I'm moved to preview a story I'm currently enjoying writing. The spark was simply the fact that the real Gotham is near Nottingham in England (Wikipedia says the village gained a reputation for the inhabitants all being mad in the Middle Ages when they feigned madness to avoid a royal road being laid through their land and consequent duties on them to maintain it, and this led in due course to Gotham becoming a kind of nickname for New York and then to its choice for the Batman stories). This is how it begins:
A crime wave had swamped Gotham. No-one could feel safe. That's perfectly normal, as crime is so wonderfully diverse and so many things are illegal that no-one is ever completely safe from crime, even a hermit who never leaves an impregnable fortress in an inaccessible spot in the mountains. After all, in many countries there are things you can do to yourself unaided which are illegal, and in the others, who said the hermit didn't have broadband?
However, this particular crime wave was quite specific. If you were old or male or ugly or flat-bottomed, or indeed not human, not living in or visiting the Gotham area or dead, you had nothing to fear, not from the Batsman. For the crime wave was perpetrated by just one villain with just one accomplice, or at least, that was the general view.
Detective Chief Inspector Iain Smiles was coming to the end of his tether. Everything the police tried failed, and often failed in such a way that they were made to look ridiculous. He himself was becoming a laughing-stock throughout Nottinghamshire.
"Let's go through it once again, Mitch," he said to his trusty sidekick and Detective Sergeant. "The so-called Batsman's victims all conform to a sairtain profile – tits under their chins and buttocks sticking oot at the back." He had pinned several profiles to his office wall to demonstrate this.
"It's the way you tell them, Boss," said the DS, with a winning smile. The DCI tossed back his untidy, bright red hair and smiled his uneven smile.
"They're all in the age range eighteen to thirty-six and attractive in the posterior department. As far as we can tell, all the attacks have happened in or around Gotham – not even one somewhere else in the Nottingham area. That's strange: it suggests the area has some special significance to him. Now – modus operandi." The DS laughed. "That wasna a joke, Mitch," his superior said. "It means the way the bastard works. There's no particular pattern aboot times or days, which suggests he's nae in regular employment, maybe unemployed or self-employed. Some of the attacks are ootdoors, on waste ground for example, in fields by a footpath or in a large garden wi' bushes. Some are indoors, mostly in the victim's own home. The victim has always been alone: that suggests he watches them carefully, but he must be inconspicuous or someone would have spotted him. The victim is attacked, restrained with masking tape, stripped below the waist and physically attacked on the buttocks. There has never been any attempt at penetrative sex, which may suggest he's impairtinent." The DS laughed and then swallowed his laugh when his boss stared at him. "He always uses his hands to start with, which is how we know they're large and horny, whereas he himself is quite small and horny." The DS laughed. "Then he proceeds to use items of equipment from cricket." He said the word "cricket" as if it represented some recondite sexual perversion or some obscure coming-of-age ritual in an Amazonian tribe (it is in fact both, but he did not know this).
And this is the officers entering the cathedral of Nottinghamshire cricket:
The surroundings were predictable and almost Spartan at first, but soon they were marching past ancient photographs of moustachioed men in blazers and flannels, past inscribed cups and plates which shimmered silver in the electric light and past display cabinets which, Claudette noticed, took them steadily back in time, back to W.C. Love's beard, Sir Clutterbuck Hambledon's box , a top hat and a stuffed sheep.
They had arrived in the Secretary's office. Three magnificent tapestries showed the signing of Magna Carta, Queen Victoria being serenaded by the Burckstock Colliery Brass Band in 1884 and Herbert Ducksworth scoring the winning runs versus Derbyshire in 1899. | 
