To kick things off in my new blog, I thought it would be a good idea to pen a few thoughts on how my lead protagonist came to be. Nate Caslin is clearly a flawed individual with exterior stresses on his life well beyond those brought to him by his chosen career path. The hard-drinking policeman, with marital issues, is an archetypal construct within the genre and handled poorly would have been received negatively.
Although DI Caslin is not based on a real individual, I have drawn on my own experience to form the makeup of his character. My father was a serving police officer in both the Metropolitan Police, patrolling Vauxhall in London, before moving to the south and clocking up three decades of service. As a family, we grew up in Police housing (those days are long gone), and were therefore surrounded by other officers and their families for most of my youth. DI Caslin is very much a product of both my imagination and my memories. His character is influenced by those I grew up alongside, albeit with the volume of their personalities dialled up more than a few notches.
I remember seeing the best of people as well as, arguably, some of the worst. The visits to my junior schools by community liaison officers, teaching us how to be safe. Attending the police cricket team training events. The Christmas disco at the Constabulary Headquarters laid on for the children and joking in the street outside my house with uniformed officers was commonplace. This was normal for me, dare I say routine.
Then there were the negatives. The impact of having parents working shifts, of only seeing them periodically for an hour or so before they disappeared again. The Christmas holidays, birthdays, football matches, without them present (or at least not often). On other days, watching their demeanour shift following what was a day spent wading through the human garbage that most of us only experience through the television news or in the papers. That was normal for these men and women. I knew children whose fathers didn’t make it home at the end of their shift, instead they attended hospital with their mother when children of their age should be sleeping soundly, in their beds. Thankfully no-one I knew was killed in service but my father lost other colleagues and it hit him hard. My father was hospitalised twice, both times with serious injuries and the latter forced his early retirement.
In almost all cases, these men and women shielded their loved ones from their daily experiences. In doing so, this may have proved detrimental to their marriages and relationships with their children. How could it not? Many of my friends watched as their parents’ marriages collapsed or stumbled on in an uncomfortable act of mutual suffering. There were some who self-medicated with alcohol, extra-marital affairs, gambling… or worse. Not all, by any means. Many had positive domestic lives that stood the test of time and have held together to this day.
These vices, character flaws, weaknesses, call them what you will, were not open knowledge. Some of the grittier details I only found out once I was in adulthood. And this is the point, you can have people in responsible roles within society, who for the most part deliver in their roles, but who have their own secrets they keep well-guarded from the rest of us. People are never black and white, most of us live within the grey areas.
DI Caslin exists here. I wanted him to be someone battling his own demons. Likewise, I didn’t want him to have all the answers. He will miss things, make mistakes. He is human with the same frailties and fallibilities we all suffer from. A detective with a strong sense of justice and a moral code that he applies to the world alongside a desire to be a better person, with the latter being just beyond his reach. A fall from grace followed by a catastrophic self-destruction, as Caslin has experienced, has left him questioning his place in the world and he needs to adapt to this new reality. Some people can change quickly, in a matter of months but for others it can take years to come to terms with their new situation, if ever. All the while, they still need to live, to work and to function in the world around them. This is the world of Nathaniel Caslin, exaggerated for the benefit of artistic licence but no less real.