Thanks mum.

I sent my mother a copy of Spinetingler last week. Well, to be fair she asked for one when she heard my story was in it, and who am I to deny my mother what she wants?*

She phoned yesterday, having finally found time to read Natural Causes, and do you know what she said?

'It's pure Stuart MacBride!'

Now, mum's known Stuart a long time, and is very fond of him. She's read both of his books, though she did find the first one heavy going. Especially the detailed autopsy scenes and the picture in the front of a dead teddy bear being cut open by a teddy bear pathologist whilst a slightly queasy-looking policeman teddy bear looked on. So her critique of my little story was meant as a compliment, and in the main I took it as one.

I can console myself with knowing that she doesn't read a lot of crime fiction, too. A few Rankins and Alexander McCall Smith, yes. But she's not a Mark Billingham groupie and has probably never heard of most of the writers I met at Harrogate.** She isn't perhaps all that well-read in the cutting edge of the genre. Her comparison was well-intentioned, but it left me with a slight feeling of nervousness.

Before writing the Inspector McLean stories, I had never really tried my hand at anything remotely resembling crime fiction, at least not in a conventional sense. I'd not read a whole heap either; just the aforementioned Rankins and some Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie in my misspent youth. To my eternal shame, I've not even managed to read The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency yet, so score 1-0 to mum.*** I have however read Cold Granite at least three times, Dying Light a similar number, and Broken Skin/Bloodshot/Dead Centre twice.

I'm not a great re-reader. Once is generally enough for me, and there are too many books out there I've not read yet to waste my time on going over ones I have. This, I know, is short-sighted. There is so much more to be gained from a second reading. But it's the way I am. So those few books that I have returned to, for whatever reason, stick with me. And this then becomes the nub of my worry, especially as I embark on the writing of my first full crime novel:

Am I being too derivative? And more pertinently, am I being too derivative of Stuart MacBride?

Since I've not written a word yet, it's hard to be sure. And I've deliberately aimed for something different. Inspector McLean is not, I hope, just another policeman trying to do a hard job in an uncaring world. For one thing, he sees ghosts - though not in a Dubric Brierly way I hope**** - or at least he thinks he does. It might just be him going mad.

But it does bother me, if only slightly. Call it insecurity, if you want to get all psychoanalytical on me. I know that I don't know everything about crime fiction, so I am at the same time mining what little I do know, and trying hard not to let that show.


*you don't have to answer that.
** but then, neither have I.
***Mother was befriended by Dorothy L Sayers when she was a little girl, and given a cat by her called Lord Peter Whimsy. So maybe she knows more about the genre than I give her credit for.
**** Inspector McLean made his first appearance in a graphic novel I scripted in 1993, followed by another in 1994, part-drawn by a certain bearded writist, then again in novels in 1998 and 1999, so I can genuinely say that his ghost-seeing abilities predate my knowledge of Tamara Siler Jones' fine novels.*****
***** which you should read, if you haven't yet.