I often get asked, "Where did the idea for sam Spallucci come from?"
The short answer to this is a teenage blend of Mike Hammer and, amongst other movies, a pirated copy of An American Werewolf in London. I was a huge fan of the former and terrified by the latter (I still can't open the front door if it's dark and the Muppets are on TV. I'm sure you know which scene I'm referring too...). I was also heavily influenced by an old Hammer werewolf whodunnit The Beast Must Die, as I explained in my little video from January 2021.
So, one evening, when I should have been doing my chemistry homework, I sat down at this ancient Bulgarian typewriter that my dad had obtained from god knows where and wrote this, what I called, a novel (it was in fact just five or six pages…) about a fedora wearing private eye who gets called in to track down a werewolf that’s rampaging through a small village. The next day, I showed it to my mate as we sat at the back of the chemistry lesson avoiding being asked questions on a subject for which neither of us had prepared. He read it through and said that he really enjoyed it, especially the detective. He said that it was like Sam Spade meets the Wolfman. I took this as high praise indeed and as I had actually neglected to give my detective a memorable name, this suggestion got me to thinking. Sat on the other side of me was a girl named Maria Gallucci. I took Spade and Gallucci, then just glued them together and Sam Spallucci, investigator of the paranormal was born.
Sam sort of stayed like that for about ten years or so until I drifted back to him in my twenties and started playing around with certain scenarios and realising that he could fit into the same universe as Fallen Angel, another novel that I was chipping away at. So it was that I finally knuckled down in my mid-thirties and, just after my fortieth The Casebook of Sam Spallucci was finished.
At the time of writing this, I'm up to Sam Six (Bloodline) with four more due for release over the next few years before he catches up with the events of Fallen Angel. So, he's got a way to go yet and I hope we enjoy the journey alongside Lancaster's very own investigator of the paranormal.
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