Hi, Judith
Good question! The time scale of a series is quite tricky to handle, especially by the time we reach number 10! Although about a year passes between books in the real world, I have to decide how much 'fictional time' passes in the world occupied by Cooper & Fry. Other authors might take a different approach, but for this series I decided Ben & Diane would age slowly - in fact, only three or four months pass in their lives between one book and the next. Yet I try to make the books as contemporaneous as I can, with each story set around the time it's published. That means an inevitable divergence between the real and fictional time scales, but I hope I get the balance about right.
One of the reasons I took this decision was that I didn't want Ben & Diane to become middle aged - or at least, not too soon! I also quite like the fact that they're junior officers, which gives me a different perspective to write from. Diane certainly had ambitions, but things have gone a bit wrong for her lately, haven't they? As for Ben, I'm not sure he's all that ambitious deep down. A reader who works in the personnel department at Derbyshire Constabulary once told me that in the real world Ben would be expected to go back into uniform and get more experience before he earned promotion! And not everyone can get promoted anyway (we only have to look at DC Gavin Murfin), unless they're prepared to move to a different specialty
Having said that, we'll have to wait and see what happens in Book 10, won't we?
Stephen
Author