Okay, I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and happy New Year to you all. I trust you’re all ready to tackle 2018 with the vim and vigour required. Personally, I’m looking for an explosive year, this year – though, by that, I should state that I mean in book terms.
KISS OF DEATH, the seventh DS Heckenburg novel, is published
in August this year, and I can promise you now, it’s going to be a big ’un – in
every sense of the word. But more about that in a few paras. Also on the
subject of explosive thriller fiction, I’m kicking off the New Year by reviewing
Terry Hayes’s mesmerising I AM PILGRIM, one of the best international actioners
I’ve read in a long, long time.
As usual, you’ll find that review towards the lower end of
today’s blog. If that’s all you’re here for, be my guest and skip down there to
check it out straight away. But if you’ve got a few minutes to spare first,
hang around here, because I’ll also be including a guest-blog I wrote for the
FOR WINTER NIGHTS blog back in April last year, in which the question was
put to me: What Seven Things Should You Know if You Want to Write Crime Fiction?
But before that …
Though I say it,
myself
Even though I say so, myself, KISS OF DEATH is going to be a
major event in the Mark Heckenburg story.
Those who’ve followed Heck’s investigations from the beginning (the first one,
STALKERS, was published by Avon at HarperCollins way back in February 2013)
will be aware that he is now at the end of his thirties, but still, despite
some jumping about en route, a detective sergeant with the Serial Crimes Unit,
which in its turn is part of Scotland Yard’s National Crime Group.
It wouldn’t be true to say that Heck has had a chequered
career, thus far; he’s had some great results, but there’ve been fireworks too. This is partly down to his penchant for going it alone, bending the rules and taking chances. However, if you haven’t read Heck yet, don’t go away from that under the impression that he’s a British version of Dirty Harry. Heck is not some humourless bully or cold-blooded killer. He’s affable and easy-going, but only with ASHES TO ASHES (the sixth outing), did we fully become aware just how
affected and damaged he is by events in his early past.
Fortunately, he’s always had Gemma Piper to lean on. His
ex-girlfriend, who once worked with him as a fellow detective constable at
Bethnal Green police station, Gemma has since rocketed to police superstardom
and is now the detective superintendent in charge of the Serial Crimes Unit
(SCU). They still care a lot for each other, but they don’t often show it, this
unspoken chemistry leading them to fight like cat and dog over matters of
procedure and morality. Gemma, the ultimate straight-player, is adamant that
she will keep Heck on the straight and narrow, while Heck is equally adamant
that what Gemma doesn’t get to know about his more ‘out there’ investigations
will never actually hurt her.
From an authorial point of view, it’s a relationship between
my two lead characters which has worked very well, and which I think has given
the ongoing story-arc depth and impetus. Whether two people in real life could
exist in this constant state of love/war, especially when they are pursuing
some of the most vicious and relentless killers in Britain, is another matter,
but hey, this is fiction.
When we get to KISS OF DEATH, though, the whole of the
Serial Crimes Unit, not just Heck and Gemma, is under a degree of pressure it
has never known before.
It’s 2018 of course, and the austerity that has denuded the
police service of so many front-line officers and whittled away at specialist
departments has finally come to the National Crime Group. NCG Director, Joe
Wullerton, argues daily with the National Police Chief’s Council for the
continuation of his department, which does not just track serial killers through SCU, but also contains the Kidnap Squad and the Organised Crime
Division. When he puts it to the powers-that-be that to close NCG would be to
drastically reduce the police forces of England and Wales’ effectiveness in
their fight against the most heinous criminals and their gangs, there is
sympathy – but sympathy alone doesn’t pay bills.
Feeling that some pro-action is required on her part, Gemma
Piper opts to join forces with the Metropolitan Police’s Cold Case Team who are
also facing the axe, and proposes the creation of a temporary task-force
dedicated to pursuing the twenty worst British offenders still on the loose,
with a remit to get rapid and impressive results.
*
And now for something a little bit different …
As I mentioned earlier, I wrote a guest blog-post for FOR
WINTER NIGHTS last April to accompany the publication of ASHES TO ASHES. It
seemed to go down very well, so, for those of you who didn’t see it the first
time, here is is again:
What seven things should you know if you want to write crime
fiction?
Well, it’s an interesting question, and certainly one I
haven’t been asked before. Off the top of my head, I can think of seven things
it might be useful for you to know. I wouldn’t say that these are the seven
most important things, but it probably wouldn’t do you any harm to be
forearmed, as they say. So here we go…
1) Guilt goes with the territory
This may seem a curious thing to say, but it reflects
reality. By its nature, crime and thriller writing deals with the darker end of
the human experience. It won’t just be routine wickedness you are exploring.
Whether your lead characters are heroes or villains, they’ll be dicing with
danger, skating along the edge of the abyss, doing all kinds of things that
law-abiding citizens in normal life never would. Now, if you want your writing
to be authentic, you’ve got to go the extra mile to ensure that you get the
facts of these matters correct.
That will entail lots of online research into
areas you wouldn’t usually go anywhere near, such as the formation and
organisation of criminal empires, the methods and modus operandi of serial
killers, the anatomies of the world’s most successful bank robberies and/or
assassination plots, the use and availability of illegal firearms, the impact
upon human bodies of poison, nerve gas, biological weaponry, the formation of
police investigation teams and the emergency procedures they follow, the
complexities of drugs-trafficking, the risk and probability of terrorist
attacks, and the depth and breadth of those security shields that protect western
cities against such catastrophic threats.
That will entail lots of online research into
areas you wouldn’t usually go anywhere near, such as the formation and
organisation of criminal empires, the methods and modus operandi of serial
killers, the anatomies of the world’s most successful bank robberies and/or
assassination plots, the use and availability of illegal firearms, the impact
upon human bodies of poison, nerve gas, biological weaponry, the formation of
police investigation teams and the emergency procedures they follow, the
complexities of drugs-trafficking, the risk and probability of terrorist
attacks, and the depth and breadth of those security shields that protect western
cities against such catastrophic threats.
All of this is going to make fascinating reading, of course,
for a security expert should he/she ever have call to examine your online
activity. You will have the excuse that you’re a crime writer and that it’s all
part of the game, but that doesn’t mean you won’t feel a tad nervous when
you’re indulging in it.
2) You’ll be challenged on facts
Never has the phrase ‘facts matter’ been more relevant than
it is to the average crime/thriller writer. One of the most basic problems you
have as an author in this field is that you’re straying into a fascinating,
complex world which also, rather inconveniently, happens to be real. So, for
example, you may be delving into law enforcement with all the procedures,
protocols and legalities inherent to that. If you think that’s tough, you may
also find yourself concerned with military matters, or security issues
involving international law, the intelligence services and/or spec ops
deployment. Medical and forensics questions will almost certainly arise; you
may need to discuss weapons, explosives and the like. But the real problem is
that you’ll likely encounter real-life people in your everyday world who have
expertise in these fields, and if you get things wrong, they may call you to
account – sometimes in public.
While it’s not incumbent on you to become a guru in these
matters, it would certainly help if you did some basic research. Whatever you
do, don’t wing it.
(I will add that it won’t matter quite so much with the
likes of MI6 and/or the SAS, as they’ll never comment anyway, and almost
certainly will be delighted if you spread misinformation about their
techniques).
3) You can chat to those who know
Library and internet research may help you factually, but
it’s often a dry process and is unlikely to hit you from left-field with cool
new ideas. In contrast, speaking to someone who’s actually done unusual things
in his/her life can be much more fruitful. And the good thing is, with the
exception of those ultra-secret organisations I mention above, most members of
the security services are happy to chat about it, though they only tend to do
so if approached … so don’t feel awkward about trying to pick their brains.
Police officers or ex-police officers are particularly good
in this regard. I have a slight advantage here as an ex-copper, in that they
may feel they can trust me more with the really juicy stuff, but I’d be
surprised if the majority weren’t willing to have a chat with any writer. There
may be certain areas they won’t go if they don’t already know you, but on the
whole I think they’ll be willing to talk widely and informatively about their
job. Never make the assumption that they’ll think you’re silly. They won’t.
Many coppers I know also read crime fiction, while others would like to write –
to immortalise their own exploits – but can’t, and so become very protective of
writers they form relationships with, as they see that as the next best thing.
The semi-mythical image of the writer slugging on alone in
his/her attic, virtually penniless and with no one to call a friend,
particularly does NOT apply to the crime/thriller writer. I mean, I can’t
comment on the ‘penniless’ bit – that all depends on your personal circs, but
you DO have friends.
In all the literary fields, I’ve never known anywhere where
the networking between practitioners is quite as vibrant as it is in crime and
thrillers. There are literally hundreds of authors writing this material at
professional level, both at home and overseas, and they’re all doing exactly
the same things you are: hammering away at their keyboards, proof-reading,
flipping through websites on the research trail, chatting things over with
their agents and editors – and not always to their personal satisfaction. More
importantly, thanks to the internet, most of these men and women are now
connected. There are all kinds of online crime-writer clubs you can join,
places where friendships are made, experiences aired and info shared (including info
about which publisher has a new slot available, or which editor is looking for
what, which can be very useful indeed). This is a great way to relieve pressure,
because it shows that you aren’t the only person struggling with writer’s
block, or character development, or just with the sheer physical effort of
trying to finish a full-length novel inside a tight deadline. Likewise, there
are many crime fiction conventions and festivals you can attend, and
crime-writing societies you can join. A burden shared is a burden halved and
all that, on top of which a lively social life, especially when it’s crammed
with folk who all share the same interest as you, can only improve your quality
of life.
5) Readers can take as much as you can give them
Don’t be lulled into thinking that, just because certain
sub-genres within the overarching genre of crime writing are cosier than others
– a good example being the ‘village green murder mystery’ – you have to handle
your readers with kid gloves. In short, it’s quite the opposite.
So, if you feel you need to lay it on, don’t worry about the
sensibilities of your readers. Lay it on.
6) Crime writing is a very broad church (no pun intended)
So many people who don’t read crime/thriller fiction have
complete misconceptions about it. They immediately think Agatha Christie and
the traditional English whodunnit. That is undeniably there and is very
popular.
Sidney Chambers, the crime-fighting village vicar of James Runcie’s
Grantchester Mysteries, still embodies something of that atmosphere, and his
adventures sell widely. But there are other fields too. Our fictional
crime-fighters, like crime-fighters in real life, vary across the spectrum –
from sticklers for procedure and crusaders of correctness to embittered louts
who are never any better than they need to be and subsequently walk tightropes
through a world of crime and sleaze. It doesn’t even stop there; often we use
hardboiled PIs as our models, the smart-mouthed heroes created by James
Crumley, Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler, who are no strangers to the
seediest worlds imaginable and will play by any rules to win. Sometimes the
villains themselves are our central characters. The violent gangland thrillers
of Ted Lewis, Malcolm Mackay and Howard Linskey perfectly exemplify this.
Sidney Chambers, the crime-fighting village vicar of James Runcie’s
Grantchester Mysteries, still embodies something of that atmosphere, and his
adventures sell widely. But there are other fields too. Our fictional
crime-fighters, like crime-fighters in real life, vary across the spectrum –
from sticklers for procedure and crusaders of correctness to embittered louts
who are never any better than they need to be and subsequently walk tightropes
through a world of crime and sleaze. It doesn’t even stop there; often we use
hardboiled PIs as our models, the smart-mouthed heroes created by James
Crumley, Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler, who are no strangers to the
seediest worlds imaginable and will play by any rules to win. Sometimes the
villains themselves are our central characters. The violent gangland thrillers
of Ted Lewis, Malcolm Mackay and Howard Linskey perfectly exemplify this.
So, there you have it; we range from those quintessential
leafy villages in the heart of Middle England to urban hells populated by
addicts, prostitutes, contract killers and corrupt politicians. Oh yes, we’ve got it all. Feel free to explore at random.
As I intimated in earlier paragraphs, we are not, as
authors, bound by real-world morality.
For my money, one of the best crime thrillers ever written is Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, which was published in 1970 but filmed in 1971, perhaps more famously, as Get Carter. It tells the tale of a mobster from the North of England who makes good in London, but when his brother is murdered back home, gets on a train in a quest for gangland justice. What follows is a brutal, gritty noir filled with anger and darkness, and in the character of Jack Carter, it gives us an amoral and uncompromising hero, a cold-blooded hardman who is only different from the evil hoodlums he finds himself gunning for because his personal code of ethics is marginally more admirable than theirs.
But hey, this again reflects reality. You’ve doubtless heard the phrase ‘it takes a wolf to catch a wolf’. Well, we crime authors mustn’t be ashamed of putting that into practice. Morally ambiguous heroes are often far more interesting than those goodie two-shoes of the old school. In any case, as I say… this is fiction, not real life, so it doesn’t matter anyway. If that’s what you want to do with your book, go for 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
‘Pilgrim’, aka ‘Jude Garrett’, ‘Scott Murdoch’, ‘Pete
Campbell’ and in inner spy circles, the ‘Rider of the Blue’, is the enigmatic
man who wrote the ultimate manual on forensic analysis. He’s also the offspring
of a murder victim and the adopted son and heir to a New England
multi-billionaire, while, career-wise, he’s a US intelligence agent, who, even
though he’s still very young, is so formidably skilled and experienced, and
boasts such an exemplary track record (which included his termination of a
powerful and highly dangerous double-agent based in Moscow) that it has earned
him the ear of US presidents.
Technically speaking, however, it’s all over for Pilgrim.
He’s done, retired, looking forward to a life of bohemian anonymity in the
garrets and backstreets of Paris.
But then, over in Manhattan, Detective Ben Bradley, locates
the body of a murdered woman whose corpse has been completely depersonalised by
the very same CIA-inspired methods that Pilgrim specified in his seminal book,
her teeth removed, her fingerprints and facial features erased with acid, and
all traces of the killer’s DNA obliterated by judicious use of antiseptic.
Pilgrim – though he isn’t going by that moniker at this
early stage – is a lonely and tortured individual, whose empathetic nature was
at the root of his seeking an alternative career, and who yearns to forget his
past, though now he is inevitably forced back onto the job to assist Bradley’s
investigation. After that, it isn’t long before he finds himself embroiled in a
connected but much larger and potentially massively more devastating case …
which takes us neatly onto I Am Pilgrim’s other main thread, the personal and
political development of an ambitious and determined terrorist, who will also
go by a conveniently simple nickname: ‘Saracen’.
After a deprived boyhood in the repressed police state that
is Saudi Arabia, which culminates in his having to watch the public decapitation
of his father for the unforgivable offence of criticising his nation’s rulers,
Saracen finds himself growing up with a fierce hatred for the Saudi royal
family, and perhaps inevitably (and far more zealously), for their most
committed western ally, the United States of America.
A fully trained doctor by adulthood, but increasingly
immersed in the more extremist tenets of Islam, Saracen eventually falls out
with what remains of his family (his mother needing to get a job is the final
straw!), and he leaves home determined to join the jihadi fight, which he does with
a vengeance, soon finding kinship with the Taliban and entering the war in
Afghanistan as a soldier of God.
However, Saracen, much like Pilgrim (though this is the only
similarity between them), is an obsessive intellectual of his craft, and the
winning of minor battles and launching of successful but relatively insignificant
terrorist outrages feels like small potatoes. Eager to carry his war into the
very heart of his enemy’s domain, and if possible, to destroy it completely,
the only solution, as Saracen sees it, is to develop and deploy a bio-weapon of
such magnitude that the might of the US will simply collapse beneath its
onslaught.
He settles on a new, vaccine-proof and horrendously
contagious strain of the smallpox virus (which he unleashes on a batch of human
test-subjects in what is surely one of the ghastliest scenes that’s ever been
committed to paper).
Back in the States, Pilgrim and his various government
informers don’t get wind of this fiendish plot straight away, but when they do,
a twisting, turning, continent-hopping duel commences, which ranges from the US
to Europe to Asia and the Middle East, taking in a variety of amazing locations
en route, including Syria, Switzerland, Bahrain, the bleak, savage mountains of
the Hindu Kush, and a hypnotically beautiful Roman ruin on the edge of the
glimmering blue Aegean. Ironically, Pilgrim and Saracen don’t meet until near
the end of the book, but this doesn’t stop either of them engaging in numerous
conflicts on the way, via flashback and subplot and through various proxies,
though ultimately we finish up in a shattering,
race-against-the-clock, one-on-one climax, which, if I was to say more about it
here would be the ultimate spoiler …
Review
The Guardian said of I Am Pilgrim that it’s ‘the only
thriller you need to read this year’. Speaking as a gobbler-up of thrillers, I
wouldn’t go quite that far, but I do know what they mean. Everything about
Terry Hayes’s astonishing debut novel is epic: its size, its concept, its cast
of characters, its range of locations, its terrifying and exhilarating action
sequences, and even its subtext, which is huge if fairly simple: those with
greater power and wisdom than most must shoulder greater responsibility than
most, and their not wanting to is basically irrelevant (not that they may
necessarily have a choice in the matter).
This is big stuff all the way through, a colossal struggle
between two born-to-it masters of their trade, neither of whom will ever take a
backward step because they know no other way, and all played out against the
majestic canvas of Europe and the Middle East in the age of wide-ranging
espionage and terrorism.
On this basis alone, it might be understandable if some
readers were put-off exploring this novel any further, perhaps suspecting an
all-too-familiar mishmash of James Bond and Jason Bourne. But that would be an
error, because I Am Pilgrim is an astonishing, multi-layered tale of conflict
and belief, which is vivid, realistic and totally gripping for the entire duration
of its 600 plus pages.
It’s no surprise at all that Hollywood has already got its
hooks into it.
That isn’t to say that it hasn’t come in for criticism in
certain quarters. The sheer length of the book has been described as OTT, while
its excessive detail and numerous side-stories have been called self-indulgent and
time-wasting. But I take strong issue with that. Despite the length of I Am
Pilgrim, the pace never flags, the story never sags, and the suspense is
overflowing – Hayes’s writing style is not exactly stripped down, but it makes
for a fast, easy read, and I got through the whole novel in three days (in
which case, a book can surely be as long as it wants to be).
Likewise, I have no truck with the argument that I Am
Pilgrim is a lesson in what might happen if the US isn’t much more interventionist
and belligerent in its overseas policies, and more willing to play dirty when
it comes to espionage. Unfortunately, we do exist in an age of relentless
terrorism, so while it could be argued that this book is alarmist in its tone,
it’s a thriller – so it’s supposed to be, and it’s hardly telling us that
something terrible could happen which we haven’t already imagined for
ourselves. But to call that a demand for much more bullying and rule-breaking
by the intelligence services is no more applicable than it would be to Bond
movies or superhero comics in which the lead characters ignore almost every
rule of law in their pursuit of megalomaniac villains.
Which brings us onto the characters, themselves.
Pilgrim as an unusually vulnerable hero in the world of
secret agents. And by that, I don’t just mean that he’s a guy with a faux
conscience, one of these unconvincing characters who even in the midst of hardline
law enforcement, is continually moved to remind us that he shares the
peace-loving, socio-liberal values of the author. Pilgrim is much more rounded
than that. Yes, he is regularly forced to make ruthless decisions, many of
which he believes in, but he has genuinely always tried to perform his duty in a way
that is least destructive, and much of his day-to-day life is overshadowed by
memories of the lives he has taken. When he finds himself working side-by-side
with the Saudi secret police, he is fascinated and appalled in equal measure by
their casual disregard for human rights. Throughout the book, his desire to take
an early retirement, to do something more useful with his life, is
all-pervading, even though he strongly doubts that someone of his expertise
would ever be allowed to. What this leaves us with is a very believable
character, who authentically suffers, both physically and emotionally, and who,
even though his ‘trust fund’ background has been knocked by certain picky
critics – he’s been disparagingly referred to as ‘Bruce Wayne mark II’ – remains
much more complex and intriguing than Batman, Bond or Bourne have ever been.
Meanwhile, as villain-in-chief (though he’s only one of
many, in truth), Saracen is also a marvellous piece of writing. Rarely in
western thriller fiction have I encountered a Middle Eastern terrorist, who –
while it wouldn’t be true to say we sympathise with – we understand as much in
terms of his motivations. Saracen’s transformation into a fanatic is a slow,
painful process (and we accompany him much of the way), during which the seeds
of fundamentalist hatred are not so much sewn into him, as hammered, by
countless cruelties and injustices which any rational person would yearn to put
right. It’s very easy in our world to dismiss jihadi grievances as an overblown
excuse for out-and-out wickedness, but after reading I Am Pilgrim, you’ll
think as the hero does: know your enemy – and know him well, or risk paying a
deadly price.
I have no hesitation in declaring I Am Pilgrim one of the
best espionage thrillers I’ve ever read. It’s got everything: action, suspense,
intrigue, mystery, villains you love to hate and heroes you are rooting for
every inch of their breathless journey. An amazing novel.
As I mentioned before, Hollywood is already developing I Am
Pilgrim, and in fact – or so the rumour-mongers insist – may even be planning
to launch it as the pilot for a brand-new franchise. Ordinarily, that would render any
fantasy casting by me completely pointless, but I’ve looked around online, and
I haven’t seen a cast-list yet, so as usual, I’m going to be bold (stupid?)
enough to suggest my own:
Pilgrim – Edward Norton
Saracen – Murat Yildirim
Det. Leyla Cumali – Beren Saat
Lt. Ben Bradley – Denzel Washington
Marcie Bradley – Angela Basset
David ‘Whispering Death’ McKinley – James Woods
Ingrid Kohl – Alexandra Daddario
Cameron Dodge – Evan Peters
Battleboi – Eric Stonestreet
President James Grosvenor – Stephen Tobolowsky
Bill Murdoch – Paul Giamatti
Dr Sydney – Bryan Browne