Naming the Man Behind the Mystery
Sometimes the hardest decision a writer makes isn’t who dies or who did it; it’s what to call the one trying to solve the mysteries. A name carries weight. It sets tone, reveals character, and even hints at the kind of story you’re about to read. Get it wrong, and the spell breaks. Get it right, and the name lingers long after the last page.
When I began shaping my protagonist, Hamilton St. James, I knew he needed a name that would hold its own in the company of Chandler’s Marlowe, Macdonald’s Archer, and Connelly’s Bosch. Each of those names says something. Marlowe feels literary, a nod to the Elizabethan playwright who wrote about intrigue and betrayal. Archer is sharp and direct; you can almost hear the twang of precision. Bosch is short, modern, and gritty, perfectly at home in the underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles.
For me, the search started with sound and feel. I wanted a name that was solid but not stiff, intelligent without pretension. Hamilton struck the right chord: strong, unmistakably English, and uncommon. I’ve never personally known a Hamilton, which gave me freedom. No baggage, no borrowed history, no subconscious bias. A clean slate.
Then came the question of surname. It needed to balance the first name, carry a quiet authority, and suggest someone who moves easily between worlds. After running through lists, translations, and more than a few Google rabbit holes, St. James emerged. It had texture. It evoked refinement, tradition, and understated strength, qualities that aligned perfectly with the man I was trying to build: intelligent, disciplined, and anchored by integrity even when surrounded by corruption.
Together, Hamilton St. James felt inevitable. The rhythm worked. It had presence without flash, a name you could imagine on a business card or whispered at a crime scene.
Writers often talk about naming as if it’s alchemy, but there’s a craft to it. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot blends the mythic (Hercules) with the precise (a French word for “pear”), perfectly matching a detective obsessed with order and symmetry.
Ian Fleming wanted something unremarkable and straightforward for his spy, so he lifted “James Bond” from an ornithologist’s book, a plain name made unforgettable by contrast. Raymond Chandler once said he chose “Philip Marlowe” because it sounded “like a name that belonged to someone who could look life in the eye.”
Every great detective name carries that spark, a shorthand for tone and temperament. For readers, it becomes an anchor; for the author, a compass. Once I had Hamilton St. James, the rest followed. His world, his voice, even his moral code began to take shape around it.
Because sometimes, before a single crime is solved or a single shot is fired, the real mystery is finding the name that feels true.
- Peter Cleveland
Hamilton St. James returns in Gobsmacked!, where a routine investigation into a British supermarket chain’s sudden profit plunge spirals into a deadly web of deception, identity theft, and betrayal. It’s proof that even in the corporate world, the numbers can kill.
