Officially, it has been just over five years since I first met DCI Jack Logan, the main protagonist of the crime fiction series I write set in the Scottish Highlands.
In that time, as I’ve uncovered some of his many quirks and foibles, I have gradually come to realise something significant - Jack has been hanging around for a long time before then.
I am, by nature, a Very Nice Man. I’m patient. I’m polite. I will try to deescalate confrontation whenever I can. I put it down to parenting, and too many Superman comics as a kid. I was never a Boy Scout – to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t exist in the small Highland town I grew up in - but if I had been, I would have absolutely nailed it.
We all do it to some extent or other – bite our tongues, rather than say out loud what we’re really thinking. I’ve never liked making people feel bad, and, being a six-foot-four Scottish man, am always wary that I could come across as intimidating.
Jack Logan doesn’t bother worrying about these things, though. And he’s six-foot-six.
I’ve written about Jack non-stop for over half a decade now, but I realise that I’ve felt him lurking in the background for most of my adult life.
He was there when I worked in a bar in Fort William, on the day that a group of Buckie Young Farmers kicked off and almost dropped a decorative whisky cast on another customer. I chased all fifteen of them down the street, before common sense kicked in and I raced back to the pub before they realised quite how badly I was outnumbered.
That chase along the High Street, I think, was Jack Logan taking the wheel.
He’s been bubbling below the surface on other occasions, too. When I finally told a self-important manager at the call centre I worked at in my early twenties exactly what I and everyone else in the building thought of his behaviour, that was Jack.
When I explained, quite firmly, to the sketchy landlord of our even sketchier flat that, no, he wouldn’t be getting his rent this month, because one of the rotting windows had fallen out of the frame and smashed on the pavement three floors below, Jack had my back.
The older I get, and the more I write about him, the more alike we become. We’re both equally as tormented by and besotted with our dogs. We’re both a little too partial to a roll and square sausage. We both hate camper van drivers, and face similar difficulties when it comes to getting behind the wheel of a Ford Fiesta.
We’re the same age, too, although I like to think I look younger.
On a more fundamental level, I believe we share the same moral compass. The only difference being that Jack is much more ready and willing to stab people in the eye with the pointy bit.
But, I’ve come to realise that I’m not only Jack Logan. I’m the other characters, too.
I share DC Tyler Neish’s inability to get through a day without some sort of personal disaster. I’ve never come close to being hit by a train like he has, but I did once step off a moving bus and get wrapped around a lamp post, then hit on the back of the head by the wing mirror when I stood up.
Like DS Hamza Khaled, I’m the family tech expert, called upon regularly by older relatives to fix their broadband, or their iPads, or to explain why the TV remote isn’t working (the answer inevitably being: ‘Because that’s not the remote, it’s your phone.’)
I share DI Ben Forde’s warmth towards people, Shona Maguire’s love for a Pot Noodle, and DC Sinead Bell’s near-supernatural ability to tolerate idiots.
And, though I’m almost afraid to admit it, I’m disgraced former Det Supt Bob Hoon, too. Bob is just me, but with all the switches that control the friendly, affable parts of my personality flipped in the opposite direction, and the anger dial cranked up to eleven.
Blend all the series’ characters together - heroes and villains alike – and the resulting gloopy mess would, I think, be quite recognisable as their creator.
Only, you know, you’d have to keep it in a jug.
As I approach fifty, I find both my patience and my ability to suffer fools rapidly dwindling. I honestly don't know if it's an age thing, or if I've just been spending too much time in Logan's company.
Perhaps it's a bit of both - a perfect storm of middle-aged grumpiness and fictional detective influence. If it's the latter then, with no plans to stop writing the series anytime soon, I've a feeling it's going to make the next few years very interesting. Call centre managers and dodgy landlords, you have been warned...
But then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, in a world that feels increasingly chaotic, there's something to be said for channelling your inner Jack Logan - standing up for what's right, even if it means ruffling a few feathers along the way.
A Killer of Influencer by J D Kirk (Canelo) Out Now
Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers – and families – in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts. And then, the livestreams begin. Broadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival. With each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end – live on camera. As the likes increase and the death toll rises, DCI Jack Logan and his team must traverse both the Scottish wilderness and the darkest corners of the internet to try and save the remaining captives. But how do you catch a killer who is always one click ahead?
More information about J D Kirk and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook and on Instagram @jdkirkbooks
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