The (Not So) Great Hardinge Detective Agency
The mystery bug bit me early. I was hooked by Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes stories, and after that there was no hope for me. I gobbled my
way through the Three Investigators series, and then dipped into adult murder
mysteries – Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Ngaio Marsh.
And when I got home from school, at 6pm there were often old
black-and-white mystery films on TV, with detectives like the Saint, the
Falcon, the Thin Man, Mr Moto, Charlie Chan, and Sherlock Holmes. The movies
were mostly made in the 1940s, so there were fantastic hats, gangsters,
trenchcoats with turned up collars, femme fatales and old-fashioned police cars
with running boards on the sides that people could crouch on. I loved those
films.
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| No prizes for guessing where I got my taste in hats. |
It was my sister, however, who came up with the idea of
setting up our own detective agency. (When embarking on daring projects of this
sort, I thoroughly recommend having a high quality sibling.) We were ten and
nine years old at the time.
We owned a book called the Detective's Handbook, which told
us how to look for clues, keep files, tail suspects and so on. I drew business
cards for the agency in felt tip, cut out newspaper clippings about local
crimes, and created files on suspicious characters. I even wrote a file on our
guinea pig, for reasons I can't now remember. I think I may have gotten a
little carried away.
Unfortunately, we never actually solved any crimes.
It wasn't for want of trying, though. There was one man that we suspected of
being a thief, and so we enthusiastically tailed him for a bit. We even tried
to take his fingerprints by stealth, using talcum and sellotape. (This didn't
work At All. The poor man probably still wonders how his lawnmower ended up
covered in talcum powder.)
The problem is, most real criminals are very unsporting. A
lot of them are complete strangers who commit their skulduggery and then go
away again, rather than hanging around the scene of the crime, acting
suspiciously and dropping clues. How were we supposed to solve crimes like
that?
Despite the less-than-total success of the Hardinge
Detective Agency, my love of detective stories has never died. All of my books
are, in some way, mysteries. There are always schemes to be detected, secrets
to be deduced, and sometimes murderers to be unmasked.
Why? Mysteries are exciting. The detective and criminal are
locked in a battle of wits, and the stakes are usually high. And a detective
story challenges the reader to use their own wits, and wrestle with the
puzzle. To play detective.
There's a lot to be said for thinking like a detective, even
in ordinary life without an ingenious crime in sight.
Don't be afraid to dig for the truth. Don't take anything
for granted. Don't judge people or situations at face value. Look at the
evidence, and make up your own mind.
Think for yourself.
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