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.

Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs - EXCLUSIVE SAMPLE

The end of this month will see Granny Smith and The Deadly Frogs published by Red Valley Publishing - the book will be available on the Kindle as well as in other formats, and will be on sale at  Amazon, Barnes and Noble, WH Smith, Goodreads and other digital stores. There will also be a limited run print edition available later this year, as Granny Smith breaks through into print.

Granny Smith is set in the small Welsh village of Gilfach, a semi-fictional village loosely based on Gilfach Goch, a village I grew up in. When I started to create the series I wondered what my own village would be like if it were populated by charters from an Ealing movie, and from there the village of Gilfach developed. There are many secondary characters who pop in and out of the Granny Smith series and I hope they add colour to the story, and give a sense of reality to this much larger than life village.

It's Miss Marple on Steroids!!!

The first book in the series Granny Smith Investigates is still available from all the usual outlets so if you've not got into the series yet then maybe now is the time.

"A nice easy read for lazy Sunday afternoons curled up on the sofa in front of a roaring fire with a nice glass or two of wine and chocolates, brilliant ." STARRED REVIEWS 

"I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Granny is a wonderful character, refreshingly different and politically incorrect. I loved that she still smokes in a time when it is frowned upon; that she is an unrepentant hippie and even that she is blind to her son's faults. She is astute and not scared to speak her mind. She is also very human and that is a large part of her charm. I think most of us can identify with her." AMAZON REVIEWS

Go get Granny Smith Investigates now - and below find a short taster of the new book Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs which will be published 31st March 2013.

Get ready - the geriatric crime-fighter is back!!!



Sample from Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs

Granny sighed.

This wasn’t getting them anywhere and they had strayed so far from the point of the meeting that they were in danger of losing sight of it all together.

‘Capitalism by its very nature exploits the working man,’ Mark brought a fist down on the table to illustrate his point.

‘And the working woman,’ Sue chimed in. ‘It’s not all about men you know.’

‘Right on, sister,’ Mansall punched the air and had to adjust his cap when it fell forward over his eyes.

‘I had the impression it was about frogs,’ Granny chimed in.

‘Right on sister,’ Mansall repeated, this time neglecting to punch the air but throwing his support behind Granny as well as Sue.

 ‘I really think we should get back to the frogs,’ Granny said and then used the pun she had been itching to use for the last ten minutes or so: ‘We seem to have hopped away from the point of this meeting.’

Maud liked that and nudged Granny gently in the side as a token of her appreciation.

‘Indeed,’ Mark stood and leaned forward, his knuckles on the edge of the table. ‘But I used the word man as in mankind. I was referring to the species and not any specific gender.’

‘Womankind,’ Sue chipped in again. When she got something between her teeth she held onto it with all the tenacity of a terrier. She also found Mark to be a pompous ass and took pleasure in annoying him.

‘Oh, give it a rest,’ Carol was sat leaning forward on the table, her chin resting in her cupped hands. She looked bored and other than this one utterance was content to allow the proceedings to go on around her.

 ‘Please, please,’ Councillor Pipe stood and glared across the table at Mark. He didn’t say another word until Mark had sat himself back down, and then gave a tight smile before continuing. ‘You have stated your case and I have listened but please do not let this resort to petty arguments. If this meeting is to continue then I must insist on the correct decorum.’

‘Well what are you going to do, Dwain?’ Granny asked. She had known the councillor since he had been knee high to a grasshopper and would never, no matter what position he held in the council, address him by anything other than his Christian name.

The councillor frowned at the use of his Christian name.

‘I will arrange for a spokesman from your little group to put your concerns before a full council meeting,’ he said.

‘And when will this be?’ Mark asked, his tone aggressive. ‘The development is due to star in less than a month and I imagine someone in the council will benefit from things going ahead. This is nothing but typical bureaucratic stalling for time.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ the councillor once again glared at Mark. ‘What are you inferring?’

‘It is you that infers,’ Mark said, smugly. ‘I’m implying.’

‘Semantics,’ the councillor waved a hand as if to dismiss Mark.

Mansall, wondering what apes had to do with anything, turned his head back and forth between the councillor and Mark like a spectator at  a tennis match.

 ‘And I imply that palms have been greased within the council,’ Mark wasn’t going to let this go.

This time the councillor was speechless and looked to Granny for support, for it was she who had cajoled him into attending this impromptu meeting, which felt to the councillor like an inquisition.

The focus of the meeting should have been the small pond on Graig Meadow, which was a known spawning ground for the extremely rare Lesser Crested Frog, and yet the amphibians had been all but forgotten. The meeting looked to be in danger of becoming a full-blown argument.

‘If the development starts and the pond is destroyed,’ Sue said, frowning. ‘That it’ll be too late. It’ll be no use stopping things once the pond’s been destroyed. That would just be a waste of time.’

‘The pond goes,’ Amy said, offering Sue a smile of support. ‘The frogs will have gone forever.’

‘I am aware of your concerns,’ the councillor started but he was cut short by a hostile “bollocks” yelled out by Mark.

‘That’s the point, Dwain,’ Granny said, quickly stepping in to defuse the situation. Mark seemed to be getting riled and Granny knew he had a nasty temper. ‘The Lesser Crested Frog is a very territorial creature and if it’s habitat is destroyed then it will move on elsewhere and will miss the next spawning season. The frogs are rare enough as it is in this part of the world so time is limited. We can’t wait for a full council meeting,’ she pulled her battered pipe from her pocket and placed it in her mouth. She would have liked nothing better right now than to puff on a bowl of burley tobacco but the smoking ban meant that she would have to wait until she went outside.

‘The meeting will be arranged by the end of the week,’ Councillor Pipe said, firmly. ‘I’ll call an extraordinary meeting which means I only have to give twenty four hours notice.’

‘There,’ Granny said. ‘That’s something at least.’

‘Excuse me,’ a short man wearing an over sized raincoat and clutching a tan leather briefcase to his chest said as he approached the table. His eyes went to each of them in turn before settling on the councillor since he was the only one wearing a shirt and tie and looked to be in charge. ‘I’m looking for a Terry Mansall.’

Mansall looked up at the newcomer and once again had to adjust his errant cap. He was about to identify himself, but then his eyes clouded over with suspicion and he remained silent. He had learned from past experience that whenever anyone came looking for him by name it usually wasn’t a good thing. The small man didn’t look like a bailiff, Mansall had enough experience with that breed to know one when he saw one, but the man was carrying a briefcase and Mansall could see no good reason for anyone connected with himself to carry a briefcase.

Mark was about to speak, likely pointing Mansall out, but Granny, noticing Mansall’s reluctance to make himself known, cut in.

‘And you are?’ she asked.

‘Forgive me,’ the small man said and had to put his briefcase down while he fished in his pockets for a business card, which he handed across to Granny.

Richard Purser, PhD

Herpetologist.

For the full story be sure to download a copy of Granny Smith and the Deadly Frogs when it becomes available at the end of this month. Granny Smith Investigates is available now.

The Body in the Library

"There are certain cliches belonging to certain kinds of fiction. The bold bad baronet for melodrama, the body in the library for the detective story. For several years I treasured up the possibility of a certain variation on a well know theme. I knew that the library had to be highly  orthodox and conventional. The body, on the other hand, must be widely improbable and highly sensational." Agatha Christie talking about, The Body in the Library.

The Body in the Library was first published in 1942 and was another case for the author's second most popular character, Miss Marple. When the book was published World War II was raging, and Christie, feeling that her readers needed some nostaligia to take their minds off the horrors in each days' newspaper, decided to bring back Miss Marple and set the story around the English seaside - the book was a celebration of the very essence of English life - "Everything we were then fighting to defend with a cryptic crime thrown in for good measure." Agatha Christie

Classic Marple

When the war broke out Christie and her second husband, Max moved from Devon and went back to London so Max could take up a position in the Home Guard. He initially served with the Home Guard before being drafted into the air force and stationed in the Middle East where his knowledge of Arabic would prove indispensable. Christie herself had trained as a dispenser for her war work during the first world war, and so she took up a position at a London University hospital. She missed her husband terribly and during this period threw herself into writing two novels - N or M? and The Body in the Library. The title for The Body in the Library had been with the author for some time and was first mentioned in the Poirot novel, Cards on the Table as one of the novels penned by the fictional writer, Ariadne Oliver, a particular favorite of Poirot.


The book was reviewed favorably with the Times rejoicing that Mrs Marple was back - "Professional detectives are no match for elderly spinsters and their old maid logic."

Miss Marple and her old maid knowledge was just what readers wanted and Agatha Christie had another iconic crime novel on her hands.

The Great Detectives - Miss Marple

The elderly spinster who dabbles as an amateur detective - the only way one  could use such a character in a crime novel these days would be as a parody or homage. The character wasn't exactly fresh when Agatha Christie first presented Miss Jane Marple to her readers in 1930's Murder in the Vicarage, although Christie had already used the character in the short story, The Tuesday Club which was published in 1927 in The Sketch Magazine.

Christie started to think of creating a great female detective after she clashed with stage writer Michael Morton over the stage adaptation of her successful novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Morton had wanted to turn Poirot into a dashing young Frenchman but Christie would have none of it. Christie was however forced to compromise and allow her character of Caroline Shepard to be changed from an insightful old maid who aids Poirot into a bright young thing to allow for a romantic interest. Caroline was Christie's favourite character from her novel and her transformation  for the stage play stung. Christie told friends then that she would create an aged female detective and thus the seeds of Miss Marple were sown in the writers' mind.

Christie was very well read and kept up with the works of her contemporaries - a favourite writer was Dorothy L Sayers and Christie was taken with the character of Miss Climpson an elderly spinster who  aided Sayer's detective, Lord Peter Wimsey in the 1927 novel, Unnatural Death. Christie and Sayers became great friends and when the first Miss Marple novel was published Sayers wrote to Christie saying, 'Dear old Tabbies are the only possible right king of female detectives and Miss M. is lovely.' Sayers later went onto create a detective agency of ageing spinsters set up by Peter Wimsey and Miss Climpson - Climson may have influenced Miss Marple but now the favour had been returned.

Another writer who helped sow the seeds of Marple was Anna Katherine Green, often called the mother of modern detective fiction. Green used a character called Amelia Butterworth in several mystery novels.The writer was a favourite of Christie who wrote of the importance on her own work in her autobiography by stating that Green's works are what started her thinking of becoming a mystery writer in the first place.

However the British tradition of  the literary spinster can be traced back to Miss Burns in Jane Austen's Emma and Betsy Trotwood in Dickens' David Copperfield. There is also Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest who was interestingly brought to the screen in the shape of Margaret Rutherford, the actress most associated with Miss Marple.

Christie used Miss Marple in a dozen novels and several short stories and the character is arguable the most famous female detective in all of crime fiction. A diverse range of actresses have brought the character to the screen and next to Poirot she is Christie most well loved and read character,

A great fictional detective indeed.

 In March 2011 it was reported that The Walt Disney Company had acquired the cinematic rights to the Miss Marple character, and was planning a contemporary adaptation to be set in the United States. It was reported that Jennifer Garner would portray Miss Marple in the new franchise, and that Mark Frost had been hired to write the script for the first film which would give us a younger, more seductive Marple. What Agatha Christie would think of this sexing up of the character would likely be unprintable.

Now they're sexing up Agatha Christie

Disney are to produce a new version of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, featuring a younger, more streetwise version of the character. Jennifer Garner will take on the role of Miss Jane Marple in what Disney are hoping will be a franchise in the style of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes.


The female sleuth, who has always been portrayed by older actresses as a mystery-solving spinster, was expected to be revived as a younger character after Disney made a deal to bring back the franchise.
Christie wrote 12 mystery novels starring Miss Marple, beginning in 1930. The character inspired several motion pictures and a long-running BBC series.

 Instead of the elderly spinster who lives in the English village of St. Mary Mead and solves mysteries as a hobby, the new configuration is for Mark Frost to script a version where Marple is in her 30s or 40s.