How injustice made me a better writer
I was in a coma for 4 days.
When I woke, I was dazed, disorientated and had the driest throat ever. I was in bed, in a room with bare white walls. My mother was sitting in a chair. For a moment, I thought we were in Italy again.
My mother’s Italian and we had spent the most boring 6 weeks in my grandparents’ farm cottage, halfway up a mountain in Southern Italy. Avellino province, in case you’re interested.
I couldn’t believe we were back there so soon.
My mother became agitated. I don’t know why. I only asked for a drink. That’s when I noticed the bandages on my hand, strapping my thumbs so tight, I couldn’t move them. I didn’t have the energy to move.
Something was wrong.
A nurse rushed in and started to examine me, asking lots of questions. She checked my pulse, shone a bright light into my eyes. I yawned, feeling tired. Not a drowsy feeling, but a deep sense of exhaustion.
It seemed wrong as I’d only woken up a few moments ago.
Later, I discovered I’d been involved in a road accident. A lorry had struck my bicycle while I was doing my paper round, 4 days ago.
Or had I ridden into the side of the lorry as the driver claimed?
I didn’t know nor care. I was 14 and the bike I’d built from second hand and begged parts was damaged. I wanted to get back home to fix it. Only I couldn’t as the police had the bike.
To make matters worse, the headphones that allowed me to listen to hospital radio were faulty. The earpiece on the left-hand side anyway. I swapped them over to see if this would resolve the problem, but it didn’t.
I couldn’t hear anything in my left ear.
When I told the nurse, she said it was quite normal for hearing to be affected after a head injury. My hearing would soon return to normal in a few days, or weeks.
Head injury?
At least it explained why my hair was matted and sticky. But, why was some of it shaved back to my skull?
“You needed 9 stitches in your head wound,” she replied. “It looks like the collision sent you over the top of your handlebars. You put out your hands to break the fall, but ended up breaking your thumbs.”
That explained the strapping. “My head hit the road?”
She nodded. “That’s why you were in a coma for 4 days.”
I also lost the hearing in my left ear. Despite numerous hospital visits and tests, my hearing was permanently damaged.
There were some advantages.
I couldn’t hear people talking if they were stood to my left. If I wasn’t keen on someone, I made sure they stood to my left.
The police couldn’t prosecute the driver of the lorry, even though they knew he’d cut the corner and struck me. An elderly lady saw the whole incident, but she refused to give a written statement or get involved.
My mother took this badly, heading round to plead with the woman, but she refused to help.
It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced unfairness.
My father died when I was 8.
But this was the first time I’d suffered injustice.
It made me angry that the driver had not only lied to the police, but didn’t care about injuring me. Or damaging my bike, which I couldn’t afford to repair.
Looking back, I wonder if this sense of injustice had anything to do with my choice of career. While I didn’t join the police, I became and environmental health officer, which involved law enforcement.
I was particularly passionate about protecting the environment and the public from harm from unfit food, unsafe work practices and a host of other public health issues. Throughout my career, I tried to ensure fairness by making sure businesses met the same standards of food hygiene.
If I hadn’t spent my career in environmental health, I would never have created my sleuth Kent Fisher, an ordinary person who solves the most complex murders I can create.
Like me, he’s an environmental health officer, but he gets away with far more than I ever could.
What I didn’t realise until I published book 5 or 6 in my Downland Murder Mystery series, was how unfairness and injustice features in all my novels. The killers are often the victims of injustice – or that’s what they believe. They seek revenge on those who have mistreated them.
Sometimes, murder is the only way to even a score.
It means I often have sympathy with the killers I create, understanding their frustration and anger with a system that lets them down. Hopefully, this brings something extra to the novels.
The unfairness and injustice I felt after nearly being killed, and losing some of my hearing, may well have contributed to my career, to a life protecting the public and to a series of crime novels that have justice at their core.
If this is the case, then it shows that misfortune, pain and unfairness can be transformed into something positive and inspiring.
And that’s how injustice made me a better writer … eventually!