In my novel, High Concepts: A Hollywood Nightmare, there is a character named Giggs, a bodyguard and heavy, possibly even a hit-man, who is a big reader with a philosophical turn of mind. I always liked the contradiction in his character and the comic possibilities it contains; eventually I began thinking of a series of short crime or mystery stories, The Gadfly series, in which Giggs features as the central character. I now have rough drafts of an initial trilogy of short stories in this series, but there’s much work to do in revision.
Giggs, being a criminal himself, functions paradoxically and not always willingly in the stories as “detective.” Even though Giggs is no saint, one of my chief inspirations for the series is G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. Chesterton once wrote that “the only thrill, even of a common thriller, is concerned somehow with the conscience and the will.” The Father Brown stories are fascinating for the way in which the paradox of the surface mystery often serves to illuminate the paradoxes of the human heart. I’m aiming to do something similar with The Gadfly series, in that the surface mystery in which Giggs will be absorbed will always be connected to a deeper philosophical or even theological mystery–one, moreover, that will challenge Giggs to come to terms with the paradoxes in his own heart.
In his essay, “The Ideal Detective Story,” Chesterton speaks of
[a] the side of the character that cannot be connected with the crime; and
[b] the crime itself.
For Chesterton, what he calls the “psychological” reconciliation of the [a] and [b] occurs when the surface mystery is illuminated by the detective. But then Chesterton goes on:
“It is only an accident of the actual origin of these police novels that the interest of the inconsistency commonly goes no further than that of a demure governess being a poisoner, or a dull and colorless clerk painting the town red by cutting throats. There are inconsistencies in human nature of a much higher and mysterious order, and there is really no reason why they should not be presented in the particular way that causes the shock of a detective tale.”
It is those inconsistencies of “a much higher and mysterious order” that I will attempt to bring to light in The Gadfly series.
I’ll have much more about the series in upcoming posts–including the very first story to be posted for free here on the blog.
The image above is reproduced courtesy of BBC Television and features the cast of its new adaptation of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.
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