Freddie: Woof! So, Heide, today sees the launch of Jaegermax. For people who’ve never read them, what are the Sam Applewhite books about?
Heide: The series is named after the main character, Sam Applewhite. We might call her an amateur sleuth, but she definitely
doesn’t set out to solve mysteries. She stumbles into some unusual scenarios because of her job and she’s the sort of person who can’t walk away from something that’s not right. She works for a company called DefCon4, who are one of the contract companies that the public sector (or anyone else who’s paying) outsource tasks to. We’re talking everything from organising community service to fitting security systems or delivering meals on wheels. The trouble is that she is the only employee in the
Skegness office. Head office don’t seem to understand this, and constantly confound her with corporate bureaucracy rather than practical support. She’s resourceful though, and she makes it work.
Freddie: How did you come up with the central concept for this series?
Heide: Iain and I were driving back from a convention that we’d attended and were discussing future projects. I told him that I burned to emulate the ‘Florida Whackjob’ style of Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, Tim Dorsey and others. They are crime capers, often with larger-than-life characters, outlandish
situations and lots of humour. They generally take place in Florida, so straightaway, Iain suggested that we should claim Skegness as the UK literary equivalent of Florida.
Iain: I love Skegness. It’s near where I grew up and it’s a very traditional seaside town and my favourite in the
whole country. It’s like Blackpool but without the tower. It’s like Brighton but with a proper sandy beach instead of that pebble nonsense. It’s got donkeys and donuts, fairgrounds and casinos. It’s one of those places where anything or anyone could appear and it would seem believable.
Freddie: Arf arf! And what happens in book 6?
Iain: A rich Russian oligarch hunts poor people for sport.
Freddie: Yes. Believable.
Heide: We’d been talking for a while about writing a book where rich people hunt poor people. It’s a trope that enables lots of fun. We had also been talking about Delia (Sam’s friend who owns a second hand
shop) accidentally buying a tank because we thought it would be funny. We combined the two into Jaegermax. The tank is a wreck at the start of the book, but it just so happens that another character, Hilde, is a Fixer of Things!
Freddie: You’ve mentioned Delia and Hilde. Who are the
recurring characters we might expect to me in book 6?
Heide: Sam has an ex-boyfriend called Rich. He is incredibly wealthy, so he is sometimes able to open doors that Sam cannot, even though she would rather keep him at arm’s length. He doesn’t always seem to understand that he is an ‘ex’.
This can be annoying because Sam has a soft spot for Lucas Camara, the local police detective.
Iain: I love Sam’s dad, Marvin Applewhite. He’s a retired stage magician and has had a (fictitious) career in which he’s shared the stage with all manner of (real) B-list celebrities. I’ve
enjoyed working out which politically incorrect comedian from the eighties he might have done pantomime with in recent years. I also love the fact that he’s a man in his seventies but his storyline is always about having a zest for life and trying out new things.
Heide: Hilde Odinson, the
Fixer of Things might be a favourite of mine. She is part of the Odinson clan, a local family who live as Vikings (or the version that Hilde’s grandad promotes anyway), but she is proud, grumpy and she loves her MIG welder. We have a lot of fun with the Odinson clan.
Freddie: Bark! Did you
do any research for this novel?
Heide: We did! We quickly realised that our tank knowledge was lacking. There are some great Youtube videos, but we wanted to get up close and personal with some tanks, so we went to Armourgeddon in Leicestershire, who were terrific and indulged a great
many questions from us, and made some useful suggestions. I also realised after this that I knew someone who had worked on tanks during his military career, so he filled in some of the blanks.
