It was all that south-London DIY that kids got into around then. It was actually a nice, if uneventful, place to grow up. When I buy a book I invest not just money but hopes and expectations, you know - and when it doesn't live up to it, it's a personal insult. And of course they almost never live up to it. I go for stuff that delivers hundreds of ideas on every page, as intense as a fever dream.
Most books are dead on arrival, there's nothing there.
So that leaves a gap in the market which is the size of the planet. Well, there's a bit of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil character in Henry Blince. Chief Blince is one of my favourite characters to write - he's in The Crime Studio , Slaughtermatic , and a few of the stories in the Toxicology collection that's coming out from Four Walls Eight Windows in America. And the third proper Beerlight book, as well, for 2000 - he's in all of them. And there's a lot of music in the books - all the streets in Beerlight are named after something.