Meet the Mind Behind The Agency of the Inexplicable: Author Chris Bee in Conversation

The Agency of the Inexplicable weaves a complex narrative with historical, paranormal, and suspenseful elements. What inspired you to blend these genres, and how did you manage to balance the different layers within the story?

My original starting point was the character of John Hurn, the paranormal investigator when he is tasked to solve a 40 year old mystery by a government agency and in doing so he starts to unravel a complex web of intrigue. From this beginning the story started to grow and evolve, drawing in multiple timelines and disparate characters, each seemingly totally unconnected from the others. I wanted to keep people interested and to wonder “How is this connected?” and “Where the hell is this going?” and hopefully keep turning the pages to find out, until piece by piece the strands are drawn together as the story ultimately reaches its climax.

Madeline Drake, one of your central characters, is a fascinating figure, intelligent, resourceful, and strong-willed. What influenced her creation, and how did you develop her character throughout the novel?

As an intrepid time traveller, Madeline by necessity must possess certain basic qualities, just in order for her to survive and overcome the extreme challenges that she is going to face. As has been mentioned intelligence, resourcefulness and a strong will are essential. But beyond that I wanted her to be sharp and witty; everybody loves to be around Madeline, despite the fact that it can occasionally be a somewhat hazardous place to be, her rather impulsive nature frequently bringing disorder and chaos in her wake, but there again that’s where all the fun and excitement usually is.

Your novel travels through various historical settings, from Sweetwater, Montana, in 1920 to West Berlin in 1975. What kind of research did you do to bring these periods to life so vividly?

Researching the various locations and time periods was quite absorbing in itself, studying old maps, film footage, photographs and documents was quite an education. You suddenly find yourself wondering, hang on a minute were office intercoms a thing in 1920 for instance. Actually the first telephone type of intercom was patented in 1894 by the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company in Chicago, please, somebody one day make that come up at a pub quiz.

Hopefully it’s these trivial little details that help bring the settings to life, also important are the different attitudes and ways of speaking. Someone born in the 1890s will have a very different outlook and turn of phrase than someone born in the 1950s. Which all adds I feel to the authenticity and more importantly it can actually be quite good fun in a time travel story when these cultures collide.

The theme of hidden technology and secret weapons left over from the war adds a thrilling layer of mystery to the story. Can you share how this idea came to be and if it was based on any historical events or theories?

The speed and breadth of technological advancement during the Second World War I find quite breath taking. Take for instance the Horten Ho229, a jet powered flying wing which was developed and successfully flown by the Germans in 1944, thankfully coming too late to influence the outcome of the war.

But wind on 80 years and take a look at it now, this thing looks like something straight out of a Batman movie; it truly would look perfectly at home at the highly classified Lockheed Martin Skunk works in California today.

Which all leaves plenty of scope to imagine what other dangerous and sinister technology could have been in development back then, during that dark and desperate struggle for technological supremacy. And is some of it still lurking buried, sealed up in one of those warrens of secret tunnels hidden away, just waiting for someone to stumble upon it? Which does then rather open up a very rich vein for a novel.

However the plot of the Agency of the Inexplicable does revolve around Hitler’s Henge which does in fact exist in Poland as described in the book, the labyrinth of tunnels are also real as is the mystery surrounding their construction and purpose. Hence all of the wild and elaborate conspiracy theories that have surrounded it ever since.

Hitler's Henge

There is an undercurrent of fear and unease throughout the novel, particularly in scenes set in the Nazi tunnels. How did you go about creating and maintaining this sense of suspense and foreboding?

The story needs to have a constant sense of danger, a feeling of being on the very edge of disaster; it has to be there to keep the reader engaged. The chapter where we encounter the abandoned Nazi tunnels wasn’t really too difficult for me, as being a bit of a claustrophobe, I couldn’t think of anything worse, just the thought of all those millions of tons of rock pressing in all around you in the darkness is bad enough.

We then add to this the element of the tunnels being in a decayed, unstable state and partially flooded, what horrors lie submerged beneath that murky water? With each layer the feeling of foreboding deepens, finally at the back of your mind is the malevolent and disturbing history behind the creation of this subterranean complex and of the evil perpetrated within it, then the sense of menace is complete and the scene is now set for what is to come next.

As the novel delves into paranormal phenomena and secret governmental operations, how much of this was influenced by real world conspiracy theories or stories you’ve come across?

I must admit I do find a good conspiracy theory absolutely fascinating, so to incorporate them into a novel is just too good an opportunity to miss. And I have used more than one in this book, but I like to be a bit subtle and just allude to certain objects and theories that devotees of conspiracy theories may begin to recognise. I deliberately don’t name them directly, leaving the reader the fun of discovering them for themselves.

Madeline’s journey in The Agency of the Inexplicable is both personal and professional. What do you hope readers will take away from her character arc and her struggles?

This is probably the most difficult question to answer, as this is something that I had never considered when writing. Each reader is an individual and unique so I think different people will draw different things from Madeline’s character and journey, but the one thing I am pretty sure of, or at least I hope, is it will be a positive experience.

The whole purpose in writing the book was for it to be essentially fun and exciting, to escape into Madeline’s and Hurns world and just simply enjoy the ride.

As for me personally, the thing I love about Madeline’s character most, is the thing that makes her interesting and possibly perilous to be around, her fearless “bull in a China shop” approach to everything, as Madeline would say “Oh bugger, let’s just press this and see what it does.”

The title, The Agency of the Inexplicable, is intriguing. Can you explain its significance and how it ties into the novel's larger themes?

The Agency of the Inexplicable is the name John Hurn gave to his paranormal investigation business, although the back story of this never made it into the book, it was created by Hurn whilst at university in Cambridge and on one of the very rare occasions that he got rather drunk. Hurn, whilst not exactly a Teetotaller, he is, as Madeline has pointed out, a bit of a lightweight in the drinking department, not that it bothers him too much. He is quite happy to sit nursing his half pint of Guinness and let everyone else get on with it.

In addition to the compelling storyline, your descriptive writing creates a vivid sense of place. Do you have any personal connections to the locations featured in the novel, or are they purely imaginative?

The places in the UK that are featured in the book are mostly fictional but are loosely based on areas I know, being born and raised on the edge of the Lincolnshire Fens made Lincolnshire an obvious setting for “Eavesby Lodge” Madeline’s home and the scene of quite a share of the action. The wild and desolate salt marshes around the Wash were another familiar and evocative location. However Sweetwater Montana is a complete fiction, having never been to Montana it was created purely from studying old photographs and film footage from the period, as was my rendering of Berlin in the 1930s.

Finally, can you tell us more about your writing process? Do you follow a structured outline, or do you allow the story to develop more organically?

This being my first novel, I’m not really sure what the writing process is supposed be or what the rules are, so whether my writing method is typical of other Authors I cannot say. But my experience was most definitely more organic than structured, in fact bordering on the chaotic; which I suppose is to be expected, as anyone who’s had the terrible misfortune of trying to find anything in my office or workshop would tell you, I am naturally a chaotic sort of a person.

I knew where I wanted the story to end up, but getting there took many an unexpected twist and turn, almost like reading a book I never really knew where it was going next. But it was a fascinating journey and I amazingly appear to have got there in the end.

How can readers connect with you? Are you active on social media or do you have a website where fans can follow your work?

I am a self-confessed technophobe; I get the distinct feeling that all modern technology has a personal vendetta against me, and therefore mistrust it; I find it is constantly doing new and interesting things that I really wish it wouldn’t do. It is both a blessing and a curse; it helps my research, corrects my dreadful spelling and allows me to instantly change words, insert paragraphs and rearrange things all without having to resort to the now dried up and redundant bottle of correction fluid. But it also appears to have a cold and calculating mind of its own, one I fear I might have offended in some way, because it always seems to choose the perfect moment to crash or “update” to a new “improved” version that I can’t for the life of me get my head around.

So the short answer is that I am at the moment not on social media, however for all communications please contact Enigma Press at Partnership Publishing - this will be the best way to connect with me.

Coming in 2025 from Enigma Press, The Agency of the Inexplicable.