I grew up a Baptist, and, like most other Baptists, I didn’t know much about Baptist history.

That changed in university when I studied history and wrote a paper on John Smyth, the founder of the first Baptist church (see my previous blog on him here). At the suggestion of another student (also a Baptist), I then chose John Smyth and his congregation as the subject of my doctoral thesis.

Trained as a historian, I naturally became an editor and writer. And then, after a while, I began writing contemporary murder mysteries.

The hero of many of my stories was a short, bald, bearded editor with a denominational Christian magazine based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. At the time, I was a short, bald, bearded editor with a denominational Christian magazine based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Writers are told to “write what they know,” but this was a bit of overkill. But I was writing murder mysteries, so overkill fit right in. Or write in.

I was uncertain what to name the hero of my murder mysteries. When I started writing, I temporarily named him John Smyth (the name of the man I had written my thesis about) until I could think of something better. This suggests a definite lack of imagination on my part, which did not bode well for my novel writing career.

Naming my hero John Smyth was a bit of an inside joke. (Like the original John Smyth, I was a Baptist with Mennonite connections.) But the more I worked on that first novel, the better the name seemed.

For one thing, John Smyth is the most generic of names, and yet the unusual spelling (with a Y) made it unique and memorable.

And I started to have some fun with that Y, as John tried to explain the unusual spelling of his last name and ended up blithering, which helped to establish his character as somewhat bumbling. The Why question was a useful counterpoint to the Who (done it) question.

As well, calling himself John Smyth made the police and other people suspicious that he was using an alias or was trying to hide his identity.

Sometimes I wonder what the original John Smyth (the founder of the first Baptist church) would think about how I have made use of his name. But, like him, John Smyth the editor and solver of mysteries, is a Christian. And so am I.

The recently published Too Many Deaths is the fifth and most recent crime book featuring John Smyth and the first since Springtime in Winnipeg (published in 2015). Both are available through bookstores and online retailers such as Amazon.