The idea for Tracks first came to me back in 2007 while relaxing and listening to an LP, from which the idea came. It could’ve been any LP, to be honest, as the spark came from a standard element which every LP ever released contains. At that time,
I was working with someone on the editing of my first book, and I didn’t believe I was smart enough to write what eventually became Tracks. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d feel this way about an idea, however, the two better ideas have become realities in the form of a finished work.
In 2019, after completing the first book in a comedy series, I wondered as to what I might write next; I’d long since thrown the Tracks idea to a dark corner of my mind, where it gathered dust and the type of gifts pigeons often leave on statues in public places. I played the same record I’d played that day back in 2007, and the idea returned, yet more enhanced in its detail. So, I went through my records to find LPs that I could use in the book. The standard element of the LPs was to form the serial killer’s ‘signature’, although it would be a signature which changed with each murder.
The development of the characters was simple; I’d only recently reconnected with two childhood friends, and we’d shared some funny stories and memories. I decided to honour these two friends by naming two of the primary characters after them, yet swapping their surnames around. My wife and I had retired in 2015 and relocated to the Philippines in 2016. Once we moved into our new house, we met a couple from the U.S who’d also relocated to the Philippines. We’re great friends now, and he assisted in the editing of three earlier books, through which we encountered an amusing Australian/American culture discovery in both the manuscripts and our conversations. This is where the nationality of Detective Jim Malone came from, as he’s a newly-arrived divorcee from Springfield Illinois, and he’s called in on the case from State Crime Command in Parramatta. Detective Craig Walker is based at the Day Street Command, and Detective Silvia Jacobson leads a forensic team out of the Liverpool Command.
Walker and Jacobson have a history and a very close relationship, yet they’ve never been intimate, whereas Malone is the newcomer, and we Australians do like to play with our American friends. Walker and Jacobson often seek to befuddle Malone during his assignment to the case. While Australians do like to engage in a little fun and frivolity during the course of the working day, they do get down to business when the job is on.
Tracks, while certainly focusing on the crimes – which I thought might be a handy thing to do across the story – also delves a little into the personal lives of our three detectives. Craig Walker despises white cars, and this stems from a childhood trauma, witnessed by himself, his sister and their Aunty from the front veranda of his family home. He is also not too comfortable in proximity to large trucks on the road. Jacobson has worked hard to cleave her place within the police force, and has been subjected to a workplace sexual assault some years prior. Malone arrived at a point in time in his life where he released his relationship with his wife and daughter had come to an end, hence his relocating to Australia to start again.
Walker doesn’t realise it, but he’s had a shadow lurking within his own shadow for the better part of twenty-one years, and that shadow is about to step out into the open and introduce itself to him. Walker, like many law enforcement officers, has worked many cases as a detective, and has been involved in just as many call-outs during his years in uniform; everything can’t be remembered, yet there’s always someone in the background who’s forgotten nothing, and seeks to keep score until they call their personal charge to action.
