Killing Notes

Fanfiction
Title:	Killing Notes
Author(s):	Ellis Ward
Date(s):	?
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	online here online at AO3
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Killing Notes is a Bodie/Doyle story by Ellis Ward.

Reactions and Reviews

1994

"Killing Notes" started off well and ran rapidly downhill into the usual Absurd Plot Syndrome which E.W. should patent.

I can't say anything much that's nice about the first half of the zine (it was two novellas rather than a bunch of short stories), because it was an Ellis Ward sort-of-maybe-maybe-not pseudo werewolf-cum-Jekyll-and-Hyde mishmash that didn't seem to me to have any internal logic and really wasn't put together well at all.

But then, Ellis' stories are rarely amongst my favourites, so perhaps people who normally like her work were better disposed towards this than I was.

1996

Stories I hate: Oh, and that other really appalling Ellis Ward one (do I detect a trend, here?) in one of the Friends zines put out by DVS: there's a werewolf and what I think were sort of mad-scientist-werewolves and looming foggy nights and things that went bump in the night and blood'n'guts and a complete absence of logic (internal or otherwise). That one, to be fair, read like a rough draft that had been sent out by accident.

2012

This is an exciting case-based story with definite aspects of the supernatural. It's CI5 and London, but... There are some seriously creepy moments and the lads have to protect each other as well as solve a mystery and some murders. I won’t tell you any more because I don’t want to spoil the surprises in the plot for anyone who hasn’t read it. Ellis Ward writes smoothly and presents us with complex storylines and well-drawn original characters. Keep it till after dark, and enjoy!

2013

I have said, repeatedly, that I don’t like the supernatural in my Pros. I suppose it’s because I don’t like the supernatural, full stop, but I think that with most of the fic I have read, I feel that it takes away from the lads as I see them.

Consider the fic we’ve looked at in this round of Reading Room – Doyle abandons Bodie for a succubus, suddenly develops out-of-body abilities, is haunted by a demon who has been promised his soul, and is turned into an immortal. My issue with a lot of these fics is that the supernatural has somehow changed how I see ‘my’ lads behaving. I see them as being very grounded in the episodes, so to read about them dealing with the supernatural doesn’t fit my mental image, particularly when they lose their essential character in the story. However, I like Killing Notes because they are trying desperately not to believe the evidence of their eyes.

The plot seems like any other case, initially – Bodie and Doyle are investigating an attack on a fellow CI5 agent, and are then handed her investigation to find out what happened to her and to the MPs who seem to be dying from unrelated causes. They meet up with a most unpleasant character, a dog breeder, who plays strange chants which seem designed to spook them.

They are struggling with other issues, including how to deal with the last case they’ve just been involved with. They are being teased because they’ve just come off an op where they were posing as lovers – cue much comment from Murphy, Anson and the like – and at one point they try to have a conversation to work through what happened and how they feel about it – but unfortunately the case keeps getting in their way. Throughout the fic the attraction between them builds, and at several points they are interrupted in their conversations because of the case.

The plot holes irritate me – okay, so Francesca can turn herself into a large dog. This doesn’t explain how she can get into two CI5 high-security flats at more or less the same time, or how she can jump from an upper-storey window without damage. But somehow I am able to gloss over these, perhaps because I know it’s a supernatural fic and therefore there will be things I don’t like about the plot anyway *g*

I like the banter between Bodie and Doyle as partners. I love the ending, with Bodie locked away in one of his hidey-holes, hoping against hope that he won’t be affected, but having made preparations just in case. Of course, Doyle isn’t fooled by his plans at all, and everything is happily resolved – apart from Doyle and the loss of his money *g* And in the end, Francesca Oldman isn’t supernatural at all:

“A tiny smile lightened Doyle's features. "I talked with the coroner, what's-its-name-Parker. Cowley instructed him to tell me all-every gory detail. Didn't understand the half of it," he conceded wryly, "but the upshot was that Francesca Oldman was in no way supernatural. Flesh and blood, he said. His best guess was that she was some sort of mutation."

Sneering, Bodie mocked, "A shape-shifting mutation?"

"You'd rather believe in satanic pacts? Being a rape-got child born on the wrong day-like Ollie Reed?"

So the reasons I enjoy this fic include that it’s case fic, I can see the lads of the episodes, they are trying to rationalise the apparent supernatural, and that in the end it isn’t supernatural at all. Although that leaves me trying desperately to rationalise mutation etc. but that’s a separate issue *g*

Questions:

Did you see the lads of the episodes?

What did and didn’t work for you?

How did the treatment of the supernatural work for you?

What do you think about the ending?

Can you suspend disbelief to gloss over the plot holes? Or do they annoy you? Did you see any plot holes? *g*

I see the Lads so totally in this story, it's amazing.

I love the banter, the snarkiness, the love. The way they finally get together is wonderfully mapped out, there's enough going on to suspend it but not too much to make it boring.

I love the little sentences that say so much, like the tiny one thrown right in the middle of totally different things, where Bodie regrets that Doyle won't share his bed tonight.

The ending where Doyle finds Bodie and they talk about one thing but in the end ghey both know they were really talking about sth. totally different...love!

The supernatural, or!not? part I didn't like. It's just not Pros.

And then there are the paragraphs where they look at each other and then there's the descreption of what either one sees. So poetic and lovely and with loads of details, that's just SO unrealistic, especially for the Lads. Doesn't fit.

All in all I really, really like the story, I try to ignore the supernaturalornot part and I skim the descriptions. And I enjoy them immensely!

It's a long time ago I read the story and I didn't remember the title, but as you wrote "dog breeder" I recognized it at once ;-).

I don't remember much details (it was something with silver and paper money and the dog at the window in the flat), but I remember I liked the way the men were acting and talking, and I liked the way the author created the plot. Sometimes she mentioned things in the middle of the story which were important at the end of the story, that was quite a good idea.

I don't like AU very much, but in this story there was enough of the lads in it, otherwise I would have stopped reading.

Ellis Ward is one of my very favourite authors and pretty much all she writes gets the thumbs up from me.

1. Did I see the lads - totally. And especially the ending with Bodie trying very hard to be sensible and mature, but failing miserably and showing his sensitive, frightened little boy side.

2. They relationship development was the golden cord in the story. Beautifully written with thought and insight - love it!

3. I generally don't read supernatural and so suspension of belief is a given.

4. The ends are tied up - which is what I like in a story - even though not very satisfactorily, but it's supernatural - it's not going to be, is it? I do have the most wonderful picture of Bodie, tied up and waiting for the full moon!

5. The plot holes didn't affect my enjoyment of the story - it's supernatural!

I'm completely with you on EW as a favourite author. That's a great phrase of yours - the relationship development as the golden cord in the story. I think you and I are coming from the same place, which is that given that the subject is supernatural, the ending isn't going to be satisfactory. And oh, yes, a trussed-up Bodie...!

Ha - and interestingly enough, this is one of the "supernatural" fics that I rarely re-read, because there's just something about it that isn't... quite. Quite what I'm not sure, because in theory it's many things I do like. Ellis Ward is a solid Pros writer, imho, and one of my favourites. I like her lads - they're them, and they don't get soppy. They're equally tough, just as we see them in the eps - neither is a super-human, and neither is a fainting flower who just wants to be loved. In other words, they're human beings doing a difficult job. As a case-story, the story worked well too - it read rather like an ep to me, perhaps because it drew in lots of things we've seen in the eps - a CI5 guard in the hospital, crowds being all gawk-y when something bad happens, a grass (witness it turns out) who must be found via a pub, etc etc. With added slash. *g*

So why don't I re-read it as often as I do, for example, Legacy of Temptation? I've just re-read it now, so I'm just going to talk out loud for a bit... *g*

Maybe because it hung so akwardly between being a supernatural story and a case-fic? I really liked the cleverness of the author's misdirection - she built up the tension beautifully with the "dry leaves rustling" that Bodie heard (and then his realisation in bed, where we come to all our scariest realisations, that it'd been wet for the last how-many weeks), and using Russian wolf-hounds, with their implied-tinge of being part of an older, darker time, and the thing of legends (which are surely all based on some truth...). But... but, but, but! The misdirection petered out at the end - it turned out that we were only partly misdirected: there was something supernatural about Francesca Oldman. Being able to turn yourself into a half-hound that can absorb bullets is a supernatural thing - it's not natural, and it gave her powers beyond those naturally by humans. Supernatural. But this was then just dismissed, as if it could only have happened the once, and was therefore completely unconnected with the werewolves of legend. I was left feeling as if there was a huge story still there, but that suddenly we were told not to be interested in it, because it could be scientifically explained. But, but but! Half the interest of the supernatural, for me, is in its potential scientific explanation. If Oldman really was such a human mutation, then there's potentially a huge scientific story there too - and perhaps if Ward had given us just some hint of this, I would have felt more comfortable.

For instance - how do they know she was the only person who could ever do that? Isn't the most concise explanation for the whole thing that a) werewolves do in fact exist; b) Oldman was an example of one; but c) the legend was based on a rare but clearly extant mutation that may well be genetic and would therefore explain the continuance of stories throughout the ages; d) therefore there may well be more such mutations out there, and hadn't someone better be looking into that? What Killing Notes seems to be saying is that there are two completely separate, unconnected things - legends about werewolves, which are completely untrue, and a woman who's able to change herself into a bullet-absorbing giant-hound-thing who just happened to have a heart-attack when Bodie's not-silver bullet hit her. Too much coincidence! Maybe that's what makes me disbelieving - at the end of it all I'm being asked to believe in too many coincidences (the plot-holes you mention), which are only apparent in the explanation at the end - which is also suddenly given in a very Poirot-in-the-library exposition kind of way...

I loved the ending in many ways - but having seen that some of the elements of the werewolf legend seemed to be true, even if the silver bullets weren't, I would have liked a bit more tension at the end when the werewolf's bite was shown to be untrue too, from the author if not from Doyle and/or Bodie. There was, surely, an outside chance that the mutation could have been passed on via blood infection, as various diseases are - and if they don't know what caused the mutation, then it could as well have been blood-borne as anything else!

Yes, but - no, but...

I don't like the supernatural. I was about to write 'in real life' and then got all tangled up because I don't believe in it - but is it that I don't want to believe in it and really I am just hiding my head under the bedclothes because it might be out there really? Well, that's for me to work on privately *g* but I do have a habit of enjoying fic less when it deals with stuff I'm not comfortable with. Here I've focused on the supernatural, but it also applies to death fic, for example. Although I love the way you have written the lads in your fic, I still don't - hmmm... believe in/get/see/enjoy the supernatural elements, which all tend to leave me slightly irritated - because I don't believe in it, full stop. And that's interesting in itself, because any fiction demands the suspension of disbelief - the whole of Pros fandom is based on the eps and therefore isn't 'real'. (I'm not going to go into what is 'real') In addition to this, there are lots of fics that leave me feeling the same way - even when I like the characterisation of the lads (or Cowley, or Murph or anyone else) - there are times when the plot gets in the way of my enjoyment. So I can enjoy your fic, totally believe in the way you've written the lads - and not like the supernatural elements because they don't fit into my (narrow) world view. As a rather gloomy aside, I can feel my mind narrowing and hardening as I get older - I'm turning into my parents :(

1. I most definitely saw the Lads in the story. EW's interpretation of them is always pretty much the way I see them, so how could I not? :-)

2. It all worked for me. I liked that it was a case, though one with supernatural overtones. And since I'm a fan of horror/supernatural, that was just a plus.

3/4. I liked the treatment of the supernatural element, even if it turns out that there wasn't one. But hasn't that been the case for a lot of things? Something that would have been seen as supernatural in the 1900s is commonplace for us today. And there's also the history of its use in such stories as Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." The murderer is deemed not human, but it's not until the end that we realize that "not human" can, and does, mean "animal."

5. I can't say that I saw any plot holes, not that I remember, anyway. I've read the story several times, though not recently, but I think I would have remembered any glaring ones.