Rosalie’s safe keeping.
And ironically it is Rosalie who captures Maryanne in the act of trying to steal it.
So, if an effort to keep it from everyone Rosalie agrees to leave with the package and tell no one where she is. Not until Jack decided what he’s going to do with it. One possibility is to use it to get his mother back, but like all ransom exchanges, it never turns out the way it’s supposed to.
So, Maryanne is going to have to come up with a convincing plan to get Jack onside, but the lies and deception are not a very good start in forming trust.
It’s an interesting premise, and beyond the raw writing, I fear it will need some more work to get it where I want it to be.
Today’s effort amounts to 3,111 words, for a total, so far, of 46,870.
Usually, from a very early age, you have some idea of what you intend to do with your life.
Those early choices of fireman, policeman, doctor, fighter pilot, slowly disappear from the list as the education requirements become clearer, and their degree of impossibility.
Then you have to factor in academic achievement or failure, hone situation, what blows life has dealt you, and your financial ability to fund any it all of your hopes and dreams, especially for that all-important university education, and even then, it has to be the right one.
Then there are the family aspirations where parents really want you to follow in their footsteps, as a doctor or a lawyer or in the military.
And if you get past all that, and everything has fallen into place, and you’re ready to head out on that highway of life, you should be fully imbibed with the knowledge and the drive to make everything happen.
…
Now I was lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling wondering at what point it all went wrong.
Right on the starting line where everything I had worked for was about to come to fruition, it had all come to an abrupt halt.
My memory got as far as driving home from a work party where we had been celebrating the company’s most recent success, and my progression to the next level of management, when a car failed to stop at a stop sign and T-boned me.
The car was a write-off. I was still not sure what happened to me, but I had heard someone say, in that murky twilight of pain medication, that if I was a horse, they would have to shoot me. It was the only thing I remembered between the car hitting mine and waking up in the hospital bed.
But that was not all the story, and I had plenty of time mull over everything that had happened in that last week. There was a certain symmetry to it all, as if one event led to the next, and then the next, and it was the last straw, on the last day, that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
…
And here’s the thing.
I would not have been in that accident had I not taken the car. I wasn’t going to, I had intended to take the train to a friends place and stay there for a few days, what the boss had told me would be a well earned rest.
Even then, I might have not taken the car, except for a cryptic text message I received from my sister, about needing to be ‘rescued’ from a bad date.
Nothing unusual for her, she was currently on a dating site binge, and after half a dozen bad experiences, I thought she had given up.
That was the thought that ran through my head as I watched her curled up in the chair next to the bed, half asleep.
Her first words, on arrival, and when she was allowed to see me, was to apologise, believing it had been her fault. She knew I hated driving in the city, so coming to get her, as I always did, had been preying on her mind, and I could see the tangible effects of it in the worried expression, and unkempt manner which was so totally unlike her.
“It was simply an accident, and could have happened to anyone,” I told her.
“You were going to Jeremy’s, I should have sorted my own problem out for once. IT’s not as if I couldn’t just call up an Uber, and now look what’s happened. I’m so sorry.”
She wouldn’t accept that it was not her fault, nor would she leave until she knew I would be OK. I didn’t understand what she meant by that because in the three discussions I had with the head doctor, I was going to make a full recovery.
He had used the work lucky more than once, and seemingly the sequence of events, and other factors like the car safety features, the angle the car had struck, and where, the fact the other driver had to dodge a pedestrian, all of it played a part.
Had they not, quite simply I would be dead.
My sister and her dating was only one aspect of how my life was being driven.
Another memory returned, from that week, that of another text message, from a girl I used to know back at University.
Erica.
She was what some might have called a free soul. She didn’t conform to what I would have called normal. Her clothes sense was somewhat odd, she always looked as though her hair needed combing, and she never had any money.
And, for a while, she lived with me, in a small, cramped room ideal for single University students on a budge, but not for two. Yet, for some strange reason, she never seemed to get in the way, or mind the closeness of our existence.
In that short period, she became my first real love, but she had said that while we were together, it was fine, but she was not seeking anything permanent. Nor, she said, did she believe in monogamy. Until she left, studies completed, I wanted to believe she would stay, but a last lingering kiss goodbye and she was gone.
Now, the message said, she wondered if I was still free, and like to meet. Of course, ten years of water had passed under that bridge, so I was not sure where it would go. I hadn’t replied, and the message was still sitting on my phone.
That invitation, however, had been n my mind moments before the crash, and I had to wonder, thinking of her, contributed to it.
Then, on top of all that, there was my parents. Married for 40 years, and the epitome of the perfect marriage.
Or so I thought.
That morning, before I went to work, I had called in to see them after my mother had called the day before saying she wanted to talk to me about something.
Before I knocked on the door, I could hear yelling from behind the door, and it seemed the perfect marriage had hit a rocky stretch.
Or simply that my father had chosen to have an affair, and had been caught out by the simplest of means, my mother answered his phone when he was out of the room thinking it was important work matters, only to discover it was his ‘floozie’.
No guessing then why my mother had called me. After hearing all I wanted to, and not wanting to face an angry couple I just headed on to work.
My mother had yet to come to the hospital to see me. My father had been, but he made no mention of her, or anything else, except to tell me if there was anything I wanted, all I had to do was ask. Then he left, and hadn’t come back.
Then, last but not least, were the rumours.
The owner of the company I worked for was getting older and didn’t have an heir. One thing or another had managed to foil his succession plans, and in the end, he did not have a son or a daughter to pass the reins to.
With the latest success, the company was about to have a bigger profile which meant more work, and plans to open branches in other cities. It was too much for one man, now in his 70s, and looking to wind down.
A rumour had started about a week before the accident that he was looking to sell, and there were at least half a dozen suitors. There was supposed to be an announcement, but it hadn’t happened while I was at work, but, considering how long I’d been in hospital, and the two weeks in an induced coma, anything could have happened.
Louisa stretched, and changed positions.
“You look better,” she said.
“Relative to what, or when?”
“Half an hour ago.”
I shook my head. Sometimes Louisa was prone to saying the oddest stuff. “What’s the deal between our parents. Dad was here for all of five minutes. Where’s our mother?”
“She left.”
OK. Blunt, but plausible. “Why?”
“Dad was being an ass.”
“Does she know I was in an accident?”
“I told her.”
“So, you’re seeing her?”
“She calls. I don’t know where she is. I think she might have gone to stay with one of our aunt’s.”
I sighed. Louise had an awfully bad memory, and I was sure one day she was going to forget who I was.
There were four sisters, mother the youngest. She had a love hate relationship with the middle two, so the best bet would be the eldest sister, Jane. Jane was also the crankiest because she hated children, never got married, and was set in her ways.
Then, there was something else lurking in the back of my mind. Another item I’d overheard when I suspect I was not meant to be listening.
I might not have a job to go back to if the company had been sold, I might not have a home to go back to if my parents had split up, and I might not be able to do anything for a long, long time. Recovery might be complete, but it wasn’t going to happen overnight.
I had a sister who blamed herself for my accident, and an old girlfriend who wanted to see me, though I suspect not like this, broken and useless. What else could there be.
Oh, yes. Another snipped from the shouting match behind the door. And an explanation why my father had all but abandoned me. My mother had also had an affair, and his son, well he was not his son.
No surprise then I had a father who didn’t want to know me.
What else could go wrong?
There was movement outside the room, and raised voices, one of which was saying that whoever was out there couldn’t go into the room. It didn’t have any effect as seconds later, a man and a police officer came in. The officer stood by the door.
Louisa looked surprised, but didn’t move.
The man, obviously a detective, came over. “Your name Oliver Watkins?”
It was, and hopefully still is. “Yes.”
“I need you to answer some questions.”
“About the accident?”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then realised what I was referring to. “No. Not the accident. About the embezzlement of 50 million dollars from the company you work for. It seems you didn’t cover your tracks very well.” He turned around to look at Louisa, “You need to leave now, miss.”
“I’ll stay.”
He nodded to the officer, “You leave now, or he will remove you.”
She looked at me, a different expression, “You didn’t tell me you were a crook, Olly.”
“Because I’m not.”
The officer escorted her from the room and shut the door.
The detective sat in the recently vacated chair. “Now, Mr Watkins. It seems there is such a thing as karma.”
Jack finally gets to spend those moments with Rosalie that were so tantalisingly close before he left.
The question is, would he had got the courage to do so if it had not been for the events that had just occurred. There always seems to be an element of danger that spurs people on to do things they might not necessarily do if life had not taken a particular turn.
But, it was everything he expected, and more.
Of course, as advised yesterday, there are problems, not of their making but of the intrepid Maryanne, who reveals herself now as an agent working for an organisation that is equally after the package that Jack’s mother had left in Rosalie’s safe keeping.
And ironically it is Rosalie who captures Maryanne in the act of trying to steal it.
So, if an effort to keep it from everyone Rosalie agrees to leave with the package and tell no one where she is. Not until Jack decided what he’s going to do with it. One possibility is to use it to get his mother back, but like all ransom exchanges, it never turns out the way it’s supposed to.
So, Maryanne is going to have to come up with a convincing plan to get Jack onside, but the lies and deception are not a very good start in forming trust.
It’s an interesting premise, and beyond the raw writing, I fear it will need some more work to get it where I want it to be.
Today’s effort amounts to 3,111 words, for a total, so far, of 46,870.
To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.
But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.
That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.
It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and was finally completed as Walthenson’s first case, ‘A Case of Working with the Jones Brothers’.
He has now embarked on his second adventure, as yet untitled, but the latest episode can be found here:
I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.
But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it. Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.
Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life. I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breath life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 