Murder in Thames Town My first attempt at writing a Detective novel

 

 

 

For years   the weekly visit to the local library  used to be the  highlight  of my working week    starting at 830 am and  clock watching on library day  to the magic  430pm and  thinking  "weeks nearly over"  combined with a  pre  redundancy job satisfaction of  2/10 

the main value if a library is that it allows you to read the books you would  never bother to buy  for yourself !!

 I read  a lot of   historical novels, tech net  cybercrack  thrillers and period  crime  over a  weekend

 

Historical novels  are made for lazy writers   the  main events and characters   are already  done for you  and  tended to follow a  pattern 

the first  no story  novel about  Stractus the Roman fighting man   or  Norman Longsword   written by an  classics  lecturer  or ex  journalist  classics graduate   retired  or redundant (  here called  deciding on a   career  change)   followed  by others  with our  Roman  Legion   Nam  platoon   or  first   crusader  with 21st  century  ideas of equality  and diversity    heroes  on a  Bobbitt  Hobbit journey  there and  back again   in the  series which like  gum you could not help reading

 

 

 

I read so many  series  sequel historical  novels   that  I  recently  put  down the latest volume Harry Sidebottom backend  of a Ballista    and the  latest  Robert Lowe  Viking  rowboat  saga   because I thought I  had already read them  before !!

I had not- it  just seemed plot wise I had!!

 

 

Tech net novels  try to be up to date   and  trending   rather too many the  work of North  Korean hackers  and  last minute  foiling of plots  to use an EMP  burst to destroy the Internet  where as  any  futurist  technologist   would know  an ESP burst  is  the only  thing  to  use to   destroy the  Internet 

 

I  also started to think  is this  about Dos 3 or Dos 4  in the many   new tech net cybercrack   thrillers  I read   and started   writing my own endings

 From which   I  then went to writing my own  detective  novels    in all of 15 minutes with  composing of careful Venn diagrams of all the suspects  and  a  network  trace of the plot intersections

 

Murder in Thames  Town

 Beginning at the Boxing Day  London sales   but mainly set  in   Thames Town  the replica English village outside  Shanghai   with its  chip shop, pubs, red telephone boxes and double yellow lines 

 Murder in Thames Town   is a tech net thriller   the plot devices being extensive  detective   use of  smartphone   RFID spime apps,  bio hacking ,  doxing,  identity  sharing,  data  shadows   and  crowd  sourcing  wiki  groups   

the identity of the  killer  being revealed  by an unconnected posting they made the year  before on a  social media  site

 

as up to date  as  any  tech net thriller can be based on articles in  your typical  2013-14  technology blogs  and   journals

 

Perhaps I should  combine the  two tired  genres and  write an historical   computer detective novel  The   strange  affair of   the  jammed tractor paper  printout"

"  you  see  professor   he tried to swap the Honeywell tape  drives   but failed to realise this model has one sprocket less " 

 

By the end of the 15 minutes  plot  plan  I had also drafted  the outline of two sequels   one where the  Thames Town detective  comes   to  London to help with  tracking down people smugglers  but soon realises it will be easier to continue his investigation  thousands  of miles away back   in Shanghai using a  digital virtual platform   and   a  second sequel with the Detective    stuck high up in the Himalayas without wi -fi  signal   hunting  a serial killer

 

all I need now is do something  about   the  padding,  the cliff hangers   and  writing   the  80 000 words  in between  too indolent  in wordsmithing  to   make chapter one  follow  chapter two   and on to the end