PHOTO: Michael Kent sits in his study, a thoughtful smile hinting at the imaginative worlds behind his Lieutenant Beaudry series.
Humour Mystery And Montreal Adventures
Michael Kent discusses creating Lieutenant Beaudry, blending humour with crime, drawing inspiration from Montreal, and shaping memorable characters while keeping long-running series fresh and engaging for readers.
Michael Kent is a storyteller whose imagination is grounded in experience. A native of Montreal, he has travelled widely as an international management consultant, and his adventures abroad subtly colour the worlds he builds on the page. Yet it is his hometown—with its cosmopolitan pulse, blending British restraint with French joie de vivre—that truly anchors his narratives. Kent’s fiction carries a tinge of humour, a deft twist, and an unerring eye for human idiosyncrasy, qualities that make his Lieutenant Beaudry series both lively and memorable.
Lieutenant Beaudry himself emerges as a study in contradictions: valiant yet unorthodox, principled yet sometimes dangerously inventive. Inspired by real-life Montreal figures, Beaudry embodies the rebel with a cause, the detective whose moral compass sometimes bends under the weight of circumstance. Through him, Kent explores the tension between authority and individuality, revealing the subtle ironies of justice and the shades of human nature.
Humour threads through Kent’s work like a steady current, softening the darker aspects of crime while keeping readers alert to the unexpected. Influences such as Mickey Spillane and Robert B. Parker are present, but Kent’s voice is unmistakably his own—wry, observant, and keenly attuned to dialogue that carries the rhythm and cadence of real life. His dedication to character development ensures that each book in the series feels both fresh and familiar, a testament to careful planning and an ear for detail.
For those who seek stories that balance intrigue with a subtle smile, Kent offers narratives that are as thoughtful as they are entertaining. His work is a reminder that crime fiction can be more than puzzles and peril—it can be an intimate glimpse into the quirks and complexities of people, cities, and the choices that define them.
What inspired you to create Lieutenant Beaudry as a character, and how did you shape his personality and style?
Lieutenant Beaudry is a tough, valiant officer, but one who has lost many pages from the procedures manual. The character is loosely based on a beat patrol officer ‘Cartouche’ Rene Duperron. A cop who made his own law in the tough red-light district of Montreal in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His nickname ‘Cartouche’ is French for bullet. He was never afraid to pull out his service revolver. He once spotted the glow of a flashlight in a closed jewellery store. Duperron caught four burglars in the act. He marched them single file to the police station with the admonition of ‘Anybody who steps out of line, I will shoot to kill.’
Your novels often have strong ties to Montreal—what makes the city such a compelling backdrop for your stories?
Montreal is a very cosmopolitan city. It’s an interesting blend of British class and reserve and French joi de vivre.
How do your experiences as a private pilot and international consultant influence your writing and the plots of your books?
Apart from a few chapters in one novel, my years of flying are not apparent. My trips too many countries show up in the secondary characters my detective meets. Speech patterns, names, background.
Beaudry often finds himself at odds with authority—why do you think this kind of protagonist resonates with readers?
Everybody likes a rebel for a good cause.
Humour and twists seem to be hallmarks of your storytelling—how do you balance these elements with the darker aspects of crime fiction?
My favorite crime writer is Robert Parker. His Spencer character is snarky and injects a smile here and there to soften harsher paragraphs. I found that to be an excellent writing technique that I now emulate.
You’ve mentioned authors like Mickey Spillane and Robert B. Parker as influences—what have you taken from them and made uniquely your own?
Without planning it, I’m certain I’ve absorbed some of their skills through years of reading these mysteries, and flavoured them with my personality.
What challenges do you face in keeping a long-running series fresh while maintaining Beaudry’s core identity?
I decided on a series at the first novel, ‘Blood Tail.’ I wrote a detailed CV for each of my main characters. Personality, speech patterns, likes, dislikes, hobbies, background. So, in any new situation, I know how they will respond. I always know the start of my new novel and I have an idea of the road to the end. The challenge is the alligator-filled swamp in the middle.
What advice would you give to other authors who want to build memorable series characters and sustain readers’ interest over multiple books?
Writing is an art that I will never fully master. I dare not give advice. I can tell you about two elements that have been helpful to me. Just like a martial art, you can only perfect writing through regular practice, not by reading about it. The other practice is eavesdropping on actual conversations. Learn the shortcuts we use in speech, voice timber and beat when questioning, angry, or love talk. With these skills, most stories could be told entirely in dialog.
