Easter Eggs...

Hinton Hollow Death Trip.

I write a lot about faith. I’m not particularly religious but the subject fascinates me. And, in the spirit of the moment, I have decided to share some of the Easter Eggs from my narrated-by-Evil book, Hinton Hollow Death Trip.

I love a good easter egg. Those cute little hidden references you find in all kinds of art that pay homage to something else or are a recurring theme or motif. I do it all the time. My line ‘Nothing important happened today’, which appears in everything I have ever written was taken from the title of the opening two episode of season nine of The X Files.

It’s my favourite TV show. I reference it quite a bit. In fact, my first published short story was called Tempus Fugit. (Again, after an episode of X Files.) I also love Twin Peaks, so I’ll slip something in from that where I can, too.

Here are a few things from Hinton Hollow Death Trip that you may not have seen or may never have known.

1. The town of Hinton Hollow. The layout is loosely based on the village of Twyford, in Berkshire, where I was living at the time. I made up the shops and the pub and the church and the people, and you can’t really see into the village from the station, so I straightened up that road a bit, but it is basically set there.

2. The name. The main road near to where the shooting takes place is called BroadHinton. I’m a fan of the show Gilmore Girls. In that, they live in a quaint place called Stars Hollow. I took a bit from each. It works.

3. That opening line.

‘Don’t read this.’

I love it. Maybe my favourite. It’s so antagonistic and challenging. I thought I would get at least one bad review that referenced that but I haven’t seen one. (And I only read the bad reviews.) I borrowed the idea from my favourite writer, Chuck Palahniuk, and his opening to one of my favourite of his novels, Choke.

‘If you’re going to read this, don’t bother.’

I think it’s fair to say that his is better but I don’t think I did too badly.

4. The dedication. ‘For nothing’. This book is epic. It was fun but difficult to write in the style that I had chosen – narrated by Evil. I had written it a different way before this and it sucked. I highlighted all 98k words and deleted them. Liberating, I tell you. (There’s an On Writing post coming about that.) I rewrote the whole thing in this very stylised way. There was nothing being published that looked like it. I was really proud. Then Covid hit and bookshops shut and nobody bought the bloody book. It was like I’d done the whole thing… for nothing. (Luckily, readers are going back and discovering it, now.)

5. The Prologue. My longest yet. 18 pages. It’s introduced like this.

It’s a little quirky, I know. The only other book I know with an odd narrator like Evil is from The Book Thief, which is narrated by death. (And it certainly came up with the idea before I did.) Markus Zusak would introduce chapters in a weird way like this and I thought it worked well for the style. It’s also my favourite contemporary novel, so I wanted to show that I loved it.

6. How’s Annie? This is the title of one of the sections in the prologue. It’s also the last thing you hear at the end of season 1 of Twin Peaks. Agent Dale Cooper is banging his head against the mirror, repeating, ‘How’s Annie? How’s Annie?’ It’s, actually, a huge reveal that I don’t want to spoil.

7. And while we are on the subject, there is a chapter near the end of the book called A Fish In The Percolator. This is the first line spoken in the pilot episode of Twin Peaks by Pete before he goes out fishing and discovers Laura Palmer’s body, wrapped in plastic. (Which a killer does in another of my books, after he bleaches their body.)

8. Samaritan. This book was billed as the third Detective Pace book. I don’t see it that way. There’s another character who spans these books. Maeve Beauman. And she first appeared in my book, Good Samaritans. This chapter title is a reference to that. (She finally gets her own book - Psychopaths Anonymous - maybe my favourite.) The Samaritan chapter introduces her to Hinton Hollow.

9. If you’ve ever read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, you’ll probably remember the end of the opening section where it says, ‘Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends Poo-tee-weet.’ I love this. It’s right at the beginning. It sounds a bit stupid but, by the end, when it does end with Poo-tee-weet, it’s profound. I paid homage to that.

It’s nonsense, of course, but the next day does start and end exactly how Evil says.

10. That ending. I get asked about this, sometimes. What happened to Detective Pace on that bridge? I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, and I don’t think it matters if you do know, but I will say… there hasn’t been a fourth Detective Pace book……

    The way this happens harks back to the previous book, Nothing Important Happened Today. (Okay, that’s my favourite, actually.) Pace told Maeve about that case, what happened to him in the therapist’s office, and she used that information against him. If you haven’t read that book, Hinton Hollow still makes sense, but that is there for the readers who are going on the full journey through THE CARVER-VERSE.

And I think you should reward the readers that stick with you. Which is why I haven’t really shared anything too juicy. There are loads of easter eggs in this book. If you’ve read it and you think you’ve found some, feel free to comment or message and I’ll get back to you. (Equally if you find them in my other books.)

Otherwise, enjoy the long weekend. Paid subscribers, I’ll have something for you on Sunday. I plan to injure myself with whisky tonight but I will rise again in a couple of days.