A first-time novelist from Guernsey is taking readers from London to the Canary Islands in a page-turning “mystery thriller”.
‘A Death in the Gym’ was partly-inspired by Patrick Hardy’s own experience as a part-time personal trainer, with a healthy dollop of twists to “surprise you”.
He told Express: “I’m quite into physical fitness and have been for a very long time, so I had this idea that a gym would be an interesting setting to launch a story.”
“So, the book begins with the discovery in this gym of a dead body.”
While the novel is “far from autobiographical”, Mr Hardy said he drew heavily on his own experience as a lawyer for one of the supporting characters – a female lawyer.
Like Mr Hardy, the main character – Josh Stern – has a “side hustle” – in his case as a private detective who helps track down scammers through his computer hacking skills.
But when he finds the dead body, he is propelled out of the gym to locations as varied as Dorset and Tenerife.
Surprising the reader
Mr Hardy said he’d written “the beginning of about 10 different novels”, before attempting this one.
“They lasted about five to 10 pages – one after the other led to basically nothing.
“And then I just thought, let’s see if I can finish one.”
Unlike a lot of writers, Mr Hardy said he doesn’t know the plot before he writes.
“I essentially started writing a book with no sense of what the story was.
“I just had the vaguest of ideas of how to begin a story.”
If I don’t know what’s happening, nor will the reader
Patrick Hardy
Mr Hardy said he would “write things and then ideas would come to me”, often meaning he needed to “rewrite what I had previously written”.
It was a “completely inefficient way of trying to write a book”, he admitted.
“But, if I don’t know what’s happening, nor will the reader.”
‘A Death in the Gym’ by Patrick Hardy is available now, published by Troubadour.
It’s available in Lexicon, in St Peter Port, as well as online retailers like Waterstones and Amazon.