Stealing from the Detectives

My own series character, Granny Smith is an amalgamation of varied pop culture detetectives - when I was creating the character the biggest influence was, of course, Miss Marple. I like the idea of a fish out of water, and that's just what Granny is - a busybody pensioner who becomes embroiled in one crime after another, usually besting the police and bringing the guilty to justice. In creating the character I wanted to build her character by taking traits of other detective characters... some of these traits were so ingrained in detective fiction that they had become stereotypes. However stereotypes are not always to be avoided, and can be used almost as a kind of shorthand in character building.

Granny smokes a pipe - that comes from Sherlock Holmes and indeed the silhouettes used on the book covers are very much based on Holmes. I instructed artist, Tony Masero, -  to think Holmes as an old lady, when creating the illustration. It can of course be argued that every fictional detective holds genomes of Holmes in their DNA. For Holmes may not have been the first fictional detective, but in terms of creating the modern genre he was indeed standing on Ground Zero.

(C) Tony Masero

Granny's love of music - this primarily came from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. The author used Morse's love of music to flesh out his character, and often to power the plots -  but where Morse enjoys classical music and opera, Granny is more into heavy metal and rock operas. It seemed to be that most fictional detectives had a leaning towards one form of music or another - Ian Rankin's Rebus was into his rock music, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch loves his Jazz, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne likes country and western and Inspector Frost - well, I like to think he woud have enjoyed his music if only he could find a CD player amongst the chaos of his office. Music, of course, holds a long tradition in detective fiction - think Sherlock Holmes and his violin. Then again we have Lord Peter Wimsey who was written as an amatuer musician of note (pun intended).

Thorne had tried, once, to tell him. To explain that real country music was fuck all to do with lost dogs and rhinestones. It had been a long night of pool and Guinness, and Phil Hendricks - with whichever boyfriend happened to be around at the time - heckling mercilessly. Thorne had tried to convey to Holland the beauty of George Jones’s voice, the wickedness in Merle Haggard’s and the awesome rumble of Cash, the dark, daddy of them all. A few pints in, he was telling anybody who would listen that Hank Williams was a tortured genius who was undoubtedly the Kurt Cobain of his day and he may even have begun to sing “Your Cheating Heart” around closing time. From Lazybones by Mark Billingham (2003)

Maigret - another pipe puffing sleuth

Granny is something of an anti-establishment figure. This of course comes from the long tradition of  maverick detectives  - there have been so many - detectives with their own code of right and wrong, detectives who don't mind breaking the rules if the end justifies their actions.

Granny's fashion sense is, to say the least, unconventional - something I borrowed from the wonderful character of Michael Belker from Hill Street Blues. This guy looked truly unique and this was something I felt was important for Granny's character.


Granny Smith was thought by most to be an odd sort, altogether harmless but decidedly odd. She dressed, an unkind person would say, like a dosser. While more kindly souls would have to admit that her style of dress was, to say the very least, eccentric. She usually wore tight leggings that were better suited to a woman half her age and would wear these with a variety of T-shirts and a body warmer of navy blue fleece.  She always wore that body warmer, zipped up in winter and open during the warmer months. And if all this didn’t make her look bizarre enough she topped it off with the corncob pipe that seemed to be permanently clamped between her teeth. From Granny Smith Investigates by G M Dobbs (2012)


Yep...Granny Smith's character came from a lifetime of enjoying the wonderful creations of others, and wanting to take my own spin on the Agatha Christie type of amatuer crimebuster.  The fourth Granny Smith novel, Murder Plot is published today. Granny is a character who has been called both Miss Marple on Steroids and Batman with dentures. The pop culture references are suitable since in creating Granny I thought long and hard about those who had gone before - we are all standing on the shoulders of giants, you know.

Gene Hunt - The hardrinking cop from Life on Mars actually owed much to Jack Regan from the 1970's classic, The Sweeney. And on the surface you'd think that Gene Hunt was a million miles

away from Granny, but the character had a straightforward way of speaking - delivering banter which was often crude but mostly hilarious. This non PC attitude is something that was very important to the creation of Granny Smith. Granny doesn't take no shit and she abhors political correctness, seeing it as a form of censorship.

 Jessica Fletcher played memorably by Paul McCartney lookalike, Angela Lansbury, owed more than

a little to Miss Marple herself. The character lived in Cabot Cove, Maine, which seemed like an idyllic seaside resort but had an alarming murder rate: Lansbury encountered a total of 274 killings, despite the town having a population of just 3,500.  Granny's own village of , Gilfach has a smiliar population and whilst the murder rate may not be so high it is certainly climbing.

Another character I kept very much in mind when writing the first Granny Smith was Columbo as played by the wonderful, Peter Falk - the detectives bumbling manner concealed a razor sharp mind. In the murder investigations he becomes involved in Columbo often seems to be the underdog pitted against a much smoother foe. I still love Columbo and can (indeed I often do) watch the old episodes over and over again, so it is no wonder that a little of the detective seeped into the creation Granny Smith. Where Columbo has his shabby raincoat, Granny has her tatty body warmer.

Have I mentioned location - well yeah I have briefly, but the location in which the Granny Smith books would be set needed to be fleshed out to a point where the village of Gilfach became a character in itself. This is something that other authors are particularly good at - Ian Rankins Rebus books thrive on the well realised depection of Edinburgh, and Morse would be nowehere without the donnish Oxford he inhabits. Wilkie Collins Moonstone (1868) displayed the importance of location in crime fiction by setting the expertly plotted story in a remote country house. And so I was aware that the location, the setting of the Granny Smith books was of vital importance. I decided on a fictional version of my own village, Gilfach Goch which is situated in the South Wales Valleys. And so the village of Gilfach in the Granny books may not an exact watercolour of the real Gilfach Goch but it is certainly an abstract representation.


The Granny Smith series are available in all major eBook formats, as well as audiobook...do a Google search on Granny Smith by G M Dobbs and you'll find your way to Granny's madcap world of murder and mayhem. I do hope you stay for awhile.

IAN RANKIN CLINT DEBUT

Ian Rankin, one of Britain's biggest-selling crime writers who sparked alarm and grief among his fans when he retired his hard-boiled policeman John Rebus, will this week make a foray into comic strip writing.

The Edinburgh-based novelist has written Someone Got to Eddie for the sixth edition of the UK magazine CLiNT, launched last year by Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar.


Rankin follows other high-profile names including Jonathan Ross, Stewart Lee and Frankie Boyle in writing for the magazine. Of course all this is assuming that the latest Clint magazine will get to the shops on time - the title, this short in its existence, has already seen its last two issues arriving late and it seems to have skipped a month somewhere along the line.

Rankin admitted he found the experience hard work and challenging. "If you're a novelist and you're used to working on your own, this is a very different mindset, it's a very different way of telling a story. It's all geared to the visual, it's all geared to you explaining to the artist what you want to show.

The novelist said comic books were an art form like any other. "I've been reading comics my entire life and I'm a great champion of them. I do think they are an aid to literacy which is especially important in high schools and with boys."


Rankin published 18 Rebus books, retiring him in 2007 in Exit Music. Since then he has made his first foray into the comic book genre when he wrote a comic book called Dark Entries featuring the established Hellblazer character John Constantine and – in Complaints – created a new character, Malcolm Fox, a cop who investigates cops.


A follow-up to that is due out this year but Rankin did not rule out a return of Rebus. "I know what he's doing, he's working for a cold case unit, staffed by retired detectives. He's still working as a quasi-detective."

THE DEATH OF CHARACTERS IN POPULAR FICTION

Recorded at this year's Harrogate Crime Writers Festival this documentary looking at why writers decide to kill off their popular characters is well worth catching - it is currently available online HERE but only for the next six days so crime fans should get over there before it vanishes.

The death of fictional superstars by pen, pencil or type lies, quite literally, in the hands of their creators.
At the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival 2010 Fiona Lindsay conducts a forensic cross-examination of popular writers, put on trial to reveal their motives for killing off their leading characters. It's an age-old friction in fiction between creator and creation. And the assassination of an author's key character is often a result of a clash of egos.
Agatha Christie kept the death of her famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot secret for 30 years only to confess shortly before her own demise. She had no regrets and, as her biographer Laura Thompson reveals, was in no hurry to get Miss Marple on the case.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detested Sherlock Holmes' public domination over his own life and murdered him merrily. Yet the firestorm of protest was so intense, resurrection was inevitable. Holmes expert David Stuart Davies and actor Roger Llewellyn incorporate the core of this controversy in their latest play.
Colin Dexter claims he didn't kill Morse: 'he died of natural causes'. A nation mourned, but the author is unrepentant, choosing kindly death over morose retirement.
Ian Rankin took the opposite view for the demise of Rebus, leaving the coffin lid open for a timely return. But since fictional characters are immortal, why kill them off at all?
Characters who become bigger than their authors, beware!! They may have all the best lines, but their creator has the last word.
Fiona Lindsay cross-examines the witnesses and interrogates the accused as they try to justify their acts of literal 'murder'.
Not so much a whodunnit as a 'why did they do it?'

Ian Rankin enters the dark side

Scottish crime megaseller, creator of John Rebus, Ian Rankin will both surprise and delight his fans with his latest project. Rankin has penned a John Constantine script for Vertigo comics new imprint, Vertigo Crime.

Vertigo Crime will release hard cover graphic novels in a black and white format written by some of the biggest names in both comics and crime writing.

Rankin, a long time comics fan, has recast John Constantine as a kind of London based Phillip Marlowe but the story contains all the demonic mayhem that fans of Constantine have come to expect. The author himself describes it as a satire of the media culture - the story is set on a reality TV show that Constantine has become involved in. Once scene even features a demon getting a blow job while watching TV - 'I wasn't sure Vertigo would let me keep that in the story." Rankin told Judge Dredd Magazine.

"Getting Ian Rankin and John Contantine together for the launch was a deliberate decision.' Executive editor Karan Berger said. "The book will say 'a John Constantine mystery' on the cover and have the Ian Rankin name in a large font. We're trying to reach out to people who don't usually read comics with the line."



Rebus doesn’t appear in Dark Entries. Ian Rankin has tackled a similarly cynical,wisecracking character here, one familiar to fans of the comic - The chain-smoking detective who dabbles in the occult, John Constantine. The plot involves Constantine hired by the producers of a hit reality show called Haunted Mansions because the set appears to be, well, haunted.

Newsrama has an interview with Executive editor, Karan Berger HERE