Q&A WITH M.J. TROW
Give us an introduction to yourself.
I have written an almost unbelievable 100+ books — fiction and non-fiction — and now have the pleasure of writing several series with my wife. I read history at King’s College London and then did a teaching qualification at Jesus, Cambridge. I was a teacher for a million years or thereabouts, and on retirement I did quite a lot of ‘talking head’ TV for Discovery channel and others and am often surprised to this day by my own voice coming out of the telly when anything Jack the Ripper is in the news again. Like Maxwell, I am a bit of a dinosaur tech-wise but have embraced laptops and iPads at last because the house was filling up with paper. I don’t have a mobile, though! We have a cat, not black and white, but some in our past entourage certainly have been, notably the wonderful Beamish and Murphy. We have a son, Tali, a musician and teacher, and by his good offices two wonderful grandsons, who are an abiding pleasure and a source of endless Nolanisms, as, back in the day, was their father.
And an introduction to Peter Maxwell.
Peter Maxwell is old-school to the extent of being regarded as a dinosaur. He lives and breathes history, confides in his cat Metternich, has a collection of model soldiers in his attic and has been loved by generations of school children. He doesn’t drive, following a family car accident before the series opens, but rides his bike White Surrey (named after Richard III’s warhorse at the Battle of Bosworth) everywhere. The students think he is mad for various reasons. He is the bane of the senior management — a group which changes through the series but are always borderline incompetent and sometimes even murder victims! He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but also never condescends — he can tell the difference, in other words, between those who are being deliberately obtuse and those who really could do with his help. And help he is always ready to give, sometimes putting himself in danger. In other words, we all wish we had had Peter Maxwell teaching us at school! His relationship with the police is complex as you will come to see. But he and DCI Henry Hall develop a close relationship over the years, built on mutual respect. Leighford, a seaside town on the South Coast, has not always been his home, but now he wouldn't ever want to be anywhere else.
Which book character are you most like?
Well, I suppose it has to be Peter Maxwell, apart from the bike (I last rode one when I was doing my teaching training at Cambridge) but my wife has other thoughts. She lists Atticus Finch, Roderick Alleyn, Inspector Purbright (from the Flaxborough Chronicles) and Sam Vimes (from various Terry Pratchett novels), but I think that all that proves is that she reads more than I do.
Which book in the series did you have the most fun writing?
Maxwell’s Movie, mainly because the Museum of the Moving Image (sadly missed) on the South Bank was so much the star and I did a ‘walk through’ so anyone reading the book could have followed Maxwell’s footsteps. But second by a whisker is Maxwell’s Inspection because all teachers have an innate dread of Ofsted inspections, no matter how they might brazen it out. I have actually given copies to inspection teams but of course they are never around for long enough to give feedback!
What can readers expect from the rest of the series?
Peter Maxwell, following in the footsteps of other literary great detectives like Roderick Alleyn, doesn’t age as such but does move on with his life. He eventually gets a mobile phone, though seldom carries it, and can use a computer but takes huge care to make sure no one knows he can — fake ignorance, in Maxwell’s opinion, is bliss. One thing that doesn’t change, though, is that he is a whizz at solving crimes!