To start April, I’ve got an amazing interview with Harry Navinski, author of the Suzanna McLeod novel. He tells me about his books, his inspiration and how he’s passionate about the subject of his latest novel.
Please tell me about your books. Which one was your favourite to write?
My protagonist is Detective Chief Inspector Suzanna McLeod. She’s highly intelligent, analytical, well educated, fighting fit, and a great team leader. She coaches her team and inspires them to excel in their jobs, working together without major daily conflict. She works with her team, rather than merely using them as pawns, encouraging them to suggest lines of enquiry, and to take the initiative. Sure, she has a boss who’s a pain in the backside and a love-life dilemma, but she still has her head firmly on her shoulders.
It would be easy to cast aside this perhaps too-good-to-be-true heroine as an uninteresting character. But Suzanna’s a judo third-dan black-belt, a skier, and an experienced scuba diver. She regularly works out in the gym and, although in her mid-forties, can still run 5 km in under thirty minutes. She’s not afraid to take on violent criminals and doesn’t run from threats. She can imagine herself in the villain’s mind and see things that others miss. She gets results but without trampling on the fingers of those beneath her on the promotion ladder.
Suzanna became a detective because of her connection to a London-based, Victorian-era consulting detective – ring any bells? She inherited her great-great uncle’s magnifying glass and his estate, which had been set aside for the first of his blood relatives to pass a test he had set – a test of detective skills. It was a whodunit, a murder mystery that had to be solved. It’s this story that’s captured in The Test, a novella giving readers some back-story into Suzanna’s previous life.
In the first-in-series novel, The Glass, this cherished heirloom is stolen, and the magnifying glass’s recovery becomes a secondary objective to her tracking down armed bank robbers, before they strike again – perhaps with deadly consequences. And it turns out there’s a connection between the two crimes.
Suzanna’s second case, in The Duty, is one of murder. A South Asian woman’s body is found but there’s no clue to her identity. The search for her murderer takes Suzanna to Bangladesh and India. Uncooperative police forces see her relying on anti-sex-trafficking organisations to find the woman’s family and break the news, tackling Bengali gangsters along the way. Suzanna discovers how the woman came to be in Edinburgh and who led her there, before returning home to arrest the murderers.
The third DCI McLeod novel, The Key to Murder, sees Suzanna unravelling the dark past of a murdered octogenarian. A man who some may say got his comeuppance – justice eventually done, if not formally. Suzanna’s worry is that the avenger may now have a taste for vengeance and will seek out others who’ve escaped justice, with execution on their mind. Eastern European sex-trafficking side tracks the team for a while, with arrests made and women released from slavery, before the killer is finally brought to book.
And in the fourth book, The Last Walk, Suzanna is sent to rural Dumfriesshire to assist the local force with tracking down the culprit who shot a woman and her dog out on a morning walk. Suzanna makes a huge impact in the short time she’s with the Dumfries CID, with a drugs ring broken, bribery and corruption uncovered, and violent assaults curtailed, as well as the killer apprehended.
What’s your favourite part of being an author?
I love hearing from readers, especially when they rave about my books. I had an email recently where the reader said they had visited Edinburgh in Scotland and travelled around to all the locations mentioned in the book they had just read. Fantastic that they loved the book so much, they went to all that trouble.
The other thing I love about being an author is mixing with fellow crime writers at social events, conferences, and festivals. The latest crime festival I was featured at was the Death in the Dales crime festival, which was held in England’s Book Town, Sedbergh in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
What books do you like reading yourself? Any authors you’re particularly fond of?
I spend most of my time reading other crime novels, particularly police detective novels, because I write in the Police Procedurals sub-genre. I rarely read an author twice because there are so many crime authors that I haven’t read yet and I want to compare and contrast my novels with theirs, and to learn from that experience. I do love a Wilbur Smith novel, though, for the adventure and insight into historic Africa.
If you could collaborate with anyone, living or dead, on a writing project, who would it be and why?
It has to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His famous character, Sherlock Holmes, is the great-great-uncle of my protagonist, Suzanna McLeod. As mentioned earlier, I published a novella, The Test, set in 1920s London, which is a Sherlock Holmes type mystery. It would be great to work with Sir Arthur on a full-length novel, featuring my protagonist Silvester Locke-Croft, or of course Sherlock Holmes.
What books are you looking forward to in 2025?
The Waiter by Ajay Chowdhury, Absolution by Caro Ramsay, and Hunter’s Rules by Val Penny.
What’s next for you? Any new projects you’re excited about?
I’m currently editing my latest book, working title The Hit, which is about a music mogul assassinated by a sniper. Suzanna McLeod has to dig deep into the victim’s history and connections to find the motive for his murder and track down the man who took his life.
Do you have anything to add?
When editing my second novel, The Duty, I welled up several times. Even though it was fiction that I had written, I became emotional when reading it. Having worked as a volunteer in India for six years on anti-human-trafficking, I know what goes on – how disgustingly the girls and women are treated by those who come to own them. It still gets me every time I think about it. And all the profits from this book will go to support anti-human-trafficking organisations in India.
Huge thanks to Harry for answering my questions! If you’re interested in his work, check out his website here.
