Book Cover by Paul Imrie

Dr Power's Casebook: Illustrations

The different illustrations featured in the collection.

Dr Power's Casebook is a collection of short stories set in different places and at different times. The illustrations were by Paul Imrie. The stories give a hinterland to Dr Power's character and work as a psychiatrist. Only two feature conventional mystery type plots. Some of the stories answer readers' questions about characters, e.g. what happened to Eve and Lucinda, and others e.g. the short story 'The Dark' give clues about the rest of the series.

Paul's illustrations

A detail from the cover- mainly representing the short story 'The Dark'.

Detail from cover

In this cropped image from the cover you can see a magpie. The magpie alludes to a story about the death of Alan Turing. Magpies also turn up in the Son of Darkness. The staff of Asclepius below the Magpie is a nod to Dr Power's medical profession.

DPC Font

The covers designed by Paul Imrie often feature a new font design.

 

Heaton Hall ruin

The cover design for The Fire of Love featured Heaton Hall, which burned down. A short story in the Casebook revisits Lucinda and her brother at the ruins of Heaton Hall.

Head of a Man (with red eyes)

There's a playful reference to Salford artist L.S. Lowry in the short story, 'The Artist' - Paul's line drawing of a Lowry Self Portrait from 1938.

Trinity StaircaseTrinity Spiral

Only one version of the iron spiral staircase from Trinity College Library was used in the book. Paul's delicate tracery of the ironwork is fantastic. He cleverly metamorphoses the Library's spiral staircase into the double helix of DNA. This is a clue to a later development in the series, but you will have to read Dr Power's Casebook and Son of Darkness to find out!