Getting down to writing the next Bernie Fazakerley Mystery

As I said in my previous post, my next detective novel is going to be about a crime that took place nearly forty years ago, when Our Bernie was still a postgraduate student and DCI Jonah Porter was a mere Detective Constable. The idea is that he decides to write his memoirs to while away the time during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, when he is confined to the house because his spinal cord injury makes exposure to the virus high risk for him.

I planned to interleave current events, such as discussions of the case between Jonah and his friends, Peter and Bernie, with past event pertaining to the murder case. The next question was how to do this.There were three main options:

1. Write both current and past events from the point of view of an omniscient narrator (my usual approach);
2. Write current events as third person omniscient, but use chapters from Jonah’s memoirs (written in the first person) to tell the story of the past case;
3. Write both current and past events in the first person, possibly changing narrator between Jonah, Bernie and Peter.

When I read fiction, I’m not a great fan of first-person narratives, but I have to admit they do sometimes work really well. Jonah is a bright guy and quite capable of writing up a case in a way that would make a good story. In a fit of enthusiasm, I got him to write some case notes for Bernie website. They never got very far, because he’s a busy man and writing is time-consuming when you only have two fingers to type with, but you can read about one of his very early cases here, if you’re interested:

https://sites.google.com/site/llanwrdafamily/home/jonah-s-casenotes.

I think I’ve decided to go for third person omniscient for the present-day and to allow Jonah to narrate the past – perhaps with interventions from Peter (who was there and may remember things differently) and Bernie (who was very much on the periphery and may have questions about what happened from the point of view of an outsider. I’ve planned out the chapters. Now all I have to do is write them!