Thirty years ago the dominant voice in PI fiction was Robert B. Parker.

His ‘Spenser’ novels are probably the best thing since sliced Chandler. Ever since I first read a Spenser novel I’ve wondered about an English Spenser to no particular conclusion, but in Graeme Cumming’s ‘Rand’ Scott (yes, that really is his name) I think we have a contender. Rand is the Spenser mix of borderline criminal and white knight, the hard-case with a heart of gold. That said, Cumming doesn’t pretend to copy Parker’s style, his voice is his own, his dialogue crisp, his sense of place superb … and he doesn’t give a flying F about food (sorry, Robert B.) 

Borderline is the first book in what I hope becomes a regular series.

John Lawton, best-selling author of the Inspector Troy and the Joe Wilderness series

When I wrote my review of Then We Take Berlin recently, I said that John Lawton had been kind enough to write a few words about Borderline, and there you have them. As a fan of Robert B Parker, I was chuffed to bits, though I certainly had no intention of emulating him. Indeed, my initial inspiration for the book came from what some might consider to be an unusual source.

A few months before Covid struck, I went to see a Thin Lizzy tribute band. I didn’t expect to get the full Lizzy experience… and I didn’t. But it was good to hear the songs played live again and the band were very good musicians.

In the lead up to the gig, I decided to immerse myself in Thin Lizzy’s songs. When I’m in the car, unless I have the radio on, I tend to have music coming through randomly, so it can flip from Quo to Elvis to Neil Diamond to Leonard Cohen and pretty much all places in between. Instead, for a couple of weeks, I was listening almost solidly to Thin Lizzy.

Anyone who knows me well enough, will also know Lizzy were my favourite live band. Recorded music doesn’t replace the live experience, but it does help to bring back some happy memories from my youth.

In later years, I realised that, memories of the gigs aside, there’s something else about the music that appeals to me. A lot of the songs are stories. In the space of a few short minutes, they conjure up tales of cowboys and gangsters and addictions (drugs and gambling crop up on more than one occasion). Scenes are set, whether they’re in Chinatown or sleazy bars or riding out on prairies. A lot of these stories feel like pulp fiction set to music.

As a storyteller myself, perhaps you can see why these songs appealed to me. Like most storytellers, I enjoy listening to stories – or reading them, or watching them. And, in my younger days, I probably did read a lot of what might be termed pulp fiction. Mickey Spillane stands out in my mind. Not just his Mike Hammer books, but his stand-alones like The Last Cop Out (my introduction to Spillane) and The Erection Set (that I was too embarrassed to go and buy myself – I was only 12).

Pulp fiction covers a range of genres, of course, including westerns and adventure stories. Thin Lizzy’s range often covers the same ground. Even so, pulp is generally associated with crime and often leans towards the noir. More importantly, the books tended to be churned out, so were often formulaic and quite short since the same author could produce at least three or four a year. It was also quite common for series with recurring protagonists to be included – hence the Mike Hammer reference.

For some reason, as I immersed myself in their songs again, that link to the storytelling felt stronger, and started to trigger some ideas.

As an author, I’d never had any great desire to write a series. I liked the idea of standalone novels. It meant I could explore different themes and characters and then walk away from them when it was all over. From a marketing perspective, I could see the advantages. If I’ve found a character I like, I’m more than happy to go back to those books. When I’m in a reading slump, I’ll often get out of it by going to the safety blanket of a Jack Reacher, or leaning into the two Roberts: Robert B Parker’s Spenser, or Robert Crais’s Cole and Pike books. But marketing has never been my strength, and writing what I enjoy has been my main driver,

The thing is, I had a feeling I’d stumbled on to something that probably ticked two boxes. Because I was really starting to warm up to this idea. And that’s in spite of realising I was going to have to do something else that went against the grain…