Where did Jack Beer come from?

Looking back, I’m grateful for the way family history stirred my imagination when the thought of writing a mystery series was still wishful thinking. The name Jack Beer, for example, originates in the photo of my father’s WWII platoon: I ‘borrowed’ Private G. Beer’s name and then decided he would be Jack’s grandfather. This marked a jumping off point for Jack’s full biography. And there was a bonus - Jack’s grandfather became an important character in his own right, in part due to his heroics at the Dieppe disaster.