Crime couple reveal dark inspirations for TV show
FORMER Huddersfield detective turned writer Bob Bridgestock and wife Carol are to be featured on a major new TV show focusing on authors inspired by real-life crimes.
The couple, who combine their talents as RC Bridgestock, are part of the line-up of the forthcoming 10-part CBS Reality series Written in Blood. Their seventh novel When the Killing Starts, published last year, was loosely based on a notorious 1979 murder of two women in Cheshire by three men from Huddersfield.
Marsden-born Bob, 65, spent 30 years with West Yorkshire Police, beginning as a beat constable in 1974.
He retired in 2004 with the rank of detective superintendent. Carol, 56, spent 17 years on the same force as a support worker.
In his last three years with the force Bob took charge of 26 murders. He also led the inquiry into the arson attack on the Chishti family in Birkby in 2002, which killed eight people including three young children.
“I got to saturation point,” he says candidly.
“I was on my knees by that time. What people don’t understand is that when you are investigating a murder it’s 24/7. You don’t stop to sit down for a nice dinner. I would work 18 hours and go home, only to be called out three hours later.”
A chance conversation at a post-retirement public speaking engagement prompted Bob and Carol to turn some of their experiences into a book, Deadly Focus, in 2008.
Nine years later they are about to release their eighth, When a Killer Strikes. All feature the central character DI Jack Dylan.
“Jack Dylan and his wife are based very loosely on our lives,” revealed Bob.
“People said to us ‘Write what you know,’ so that’s what we do. The novels detail the things that we have dealt with: the circumstances that surround murders but also the effect that it can have on the officer and his family.
“We take people on a journey from the word go.”
Bob and Carol join other writers including Peter James for the series, which begins next month. The Bridgestocks’ segment will air on October 15. Bob said that to be in such prestigious company “is massive for us.”
Carol added: “We have loved working on this series and showing to viewers the reality that goes into our fiction. Our books show the complete investigation as it would be, and Bob draws on his 30 years of experience in murder cases to form the basis of the stories we write. Likewise I draw on Authors Bob and Carol Bridgestock’s novels are loosely based on their own life and careers. Below: Novels published by the couple and (right) artwork for new TV show featuring the Halifax crime-writing duo my experience as a support worker and as the partner of the man in charge.”
Bob and Carol speak to bestselling writer Simon Toyne, who said: “Everyone I’ve ever met is obsessed with real life crimes and the people who commit them, and crime writers are no different.
“In this series I get to talk to some of the brightest lights in crime about the darkest criminals in history.”