#0 in a Mystery Series
Counting on our fingers, we all start “one, two, three.” Right? So what’s up with a mystery series, like the Seamus McCree Novels, that starts with zero? Perhaps I should have been as smart as George Lucas, who labeled his first Star Wars movie “Episode 4.” But I was not. When I first decided to write a series about a financial crimes investigator, I thought long and hard about his name and finally decided on Seamus McCree. His first name is a double play with words: Seamus is the Gaelic equivalent of my first name, James. Since this character was in a sense standing in for me on the fictional page, a variation of my name had a certain irony that I appreciated. Even better was that Seamus is a homonym for Shamus: Yiddish for a detective. Mystery readers would appreciate that inside joke. After choosing a first name, I decided on the last name McCree so when anyone Googled the name, they would likely come up with my character. And with an Irish name like that, I gave ...