Writing a Series A Challenging Art

"Paris the the whore, perpetually young and yet still captivating."

Louis Shalako

If a book is a work of art, then a series is also a work of art.

It is challenging from the artistic point of view. Assuming you want to write more, that is--you could always break off and abandon it.

It is a work of greater length and complexity. This offers certain opportunities.

In The Maintenon Mystery Series, I have one novella, The Handbag’s Tale, and then the three novels, Redemption: an Inspector GillesMaintenon mystery, The Art of Murder and Blessed Are the Humble.

Since Maintenon is described as low fifties in Redemption, and since Handbag takes place in 1927, he’s a grown man and a complex character. He was in the police in 1914 when WW I broke out and would have had to ask permission to resign and join the French army. He was at Verdun and said so in Redemption (I think.)

His wife is sick in ‘Maintenon4,’ my working title. I have a great title, but I’ll finalize and announce that later.

In the three novels already written, the reader has never met Ann Maintenon. The themes in this book can be pretty dark, for I’ve got something like thirteen victims, all women and girls, and a man awaiting the guillotine when Maintenon is asked to take another look at the case.

In this story, Maintenon isn’t even an Inspector—he’s written the exam, but competition is fierce and not all qualified candidates are taken up in rank. There’s a yearly quota, much like the ‘list’ in Royal Army terms. 

They’re only going to make so many Inspectors in any given year. He’s Detective-Sergeant Maintenon, but he’s solved a couple of high-profile cases and the President himself is asking for him. There is the pressure of internal politics, and there is the pressure of time.

Sergeant Andre Levain, who plays a prominent role in the ‘later’ stories, (which I wrote first) is the new guy and he and Gilles have only worked together on a limited basis, all under the supervision of superior officers. As a writer, and as a work of art, this offers the chance to explore the earlier days of this relationship. We have the chance to explore Gilles’s relationship with his wife and his work, at a different age and level of proficiency. Good cops are made over a long time—they don’t spring, fully formed from the genie’s bottle. But I can slot new stories in almost any year, and one case might span a year and a half—theoretically, he’s off solving new cases, cases made into books, even as that one in particular is still ongoing. It is a fact that homicides have been solved after thirty or more years and cops never forget, essentially.

Then there is the whole challenge of historicity. In 1924, at the time when the story actually takes place, Paris is all wrought up in the summer Olympics. As of June 13 they have a new government, and a President who is perhaps a little more radical than modern voters might be comfortable with, no matter which side of the political spectrum they might be on.

It is a time of worker ferment, bureaucratic corruption, and great art, great music, great culture—and Paris is a great city in the peak of its form in spite of all faults.

Paris is the whore that is perpetually-young, and still captivating in spite of all the warts and blemishes that do peek through.

(That line might even make it into the book. – ed.)

In a series, your work of art acquires greater depth and precision. The more books in the series, the greater the clarity, where incidents in one book support the events in another. Anything is possible because there is no set length. Other characters come and go, but Maintenon remains.

It is inevitable that I must end up studying the world I write about. The really strange thing is that I chose it at random, mostly to avoid modern forensics and the CSI fixation on biochemistry and zooming down through the bores of scanning electron microscopes. I wanted a certain feel, I wanted something French.

I wanted, like Lovejoy, a period piece, no matter how new it actually was.

In terms of building that world, Paris and France from about 1920 until the 1930s, I check my facts, without going nuts on the politics of the day. I have to nail it down in time and place;  and then I try to weave as seamless a tale as I can. Inevitably, it will have its limitations, and there you go. That’s the way it is.

I can always write another one. A really interesting period to write about might be on the eve of WW II, in which we might be looking through the eyes of a very old, very tired, and very jaded man.

That depends on a number of factors, including the question of whether I live long enough.

Right?

END

Naveed.

(Bluewater Bridges, Wiki Commons, by 'optionbooter.')


Naveed clung to a vertical girder in the dimness, a cluster of other grey-painted I-beams slanting upwards right and left. A small satchel was tucked into the corner where they all met in a massive gusset, liberally planted with thirty-five millimetre bolts.

Pinned by several powerful lights, he waited, lungs aching from exertion, and sobbing for life.

The top of the bag was open. The gusting wind high over the river sucked out a page and it flew off like an avenging angel of death, intent upon some mission of punishment far below.

Naveed’s white-rimmed eyes stared pitifully up into the faces of the emergency responders.

“It’s proof—proof,” he yelled in despair.

“We’re just trying to help you,” called Jim Melshevik, the negotiator. “What’s this all about?”

He found it hard to be reassuring when hanging over a chasm of several hundred feet, and yelling at the top of his lungs at a crazy man. At his present weight of three hundred and forty pounds, bending over the rail at all was something of a miracle.

He huffed and puffed, and then tried again.

“What’s this all about?” he shouted weakly down to the man known as Naveed.

“Proof that genetic engineering and hormone-enhanced agriculture is causing Americans to get really, really fat,” shrieked Naveed, his rising hopes threatened by a gust of heavy rain.

***

“Did he just say what I thought he said?” asked Staff Sergeant Paul Monnopo.

“Yes!” said Jim, a highly trained psychologist, and the hostage-negotiator, suicide talk-down guy, and duty shrink at the hospital on Jones Boulevard.

“So what do you think?” asked Paul.

“Kill him,” advised Melshevik. “He’s obviously not going to shut up about it, and he did say he has proof.”

Staff Sergeant Monnopo drew his service revolver. By standing on his tiptoes, twisting his upper body, and tucking his belly carefully to one side, he leaned over the rail.

Melshivek waited patiently, but no shot came and the sergeant popped back up for air. He put the gun away, noting the raised eyebrow. After a minute of deep, slow breathing, he was able to talk.

“He saved us a bullet,” he said, giving Melshevik an old-fashioned look. “We’ll have to get one of the smaller men down there and recover the papers, but I think we’re all right.”

Sergeant Monnopo reached up and pressed the button on his transceiver.

“All right, he hit water, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s see if we can wrap this up tonight,” and with a nod to Melshevik, the good sergeant strolled back to his cruiser.

“Phew,” muttered Melshevik. “That was a bad one.”

Naveed came so close to getting away.

The consequences of a successful departure just didn’t bear thinking about. The worrying part really wasn’t his job, it was merely the reason for it.

Looking idly over the rail again out of morbid curiousity, he saw lights and boats milling around a common point. Men with poles and hooks were hauling in a sodden form, draped in Naveed’s long white raincoat.

Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.

With a wink and a nod at the firemen rigging up some brave volunteer to go over the rail and grab the bag, Jim Melshevik headed for his own Escalade. His thoughts were already elsewhere. It might be a good idea to grab a double box of French fries and gravy, and maybe a foot-long barbecued sausage on a stick while he was in the neighbourhood.