The role of amateur detective has always appealed to me. The artless inexperienced meddler asking questions, stirring things up and getting in to a whole heap of trouble. So I decided to write a novel from the perspective of a young female investigator and let her loose upon an unsuspecting world.
Clarry Pennhaligan is an unlikely heroine. She’s a girl who makes mistakes but she’s quick witted. There are times in the book when she’s scared and feels overwhelmed but she’s ballsy. She uses her wits and toughs it out. And I hope that my readers will root for her because she’s not a stereotypically strong and super-efficient professional, nor is she a ditzy shoe and handbag girl. She’s like most women, a bit of everything, a walking contradiction. Real. Identifiable. Relatable.
I’ve been asked if Clarry’s personality is based upon my own. Well, I have to admit that there is quite a lot of me in there, particularly the more flawed aspects of her nature, but I wanted to create a character that was naturally more daring and less constrained by social convention than I am. Oh, and braver!
Clarry gets to do all the things that I, and I suspect many women, secretly long to do. She is free to break rules and to take risks. Through fiction I live a life that is bigger, bolder and a lot more fun than my own.
When I finished writing The Love Detective I found that I very much missed Clarry… and her side-kick Flan. And I realised that they had no intention of waving me good-bye but planned to stick around for a good while to come. So a series was born. I am currently working on the second novel, The Love Detective: Next Level, which will be released in 2019.
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