All I can really talk about today is what happened to me yesterday. Because it was, without doubt, the best day of my working life. It was a day in which three very talented artists each presented to me their own interpretation of my latest novel.
Yes, that’s correct. Three remarkable ladies had each taken the trouble to condense my 130,000-word thriller, NEVER SEEN AGAIN, into a single canvas. The only role I had yesterday was to attend this presentation in Birmingham and choose the winner, but believe you me, that was no small thing.
So, today’s blog will tell the story of how all of this came to pass.
In addition today, on the subject of solid mystery-thrillers (sorry, blatant bit of self-glorification there), I’ll be reviewing Ruth Ware’s compelling novel, THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10. Anyone who’s only here for that and isn’t particularly bothered about the book-to-painting story, scoot straight down to the lower end of today’s column, the Thrillers/Chillers section, where you’ll find that review.
In the meantime though, why don’t we discuss …
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A fusion of the arts
That’s the way this incredible new idea was first pitched to me by Mike Olley (left), boss of Birmingham’s Westside BID, and his wife, Lorraine Olley (below), a popular singer, businesswoman and media personality down in the West Midlands, while we were all sitting in The Brasshouse pub in Birmingham last summer, talking generally about our careers and interests.
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What I’d been looking for, I said, was an actual painting. Not just a new book cover that would work for retailers, and not an advertising poster. But an original piece of art, condensing many aspects of Heck’s life and investigations into a single image that we could then use as part of the promotional campaign in 2023, but which would mainly be for hanging on the wall in our lounge.
Mike and Lorraine seemed fascinated by this concept. ‘A fusion of two art-forms,’ they called it. ‘That would be something different and new.’
On reflection, I had to agree. The creation of book covers is an art in itself of course, while high quality illustrations have been used inside books throughout the entire history of publishing. But this would be slightly different. This challenge would require an artist who was not an illustrator or a book jacket designer to interpret an entire novel in one image.
Birmingham Art Zone
Mike put the concept to the Birmingham Art Zone, a group of highly talented artists dedicated to bringing artistic endeavour to the whole community of the West Midlands. Only then – certainly in my case – did it become apparent just what an enormous challenge this was going to be.
NEVER SEEN AGAIN is a 400 pages long thriller, concerning a violent kidnapping that has now become a cold case, a burned-out reporter trying to revive his career, corruption in the City of London, organised crime, a serial murderer called the Medway Slasher, a whole nest of dirty cops and the disgraceful scandal of international sex-trafficking.
How do you ask an artist to depict all of that in a single frame?
Well, that wasn’t for me to say. I only wrote the book. The three intrepid artists who undertook the challenge – Paula Gabb, Helen Owen and Helen Roberts – would need to decide for themselves what went into their pictures and what was left out. And thus they embarked on ‘this massive task’ as one of them described it to me, beavering away in their respective studios, with only a couple of months realistically available in which to create.
Roll forward to this week, and we come to the grand unveiling – Judgement Day, as Lorraine cheerily called it – held on November 16, down at the Velvet Music Rooms on Broad Street, the artery at the beating heart of Birmingham’s cultural life.
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The press were in attendance, which was lovely to see, alongside some very special guests indeed, not least Tony Iommi, legendary lead guitarist of rock/metal pioneers Black Sabbath. That made it even more unbelievable for me, having been a heavy rock fan since I was at junior school, so the moment when Tony asked me to sign a copy of NEVER SEEN AGAIN for him (see right) was almost more than I could handle.
When the paintings were revealed one by one, each one then presented to me by the artist responsible, I was actually very unnerved. I’ve had no formal training as an art critic, I just know what I like. But on this occasion, quite frankly, I liked all of them.
At no stage had I prescribed what I wanted the artists to paint (who would I be, to tell an artist how to do their job?). But secretly I’d hoped, as I’ve already hinted, that I wouldn’t just get an alternative piece of jacket art or what you might describe as a screen-grab, i.e. a single moment from the novel represented in oils. I was looking for an interpretation of the whole thing, if that was possible.
And as it turned out, it was … because that is exactly what I got in all three cases.
If I tell you now that none of the three were losers and that I loved them all equally, and only in the end chose one because that was the purpose of the exercise, you might consider it a cliché tossed out casually to prevent anyone feeling bad. But actually it would be 99.9% true.
NEVER SEEN AGAIN is a 400 pages long thriller, concerning a violent kidnapping that has now become a cold case, a burned-out reporter trying to revive his career, corruption in the City of London, organised crime, a serial murderer called the Medway Slasher, a whole nest of dirty cops and the disgraceful scandal of international sex-trafficking.
How do you ask an artist to depict all of that in a single frame?
Well, that wasn’t for me to say. I only wrote the book. The three intrepid artists who undertook the challenge – Paula Gabb, Helen Owen and Helen Roberts – would need to decide for themselves what went into their pictures and what was left out. And thus they embarked on ‘this massive task’ as one of them described it to me, beavering away in their respective studios, with only a couple of months realistically available in which to create.
A difficult choice
Roll forward to this week, and we come to the grand unveiling – Judgement Day, as Lorraine cheerily called it – held on November 16, down at the Velvet Music Rooms on Broad Street, the artery at the beating heart of Birmingham’s cultural life.
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When the paintings were revealed one by one, each one then presented to me by the artist responsible, I was actually very unnerved. I’ve had no formal training as an art critic, I just know what I like. But on this occasion, quite frankly, I liked all of them.
At no stage had I prescribed what I wanted the artists to paint (who would I be, to tell an artist how to do their job?). But secretly I’d hoped, as I’ve already hinted, that I wouldn’t just get an alternative piece of jacket art or what you might describe as a screen-grab, i.e. a single moment from the novel represented in oils. I was looking for an interpretation of the whole thing, if that was possible.
And as it turned out, it was … because that is exactly what I got in all three cases.
If I tell you now that none of the three were losers and that I loved them all equally, and only in the end chose one because that was the purpose of the exercise, you might consider it a cliché tossed out casually to prevent anyone feeling bad. But actually it would be 99.9% true.
I couldn’t believe the standard of the three images I was confronted with.
All three artists had taken a deep, deep dive into the novel, producing wondrous and tumultuous depictions, any of which, even taken out of context, would immediately have spoken to me about my book.
Of course, none of this made it any easier, choosing, but though Helen, Helen and Paula were all standing watching at the time, to their everlasting credit they remained bright-eyed and happy all the way through. They’d all bought fully into the concept and were delightful with me both before and after the final decision was made.
Photo-finish
The two runners-up, in no specific order, were Paula Gabb’s and Helen Owen’s paintings.
Paula’s piece, as seen above, took a ‘journalistic’ angle on the book, recreating all the salient moments in the narrative visually, throwing them together as though they were photographs on a storyboard, connecting them with concise but crucial notations.
Her attention to detail was astonishing: nothing relevant from any of those key moments was absent from her painting. It told near enough the whole story, very succinctly.
Not entirely abstract but strongly leaning that way.
Very effectively stylised, areas of light and colour interspersing with darker, more menacing imagery to indicate the many highs and lows the characters in the novel undergo, semi-subliminal gravestones in the background hinting at the fate of so many.
And through the middle of it all, a road leading not so much to redemption as to uncertainty, which I felt nicely underlined the conclusion to the novel, wherein the evil, while it is certainly evaded, is not necessarily defeated, which in its turn then poses the questions: when will it reappear, and what form will it take next time ... and will we be ready for it?
The winner
The winner – and I’m not kidding when I repeat that this was a photo-finish – was Helen Roberts’ version of NEVER SEEN AGAIN.
The first thing that struck me about this particular piece of work was the face of Jodie Martindale in its very centre, staring out at me with the most hauntingly beautiful pair of eyes. Those who’ve read the novel will recollect that Jodie was kidnapped six years before the narrative really commences, and though her boyfriend, who was also taken, was found zip-tied and shot through the back of the neck only a couple of days later, Jodie herself has never been heard from since.
Jodie is thus the central character in NEVER SEEN AGAIN even though she barely appears in it. She is the person whom our flawed heroes finally unite in order to try and find, putting everything on the line, including their lives. Her beauty and intellect, and her reputation as a good person, pervade the entire story, intensifying the tragedy of her unsolved abduction – and to suddenly see her looking out at me like that, literally locking gazes with me, was a near mesmerising moment.
The rest of the painting is also filled with meaningful symbols, so many that I suspect I’d need to dedicate a different blogpost to assessing them all, along with many other key moments and personalities from the book. Anyway, here I am below, presenting the winning artist, Helen Roberts, with her prize.
Jodie is thus the central character in NEVER SEEN AGAIN even though she barely appears in it. She is the person whom our flawed heroes finally unite in order to try and find, putting everything on the line, including their lives. Her beauty and intellect, and her reputation as a good person, pervade the entire story, intensifying the tragedy of her unsolved abduction – and to suddenly see her looking out at me like that, literally locking gazes with me, was a near mesmerising moment.
The rest of the painting is also filled with meaningful symbols, so many that I suspect I’d need to dedicate a different blogpost to assessing them all, along with many other key moments and personalities from the book. Anyway, here I am below, presenting the winning artist, Helen Roberts, with her prize.
I don’t want to talk too much more now about this event for fear of getting self-indulgent, but I will add that a video telling the whole story of the ‘paint-off’ competition, which was filmed up here in my home town, Wigan, as well as down in Birmingham, is now in production and will be launched at a Birmingham venue in the New Year.
Because I obviously haven’t posted enough pictures of this major event in my life, here are one or two more. In addition, if you feel I haven’t written enough about it either, you can read a lot more HERE.
Because I obviously haven’t posted enough pictures of this major event in my life, here are one or two more. In addition, if you feel I haven’t written enough about it either, you can read a lot more HERE.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – 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 (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … 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
Laura ‘Lo’ Blacklock is an ambitious and talented travel journalist, who on the surface has it all. A glamorous job with uber-cool mag, Velocity, great talent, a hunky American boyfriend, Judah, who also happens to be a successful reporter (and who absolutely adores her), and now an opportunity to travel on the Aurora, one of the world’s most luxurious holiday yachts, which will shortly be making its maiden voyage to the Norwegian fjords to check out the Northern Lights.
But Lo, who has a more fragile personality than many might realise, was recently terrorised in her London flat when a masked burglar broke in and helped himself to her valuables while she was present. Though she was physically unhurt, the result is nightmares, insomnia, a series of terrifying flashbacks and an increasing reliance on alcohol and prescription pills to get her through each day. This stew of self-medication ends up clouding her judgement badly, which leads to a fall-out with Judah, who has turned down a massive job offer in New York in order to stay with her, a huge sacrifice that she is almost indifferent to.
When she finally arrives on the Aurora, which is owned by British business mogul, the effortlessly smooth Lord Richard Bullmer, she experiences a degree of lavishness she never knew existed, and finds herself in the company of a range of wealthy and eccentric socialites, none of whom, in Lo’s distressed and crotchety state, seem entirely ‘right’.
Among others, there is Cole Lederer, a handsome, vaguely predatory photographer; Alexander Belhome, a pompous, corpulent hedonist; Chloe Jenssen, a beautiful model, and her wealthy investor husband, Lars; and Archer Fenlon, a rugged, Yorkshire-born outdoorsman, who seems very out of place here. Lord Bullmer himself is the dominant character, though his life isn’t entirely perfect, as his wife, Anne, is also present, a sad, frail woman who is vastly wealthy in her own right but currently in the middle of a losing battle with cancer (not that Bullmer seems to be especially affected by this).
If nothing else, Lo is glad to see a couple of fellow journalists, though Tina West is a waspish rival whom she doesn’t trust, while Ben Howard, though a former lover of Lo’s, is a confident swaggerer even in this society, which galls her, and, because he once shared Lo’s bed, is now inclined to take liberties with her, which she also doesn’t like.
For all that she feels out of her depth, Lo is determined that her trip on the Aurora, and the write-up she will give it, will be her big break in travel-writing. But on the first night of the cruise, things take a turn for the totally surreal.
Lo, still emotionally exhausted and already on her way to being drunk, is preparing for her first real evening in the company of the rich and famous, and so pops next door, to Cabin 10, to borrow some mascara. A young woman she hasn’t seen before, who appears very flustered to have suddenly come face-to-face with one of her fellow travellers, provides the missing cosmetic and then slams the cabin door in Lo’s face.
Lo gets through the evening by continually dosing herself with alcohol, though she notices that the young woman from Cabin 10 doesn’t appear. Later, back in her own cabin, very drunk, Lo is just dozing off when she is disturbed by the sound of a scream next door, and then a loud splash, as if something hefty has been tossed overboard. Staggering out onto her veranda, Lo is appalled to see what looks like a body submerging between the dark, foam-covered waves. She also spots what looks like a smear of blood on the glass partition separating her from the veranda attached to Cabin 10.
Convinced the young woman she saw there has been murdered, and equating it with her own experience during the London burglary, Lo makes a big fuss, but when the yacht’s security chief, Johann Nilsson, takes charge, she is startled to learn that Cabin 10 is unoccupied. It was booked, but the expected guest was unable to attend, and no one has been in there since. They check the cabin out together, and it is stripped and bare. In addition, there is no trace of any blood.
The next day, Lo and Nilsson make a tour of the vessel, but nowhere does she see anyone who resembles the woman from Cabin 10. Instead, she is introduced one by one to the helpful and improbably good-looking Scandinavian crew, though none of them are able to assist her. Everyone who is supposed to be on board is present and correct; no one is missing.
If nothing else, Lo still possesses the mascara she borrowed from the woman, which, to her mind at least, is proof of what she thinks happened. But Nilsson is not impressed, arguing that the mascara could have belonged to anyone. When, later on, the mascara goes missing too, Lo demands an explanation, and Nilsson finally gets frustrated with her, pointing out that her combined diet of drugs and alcohol is hardly making her a reliable witness, and that her constant questioning of people is becoming a nuisance.
Still convinced that she met someone in Cabin 10, but also aware that she has skewed her own sense of reality in recent times (now suspecting that everyone on board is watching her and whispering), Lo wonders if there might be something in Nilsson’s assertion that she has basically made a huge and embarrassing faux pas. Helpless to do anything else, she tries to relax in the yacht’s spa, hoping to get it together, only to fall asleep and then wake up and see a message written on the steamy mirror: STOP DIGGING …
Review
The Woman in Cabin 10 first appeared in the wake of The Girl on the Train, and obvious analogies were drawn, the main heroine’s struggles with alcoholism fuddling her attempts to work out whether she is genuinely a witness to criminal activity or simply imagining it and bamboozling her efforts to call on the assistance of others.
The really big difference with The Woman in Cabin 10, though, is that Ruth Ware takes her story out of the suburbs, where so much modern day psychological noir is located, and plonks it down in one of the most isolated spots you can imagine: a small cruise-liner, far out in the North Sea, where, once the internet has gone down, contact with the outside world is all but impossible.
This is a very neat idea, but Ware intensifies the tale all the more by moving it away from the normal ‘blue sea / blue sky’ cruise ship experience, plunging us into the far north, a realm of cloud, bitter rain and dark, cold seas. On the few occasions Blacklock is able to go ashore, she’s on the rugged Norwegian coast, where spume explodes from the rocks, and any footpath or road invariably leads steeply uphill in its attempts to navigate the dizzying slopes of the fjords.
So, once Lo Blacklock reaches a solid conclusion that she’s onto something – not just that she witnessed a murder but that she herself is now in peril – the sense of discomfort becomes overwhelming. Especially as she still has no way to identify the killer (or killers). Ruth Ware, like all good thriller writers, now works this scenario for everything she can. In scenes as tense as a hangman’s rope, Lo moves among her fellow passengers and the yacht’s highly efficient staff, watching every one of them carefully, and seeing (or imagining) all kinds of oddities and idiosyncrasies that might lead her to suspect them.
The tension mounts as the vessel encroaches on its first scheduled stop, Trondheim, where the journalist knows she’ll be able to get ashore and speak to the police, meaning that, if she’s going to become a victim herself, it will need to happen before then.
The extra layer of oppression that Ware adds through the device of Lo’s booze-fuelled anxieties only worsens her predicament, mainly because it means that other characters don’t believe her. On the other hand, we the readers know that she’s onto something. For all Lo’s acute paranoia and pernicious self-doubt, we shared the incident involving Cabin 10 with her. Despite her wibbly-wobbly recollections, we saw it happen for ourselves.
In that regard, the ‘unreliable narration’ technique didn’t entirely work for me.
On a not dissimilar subject, if there’s a weakness in The Woman in Cabin 10, I think it’s rooted in the character of Lo Blacklock herself. She is both physically and mentally enfeebled by her bad experiences. Which is fair enough. But it’s turned her into someone rather unpleasant. While you might agree with her assessment that the Aurora is all about rich people enjoying a holiday at the expense of poor people, you can’t help cringing at her whiny snappiness. Yes, she’s had a hard time, but she’s supposed to be a professional journalist, someone whose grand plan is to travel the world, reporting on all kinds of troublesome situations, so you can’t help feeling that she could make a bit more of an effort to get back in the saddle.
Aside from that, I had one other complaint, and that lies with the rollcall of secondary characters, many of whom are little more than background figures throughout, potential suspects initially but so undeveloped as to gradually disappear from view as the story proceeds. This serves to reduce the mystery factor in The Woman in Cabin 10 until we reach the point where, when we finally uncover the culprit, it’s a bit of a ‘ho-hum’ moment.
But as someone who enjoyed this book and read it quickly, I’d argue that its mystery elements purposely end up playing second-fiddle to the slowly mounting air of fear and distrust, and above all, to the suspense. It’s relatively early in the story when we learn that Lo Blacklock isn’t losing her mind but has uncovered vicious criminality, and once that is established, the tension ratchets up unnervingly quickly.
Who is the guilty party here? Which of these pleasant and gregarious people is actually a scheming murderer? But much more pertinently, especially in the final third of the narrative, surely they’ve now decided that they can’t let Lo live? So, at which point will they strike? How will they do it?
I have to say that there’s no particular gut-thump at any stage in The Woman in Cabin 10, no horrifying shock that completely knocks you off kilter, but all these minuscule criticisms aside, I found this a smart and satisfying thriller. Claustrophobic, twisty and very pacy in the second half (with a steadily mounting sense of jeopardy), and written in Ruth Ware’s usual spare and easily accessible style, I tore through it in a couple of days.
Just don’t take this book with you on an ocean cruise. Or, who knows … maybe to get the most out of it, you should.
And now, in my usual ill-advised fashion, I’ll attempt to cast this property in the hope some big noise in film or TV is looking to put it on the screen and comes calling for my advice. Unlikely, I know, but it’s all in fun.
Lo Blacklock – Millie Brady
Lord Richard Bullmer – Richard Armitage
Ben Howard – William Moseley
Tina West – Naomie Harris
Carrie – Thomasin McKenzie
Cole Lederer – Mark Strong
Johann Nilsson – Joel Kinnaman
The Woman in Cabin 10 first appeared in the wake of The Girl on the Train, and obvious analogies were drawn, the main heroine’s struggles with alcoholism fuddling her attempts to work out whether she is genuinely a witness to criminal activity or simply imagining it and bamboozling her efforts to call on the assistance of others.
The really big difference with The Woman in Cabin 10, though, is that Ruth Ware takes her story out of the suburbs, where so much modern day psychological noir is located, and plonks it down in one of the most isolated spots you can imagine: a small cruise-liner, far out in the North Sea, where, once the internet has gone down, contact with the outside world is all but impossible.
This is a very neat idea, but Ware intensifies the tale all the more by moving it away from the normal ‘blue sea / blue sky’ cruise ship experience, plunging us into the far north, a realm of cloud, bitter rain and dark, cold seas. On the few occasions Blacklock is able to go ashore, she’s on the rugged Norwegian coast, where spume explodes from the rocks, and any footpath or road invariably leads steeply uphill in its attempts to navigate the dizzying slopes of the fjords.
So, once Lo Blacklock reaches a solid conclusion that she’s onto something – not just that she witnessed a murder but that she herself is now in peril – the sense of discomfort becomes overwhelming. Especially as she still has no way to identify the killer (or killers). Ruth Ware, like all good thriller writers, now works this scenario for everything she can. In scenes as tense as a hangman’s rope, Lo moves among her fellow passengers and the yacht’s highly efficient staff, watching every one of them carefully, and seeing (or imagining) all kinds of oddities and idiosyncrasies that might lead her to suspect them.
The tension mounts as the vessel encroaches on its first scheduled stop, Trondheim, where the journalist knows she’ll be able to get ashore and speak to the police, meaning that, if she’s going to become a victim herself, it will need to happen before then.
The extra layer of oppression that Ware adds through the device of Lo’s booze-fuelled anxieties only worsens her predicament, mainly because it means that other characters don’t believe her. On the other hand, we the readers know that she’s onto something. For all Lo’s acute paranoia and pernicious self-doubt, we shared the incident involving Cabin 10 with her. Despite her wibbly-wobbly recollections, we saw it happen for ourselves.
In that regard, the ‘unreliable narration’ technique didn’t entirely work for me.
On a not dissimilar subject, if there’s a weakness in The Woman in Cabin 10, I think it’s rooted in the character of Lo Blacklock herself. She is both physically and mentally enfeebled by her bad experiences. Which is fair enough. But it’s turned her into someone rather unpleasant. While you might agree with her assessment that the Aurora is all about rich people enjoying a holiday at the expense of poor people, you can’t help cringing at her whiny snappiness. Yes, she’s had a hard time, but she’s supposed to be a professional journalist, someone whose grand plan is to travel the world, reporting on all kinds of troublesome situations, so you can’t help feeling that she could make a bit more of an effort to get back in the saddle.
Aside from that, I had one other complaint, and that lies with the rollcall of secondary characters, many of whom are little more than background figures throughout, potential suspects initially but so undeveloped as to gradually disappear from view as the story proceeds. This serves to reduce the mystery factor in The Woman in Cabin 10 until we reach the point where, when we finally uncover the culprit, it’s a bit of a ‘ho-hum’ moment.
But as someone who enjoyed this book and read it quickly, I’d argue that its mystery elements purposely end up playing second-fiddle to the slowly mounting air of fear and distrust, and above all, to the suspense. It’s relatively early in the story when we learn that Lo Blacklock isn’t losing her mind but has uncovered vicious criminality, and once that is established, the tension ratchets up unnervingly quickly.
Who is the guilty party here? Which of these pleasant and gregarious people is actually a scheming murderer? But much more pertinently, especially in the final third of the narrative, surely they’ve now decided that they can’t let Lo live? So, at which point will they strike? How will they do it?
I have to say that there’s no particular gut-thump at any stage in The Woman in Cabin 10, no horrifying shock that completely knocks you off kilter, but all these minuscule criticisms aside, I found this a smart and satisfying thriller. Claustrophobic, twisty and very pacy in the second half (with a steadily mounting sense of jeopardy), and written in Ruth Ware’s usual spare and easily accessible style, I tore through it in a couple of days.
Just don’t take this book with you on an ocean cruise. Or, who knows … maybe to get the most out of it, you should.
And now, in my usual ill-advised fashion, I’ll attempt to cast this property in the hope some big noise in film or TV is looking to put it on the screen and comes calling for my advice. Unlikely, I know, but it’s all in fun.
Lo Blacklock – Millie Brady
Lord Richard Bullmer – Richard Armitage
Ben Howard – William Moseley
Tina West – Naomie Harris
Carrie – Thomasin McKenzie
Cole Lederer – Mark Strong
Johann Nilsson – Joel Kinnaman
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