When writing a series, it’s important to have an established backstory for your main character. Readers are investing their time and money in reading your book and it’s your protagonist that’s going to keep them coming back for more. This is especially important in a police procedural. The very best fictional police officers translate well to TV because of the authors who created them in the first place – DCI Jane Tennison (Lynda LaPlante), DI Vera Stanhope (Ann Cleeves) and DCI Morse (Colin Dexter), to name but a few. In fact, the backstory for Morse was so good that Endeavour came into being. If I’m truly honest, I preferred Endeavour to Morse but that might be because I watched it knowing what Morse would become.
DI Bernadette ‘Bernie’ Noel wasn’t the main character in my first ever book. She was a DS but her backstory was still the same – dual heritage with white mother and black father (both fifteen when she was conceived); raised white by her mother and maternal grandparents and close to her grandfather in particular; no knowledge of who her father was; joined the Met at nineteen but then a terrible event happened that forced her later to move to Wiltshire Police. Her backstory was more developed than the main character in that novel which is probably one of the reasons why she then became my protagonist.
I took all of that into my first ‘Bernie’ novel – Last Seen. Some of it was dealt with in my debut but the ‘terrible event’ has lingered in the background until now. In Rewind, the fourth book in the series, all is revealed and the literal scar that Bernie has on the left side of her abdomen is explained. I knew the story well as I’d been thinking about it for six years. It was there, ready in my head to go. But something held me back.
When I first started writing Bernie, I was acutely aware I was a white woman writing a dual heritage one. Originally her mother was black and she was raised in a black home and community. But my writing wasn’t authentic so I asked friends who were dual heritage for advice. One said, ‘I’m not sure if I can help you. My mother’s white and I was brought up white.’ It was a lightbulb moment and Bernie’s maternal family became white. But that didn’t help me with Rewind. This time, Bernie (in the past), would be heading onto a Peckham housing estate to take part in an undercover operation that would tackle gangs and drugs in a black community. I was as ill-equipped as Bernie.
Quite by chance, I saw on the London news, a young man talking about his forthcoming memoir – That Peckham Boy. Kenny Imafidon had been both a model student and a small-time drug dealer selling cannabis. When he was falsely accused of murder, his life turned upside down. I knew I had to read this book. As I read it, I underlined parts and then added post-it notes with the headings – how to survive; don’t trust the police; how not to get caught; weapons; how best to earn money; powerful words from mum; church inside and out of prison; don’t snitch; be yourself. As I took this on board, I realised the characters were more important than the situation. We’re so used to a 2-D version being portrayed in the media, especially in the news, but Kenny’s memoir gave a 3-D insight into the realities of poverty, single parent families and gangs. From the headings above, ‘don’t trust the police’ and ‘don’t snitch’ stood out the most and a lot of them sound negative. However, hope weaves like a golden thread throughout Imafidon’s book. I chose redemption and forgiveness as my main themes for Rewind.
I watched YouTube videos about the area but I really needed to visit. Author, Anne Coates, who knows Peckham well, showed me round to get a feel for the place – sights, sounds and smells. Rye Lane was busy and colourful. The graffiti on the walls and shop shutters were more like works of art. We found a housing estate that was part of the inspiration for my fictional one, with its twenty-storey tower rising above the smaller three-storey buildings. Drawing on everything I’d learned, the plot started to come together, the characters connected with Bernie and I was ready to tell her backstory at last. I’d done my background checks.
Rewind by Joy Kluver (Marchant Press) Out Now
When DI Bernie Noel goes back to work after maternity leave, she doesn’t expect to find a crashed car with a dead driver on her journey in. But a gruesome discovery in the boot of the car turns a road traffic accident into something more sinister and personal for the detective. It isn’t long before Bernie is forced to rewind six years and confront her failed covert operation in London. But as she relives that failure, can she survive the present danger too?
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