It's amazing to think that P.D. James's  <em>An Unsuitable Job for a Woman</em> is now thirty seven years old. It was one of the first James books I read, back when she wasn't a well-known author. A great book: sharply written with some lovely lines. It tells how the 22-year-old Cordelia Gray finds herself thrust into the middle of a murder-hidden-as-suicide inquiry and proves a brave and relentless searcher for the truth. There's also a touch of feminism in there, hence the title.

One thing bothered me about the book, and it still bothers me today. Not enough to ruin it, but it does give focus to one of my nagging worries about the damaging effect genre can have on writers, particularly those trying to establish a style and a career.

Cordelia starts the story as junior sleuth who inherits the seedy little investigations agency that employed her after the suicide of the owner. She's that eternal figure in crime fiction, a private eye. In everyday England. Hmmm...

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If you're an American writer then PIs are hanging there on the character shelf just begging to be taken down and dusted off. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler set the form for the modern detective back in the 1930s. America has lots of private investigators. I even know someone who used to be one, that excellent fellow <a href="http://www.davidcorbett.com" target="_blank">David Corbett</a>, though I'm happy to report he's now a wonderful author instead. Americans use private investigators regularly. You'll find them listed in Yellow Pages. They're a part of everyday life.

In Britain it's different. Sherlock Holmes wasn't a proper private eye. He always seemed to me a gentleman of private means who did his sleuthing out of intellectual interest more than anything. Doesn't damage the books -- which I adore -- in any way, but that does set him apart from the rest of us. Cordelia Gray is no upper class aesthete getting by on her inheritance. She's ordinary, skint, the kind of person you'd sit next to on a bus. I can't help but struggle with that.

I worked as a journalist for a long time before taking up this present career. Over the years I've met politicians and crooks (simultaneously on occasion), writers, actors, police officers, civil servants, financiers, sports men and women and at least two professional spies. But, David Corbett apart, I've never met a private eye. Nor can I imagine why I'd want to meet one, except as an author seeking research and if that's the only reason to track them down the alarm bells should be ringing. I'm sure private eyes are out there, but they're invisible, not part of the landscape as they seem to be in the US.

The rationale behind the Hammett/Chandler PI is that they're the dark knights ordinary people turn to in times of trouble. Not here. We'd go to the police or, if that fails, ask a friend. I've never heard anyone in this country suggest a visit to a detective agency as a way of fixing a problem except, of course, in a book. For me they're truly rotten candidates to be the protagonist in a book set here. Do editors and agents feel the same way?

Yet some budding writers still reach for the PI hat. Why? Because that's the genre, and the genre tells them to. This may be fine for fantasy or pastiche, such as <em>The Singing Detective.</em> But if you're trying to write anything realistic it's one more obstacle to overcome on the rocky path towards a sense of authenticity.

Crime series usually offer up three standard templates for their principal character: some kind of law enforcement officer, PI or the villain him or herself. I made Nic Costa a cop because policing is a job all of us see and can, to a certain extent, understand. My stories are often much more about justice than they are crime. Police officers (in books anyway) find themselves in the middle of the conflict between good and evil as part of their daily working routine. As a writer and a reader I can imagine my way into the head of a cop dealing with some unpleasant event and trying to think of some way of resolving it. It seems to make sense all round.

The problem I had with Cordelia Gray was that I couldn't do that with her. What does a private detective actually do? And why? Do they take their work home with them? Are they on some kind of career path? I'm sorry, it just never worked for me, and it was a relief to see that James wrote only one more Cordelia Gray book then went on to focus on her police officer, Adam Dalgleish. He makes a lot more sense, even with that penchant for poetry.

There's constant pressure from the genre to write private eye fiction. There are even awards out there marking the best in the field. Good luck to them, and anyone who wants to write those books. But I have to be honest: if I were a writer in the UK starting out now, wanting to set a book in my native country, a book that was to be written dead straight, without a cheeky twinkle in the eye, then a Brit private detective is the last person I'd use as a protagonist. The hard core genre fans may love you. But other potential readers in the UK may well scratch their heads in bewilderment, and I'd probably be among them.

Though I rather hope there's some clever soul out there about to prove me wrong.