Inspector Jacques- 2009 (Post 219)
Inspector Jacques is the eleventh book in the Jack Russell: Dog Detective series.
Long series can sometimes get repetitive, so we decided to shake up the formula a little by giving Jack an intellectual rival and a case that bent our cardinal rule; that Jack's cases must feature things that are the legitimate concern of dogs.
Jack has always been top dog detective in Doggeroo, but suddenly there's a newcomer trying to claim his title. Inspector Jacques is a French bulldog with attitude, and a fang-resistant collar, as Jack discovers. Meanwhile, poor Preacher has run afowl of the terrible dog-boggarts.
When we decided on a French detective dog to come up against Jack, we needed a legitimate reason for it to be in Doggeroo, and we wanted to make use of the fact that he was foreign. Why French? Initially we were playing with the idea of a dog whose name was almost the same as Jack's and we hit upon Jacques. As it happens, Jack is an offshoot of the name John, but John comes via Johannes. Jacques is a from of James, from Jacquot, sometimes changed to Jakkin in the middle ages... This may be coincidental, but the names still seem bound together. We were playing with the name Jacques le Bark (so sue us) but in the end common sense prevailed. The obvious breed for the Inspecteur was a French Poodle so we decided not tp be obvious and went French Bulldog instead.
As for the case- poor Jack just can't work out why any dog would be interested in paintings! The dog-boggarts? Our own Preacher was frightened of children when he was young and we got into the habit of saying, "Oops, dog-boggarts approaching," and making a detour.
Funny, the things that get into books. This is another of my favourite collars...um, covers.
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Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)
The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service.
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