As authors, we’re told to write what we know, but as with most writing advice, it’s a rough guide. My first few books featured a firefighter, a job I did for almost twenty years and knew well. Not having to research the role meant I could focus on developing my writing skills. Since then, I’ve written about a female reporter fighting corruption and now a homeless private eye.
I refine most of my ideas for novels by letting my mind wander during walks around my home city, Manchester, and this was no different. Like many British towns and cities, we have too many homeless people, but to most of us they’re almost invisible. I’d been considering a private eye novel and thought my PI could disguise himself as a homeless man to carry out surveillance.
But why not make him homeless? It would tie in with my desire to write about marginalised people. My writer’s brain is always asking how someone got where they are, whether they’re a successful chief executive or someone who’s lost everything. In addition, so few novels have homeless characters in them, let alone a protagonist. I felt that was a gap I could and should fill.
Some feedback I got during the querying process suggested a reason for this. One early rejection came from an editor who liked my writing but didn’t bite because, ‘There’s already been a crime book with a homeless main character.’ This seemed to suggest that publishers saw homeless people as a monolith and once you’ve told one homeless person’s story, you’ve told them all.
But this was yet to come, and enthused by the idea, I roughed out a sketchy outline and jumped into writing the first draft. Once I got into the first few chapters, I feared I was making the story too depressing. I didn’t want to sugarcoat the experience of homelessness, but people read for enjoyment, so when a friend suggested I give Victor, my main character, a dog, I agreed. Oscar was born and quickly developed a personality. Early on, I decided he should talk to Victor—but only to Victor. This would give the scenes where they were together a dynamism and offer opportunities to inject more humour into the manuscript.
Oscar, a pedigree Standard Schnauzer, was a much-pampered family pet, and isn’t impressed by his new status, and this comes out in his exchanges with Victor. Of course, not everyone thought that Oscar talking was a good idea, and this was another “issue” which arose during the querying process. Fortunately, a commissioning editor at Thomas & Mercer, a publisher I’ve worked with before, loved the book and the journey to publication began.
It wasn’t all plain sailing because the editor left and his replacement didn’t share his enthusiasm for Oscar. During the editing of my previous books with them, the Antonia Conti series, they’d emphasised that I was free to disregard any editorial feedback. This was a test of that reassurance, and they passed with flying colours. My developmental editor even encouraged me to give Oscar a bigger role.
Another “character” I wanted to include in the novel was Manchester, the city which has been my home for over forty years. I knew it well from not only living in the suburbs and visiting the centre but also from my years as a firefighter, where I got to know parts of the city most people don’t go to.
Because I wrote Victor from a first-person point of view—another departure from my previous novels—I found it easier to get into his head. His situation informs his view of the city. He isn’t a local, so his knowledge of Manchester is limited to his experience of it from the streets. It meant I had to look at my home city from a new perspective. See it as an exotic and sometimes threatening location, which was an interesting challenge.
Like many homeless people, Victor faced the regular threat of violence. Of course, exploring Victor’s survival and his relationship with Oscar in a Manchester many people don’t experience wasn’t enough to make a crime thriller. I had to give him a mystery to solve. An encounter with Kasper, a hapless private eye, was the catalyst to get him involved in an investigation.
His initial reaction to getting the job was to regard it as a route off the streets, something to enable him to get a home and reconnect with his family. But obviously, I couldn’t allow that—yet. His new job as a PI threw him into a dangerous world of people trafficking and murder. It’s a world few of us are equipped to navigate, and Victor was no different. And neither was Kasper, nor his sister and business partner Zofia.
It’s not realistic to investigate serious criminals and not have the police notice what you’re doing. In an early version, I had Collette, a detective sergeant, play a prominent role in the story, but I wanted Victor and his team to solve the case. In a rewrite, Collette and her colleagues took a much smaller part in this story—but I’ve given her and her grumpy boss their own novel; watch this space.
This meant Victor and his friends had to navigate any confrontation with the bad guys on their own. Although not lacking in courage, especially Zofia, none of them are action heroes, so he had to find allies with the skills needed. The only people he knows live on the streets. Would they have the qualities needed to prevail against a well-organised criminal organisation? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
Anyone who’s had a proper conversation with people who’ve lived on the streets will know the range of talent and skills that exist amongst the people society has discarded. I hope readers will look at the homeless with fresh eyes after reading the book. In the meantime, I want them to enjoy a thrilling mystery with a range of lovable, and some not so lovable, characters.

Missing by D E Beckler is published by Thomas & Mercer on 1/2/26