About the Case-Book:
A Study in “Victorian Noir”
All good detectives keep a case-book detailing the lives and crimes they’ve encountered throughout their career. It’s true now, and it was true in the 1880’s, when Adam Cole, private investigator (or “enquiry agent” as they were often known), wore out his boots and his wits pounding the grimy pavements of London seeking answers amongst the worst the city had to offer. Unlike many of his forebears, Cole is not remarkable nor wealthy. He struggles day-to-day in the slums of the East End, tortured by the twists and turns his investigations reveal without the ease of godly deductive abilities or the means to throw money at his problems. He is a working man, often frustrated and even bored by his job, but always tireless when it comes to turning over the pieces of every puzzle he passes. From pubs to pawnshops to ports, Cole winds his way through the dark warrens of London and beyond as he chases down the answers to missing and murdered persons. And there is no limelight awaiting him should he find the resolutions he seeks – just more cases…
Written for fans of both detective fiction and the world of Victorian London, The Case-Book of Adam Cole will set out to explore the day-to-day workings of a private investigator in a way different from Sherlock Holmes and those wonderful creations other writers have gifted to us over the years. Drawing from my own experiences as a decades-long private investigator and cold case researcher, I intend to make Cole a man who is pained and haunted yet driven in all that he investigates. Far from cozy or quaint, The Case-Book of Adam Cole is more “Victorian Noir” in its approach, while presented in a way readers have scarcely experienced since the 19th Century.
The modern real-world detective can trace his lineage to the early Victorian Era. The same is true for the modern fictional detective. While real-world police investigators were born of a necessity to bring law and order to the rapidly growing industrial cities of the west, fictional detectives (both police and private) were born of a reader’s necessity to be confounded by and find resolution to injustices explored by writers on the printed page. Authors like E.A. Poe, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins pioneered detective stories and turned them into a favourite topic for readers of the era. Month after month, the reading public thirsted for the next installment of C. Auguste Dupin, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood or The Woman In White.
Unlike today, the books of the Victorian Era were not initially bound and released as whole novels. Instead, their release was serialised, rather like a weekly episodic television series, with a new installment that consisted of a few chapters, or a short story, being released weekly or monthly over many months or even years. Often, the author wrote on the go, barely keeping ahead of schedule, knowing that if they so much as dropped their pen they might fall behind and receive scorn from publisher and public alike. There was no time to procrastinate. Writer’s block meant certain death for one’s literary future. In the Victorian Era, writers wrote more than they ate or slept. It was a high-pressure situation. Many of the writers, even great ones like Dickens, had no long-term plan or outline; they simply wrote and wrote, and as the public read and read and shared their comments in printed forums like newspapers and magazines, the writer had the advantage of tailoring his story to the needs and wants of his audience. Sometimes to great success or even to great disappointment. But the format worked regardless, as readers stayed hooked to the end, snatching up the latest periodicals like Lippincott’s, Household Words, Tit-Bits, or The Strand to see where the story went next and what happened with their favourite characters. As most writers were paid by the word, it was in their best interest to keep these stories going to great length – or until the readers grew tired of them.
The enjoyment of serialised writing comes from the duo sensations of suspense and expectation that it creates. The slow-drip method gives readers the time to meet the characters, savour the moments, and turn the story’s events over in their imaginations as they prepare for what comes next. Most of the great characters and literary contributions of the 19th Century were introduced in this way. From the opening lines of a novel, a reader might have to wait many months or years to reach the conclusion, and throughout this time they were free to compare and debate their theories and thoughts with other readers right up until the author, in near real time, signed off with “The End.”
This is how I intend The Case-Book of Adam Cole to work: serialised chapters of a completed novel released weekly, with supplementary articles and materials made available to fill the gaps and compliment the story as it progresses. It will be about portion control as, like your literate ancestors from two centuries ago, you consume each installment one crumb at a time until, hopefully satisfied, you have digested an entire meal over many months:
What You Will Get:
· Weekly chapter drops of an on-going Adam Cole novel that will be serialised, in the traditional Victorian fashion, over several months;
· Bonus short stories featuring independent cases from various times throughout the career of Adam Cole;
· A timeline explaining Adam Cole’s strife and crimes throughout his life and times, periodically updated;
· Supplementary material such as articles, news-clippings, and maps related to the world of Cole;
· Photographs of the hand-written case notes of Adam Cole, displaying his personal thoughts and techniques, which have survived from the era of dip pens and inkwells into the modern day;
So, please subscribe for $5 US/month (or $45/yearly) and follow along as we enter a world of “Victorian Noir” through the escapades of Adam Cole, private enquiry agent. Feel free to sample a short story and a chapter first; I hope you will be riveted enough to want to delve deeper and follow Cole into the grimy alleys, stinking dens, and fetid courts of a time long past yet eerily familiar…
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