How a Clitheroe childhood became an imaginary 1930s world populated by animals
Local author Simon Allan draws on his Clitheroe childhood to create an imaginary 1930s world populated by animals in his Lion Hall Mysteries series.
A Clitheroe childhood and a lifetime of experiences have gradually evolved into an imaginary 1930s world populated by lions, buffaloes, cats, and horses in a series of cosy novels from local author Simon Allan.
Writing under the pseudonym S.H. Eep, Allan is a local lad through and through. He attended Ribblesdale School from 1981 to 1986 and became a familiar community face running a fitted-kitchen business in Clitheroe town centre for 18 years.
In 2013, he set up an online design company, granting him the freedom to live wherever he chose to. He purchased a small farm with his wife and relocated to the Orkney Islands. The move wasn’t intended to spark a literary career, but after a severe virus a few years back, his imagination took over. Within three months, he had drafted three books. “It just happened," Allan explained. "It's not like I've always wanted to be a writer or I came up here to write. I came up here to design kitchens online and then it turned out that now I work part-time for a company in San Francisco basically consulting for a kitchen company and then the rest of the time I now spend writing. So it's a good balance,” he concluded.
Though he resides in Orkney, the Ribble Valley provided the rich inspiration for his light-hearted mystery series, the Lion Hall Mysteries. The first two books—The Maharaja’s Ruby and The Mill Town Murders—are published, with two more books in development. Growing up in the shadow of Clitheroe Castle and living near Pendle Hill directly inspired Elephant Castle, a key setting in his debut novel.
In the first book, the castle is owned by elephants who lose a precious, ancient family ruby. This triggers an investigation by Colonel Russ—a former army colonel who happens to be a lion—a character shaped by Allan’s father’s military background. “He's basically a well-to-do lion... from a military and semi-aristocratic background," Allan explained. "He's retired from the army and started a private detective agency with his companion, who is a buffalo, who served under him in the army,” Allan added.
The story expands into nearby towns, featuring a brown bear as the police detective and a muscular hippo as his sergeant. Family history further enriches The Mill Town Murders; Allan’s great-great-grandfather bought a West Bradford corn mill in 1864 and converted it into a cotton mill. Having kept animals for a long time, Allan chose personified animal protagonists to offer a refreshing twist on the standard detective genre. “I think once you get into the story, you can tend to forget that the characters are animals," Allan noted. "There's thousands of murder mysteries, so I was looking for something that just put a slightly different twist on it... with all the animals in it, it just makes it a little bit more light-hearted as well,” the author concluded.