It’s a big news week this week, at least for those
interested in the respective futures of Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’
Heckenburg and Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn. Before we get to that, and on the subject of cops under pressure in a very dark world, I’m also proud today to be reviewing and discussing David Jackson’s superbly entertaining, New York-based crime thriller, PARIAH. If that feature is the main reason you’re here, you’ll find it, as usual, at the lower end of today’s column – feel free to scroll your way down there now.
However, if you’ve got a bit more time and are fans of the Heckenburg and Clayburn books, you might be a bit interested in the following …
The weeks leading up to Christmas are usually pretty
exciting, but as we raced towards the end of 2016, I was a bit more excited
(and tense) than usual. In early November last year, I entered discussions with my
publishers, Avon Books at HarperCollins, to maybe continue the two crime sagas
I’ve recently been writing: the DS Heckenburg novels, and what, as most punters
will have now guessed, was always intended to be a parallel crime series, the
Lucy Clayburn books.
But we authors don’t glue ourselves permanently to any
particular character or series of characters, no matter how popular they may
become. At least, we don’t plan to. Okay, I can’t speak for everyone in this …
but I think it’s fair to say that we all of us have ambitions to broaden our
writerly horizons. We don’t want to write about the same people all the time.
Hence the long chat I had with Avon.
It’s always a strange time for an author, that. Because
even if you’ve enjoyed a happy and fruitful relationship with a publisher – as
I definitely had with Avon, particularly with regard to the Heck and Clayburn
books – you can’t help but question whether the grass might be greener
elsewhere. You swap notes with fellow writers, you start mulling over different
ideas, possible new directions, you discuss it with your agent, your wife,
husband etc.
But ultimately, you wonder ...
You wonder if you’ve been in your comfort zone for too
long, and if maybe your work has stagnated as a result.
You wonder if opting to write something completely
different might totally re-energise you.
I’m very happy to announce that, after all the
soul-searching I mentioned above, I’ve signed a new deal with Avon, and
that both Heck and Lucy Clayburn will continue to work their cases harder than
almost anyone else into the foreseeable future under the HarperCollins banner.
As such, another Lucy book – SHADOWS – will follow this
year (in October, to be precise), the next Heck novel, as yet untitled, will
hit the shelves sometime around next spring, and Lucy, most likely, will appear
again later on in 2018.
You may wonder, ‘okay, so … why give us all that gabble
beforehand?’
The simple answer is that lots of people have recently been
asking what my plans are for the two characters, and have expressed concern
that I seemed cagey or even unsure about what was going to happen next. The
truth is that I wasn’t really able to say anything because I was genuinely
undecided – it was, as I think I’ve underlined, a difficult decision.
But at the end of the day, I suspect I was always
destined to sign on at Avon again. Firstly, they’ve done a great job with the
novels so far, and have encouraged, supported and assisted me in every
conceivable way as I’ve developed my two main characters. I’ve long felt I had
something valuable in my connection to Avon – a relationship that more
resembles close friendship than employer and employee hooked-up for mutual
convenience, and this is something which, from my many chats with fellow
authors, is not by any means a given when you move on to pastures new. If I’d
decided to head elsewhere, I’d have been risking losing something very
precious.
In addition, of course, I still have a directory’s worth
of untapped ideas for both Heck and Lucy, and, quite frankly, it would have
been an out-and-out crime to leave it there. Not only that, I’ve realised these
last few months how emotionally attached I’ve become to these two fictional personalities
– every day, it seems, I’m thinking up possible new developments in their
careers. Merely considering drawing a sudden line under them actually affected me with a sense of physical loss.
So there we are: I’m still with Avon Books, at least for
another couple of books, and, as I said before, both Mark Heckenburg and Lucy
Clayburn will continue to hunt the bad guys with every ounce of strength in my
body.
And now for something completely (well, a little bit)
different …
Last year, I wrote a special blogpost for BLOOMIN BRILLIANT BOOKS on the subject of
my research techniques, and what lengths I must go to in order to create the
authentic feel of the homicide detective’s world. That was half a year ago now,
of course, last October in fact, and so, with many thanks to BLOOMIN BRILLIANT BOOKS – and hopefully
for your interest – I’m able to reproduce it in full here, today …
How do you research for your cop fiction?
I suppose it all boils down to how much research you
actually want to do.
Do you want to be as precise as possible and follow real
police procedure to the absolute letter of the law? Or are you quite happy to
cut corners in order to tell a rattling good story?
Either way, I have a slight advantage because I was once
a serving police officer, albeit some time ago now. Given that police protocols
change so regularly, and vary so much from force to force, my basic knowledge
is hardly likely to be 100% accurate. That said, my service did ensure that I
have a good basic understanding of police life, police attitudes, police
relationships, and I like to think that I’m fairly well informed when it comes
to the law, though I too have to update my legal knowledge on a regular basis.
Thankfully, I still have some of my old crime
investigation manuals to hand – very grubby and dog-eared though they are – and
there are still lots of police buddies I can consult when it comes to tricky
issues. In addition these days, we all have an amazing resource of information
in the internet. Complex, detailed data that once could only be discovered by
going to the library or visiting the local Citizen’s Advice office is now
available at the push of a button. Law exists online, the rights of citizens
are available online, police procedures at the time of arrest and custody are
online – it’s not difficult to keep yourself appraised of essential
developments.
Which brings me back to the point I raised earlier. How
much hard fact to you want to include?
Some authors are very hot on procedure, while for others
it’s nothing more than a vague background. I guess I fall somewhere between the
two. I like things to be as accurate as possible, but by the same token I
consider that I’m writing thriller fiction not police textbooks. So I don’t
like to overdo it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t keep my ear to the ground and
read up on new cases and systems, which can be a time-consuming process.
Of course, one key advantage the average crime writer has
in this regard is the sheer amount of misinformation already out there. Most
members of the public have never visited a real-life murder scene, and
hopefully never will. Nevertheless, they think they know what goes on because
they’ve seen it so often in the movies and on television. But most dramas
operate on the same principles that we novelists do: in other words, their
priority is not always to be absolutely faithful to real life, and they too
will skimp on inconvenient details. In addition to this, there are some
investigative techniques that official police advisers will not speak to
writers, publishers or film and TV producers about, and I won’t even name them
here. It definitely suits the police if not all the tricks of their trade are known
to the public; there are some areas where they are more than happy for crime
authors like myself to make stuff up.
With my last Lucy Clayburn novel, STRANGERS, there is
no way that even as a former copper, I could just have grabbed up my keyboard
and started bashing it in.
To start with, STRANGERS is
about a policewoman, not a policeman. Not only that, it’s a policewoman who
needs to go undercover among Manchester’s prostitutes to try and snare a
vicious female serial killer called Jill the Ripper, a streetwalker who is
murdering and mutilating her male clients.
How could I know what it would be like as a young woman,
who as part of her duty must don the most suggestive clothing and walk the
roughest parts of town at the dead of night, while actively seeking the company
of deranged offenders?
But thankfully, I had this covered too. The author Ash
Cameron, a personal friend of mine, is also a former police officer, and she
performed this perilous duty many, many times during her own days in the job.
So, I had more than a few discussions with her on the subject, and trust me, I
got it chapter and verse, and you will too if you fancy checking out STRANGERS, in which I skimp on no lurid detail.
Even so, I reiterate that I’m not in the business of writing how-to
manuals. On occasion, the mythology of police work is much more entertaining
than the reality – how much do you really want to know about mountains of
soul-sapping paperwork, or sitting in court for hours while lawyers argue over
minutiae?
That doesn’t mean to say that the truth can’t every bit as compelling and hair-raising as the fiction. But for me it's about finding a happy medium midway between the two. I guess it’s over to my readers now to see what they make of it.
That doesn’t mean to say that the truth can’t every bit as compelling and hair-raising as the fiction. But for me it's about finding a happy medium midway between the two. I guess it’s over to my readers now to see what they make of it.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
Outline
Detective Callum Doyle is one of New York’s finest. But
he’s not the most popular guy in the station-house. Wrongly accused of once
having an affair with a colleague’s wife, who subsequently died in a shoot-out
with a worthless hoodlum, there is a distinct lack of support from his
work-mates when a faceless and relentless killer targets him for isolation,
eliminating anyone he gets close to in the most cruel and horrific ways.
The book starts at a hundred miles an hour with the
slaying of two of Doyle’s fellow-cops, Detectives Parlatti and Alvarez, both of
whom at the time of their deaths happen to be partnered with him. Letters are
then sent threatening the lives of anyone Doyle has contact with – police
personnel, family, friends and even those criminals he happens to be
investigating.
Initially, the rest of the Detective Squad reacts the way
you’d expect, showing determination to crack the case and bring the mysterious
madman to justice. However, it soon becomes apparent that this calculating individual
enjoys several big advantages over the NYPD and over Callum Doyle in
particular.
To start with, he remains bewilderingly anonymous,
carrying out his hits with ultra-professionalism, leaving not a clue for his
pursuers to work with. He also – and this is the real butt-kicker for Doyle –
seems constantly to be two or three steps ahead. It’s inexplicable, but the guy
always appears to know exactly where Doyle is and who he’s interacting with,
and as promised, he duly obliterates these unfortunates with extreme and
elaborate viciousness.
Even Doyle’s most nefarious contacts, regular Internal
Affairs opponent Paulsen, and washed-up former boxing pal-turned-informer,
Mickey ‘Spinner’ Spinoza, find themselves in dire peril.
No-one, it seems – literally no-one – is safe.
Doyle is certain the answer lies in his own past. It’s
just a matter of going through the files and trying to identify if there’s
anyone who bears him this much ill will and who is capable of mounting such a
campaign of terror. But increasingly, Doyle’s colleagues – especially those who
were iffy about him from the start – are hesitant to assist. They’ve got lives
to lead too, not to mention families whose welfare they fear for. In truth,
Doyle has only one true friend in the department, Lieutenant Mo Franklin, heir
to a wealthy estate and husband to the sexy Nadine, who has become a close pal
of Doyle’s homely wife, Rachel – but now even Franklin has become concerned
that his top detective is a danger to everyone, and so advises him to take an
indefinite period of leave.
Doyle keeps working the case – of course he does; he’s no
intention of playing this crazy game. But things get much tougher when the
lunatic switches his attention to Doyle’s family (and in one instance in the
most harrowing and heart-rending way).
In some ways, Doyle thinks it might be better if this
nameless enemy was simply planning to kill him. Because what happens now is
infinitely worse: a living death, permanent and complete separation from his fellow
men. Doyle literally must bury himself in a roach-motel and sever all contact
with the outside world. And how can he fight back in such a predicament? Even
the underworld, having lost some of their own to the killer, hold him at arm’s
length – with the exception of low-level Mafia hood, Sonny Rocca, who Doyle has
had run-ins with before but whom he basically likes, and far more scarily, the
Bartok brothers, two major players on the New York crime scene.
For reasons of their own, Rocca and the Bartoks are ready
to help Doyle, though of course this kind of help only comes at the sort of
price a good cop will struggle to pay. Just when he thought things couldn’t get
any worse, Doyle now has this nightmare decision to make: does he give up his
life as he knew it previously, or does he give up his soul? …
Review
First and foremost, the most impressive thing about Pariah – at
least as far as I’m concerned – is the authenticity with which it is written,
especially given that David Jackson is a British writer. It completely captures
the world of a busy New York City police precinct, with believable dialogue,
convincing use of genuine procedures (some serious research on show there, Mr.
Jackson!), non-intrusive but atmospheric use of real locations, and lots of the
kind of rugged, hard-bitten grotesques you’d expect to meet on the mean streets
of the Big Apple.
It’s to the author’s credit that so few likeable
characters populate these pages: pimps, addicts, winos, bang-bangers. Not every
punter has reviewed this aspect of the book favourably, arguing that it perhaps
wallows a little too much in grimness, and that maybe a few nicer personalities
would be refreshing. But it works excellently for me and shows that Jackson is
determined to immerse us in a version of NYPD life which is as close as damn it
to the real thing.
This brings me fully onto the issue of David Jackson’s
characterisation, which in Pariah is razor-sharp from the outset, but
also pretty merciless.
Far from the oft-depicted police world of white knights
and unbreakable brotherhoods, it feels here as if Callum Doyle’s work-buddies
let him down disappointingly quickly. Again, this is an effort by Jackson to
reflect real life. Let’s face it, Doyle was a guy with baggage and not too many
friends to start with, and this confirmed outsider status was never likely to
endear him to his fellow cops when it started to look as if he’d suddenly
become a walking bullet-magnet.
Doyle, for whom Pariah is the first of several
no-holds-barred outings, makes for a traditional flawed hero, his background in
boxing giving him ‘man’s man’ kudos, but the suspicion with which he’s held in
by certain colleagues even before he’s become the object of the killer’s hatred
understandably steers him towards the friendship of lowlife informers like
Spinner, Sonny Rocca and even Mr. Unpopular himself, IA investigator Paulsen.
Doyle’s a family man, of course, so his home life is comfortable, almost cosy,
but then there is still that lingering doubt in the minds of so many who know
him about whether he had an affair or not, and the mere presence of loved ones
presents its own kinds of difficulties, especially with a ruthless psycho
hanging around. So, it’s never cakes and ale for Callum Doyle, not even on the
domestic front.
The rest of the cops are convincingly drawn; even good
guys like Parlatti and Alvarez have issues, while one particular member of the
Detective Squad, Schneider, is an out-and-out hate mobile, one of those
archetypical fat-necked, loudmouthed, aggressively opinionated law enforcement
bullies of the old school and very much the opposite number to Doyle’s fearless
pursuer of genuine justice.
I was somewhat less sold on Mo Franklin. Not because he
didn’t strike me as the real deal – in the workplace he certainly did, but his
home life is perhaps a little too gold-plated. I had trouble buying into the
huge inheritance, the big house and the kittenish wife. But that’s probably the
only brickbat I’ve got for Pariah, and it certainly didn’t spoil my
enjoyment of it.
This is a taut, fast-moving detective thriller, based on
a singular and intriguing concept. When a cop is completely ostracised – when
he literally has no access to any of his normal support networks, neither cop
buddies, non-cop buddies, friends, loved ones, and certainly none of those
basic departmental essentials like Forensics, Ballistics etc – how can he even
start to track down so sadistic and yet sophisticated a maniac?
This is a truly great idea, very well executed, which
screams to be adapted for film or TV. It also features some truly hair-raising
moments – check out the scene in the nightclub alley! – which lift it well
above the average police procedural, certainly in the action stakes, though it
has its cerebral moments too; when Doyle is too weary and battered to keep on
hitting the streets, he must fall back on that often most underused tool in
detective fiction, his brain – though to talk much more about that would be a
spoiler for sure.
Suffice to say that Pariah has my strongest
recommendation. It’s a high-octane page-flipper, filled with unforeseen twists,
which I defy anyone to get through in more than two or three sittings.
As always, at the end of these book reviews, I’m now
going to be cheeky enough to indulge in some fantasy casting and list those
actors I personally would pick were this novel ever to make it to the screen.
Here, purely for fun you understand, are my selections for who should play the
lead characters in Pariah:
Callum Doyle – Jude Law
Rachel Doyle – Jennifer Esposito
Mickey ‘Spinner’ Spinoza – Micky Rourke
Sonny Rocca – Michael Imperioli
Paulsen – Robin Lord Taylor
Mo Franklin – John Turturro
Nadine Franklin – Sarah Michelle Gellar
(I know, this cast wouldn’t come cheap, but there’s never
any point doing this if I haven’t got limitless funds to work with!!!).
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