Out walking with his family in the local park, Jon Spicer’s life is shattered forever. The dog – aggressive and huge – appears from nowhere. At first, Jon assumes the attack was random. Soon, other events force him to think again. With his family under threat, Jon can do only one thing: fight back. The pursuit leads him far from his home city to the unfamiliar territory of Ireland – and a remote village where his family are originally from.
This novel was like a twelve pound baby: awful to deliver.
For a while, I’d wanted to delve further into DI Spicer’s history, knowing rich pickings were to be had if I did. His mum’s family are originally from Ireland – and his Great-Grandfather, Padraig, had used his winnings from bare-knuckle fighting to climb out of Manchester’s slums. I also had the loose-end that was Zoë (the girlfriend of Jon’s murdered brother, who had vanished at the end of The Edge).
Then, one Christmas, the Simmses headed over to Ireland. We went to spend the festive season with the family of my middle-brother’s wife – who are from a remote village in Connemara. I immediately knew it would be the ideal setting for my plot. A plot that would need to be wild and raw if it was to match the untamed beauty of Ireland’s west coast.
So I began my favourite part of the novel-writing process: research. The fact this rugged coastline is also known as the graveyard of The Armada grabbed my attention. Could I create a plot incorporating that? More research revealed information about a particular type of dog – long thought extinct – that the Spanish army-of-old favoured.
A call to the RSPCA’s chief investigation officer gave me lots of material on the modern-day practice of dog-fighting. I began to see a way of tying the strands together.
The only other thing I wanted the novel to feature was a real physical ordeal for Jon Spicer. He’s a prickly character – abrasive, pig-headed, often arrogant. How, I wondered, would he handle a proper beating at the hands of some real head-cases?
Many, many hurdles later, Sleeping Dogs was finished.