Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse is one of the great creations of British crime fiction: a man of fierce intelligence and considerable personal difficulty, operating in a world — Oxford, its colleges, its hierarchies — that he understands completely and belongs to only partially. The crimes are puzzles, but Morse himself is the real subject. His contradictions, his loneliness, his standards, his refusal to accept easy answers.

That combination of a richly rendered setting, a protagonist with genuine inner life, and plots that respect the reader’s intelligence has a counterpart in the Frankie Armstrong series. The surface is very different. But the DNA is recognisable.

What Morse and Frankie Share

Neither is a comfortable person. Morse functions in spite of the system as much as because of it — he is tolerated because he gets results, not because he fits in. Frankie Armstrong is a British ex-soldier in Southwest Florida, an outsider by nationality, background, and temperament, operating in a world that runs on unspoken rules she has no investment in following.

Both are driven by a refusal to let things lie. Both have been shaped by experiences that marked them. Both see through the surface of things with an ease that makes the people around them uncomfortable.

Oxford and Southwest Florida

Part of what makes Morse endure is Oxford itself — beautiful, hierarchical, ancient, and corrupt in the way that very old institutions tend to be. The setting does work that no generic backdrop could do.

Southwest Florida works the same way in the Frankie Armstrong series, but the corruption is newer money, newer power, the kind that comes with no tradition of accountability. Naples is one of the wealthiest cities in America per capita. Behind those manicured facades are the same human failings that Dexter was always excavating in Oxford — greed, vanity, the desire to protect what one has accumulated — expressed in a more contemporary, more openly ruthless form.

For Readers Who Want More Than a Puzzle

The Morse novels are beloved not because the crimes are especially ingenious — though they are — but because spending time with Morse is an experience in itself. The Frankie Armstrong series is built on the same principle. The crimes matter. But Frankie matters more.

Five books into the series, readers who came for the thriller have stayed for the character. If that sounds like your relationship with Morse, You Owe Me is a reasonable place to start.

[Get You Owe Me on Amazon → kerrycostellobooks.com]

— Kerry Costello is the author of the Frankie Armstrong series. Find out more at kerrycostellobooks.com.

POST 10: Five Reasons Older Readers Are the Best Audience for Crime Fiction

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The publishing industry spends a great deal of time chasing younger readers. It shouldn’t — or at least, not at the expense of the audience that has always kept crime fiction alive. Readers who have been at this for decades are not a niche. They are the core.

Here is why, and why the Frankie Armstrong series was written with them in mind.

1. Experience Makes You a Better Reader

Crime fiction depends on the reader bringing something to the page. The pleasures of the genre — working out what happened, reading character, spotting what doesn’t quite fit — are pleasures that deepen with practice. Readers who have been through hundreds of mysteries have tuned instincts. They notice more. They are harder to fool in the wrong way and more satisfyingly fooled in the right way.

2. You Can Spot Condescension Immediately

A great many thrillers are written for readers the author imagines as credulous. The twists are telegraphed. The characters are thin. The prose is merely functional. Experienced readers see through all of this within the first chapter and put the book down.

The Frankie Armstrong series is written for readers who will catch anything lazy. The plots are layered. The characters have genuine contradictions. The setting is researched and rendered with care.

3. You’ve Seen Enough of the World to Recognise It

One of the pleasures of the Frankie Armstrong series is Southwest Florida itself — a world of visible wealth, invisible power, and the complicated lives of people who have relocated there for reasons they don’t always admit. Readers who have been around long enough to understand how money and power actually work will find the world of these novels immediately recognisable, whatever their geography.

4. Character Matters More Than Plot

Younger readers often read for plot. Experienced readers read for character — for the pleasure of spending time inside a mind they find interesting, even when that mind is heading into trouble. Frankie Armstrong is that kind of protagonist: complicated, capable, occasionally her own worst enemy, and worth following through five novels.

5. You Know What You Like — And You’re Right

The long tradition of crime fiction that the best of the genre stands on — Christie, Dexter, Rendell, Rankin — was built by readers who knew the difference between the genuine article and the imitation. The Frankie Armstrong series is written in conscious awareness of that tradition. It is crime fiction for readers who have earned their standards.

Start with You Owe Me and see whether you agree.

[Get You Owe Me on Amazon → kerrycostellobooks.com]

— Kerry Costello is the author of the Frankie Armstrong series. Find out more at kerrycostellobooks.com.