Life of Pi sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life, and found that writing the novel met this need. The name of Martel's tiger, Richard Parker, was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1838). In this book, Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship (and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger). The author also had in mind another occurrence
Tiger in the Smoke statue of the Madonna. Except for the omission of Campion, the film follows the plot of the book very closely. Tiger in the Smoke Tiger in the Smoke is a 1956 British crime film directed by Roy Ward Baker (billed as Roy Baker) and starring Donald Sinden, Muriel Pavlow, Tony Wright, Bernard Miles and Christopher Rhodes. It is based on the 1952 novel "The Tiger in the Smoke" by Margery Allingham, although the film omits the principal character of Albert Campion. The film is set in a noirish smog-shrouded London and Brittany, France and combines the genres of mystery, thriller,