Q&A: The Mystery of the Homeless Man by Gina Cheyne

Genre ~ crime & mystery

Series ~ SeeMS Detective Agency #3

Release date ~ May 4, 2023

I am delighted to be share a Q&A today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.

check out what my fellow bloggers thought of this one ⤵

Q&A:

Q.1. Why did you write The Mystery of the Homeless Man?

A. Even before I wrote my first book in this series, The Mystery of the Lost Husbands, I was thinking about writing a book about a homeless man. The reason is simple: I knew someone who died there. A flying colleague.

Q.2. So, is this the story of your colleague?

A. No, this is a work of fiction, but it uses some elements of his life and it is what might have happened to turn him (or rather the fictional homeless character Neil) from a successful airline pilot to a homeless drunk living and dying on the cold wet street.

Q.3. Do you think your colleague would be happy that you have used his example for a work of fiction?

A. I mulled this in my mind for a long time before I started writing the book. My colleague was a very private man. In all the time I knew him, we talked only about his flying career, his interest in aircraft and his love of history. I knew nothing at all about his family. Only after he died did I discover he had been engaged twice to the same girl, who each time broke it off to marry someone more useful. He, however, loved her still and wanted to get engaged to her a third time. Despite his natural desire for privacy, he was a very kind man and I think he would like this story – a story which has an explainable ending– to be an example to others.

Q.4. What research did you do to prepare for writing about a homeless man?

A. Well, many years before I met my colleague and heard about his death I had been interested in writing about the homeless. When I was growing up in London there was, for a short time, a tented city near my home and I used to visit it and imagine what it would be like to live there.

I also did a sponsored sleep out. However, the night I went to do the sleep out was not as planned as only the organiser and I turned up for that night. This, since I was then still a school girl, was quite challenging for us both: particularly for him, suddenly finding himself having to protect a naïve child. However, he was very kind and even ‘borrowed’ some boxes for me to sleep in as I had come with only a sleeping bag – in effect totally unprepared.

I also volunteered at St Botolph’s, a church in the city of London where they gave food and medical treatment to the homeless. (It closed in 2008) My job was to talk to people and hear their stories, which was highly enlightening and sometimes truly devastating.

Q.5. Do you feel that you have achieved your aim with this book?

A. I don’t think I’ve ever met an author who was entirely happy with their work. It seems the creative ‘genius’ is always just a paragraph away. However, I hope that my colleague would feel I had tried to keep his memory going and that people who knew him would remember him for his kindness, his support to women pilots and not just for his despair which led to such a sad and lonely ending.

Q.6. One final question. I believe this novel has a sequel called Perfect Planning. Is it possible to read this book satisfactorily without the sequel? And when will Perfect Planning be released?

A. Yes, this book is a standalone and the mystery of this novel is solved by the end. However, there is a lingering question, which is answered by Stevie the airline pilot in the following book: Perfect Planning.

Perfect Planning is currently going through edits and should be ready to release in November this year.

Book blurb:

Why would an airline pilot exchange a world of comfort
for life on the streets?

In 2006, Miranda meets an itinerant in the wood, she takes him home. He refuses to stay, desperate to return to the streets. Miranda gives him some money and forgets the incident.
Fifteen years later, the SeeMs Detective Agency is investigating an abandoned house and discovers a homeless man was found murdered.
No one knows who the dead man is or how he died, and, with one hundred and fifty unidentified street deaths per year, no one has time to find out.
But, the SeeMs Detectives have both time and a client.
Their investigation takes them into a surprising world of aviation, night-clubs and the homeless.
What they discover threatens one of their team. Can they save their colleague before the homeless man’s killer strikes again?

Check out the series on goodreads

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