GDJ Detective: Inspirations by Przemysław Rymer

Ignacy asked me to write about my inspirations for the story that you will unravel while playing Detective: A Modern Crime Board game. Well, Ignacy can be fun at times, How can I even… All right, fine. Let’s start with the tough-guy.

‘…The match scratched noisily across the rusted metal of the corrugated iron shed, fizzled, then burst into a sputtering pool of light, the harsh sound and sudden brilliance alike strangely alien in the stillness of the desert night. Mechanically, Mallory’s eyes followed the cupped sweep of the flaring match to the cigarette jutting out beneath the Group-Captain’s clipped mustache, saw the light stop inches away from the face, saw too the sudden stillness of that face, the unfocused vacancy of the eyes of a man lost in listening. Then the match was gone, ground into the sand of the airfield perimeter.’

I was eight, and the class at the school was pretty boring. Winnie the Pooh. I’ve met Winnie when I was four years old. During that class, I’ve had an entirely different lecture under the desk, and It took me far far away. On the cliff, where Mallory and Andrea were climbing to get themselves to the guns of Navarone. I mean, let’s face it – Winnie against Mallory – who would you pick, huh?

– What is this?! – the voice was harsh. I’ve jumped on my chair, terrified, and I’ve looked up with confusion in my eyes. In my head, I’ve heard the question in German ‘Was ist das?!’ It took a few seconds before the guard with a German helmet (his name was Ehrich – he fell off the cliff) turned back into my Polish teacher – Give me that! – She growled and took away my book. Oh man, how much I’ve hated her at that moment. I wished that she would end up in the same place as Ehrich…

The book was confiscated, locked up in the safe and surrounded by the chain of scandal – unfit for the eyes of an eight-year-old. No, I didn’t get a note. But I’m glad that my parents were always more understanding, and I they gave me back the book – but it was only after the parents’ meeting. Which was over three weeks later! Three long weeks of torment. What happened to Dusty Miller? What’s up with Mallory? What’s going on with a god-damn thousand men waiting for the evacuation on the Kheros. You see – a torment.

My first beloved tough-guy was Dusty Miller. Surprised? I love plot twists. Not Andrea, not even Mallory, that’s right Dusty. Freaking Dusty ‘My God, but he’s though, that Yank’ Miller. Cynical and calm, he was the one that unrevealed the traitor and blew up this entire stronghold, turning it into dust.

That’s how it began, and from there it was just worse. I mean better of course.

’48 hours’. Intrigue. Investigation. Fog. Solitude. Dead colleagues. Missing ships. And among all that is he – Phillip Calvert, tough-guy number 2. Beat up, strangled, shot a couple of times, drowned, overall he had a rough road – yeah a type of guy that John McClane could call sensei.

W ‘Fear is the key’ main character had a stunning runaway from the court hall. When I fall in love with this character, I’ve decided to accept the fact that he is a murderer and overall a bad guy, a couple pages later it all made sense, and that was a great plot twist. This just showed me that vengeance was a part of us from ages. Later I found out that he was pretty OK. That was my tough-guy number 3.

‘Golden Rendez-vous’ introduced a tough-guy number 3. John Carter. First officer of the ship Campari. Intrigue, murders and once again a great plot twist… Everything fit in a specified timeframe, everything in its place, every hour and minute.

A couple of years later, when I grew up and got to know many more authors, that’s when I met my second to the last tough-guy. He got me by surprise, he was limping but he was talking a lot. His name was Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, but you might know already that it was Keyser Soze and he was telling a story, that’s when I realized that it never was about the tough-guy, it was always all about the story.

You remember the match?

That noisily scratch against the iron shed had started everything, that now became a fascination and love towards any kind of intriguing story, full of betrayal, action, and emotion. But there is one last tough-guy – Harry Potter.

Yeah, I love that story. You wonder why? That’s because of Mrs. Rowling treated me right, and I mean it. She came up with this intrigue in the first book and with a consequence, she unrevealed it a piece after piece. Ignore all the elixirs, wands and brooms. Those are just gadgets. What was important is the Dumbledore’s intrigue towards Harry, Snape, and Voldemort. Everything fit and in the end, it was solid. No lying to a reader, there was no cliffhangers where a guy is falling down at the end of one book just to be found hanging there in the beginning of another. Mrs. Rowling didn’t lie to me.

And now I really hope, that Detective will be the same. It’s a dark story, in which characters are doing awful, terrifying and sometimes deceitful things, and it’s up to the players to find out their motivations and lock them up.

‘It is the tale, not he who tells it.’
Stephen King… ‘The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands’

Goodnight.

List:

Stories:

Frederick Forsyth – The Odessa File (1972)
Alistair MacLean – everything
Kathleen Joan ‘Kathy’ Reichs – Bones Cycle
Bogusław Wołoszański – ‘Twierdza szyfrów’
James Jones – ‘The Thin Red Line’
Robert Galbraith – ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’
Robert Galbraith – ‘The Silkworm (2014)
Stephen King – ‘Mr Mercedes’
Additionally most of the Nordic noir stories like Henning Mankell

Non-fiction:

Kazimierz Moczarski – Conversations with an executioner – this book deserves a little explanation. Polish players will know it well from the school, however I doubt the same can be said about their foreing friends. The author was the Home Army soldier during the WWII, serving in the investigation & intelligence department. It was something like the counter-intelligence of the resistance. After the war, because of his views he was tortured, sentenced to death and imprisoned by the communist government. He was put in one cell with a war criminal, high-ranking SS officer Jürgen Stroop. Stroop was responsible of the executions in Warsaw ghetto during the uprising in 1943 in Poland, he was responsible for the death of tens of thousands of people. It was an incredible situation, and the great memory of Kazimierz Moczarski let him create a character portrait of the Nazi soldier. He wrote about his life, his career, and the origins and development of the Nazi movement. Check it out on the Wikipedia.
Jurgen Thornwald – ‘Das Jahrhundert der Detektive’
Jurgen Thornwald – ‘ Die Stunde der Detektive. Werden und Welten der Kriminalistik’ (1966)
Simon Wiesenthal – ‘Justice not vengeance’
And loads of articles on the FBI website. It’s really a good read – I know because I read a lot of them.

TV-shows & Films

The Killing – Forbrydelsen – and I don’t mean a remake but the Danish show with 3 amazing seasons. Really worth it.
Bridge over Sund – Danish/Sweedish serie, really amazing stuff.
True Detectives – 5 minutes and you’re hooked.
Monster (anime) – Great, but it has a really long start with a couple episodes that feel like a suffering.
Mindhunter – the beginning of the FBI’s behavioral studies
Zodiac (2007)
Band of Brothers