I’ve always been drawn to reading novel series, especially mystery and crime series. Each novel has a murder, problem or puzzle that the main character works through, often at the same time as dealing with personal concerns. The main character usually, but not always, develops and changes over time as a result of their work and changing relationships.
Which brings me to Captain Kirk’s girlfriends. Even at a young age watching re-runs of the original three seasons of the programme, I used to wonder what happened to them. In one programme, Captain James T. Kirk would be kissing an intergalactic beauty, and in the next programme she’d be completely forgotten, and he’d be making the stars shine with another. I like to imagine all of Kirk’s lovers gathering on some far-off planet, comparing notes and plotting his downfall. My point is that even as a child, the idea of a main character not having developing relationships didn’t ring true (even in a fictional, science fiction programme). Life and love are messier than that.
Inter-stellar relationships might be different, you could be galaxies or dimensions apart, but in a small town or even a city setting, exes (ex-girlfriends, ex-husbands, etc.) don’t normally just disappear from your life even when you want them to. You bump into them, hear news about them, talk about them, get random correspondence from them (as an example, I was recently contacted by someone I’d dated for two weeks nearly two decades ago. I remembered that he’d ending the brief relationship by text because he felt his mother wouldn’t have approved of me. I never knew what to make of that. Anyway, he wanted to say hi, see how I was doing and suggested meeting up at some point in the future. It was the first time I’d laughed hard for quite a while).
Relationships matter. They grow, deepen, change, fade and fail. And I’m not just talking about romance. There are bonds with family and friends, connections with colleagues and the cashier at the supermarket who always asks how you are and seems to mean it. We remember who has supported us, been a friend in need (one of my favourite stories as a child was ‘Androcles and the Lion’), and we also remember the digs and slights, and the disappointments.
As a reader/viewer and writer, I’ve always been interested in how these relationship peaks and valleys play out over time. Perhaps this interest stems from being raised on ‘Coronation Street’, a soap opera set in a working-class street in Manchester, which happens to be the longest running soap opera in the world (since December 1960, if you’re interested). During the last couple of years, which have been pretty tough with intermittent bright spots, my comfort watch has been Classic Coronation Street, episodes originally aired twenty years ago when I was living overseas. What I like about the programme is, in part, that it’s been running so long and many of the characters have been part of the series for decades, so you can trace past relationships (during a recent clear-out, I came across a 1995 Coronation Street magazine that had a wonderful ‘Who’s had whom love tree’ diagram – see photo – copyright @1995 Granada Television Ltd.) and literally grow up with the characters. But what I like most about the programme, especially the older episodes, are the writing and characterisation. The script is often clever and very funny, and, between the gossip, biting sarcasm (bring back Ena Sharples and Blanche Hunt), shouting and tears, there’s real warmth and tenderness that I haven’t found in other soap operas.
How do ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Coronation Street’ relate to my writing? Firstly, I wanted to create a fictional, (non-murder) mystery series in which the characters develop, struggle with juggling professional and personal concerns, develop through their work and relationships, meet someone in the first book and perhaps see them again in the third or fourth (I love when fictional worlds collide, for example, when Robert B. Parker’s Sunny Randall dates Jesse Stone), start and end relationships and have regrets. I wanted there to be humour and emotion as well as mystery. In this novel, the fourth in the Hanazawa Information Services series, Sam Hanazawa has left Tokyo behind, so there is physical distance between him and his colleagues, some of whom are family. In the third novel, he almost began a romantic relationship, but the Japanese visa system got in the way. Do I want him to pursue the relationship, rekindle an old relationship (there’s the pushy, Canadian journalist he dated in books one and two), meet someone new or decide that romance isn’t a priority? What would be true to his character as I’ve written it, how would any personal relationship intertwine with the mystery plot, and what would make the most interesting story? This is what I’m mulling over.
Novel word count to date: 6,317 words
Some recommended crime/mystery series that juggle professional and personal issues:
- Robert B. Parker’s three series, focussing on private detectives Spenser and Sunny Randall and police chief Jesse Stone;
- Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series (Detective Jimmy Perez);
- Denzil Meyrick’s DCI Daley thrillers;
- Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series;
- William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series;
- Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak books.
d j mantle 