Local author evolves Clitheroe experiences into a four-part mystery series

A Clitheroe childhood and a lifetime of experiences have grown into a series of 1930s murder mystery novels, but it’s one that has been given a unique twist from a local author.

Simon Allan, who writes under the pseudonym S.H. Eep attended Ribblesdale School from 1981 to 1986, ran a fitted-kitchen business in Clitheroe town centre for 18 years before setting up an online designing company in 2013. Allan secured a big contract with a company based in San Francisco, California, home to the Golden State Warriors. Since securing that deal, Simon has found the perfect balance, dedicating 50% to his online design company and 50% of his time to his book series – 'The Lion Hall Mysteries’. However, 18 years of running a kitchen fitting business in Clitheroe, working with clients directly, has helped him in his writing career.

“I met a lot of characters during that time,” Allan said when reflecting on the people he met during his time running his kitchen business. “Dealing with the general public for nearly 20 years, you meet a tremendous amount of characters and different characters. I think you build up a life experience during that time, and I think you can pull people into your books even if it's only a vague recollection of them. I think that's the thing about writing a book when you're older, which I am; you do tend to have a little bit more experience in terms of general characters and how life just generally works out,” Allan explained.

But does Simon believe that the life experience he’d gained enriched the world established in ‘The Lion Hall Mysteries’? “Absolutely,” he said. “I don't think I could have done it to the same effect when I was younger. I just don't think you can do the type of story I've written. A lot of the characters are quite in-depth, although they're quite light-hearted, and they're running through several books,” he finished.

The characters that Allan speaks of include the protagonist, Colonel Russ – a former army colonel who happens to be a lion and was a character shaped by Allan’s father’s military background. In the first novel, ‘The Maharaja’s Ruby’, Russ, alongside his companion who is a buffalo, investigates the theft of a precious ruby that belongs to elephants living at the Elephant Castle – a location inspired by living near Clitheroe Castle.

The second instalment of the series – 'The Mill Town Murders' – has already been published, and the third instalment, which features another significant connection to Clitheroe, is currently in development. “It's the same characters, obviously, but this (instalment) features the Flying Scotsman in the book, and it's like it's more of a robbery; it's called ‘The Great Heist’. I've got that about 90% complete, so I'm hoping for later this year (as a possible release date) or very early next year, at the latest, and then I've started the draft for the fourth book as well,” Allan revealed.

The revelation that Allan is currently developing the fourth instalment at the same time as the third came as a shock, but does he feel that the process of developing both simultaneously works better for him? “It works well enough for me,” he admitted. “I think once I've got the initial story drafted in terms of the third book, then it's okay to hop onto the fourth one because it's just a case of fine-tuning the third. I can hop onto the fourth if I get some inspirational thoughts, and I can just sit down, pen a few words of the book, and then I can put that back down because I'm not in a massive rush for that, and then I can just hop back onto the third one, which I'm just basically polishing off,” he concluded.

Yet, how does Allan plan to tie ‘The Great Heist’ into the fourth instalment, and would that mark the end of ‘The Lion Hall Mysteries’?

“I think there's got more legs in it if I want to keep it,” Allan said. “There's no reason why I couldn't do a fifth or a sixth. In terms of mystery, which is the genre that the book sits in, I think people do tend to like a slightly longer series rather than some historical books, which tend to be in threes or maybe fives.

“I think we're creating mystery with the type of character base that I've got, so there's no reason why it couldn't go up to maybe ten. It just depends. I quite like history, and the book is set in the 1930s, and I haven't written off the idea of maybe introducing similar characters, but maybe go way back in time, maybe to mediaeval times or something like that. I might draw on that, and you could even maybe create another series with sort of animal characters but maybe relatives of the characters that are distant relatives of the characters in the book now, so yeah, there's quite a lot of legs in it, really. I've got a few ideas,” Allan finished.