To be honest, I just wanted a properly mismatched crime duo after years of watching BBC crime shows. Rather than just Veteran Cop and Rookie Cop, I felt there was more scope to vary the demographic. If you’re going to commit to putting two unsuitable people together to solve crimes, you might as well try harder. The Americans have one mismatched crime duo show featuring the devil and another with a zombie, for crying out loud.
So, within the confines of a non-fantastical modern London, I came up with an older white private detective and his teenage female East Asian work experience kid. (And they’re still both cisgender and heterosexual, so there’s plenty more variables you could change in your crime series.)
Of course, once you’ve put your two mismatched characters together and set them to arguing, you need to work out what they have in common. After all, even if you devise some ridiculous method to force them to stick together (a work experience placement, say), it hardly works if they can’t hold a conversation.
So for Hobson & Choi, it’s probably loneliness. A sense of displacement. They’re also both quite self-involved - the desire to solve crime comes less from altruism or even just doing their job and more from a need to look good to various other people/internet users. Does it always make them sympathetic? Probably not, but it throws the story in odd directions and I like that.
Also, the improbable set-up is offset slightly by the even odder stylings of the world it takes places in - this is a London with a wolf committing murders, secret societies underground and a criminal enterprise behind every business. I feel like this strange work experience placement can easily exist there and it wouldn’t even be the weirdest business strategy to come up that day.
Digging a little more into the mechanics of writing it, the other key to writing disparate characters is giving them both a role in the plot but ideally without it being enormously lampshaded. If a part of the book reads as “He’s clearly only added that scene so Hobson has something to do” then I have failed a little. But as long as the cases involve some combination of the internet and violence, I usually find ways to keep them both occupied.
Of course, maybe the whole thing is just a terrible idea, Choi’s mother is right and she shouldn’t be doing any of this because it’ll definitely end in tears. That’s possible too. The series can’t go on forever, after all.
Thank you so much Nick for coming onto Rachel's Random Reads.
So, within the confines of a non-fantastical modern London, I came up with an older white private detective and his teenage female East Asian work experience kid. (And they’re still both cisgender and heterosexual, so there’s plenty more variables you could change in your crime series.)
Of course, once you’ve put your two mismatched characters together and set them to arguing, you need to work out what they have in common. After all, even if you devise some ridiculous method to force them to stick together (a work experience placement, say), it hardly works if they can’t hold a conversation.
So for Hobson & Choi, it’s probably loneliness. A sense of displacement. They’re also both quite self-involved - the desire to solve crime comes less from altruism or even just doing their job and more from a need to look good to various other people/internet users. Does it always make them sympathetic? Probably not, but it throws the story in odd directions and I like that.
Also, the improbable set-up is offset slightly by the even odder stylings of the world it takes places in - this is a London with a wolf committing murders, secret societies underground and a criminal enterprise behind every business. I feel like this strange work experience placement can easily exist there and it wouldn’t even be the weirdest business strategy to come up that day.
Digging a little more into the mechanics of writing it, the other key to writing disparate characters is giving them both a role in the plot but ideally without it being enormously lampshaded. If a part of the book reads as “He’s clearly only added that scene so Hobson has something to do” then I have failed a little. But as long as the cases involve some combination of the internet and violence, I usually find ways to keep them both occupied.
Of course, maybe the whole thing is just a terrible idea, Choi’s mother is right and she shouldn’t be doing any of this because it’ll definitely end in tears. That’s possible too. The series can’t go on forever, after all.
Thank you so much Nick for coming onto Rachel's Random Reads.
The Girl Who
Tweeted Wolf (Hobson & Choi #1)
"If we get 400
followers, John Hobson will solve that nasty wolf-murder case for free! Fight
the thing himself if he has to! #HobsonVsWolf!"
Angelina Choi was
only trying to drum up some Twitter followers and make a good impression on her
first day interning at John Hobson's one-man detective agency.
But the campaign
went viral and now they have a murder to solve, no money coming in, and an
unwilling Hobson faced with battling some enormous beast.
With both follower
and body counts rising, can they crack the case without offending everyone or
being eaten by a huge dog?
The Girl Who
Tweeted Wolf is the first case starring Hobson & Choi, a bickering,
mismatched detective duo for 21st century London. This book collects the debut
storyline of the hit darkly comic crime web serial, extensively rewritten and
improved for this definitive edition.
Information
about the book:
Author:
Nick Bryan
Title:
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf
Genre:
Darkly comic crime with YA crossover potential
Publisher: Self-Published
Format: E-book
Published:
July 22nd 2014
Goodreads
Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22702248-the-girl-who-tweeted-wolf?from_search=true
Rush
Jobs (Hobson & Choi #2)
“Sometimes #crime
feels like the Matrix. Or the #patriarchy or #porn. It's everywhere, even in
people you trusted, and there's so MUCH of it.”
Angelina Choi
returns for her second and final week of work experience at John Hobson’s
detective agency, ready for anything after their first successful murder solve.
After all that
online buzz, they’re in phenomenal demand. Can Hobson & Choi solve a
kidnapping, play chicken with corporate crime, beat back gentrification, save a
dog from drug dealers and head off violent backlash from their last case?
Or will grim
revelations about Hobson’s past leave them floundering in the chaos?
Rush Jobs collects
the second major storyline in the Hobson & Choi saga, #1 on Jukepop Serials
and #2 in Dark Comedy on Amazon, adding brand new chapters and scenes to the
case.
Information
about the book:
Author:
Nick Bryan
Title:
Rush Jobs
Genre:
Darkly comic crime with YA crossover potential
Publisher: Self-Published
Format: E-book
Published:
8th January 2014
Amazon
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rush-Jobs-Hobson-Choi-Book-ebook/dp/B00RWS7QXC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=
Author Information
Nick Bryan is a
London-based writer of genre fiction, usually with some blackly
comic twist. As
well as the detective saga Hobson & Choi, he is also working on a
novel about the
real implications of deals with the devil and has stories in several
anthologies.
More details on his
other work and news on future Hobson & Choi releases can be
found on his blog
at NickBryan.com or on Twitter as @NickMB. Both are updated
with perfect and
reasonable regularity.
Subscribe to his mailing list using the form in
the sidebar of NickBryan.com to get
news first and an
all-new free Hobson & Choi short story immediately!
When not reading or
writing books, Nick Bryan enjoys racquet sports, comics and
a nice white beer.
Author Links
Website: http://www.NickBryan.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/NickMB
Mailing list: http://eepurl.com/YrrWr
I think it's a fab idea, Nick! Well done you. Thanks for sharing, Rachel! :) xx
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