Detective Matt Jones – Why Age Matters
The Detective Matt Jones series is unique because of its timeline. Matt is thirty years old in October when City of Echoes begins. By Book 5, I’m All Better Now, it’s only February, and Matt’s still thirty. Five cases in five months—Matt’s very first year as a homicide detective.
Age matters because this is a thriller series, and keeping Matt vulnerable in as many ways as possible is vitally important to upping the danger and suspense. Last time I checked, there were already quite a few superheroes, comic book characters, and machine-like protagonists in crime fiction. Adding another antihero or detective with twenty years on the job didn’t seem like the way to go either.
I really like the fact that Matt Jones is real. That he’s more like you and me—an innocent, tossed into a very dangerous world of unpredictable circumstances where his survival is almost always in doubt.
Being vulnerable, exposed, under attack—here are three wonderful examples: Clarice Starling in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs isn’t even an FBI agent yet. She’s a trainee whom her boss uses as bait to attract a serial killer. In Harris’ Red Dragon, Will Graham might be an FBI agent with experience, but he’s vulnerable because he’s recovering from a violent stabbing by Hannibal Lecter as the novel opens. In Hitchcock’s Rear Window, LB Jefferies played by James Stewart is recovering from a broken leg and is confined to a wheelchair throughout the entire story.
Vulnerable, but not weak—that’s the line the hero in a thriller must walk. And that’s the key to the Detective Matt Jones series and I’m All Better Now. Everything Matt experiences is almost always a first-time experience. Every decision he makes might seem like the right one … before the world begins to collapse before his eyes and we’re left wondering if he’s finally in so much trouble, there’s no way out.
That’s why age matters, and why I write thrillers.
ROBERT ELLIS WRITERS BLOG
10/31/26
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