Cases for Harley (three parts)

I started with these short stories two or so years ago and kept on writing them without ever thinking of a book. Eventually, I realised I had a total of twenty-one of them, so I took the trouble to arrange them chronologically according to the number of children my detective couple—around whom all the stories revolve—had together, and created an e-book in three parts titled 'Cases for a Harley, If You Don't Mind Skipping the Murders.' This title highlights the fact that there are no murders in them, only two cases of unintentional manslaughter. You see, the stories came about from a discussion with my younger granddaughter (I'm so old that even she is far too grown-up now) who dislikes detective stories precisely because of the murders. So, for her sake, I tried my hand at detective stories without corpses, but with lots of love and five children who, like proper police kids, also do some investigating of their own—for instance, into what their parents get up to when they are asleep. You desperately need that huge amount of love as a caring parent to so many children while also, as a police officer, constantly wading through avalanches of human misery and filth. There's so much love you could slice it and serve it up.

There are three parts because life doesn't just happen around me, but around my fictional characters too. So in each little book, they are slightly different—still distinctive and unconventional, but ageing, wiser, and calmer, though still helping, protecting, and advising. They are proper police officers in a small town where everyone knows each other and where many things are still as they should be. He, a gentle giant with a heart of gold called Golem, and she, a petite, empathetic, and fashion-loving woman called Tinkerbell, who is also exceedingly agile and so skilled in martial arts that even five men are no match for her—seriously, I'm not kidding. And besides all those children, they both have a Harley, which lives with all of them in her little house in a small, unnamed town. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Men like that exist in real life. And believe it or not, women like that exist too.

The book is richly illustrated—each chapter is loosely accompanied by one of the author's colour pictures.