It was around 2014 when the idea for DI Joanne Christie started to develop. I had been writing some short stories with the character DI James Slim, set in Glasgow, but I was worried that he would end up being a ‘Glasgow Rebus’ type character, even if they are very different. I knew that I wanted to write a story with a female lead, set in Edinburgh so started working on developing the DI Christie.
The name came first, a nod to Dame Agatha who I am a big fan of. The idea of a unisex first name stuck with me, and I chose Joanne or Jo for short which could be easily confused with the male version, Joe. Despite the idea, it has never really had any great significance in the stories thus far.
When I was writing the DI Slim short stories, I came up with the idea of using the track list of a complete album as the names for each story, taken in the order that they appear on the record. I’m not sure exactly why I chose Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album, but there a number of things that may have led me there upon reflection. Firstly, I recall watching a documentary about the making of the album, the issues the band had, the disputes, fallouts and arguments. Despite everything that happened during the recording, they created a classic record. Secondly, the album has a strong female association through Stevie Nicks and the sadly, late, Christine McVie. Thirdly, Christie’s sidekick, DS Lyle, is a big classic rock fan and would love this album. Finally, my favourite track from the album had a perfect name for a crime story – The Chain. I love the story I had written for this one and the title character. I admit to having been a little annoyed when a novel of the same name was released in 2019, albeit, a very different story and plot to my creation.
Some of the story ideas came very easy from the title track names. The opening story ‘Second Hand News’ instantly gave me the idea of a body found in a pile of newspapers. ‘Oh Daddy’, gave me the idea of one of the character’s fathers being in trouble. Some, however, were a challenge – ‘You Make Loving Fun’ in particular. The title didn’t always marry up directly with the story, sometimes it was just a reference or comment made by a character in the story, but it was good fun to play with during the writing process.
With eleven tracks on the album, this meant the creation of 11 different stories to introduce and develop the main characters that would continue in the series, when full novels would be written later. The first 10 were all around the 5,000 mark, but I knew that I wanted to write a longer final story. ‘Gold Dust Woman’, is more at novella length and brings backs elements from ‘The Chain’ story and again was great fun to write.
With the stories completed, I just had to come up with a title. Initially, I had considered naming it after the album it was influenced by, but in the end decided to give another nod to Dame Agatha Christie, who wrote and published ‘Poirot’s Early Cases’ as a collection of short stories. I think that short stories, especially in the crime fiction genre, are an under appreciated art. It’s difficult for authors to create a crime, a motive, a list of suspects, an investigation and resolution within around 5,000 words.
And if to punish myself for my art, I did ten times for one book…
‘Christie’s Early Cases’ is the first in the DI Jo Christie book series. I will blog about the other two in the coming weeks, but if you fancy finding out more about the character and her early life as a DI in Edinburgh working for Police Scotland, you can order your copy in the ‘Books’ page of this website.
Ross Alexander Writer 