It’s hard to pinpoint when and how inspiration strikes for a novel, but I know exactly when it did for The Detective.
The Waiter and The Cook were the first two books in my Kamil Rahman thriller series about a disgraced policeman from Kolkata who comes to work in a Brick Lane curry house. It was great fun to write this fish-out-of-water character, solving murders with his housemate Anjoli, while working as a waiter and then a chef at her dad’s restaurant.
I had an arc for Kamil which meant by the third book I would have him working his dream job in the Met Police while struggling with his unrequited love for Anjoli. I knew the East End setting with its eclectic environs was almost a character in itself, so I didn’t want to displace him from there yet, but I was stuck for the plot. To get some inspiration, my wife and I decided to drive around the area for a day. We picked up pakoras and jalebis from one of the old shops selling Indian sweets, beigels
