Darrell’s Deductive Doyle Says Cheese
Paula Xiberras
Darrell Pitt hasn’t been to Tasmania as yet, but shares with me that it’s ‘a place I really want to go’ in fact Darrell has been perusing photos and has taken a keen interest in real estate in some of Hobart’s historic areas.
The plan of visiting Tassie is coming a little closer as he also scrutinizers the fairly inexpensive travel deals and having lived in NSW for most of his life, the fact that Darrell now lives in Victoria and so just over the pond from Tasmania. Of course the Tassie winters do deter him a little!
Darrell’s latest novel ‘The Secret Abyss’ is inspired by his long time love of Victorian literature including the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.
His young adult novel’s main character Mr Doyle, with the middle name Ignatius, is a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle himself and his invention of the sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The interesting thought struck Darrell that if ConanDoyle was a detective and solved detective cases like Holmes he would have his own Watson and form a dynamic duo, and give guidance, in this case to an orphan by the name of Jack Mason.
One thing that Mr Doyle gives guidance on is his deductive thinking and if you read page 65 you will get a good example of this as Mr Doyle quizzes a suspect, deduces some very interesting facts from the unfinished state of the fellow’s tattoos, the un-kept nature of his clothing, the letters in a woman’s hand he spies behind him and the demise of his dog.
Darrell’s novel also has a feminist point of view with his admittedly favourite character of Scarlet Belle, a young suffragette, because to Darrell woman are still fighting for their rights and it is an important issue to him. Darrell celebrates the strength of women and says Scarlet dives in ‘where angels fear to tread’.
Darrell may never have gotten into writing if it hadn’t an experience as a child at school hadn’t turned things around for him. He had struggled to write a short story at school but one day he did manage to write the required 3 and half pages. He was praised by the teacher and this is what gave him the impetus to continue and indeed make a career of writing.
Darrell’s aim is to write about seven books, similar to the Harry Potter series. Darrell’s characters are not cardboard and in some cases are so real we share with them, their trials and tribulations.
Darrell tells me his character’s stories affect him greatly and he finds himself crying at their sorrows and laughing at their joys. He notices sometimes his wife popping her head around the door and shaking her head at his expression of emotion! Darrell believes like Stephen King that ‘there is a mental telepathy between the reader and the writer’ something akin to what Morris Gleitzman calls the ‘magic spaces’, Darrell also quotes Stephen King about reading and education and how it leads to the opening of a door, while lack of educational opportunities opens the door only narrowly that limits your view of the world.
Darrell says to encourage reading it’simportant to let people read whatever they want, whether it be comic books or fantasy as it will allow them to form the skills in reading they need. Darrel is always delighted when he hears stories like the following for instance:
Some parents noted their young son in the back seat of the car on a long trip giving up his computer and his parents looking around to see him engrossed in a book!. Such stories give Darrell deep satisfaction.
I have one question to ask Darrell and that is why we always see Mr Doyle with a piece of cheese. Darrell says that he himself is also a fan of blue cheese but with a writer’s visionDarrell says the regular appearance of the cheese might subconsciously, symbolically signify a maturing (as cheese is known for) in the relationship of Mr Doyle and his young protégés.
On a final note Darrell says once a woman asked him whether he wrote for money or fame he says for him it is neither, he loves writing, Darrell’s book ‘The Secret Abyss’ is out now published by Text Publishing.