‘Working as a police officer in the Derbyshire Dales in the 1980s was like working in a big family’ says Chesterfield retired detective turned author

Steve Winnard has fond memories of his time as a police officer working in the Derbyshire Dales in the 80s. (Photo: Submitted)

Steve, who lives in Walton, Chesterfield said: "If you talk to anyone who worked as a police officer in the Derbyshire Dales in the 1980s they would tell you that it was a brilliant place to work. It was like working in a big family. There were small teams based around the Dales and village police officers as well. Most villages had their own police officers and the larger towns such as Matlock, Ashbourne and Bakewell their own police stations and teams of officers working from them. It's a far cry from today."

His career in the police took Steve to Matlock in 1980 and to Bakewell a couple of years later. Steve, 63, said: “I was then a detective for the area for over a decade until I joined the Economic Crime Unit where I investigated local, national and international crimes for the next 15 or so years under I retired in 2012.”

Steve’s new novel, The Burden Of Evidence, which is released this month, is the follow-up to An Accidental Death, which he released last year. His latest fictional story focuses on a team of detectives in Bakewell tasked with solving a number of historical murders while dealing with violent ruthless criminals and corruption within their own force.

He said: “I decided quite early in the writing that none of the characters would bear any resemblence to people I had either worked with or dealt with in my time in the police service. So when I was writing the characters I kept asking myself 'is that like anyone I knew or had dealt with'. I do get asked if this character is based on so and so, as well as people trying to guess which character is actually me. (I think that I am all of the characters in some way or another).

"One thing that I learned from the police was that people are not one-dimensional. Who we would usually label as criminals are only criminals some of the time. The same with 'Police Officer', the label does not make you a good person all the time. In both novels I have tried to base the characters around a premise....'Are fictional heroes always real heroes and are the criminals always as bad as they seem?’

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"I have tried in the novel to not only illustrate the emotions of the actual victims of crime but also the effect that the empathy for their situation has on police officers in their day to day lives and relationships. I have also tried to concentrate on the theme of evidence and both its advantages and failings in the Criminal Justice System in the second novel."

The Burden Of Evidence progresses the story of Steve's debut novel, An Accidental Death, which he was inspired to release two years ago after a chat with an ex-colleague about the horrendous deaths and murders they had dealt with. Steve said: "I tried to envisage how each of the characters would deal with the deaths emotionally in the story. I was trying hard to ensure that the characters were not binary and so then I wrote in how they would deal with love as well. Not just in a conventional way of boy meets girl and falls in love but also in a more diverse sense of boy meets boy and girl meets girl as well as love of parents for the children, love for friends and love for work colleagues.

"In the second novel, I have again followed these themes as the main characters have developed their work and private lives' relationships. I have also in the second novel tried to contrast societal norms from the historic crimes to those of the present day."

The Burden Of Evidence will be released on September 26, 2023, available in paperback from https://swpublishing.co.^[1]uk and on Kindle e-book.

An Accidental Death remains on sale from the website and Amazon Kindle.

References

1. ^{^} https://swpublishing.co. (swpublishing.co.uk)