A Murderer Joins the Police Force

Charlie Williams is the author of Deadfolk , Booze and Burn , King of the Road and One Dead Hen,(each just $3.99). This series of pulp-crime novels, set in Mangel, England, is narrated by nightclub bouncer, Royston Blake, a dense bloke who speaks in a thick English dialect. Here the author discusses the latest novel in the series.

I have a thing about delusional characters. In One Dead Hen, my new book, former nightclub doorman Royston Blake sees a recruitment ad for the local police force and gets it into his close-cropped head that he will be welcomed with open arms. Never mind that he has been in and out of the station since childhood, and has wriggled his hulking frame out of every major crime he has been involved in (mostly murder). Never mind that he has no worthwhile education, a history of mental illness, and has been unemployed for the past two years. Never mind that his public image is somewhere between the most violent thug in town and the village idiot. To Blake, these are all good qualities. To Blake, this is a case of poacher turning gamekeeper.

It’s the non-delusional, normal and conforming people that we must be concerned about in literature. These straight-laced heroes often turn out to be even more corrupt and malicious than the openly delusional or criminal characters. The even temper and rationality is a front, hiding a miscreant or a soul that is ready to snap from enduring the pressure of years of suppression. Patrick Bateman in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is a fine example of the mask that hides the opposite psyche. Bateman's whole approach to public life is to conform, to stand out only as the epitome of what is acceptable because he knows how rotten his true self is.

Blake, by contrast, is not scheming enough to conform. He is a criminal  who thinks his heart is pure and wholesome, an expert in the art of dreaming up excuses for his wrongdoings and immediately swallowing them whole. He is also convinced that he has the face of a young Clint Eastwood and the body of Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, despite a life of beer, burgers and beatings.

Despite his thuggery and delusions, there’s a reason we care about him. Perhaps the fact that he’s not duplicitous makes us root for him, even though his carelessness has just led to someone's death and he just shrugs and moves on. Maybe we identify with him. Not that you or I are similar to Blake in any obvious way. But Blake is just a human being, like us. His fallibilities are magnified, but isn't he behaving like we all do? Don't we all do the wrong thing at times and justify it to ourselves with some dubious excuse? Aren't we all just products of our environment, wanting to get some recognition in the world we find ourselves in?

In Mangel, the small town environment of which Blake is a product, violence and hair-trigger judgment are the norm. But things have been getting worse of late. Headless corpses of women are turning up on a regular basis, and the police are no closer to collaring the killer. Maybe, just maybe, someone who thinks like a criminal, someone like Blake, can help catch the murderer.

One Dead Hen is available on Kindle for $3.99.