David Hodges is a former superintendent with Thames Valley Police who turned to crime writing. He has had five novels published so far, and his latest novel “Requiem” is due out with Robert Hale in October. He often uses the Somerset Levels for his fictions and he takes a hard line on criminality.

David met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about how policing has influenced his crime writing and the E Book revolution.

How do the Somerset Levels influence your writing?

The contrasting scenery of the Somerset Levels cannot but fail to inspire a writer. On the one hand, you have wild waterlogged countryside, steeped in history and legend, with the mist rolling in during the winter months and Glastonbury Tor standing out against the summer sunsets like a phallic symbol, and on the other, the industry and developing urban environment of Bridgwater, with its factories, garages and big housing estates. It’s an ideal spot for murder most foul and I was able to wax lyrical in my last novel, ‘Requiem’, to be published by Robert Hale in October, by introducing twitchers into the mix, with a decomposing body trapped under a hide in one of the Levels’s wildlife reserves. Ugh! Not a place to eat your sandwiches!

As an ex police superintendent, do you think most people commit crimes unintentionally, and how are hardened criminals separate psychologically from the rest of those who break the law?

We tend to make all sorts of excuses for criminal behaviour – I didn’t mean it, I was easily led, I am mentally challenged, I was framed by the police, I was abused when I was a child. etc. etc. etc. Apart from a very small section of society who are genuinely mentally ill or who have made a mistake through inadequacy or social deprivation – and I mean a small section – most people commit crime because they want to. There are all sorts of motives – gain, revenge, jealousy, lack of sexual control, to show off and so forth. While we continue to make excuses for criminal behaviour and continue to label all crime as the result of social deprivation, it will continue to rise. We should face facts and get on with the job of punishing those who commit offences, not rewarding them by fully paid trips to Africa and Asia as part of some misguided social improvement policy. I think too much psychology is applied to hardened criminals, who walk away from punishment laughing after liberal minded do-gooders invent more and more ways of letting them off the hook. The hardened criminal doesn’t become hard because he has been put away in prison; he becomes hard because he is already impervious to pleas to be good and knows he can get away with what he has done. Sadly, we are very naive if we think we can reduce crime by appealing to criminals’ better natures; they don’t have them! A case in point is restorative justice, which I regard as a total waste of time and money.

Who are your literary influences?

Originally, I grew up heavily influenced by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; I loved the old gothic style thrillers. I started writing similar stories from the age of 11, but got nowhere. Then a writer friend of mine advised me to ‘write what you know’, so I graduated to modern police crime thrillers and as a result, never looked back. I suppose in later adult years, I have particularly admired Peter James,Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth in the modern thriller idiom, but you will still find the ‘gothic’ influence in my own thrillers, which creeps through like the mist on the Somerset Levels. I like a good well structured novel, with no loose ends, which has as factual a background as possible, but I think too much ‘procedure’ can get in the way and the old tales of Fu Manchu, with their screams in the night and black-gloved hands turning door knobs will always endure in thriller fiction. Too much blood and gore can spoil a thriller, though you do need enough, and I am against the gratuitous use of foul language, which would put me off any book. The authors I have mentioned above – Peter James, Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth – seem to balance everything so well and I do admire their style.

How has your experience as a police superintendent influenced the way you write about crime?

Funnily enough, one of the reasons I took up crime thriller writing instead of sticking to gothic genre and rejection slips was not only because a writer friend told me to ‘write what you know’, but also because I was fed up with the way the police were being inaccurately portrayed on TV and in crime fiction literature. It doesn’t take that much effort to research your subject and the glaring mistakes made by a lot of writers still irks me. Of course there has to be a measure of poetic licence – as I said before, too much procedure can kill a novel – but the background should largely be based on fact. I suppose my thirty years experience in the police – not just the period I served as a superintendent – influenced the way I write. It enabled me to see things in a much more balanced way. Crime fiction tends to portray the police as either heroes, idiots or just plain corrupt, but none of this is true. Police officers are first and foremost human beings who come from the society they police, so there are good and bad cops, efficient and negligent cops, and courageous and cowardly cops. I try to reflect this in my stories. It would be tempting to do a PR/propaganda job with my characters, but this would not be real, so I introduce a mix of characters. In ‘Requiem’, for example, I contrast a courageous if impetuous woman sergeant at odds with a nasty corrupt colleague as a sub-plot – it happens, so why not portray it? I’m not ‘in business’ to praise or slate the police, just to show it the way it is.

Tell us about your latest novel.

‘Requiem’, due out with Robert Hale in October, is the sequel to my previous novel, ‘Firetrap’and is set, as before, on the Somerset Levels, with my policewoman heroine, Kate Hamblin, now promoted from detective constable to uniformed sergeant. It is two years since psychotic undertaker, Larry ‘Twister’ Wadman disappeared after blasting two police detectives to death with an incendiary device attached to their surveillance van and embarking on a murderous rampage across the Levels. When a prostitute’s body is found dumped in a coffin in Twister’s now derelict funeral parlour in Highbridge, dressed in one of Kate’s own uniforms, the young police sergeant realizes this is Twister’s way of telling her he has come back for her! But it soon becomes apparent that the psychopath has no intention of finishing the job quickly. Instead, he is determined to play a twisted game of cat and mouse with his prospective victim, a game he has meticulously planned down to the last detail, and as a massive police manhunt is mounted across the mist-shrouded marshes, Kate and her colleagues soon begin to appreciate with an increasing sense of alarm and frustration that it is Twister who holds all the aces!

The novel is very much locally based, with a lot of reference to local streets and places and part of it is set on a wildlife reserve which actually exists on the Levels (though I have given it another name). I have tried to make the story Somerset-atmospheric, as I believe that readers like to read thrillers set in their home areas. (Colin Dexter with Oxford, Peter James with Brighton and Ian Rankin with Edinburgh are classic examples of this). For a writer, setting a story in the area in which they live is also very inspirational and brings the whole thing alive in their own minds.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

This is a bit of a difficult one! Instinctively, I am very anti e-books and for two reasons. Firstly, for me, there is nothing exciting, romantic or whatever you like to call it, about an e-book. It is just a screen and nothing else. In short, it has no soul. There is nothing to equal a proper book, with a beautiful cover and binding, and that distinctive smell that comes from newly turned pages. Then, as the book ages, like the reader, it acquires a respect and a dignity of its own. Its cover becomes worn, its pages pigmented, then yellowed, but it remains a repository of treasured memories to be proudly displayed on a bookshelf for all to see. The book is a living, breathing thing and for an author it represents achievement and fulfilment. The e-book, well, as I’ve said, it is just a screen! The second thing is that the cheapness of production and distribution means that virtually anyone can publish an e-book, whereas the cost of self-publishing a conventional book is so prohibitive that few amateurs bite the bullet. To my mind, this safeguards standards. A conventional novel has to be accepted by a publisher, it has to be vetted, proof-read etc etc before it goes anywhere, and it has to be properly put together – printed, bound and enclosed within an appropriate professionally produced cover. Not so the e-book and I fear that because the market here is wide-open, standards will slip and the professional writer will ultimately become history. I can only pray that e-books are just another blip. So why was your question so difficult? Well, it’s because, like many authors, after holding back for so long, I have had to move with the times. Two of my books – a novel, ‘Slice'(Robert Hale) and my autobiography, ‘Reflections In Blue’ (Pharaoh Press) – have now been put on Kindle by my publisher with my very reluctant consent, following their conventional publication, and another of my novels, ‘Firetrap’ (Robert Hale) is due to join them shortly. On top of all this, I did a very bad thing and bought my wife a Kindle, because she wanted one so much. Oh dear! Am I a hypocrite? I’ll leave my readers to decide on that.

If you could give advice to yourself as a younger man what would you say?

I suppose I would say ‘Go for it!’ To do anything in life you have to have faith in yourself and your own ability. That isn’t to say you should be arrogant – and you should always be prepared to listen and learn at every age – but being confident is essential. Looking back on my own life, I feel proud of what I have achieved with nothing. I went to secondary modern school, ended up top in English and bottom in Maths. I’ll always remember in one test getting six out of a hundred for maths, which I hated, but was reassured when the teacher said, ‘I’ll give you three for trying.’ I was delighted. ‘Does that make it 9 then?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘Six!’ It took me three goes to get into the police after two menial jobs in central London (all because of the maths test), but I kept at it and in the end made superintendent. Life has been a hard slog, but no one gives you anything, you have to fight for it. However, achievement is a lot sweeter when it isn’t easily gained. It has been the same with my writing. I started at the age of 11, believe it or not, got nowhere right up to the time I joined the police at 20. Then I had to leave it alone for thirty years because at that time it was not acceptable to write novels AND be a policeman. Then, when I retired, my first novel writing efforts got nowhere until my debut crime novel, ‘Flashpoint’, was picked up by a small publisher; it made a centre page spread in The Times newspaper and received a lot of nice praise from other newspapers and an accolade from Inspector Morse’s Colin Dexter, which set me on the road. My third novel was accepted by Robert Hale and I have never looked back since. But there is one bit of advice I received from a very successful writer friend that I have always borne in mind, ‘you are only as good as your next novel’ and that applies in life generally; you are only as good as your next achievement. And that is one thing I would emphasize to a younger man starting out. In short, set your sights on what you want, strive for it, but always remember that you cannot afford to be complacent once you have got where you want to be.

What are you working on at the moment?

My current project is another crime thriller, ‘Blast’, which is set both in central London and the south-west of England, in Cornwall. It involves the bombing of a nightclub in the Smoke and a fatal shooting which later takes place a few miles away. Initially, the two incidents are treated as separate investigations, but then it becomes apparent that they are linked. Just to complicate matters, a further murder then takes place in Cornwall which is found to be connected to both the other cases. The story revolves around the inter-action between three different police incident rooms which are drawn together to solve a complicated and unusual set of crimes. As per usual, there is an unusual twist at the end. The book is not heavy on procedure and I have taken a few liberties to keep the narrative moving fast, but it is heavy on characterization and the rivalries that exist within the police operational environment during a major investigation. Hopefully, I will finish it – two-thirds there now – and hopefully someone will publish it. But there again, that is the nature of the game, isn’t it? To quote a cynical phrase often used in police circles, ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die!’

Do you think today’s society is too lenient on crime?

After thirty years in the police, working at gutter level, you tend to get very cynical about life in general and people in particular. I am not a reformist and though I believe in people being rehabilitated back into the community – except for crimes of murder which in my view are beyond the bounds of rehabilitation and require nothing less than permanent incarceration – I feel that rehabilitation should never take the place of punishment or there is no legal deterrent and criminals will manipulate the system. This is particularly true of restorative justice, where the criminal apologizes to his victim, shows genuine remorse and gets off the hook. Great! So all a villain has to do is to look sad, say sorry, then carry on where he left off. I think it is the height of naivety for so-called experts to believe that being nice to criminals gets results; it doesn’t. It made me laugh one day when a survey was carried out into the death penalty and it was concluded after interviewing violent criminals ‘inside’, that they would have killed anyway, so there was no point in capital punishment. Of course murderers will say that. Come on! They don’t want to get topped, do they? Really, life is very simple. You go about your daily business, hurt no one and live happily ever after, or you transgress, do someone a mischief and end up being punished. End of story. We have turned crime reduction into a science and the only ones benefiting are the criminals, the lawyers and, of course, the silly people who still live in a land of chocolate and ice-cream! So, as a summary to your question, yes, society is much too lenient on crime and the only ones suffering at the moment are the victims, who can’t even defend themselves without the risk of prosecution!

As a published author, what would you like to achieve next in your writing?

There is always something else you would like to do in life, whatever your achievements are, and though, for me, being published is the realization of a lifetime’s ambition, there are two things left that I would like to do. The first is the dream of most writers and that is to write a best-seller or at least to gain a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Award, but what would really give me a buzz would be to have a book made into a film, either on the big screen or for television. I have often toyed with the idea of trying to write a film script based on one of my novels, as television is crying out for drama, but actually writing one is a particular skill in itself, which does not come automatically to you just because you are a novelist. As a writer, I gain considerable satisfaction from completing a book, but that satisfaction does not simply stem from the royalties I receive (which, believe me, would not finance anyone’s lifestyle) – it comes from the pleasure I gain from putting prose on paper – providing believable characterization, good dialogue and convincing descriptions of background and locations. And that satisfaction is increased ten-fold when someone comes up to me and says they enjoyed reading the story – not out of any sense of conceit, but because I feel my writing has actually given someone pleasure, which makes the long nights bent over my computer all the more worthwhile. Being able to access and entertain millions of people, instead of just a few hundred loyal followers, through the medium of film would be the icing on the cake as far as I am concerned, so I live in hope!

Thanks David for an engaging and informative interview.

Links

David Hodges’ debut novel Flashpoint won critical media acclaim and can be had at Amazon UK or US. Flashpoint was followed by Burnout, also available at Amazon UK and US. Buy links for David’s last three novels Slice, Firetrap, and the sequel Requiem, follow:

Slice at Amazon UK and US
Firetrap at Amazon UK and US
Requiem at Amazon UK and currently available for pre-order at Amazon US

Chris Nickson is a journalist and novelist. His reviews and features are published in print and online, notably with fRoots, Sing Out!, emusic.com, and allmusic.com. He’s also the author of The NPR Casual Listener’s Guide to World Music. Chris has also published 28 other non-fiction books, most of them quickie biographies, and has had a pair of one act plays staged in Seattle. His short fiction has appeared in several small magazines, and most recently in the anthology Criminal Tendencies. His novel The Broken Token was published by Creme de la Crime in 2010. His novel Come The Fear was published in August 2012. Chris is also the author of Solid Air – The Life of John Martyn.

Chris met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about John Martyn and the E Book revolution.

What do you think made John Martyn such a unique talent?

Part of my love of John Martyn came from the circumstances in which I discovered his music. I was 18, finished with my A-levels, and going out with an interesting (and, in hindsight, probably damaged girl). Her father was an English professor, her mother a poet, and they had a wonderful music room, with grand piano, wall of sheet music and wonderful stereo. I was a budding musician and writer, fascinated, enthralled by all this. Lol – the girl’s name was Laura – took me into the music room and played me John’s Bless the Weather album. The sound was rich and full on an expensive stereo, the voice as luscious as a smoky tenor sax, the guitar style so different. I was hooked. I bought Solid Air when it came out and the addiction deepened. Then I was lucky enough to be at the concert that became his Live at Leeds album, and even had a signed copy of the LP (now long gone). From 71-79 he made some of the most magical, adventurous music around, outside genre, inventive and still beautiful. It was, and to me still is, music that sits outside time. But some part of it still evokes my 18-year-old self in that room with that girl.

Your new novel, Come the Fear, is published in the UK at the end of August, and is set in Leeds in the 1730s. Tell us about it and how you think historically crime has changed.

At heart, I’m not sure that crime has changed much over the centuries. Of course, there’s white collar crime these days, computer fraud, things that wouldn’t have been possible in the world that once was. But fraud has existed for hundreds of years, if not thousands, and crimes of violence and passion are as old as humankind.

In this country, especially, we have a history of drinking and violence going together, and a mob being incited by pamphlets and newspapers. What happened a few years ago with the Sun paedophile campaign was just history repeating itself, and the Saturday night binge drinkers and fights would have been recognised several centuries before, although they might have been deadlier more often then.

Schemers, cheaters, the greedy – there’s really nothing new under the sun. In general, the crimes in my books echo things are are here today. That’s quite deliberate. I like to make that connection to the here and now, while still making people believe they’re firmly in the past.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

Much as I love the feel of a book and buy them with alarming regularity, as well as being a regular library user, I’m really in favour of the ebook revolution, and a revolution is most surely is. What’s astonished me most if how slow the publishers have been to react to it. There’s a strong analogy to be made with what home studios and being able to record on computer and the mp3 did to the music industry. The big companies had no idea how to react. Ebooks have been around a few years, long enough for the publishers to formulate a strategy, but they didn’t.

My novels come out on ebook. In fact, I have a mystery coming out with a company in the next few months that will be simultaneous ebook and audiobook, not in print, and my John Martyn was an ebook (although a hard copy is available via print on demand).

Perhaps the most interesting part of all this is the rise of self-publishing. That, too, has a parallel in the music world. Like bands and singers with mp3s, now anyone can publish a book. It’s democratised the business beyond belief. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone should publish a book, by any means. So many self-published efforts are best life in desk drawers. But I have some friends on Twitter who’ve self-published and are excellent.
That said, I have serious doubts about the low pricing of so many ebooks on Amazon, all too often the self-published ones. A low promotional price for a short while is fine, but no one is done any favours by continued low pricing. The authors who self-publish want a level playing field, and that’s perfectly fair. But to keep it fair their books should be priced in parity with those from publishers. My little bugbear.

A corollary of that is the amount of self-promotion some authors indulge in on Twitter and Facebook – probably on Goodreads, too. Interaction is the best advertising, not endless links to be able to buy the book. Those people end up unfollowed by many.
But ebooks are the future, or at least one strand of it. And as libraries adopt them, we’re going to need to change the PRI model. Currently authors receive a small amount every time someone borrows one of their books from a library, but nothing for an ebook. As things shift, this will have to alter. The revolution, in this case at least, won’t be televised; it’ll be read.

Has music influenced your writing?

Absolutely. With the Richard Nottingham series the old folk ballads have been a great influence, as well as tunes and songs. So many of the ballads have travelled all around Europe, with variations in different countries (Denmark has a great collection of old ballads that are taught there as literature). They’re like pieces of wood that have been shaped and smoothed over the centuries by many hands, and my theory is that many of them have stayed in currency for a reason – perhaps, rurally, they sang “The Cruel Mother” if they knew a woman had committed infanticide. It was social castigation by peers without bringing in the law. In the Faroe Isles they dance the ballads, and if someone has done something wrong, they sing the ballad that’s closest to the crime and force the person to stay, arms linked in the circle as it’s sung and dance. That’s potent peer force.

The title of The Broken Token came from the broken token songs, where a couple split a coin or ring when they had to part, and bringing it together again on the man’s return was plighting their troth. Come the Fear is directly inspired by a ballad called Lucy Wan, and the famous folk song Black Jack Davey is in one of the books, as is the figure of the blind figure, emblematic in folk music. That leads in folklore, which is also important as a way of defining ourselves and our fears. But yes, music has always been important, and in my Seattle book, Emerald City, everything is set in the music scene before grunge broke out – my main character is a female music journalist.

Who are your literary influences?

I suppose that like everyone, I’m influenced to some degree by all the good writers I’ve read (and I realise good is very subjective). i’m a traditionalist in that I like a story to have a beginning, middle and end, however ambiguous that ending might be.

When younger, I loved Knut Hamsun’s work and read a lot of Scandinavian writers. I love Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald as crime writers. Some of William Boyd, Peter Hoeg (since 2003, when I first went there, I’ve had a deep love of Danish music which has expanded into other areas of Danish culture and life).

Although I write about the 18th century I’m not a fan of its literature; I had to do Joseph Andrews at school and hated it, not do I care for the Victorians.

Someone who showed me the possibilities in writing historical crime is Candace Robb. Her Owen Archer series is set in 14th century York, but the character’s family and friends, his relationships, are very important, and it opened up a lot for me. She lives in Seattle but brings York and the period brilliantly alive. Weirdly, she and I have lived in two places at similar times but never met, although, via email, we’ve now becomes friends and I have great respect for her and a love of her work.

Of current mystery writers, I like Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson (his Inspector Banks series took a quantum leap partway through), Mark Billingham, Val McDermid – the usual suspects, really. I’ll gladly get their work out of the library and know I’ll enjoy it.

Joanne Harris has shown me that it’s possible to put magic in a book. Even if I might not do it, to know it can be there is wonderful.

The other big influence, I suppose, is a guy called Thom Atkinson, who’s won numerous awards for his plays and short stories. He lives in Cincinnati and we met almost 30 years ago, played in the same band and have remained close friends ever since. We’re close enough to give each other completely honest criticism, and I know whatever he suggests will improve my work. Track down his work, he’s worth it.

What are you working on now?

At the moment I’m going through the publisher’s edits for Emerald City, which is set in Seattle, and working on a new mystery which takes place in Leeds during the Civil War. I’m partway through the sixth Richard Nottingham book, currently titled Fair and Tender Ladies – I’m hoping to have a first draft finished by Christmas. And, of course, there are always CD reviews that have to be written…

What advice would you give to yourself as a younger man?

Don’t take the brown acid? Honestly, I’m not sure. Just keep on doing it and believe in yourself. Try not to get frustrated and don’t drink too much in the ’80s.

As I’m one who believes we’re the sum of all our experiences I wouldn’t want to miss out on any of them, good or bad, because that would change the balance. But, yes, one more thing: that Norwegian girl you’ll meet when you’re 20. Go for it.

Do you think criminals are a product of society?

You’ve lulled me into a false sense of security with the easy questions before moving on to the hard ones, haven’t you?

I don’t think it’s possible to say definitively one way or another on this. It’s a variation on the nature vs. nurture debate, really. In some cases the tendencies will be innate, within the people. I doubt that most serial killers are products of society; there’s something seriously twisted in them. However, many crimes of property probably do come society – read the reports on the riots last August to see, for instance. I think Plan B nailed it perfectly with “Ill Manors” (the song, not the movie), but really, it’s nothing new, any look back through history will tell you that. What worries me is the punishment meted out on the rioters – it’s almost Georgian in its severity. I have the impression that the magistrates would have given them seven years’ transportation or hanging if they could. All that does is breed more of the same anger. As long as society remains so uneven in its distribution of wealth, it’ll continue (and that’s a recurring theme in my books).

Who do you think is the greatest living crime novelist?

The greatest living crime novelist? That’s tough, and very subjective. If my arm’s twisted and I have to pick one, it’ll be Ian Rankin for his Rebus series, because he’s made crime fiction into something more popular. But Ruth Rendell definitely is in there, too.

And for the last question – How come you never made any real impact as a musician?

The simple fact is that I wasn’t good enough or distinctive enough. The bands were okay, with reasonable songs, and Harvey and the Larvae might have gone somewhere in another time or place. But solo? Did anyone need another Billy Bragg? No, didn’t think so…sticki with the writing, lad.

Thank you Chris for a perceptive and informative interview.

Links:
Author website

Pick up a copy of the fourth Richard Nottingham mystery, Come The Fear, at Amazon US or UK

Download the first two chapters of Come The Fear from the publisher, Severn House

Look for the fifth Richard Nottingham book, At The Dying Of The Year, to be released 29 February, 2013. You can pre-order now in the UK at Amazon.

And if you need to catch up on books one through three, here are the buy links:
Book one: The Broken Token at Amazon US and UK
Book two: Cold Cruel Winter at Amazon US and UK
Book three: The Constant Lovers at Amazon US and UK

Maxim Jakubowski is a widely published author who has written in numerous genres, among them science fiction and erotica. He has also edited many classic anthologies, including the annual Mammoth Books of Best New Erotica and Best British Crime. He opened the Murder One bookshop, the UK’s first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. A contributor to a variety of newspapers and magazines, he was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out. He is also the literary director of London’s Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio, and a past winner of the Karel and the Anthony awards. His novels include “It’s You That I Want To Kiss”, and “Ekaterina and the Night”.

Maxim met me at The Slaughterhouse, where we talked about the publishing industry and Donald Westlake.

How do you think the publishing industry has changed?

Publishing has changed enormously over the last decade and seen a sea change of incredible proportions.

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I find it difficult to say.

I was brought up and lived with print from my early childhood and a book will always be something special, an object for me, and even though my books now also appear simultaneously as ebooks and I have even allowed a few short story collections to appear as ebook originals, it just doesn’t have the same magic.

In addition, you must remember that I’ve worked for decades in traditional publishing so I’m a ‘paper man’ through and through.

Call me a Luddite, but at heart the changes worry me intensely and I would hate to be a beginning writer (or publisher) now, and cherish the fact I’ve been involved in the trade for so many years already and have carved a niche. If I were starting off now, I’m not sure I could do so as easily.

The power of bookshops is fading, to be replaced by supermarkets, chains run by algorithms and not people, and the Internet.

In addition, the resources for self-publishing are now so vast that it encourages a glut of crap which the few successes that attract attention tend to obscure. As much as I applaud those who have made it through the self-publishing route, there is a desperate lack of quality control involved which in the long run will be harmful to all: writers and readers alike.

How would you elevator pitch Donald Westlake to a disinterested party?

Already done it:

Of the various fiction genres you have written which would you say is the survivor in today’s market and why?

As a lover of all forms of popular fiction, I’ve written in many diverse areas. Beginning with science fiction & fantasy when I was younger, a genre I adore with a vengeance but found after a time that I somehow didn’t have enough imagination for or a talent for big concepts, although I have sworn to myself that one day soon, before I hang up my keyboards, I will pen one final SF novel, the theme of which has been haunting me for ages.

As a crime writer, again I am no great innovator plotwise as my preference is for noir, and its attendant emotions and landscapes. Give me a doomed love story and a road movie anytime! But over the progress of my writing career (as apart from the publishing, editing and film curating) I’ve found that the reality I was injecting into my stories in terms of treatment of sexuality was not always most welcome by publishers or readers, so one day I wrote a book with erotic elements in which the thriller factor had been left out, and ironically it became my biggest success.

As a result, although I now alternate between erotic thrillers and purely erotic books, I find that sales of the latter are becoming disproportionately high ( I have had a book under a somewhat transparent pen name) on the Sunday Times top 10 fiction bestseller list for the past 6 weeks, and its sequel appears next week. Because of the 50 SHADES OF GREY tsunami, I’m finding that my erotic romance is now in hot demand so it’s highly likely I will  stick around in those wonderfully murky waters for the next few years. 175,000 copies sold and 15 foreign country slaes are not to be messed with.

But in my heart, I still love all three genres I am involved in the same.

Is there a particular event or incident that has changed you and influenced your writing?

A teacher when I was 12 or 13 encouraged me to use my imagination when I wrote essays and papers and not necessarily stick to the truth or the ‘what we did on our holidays’ model, and I’ve never looked back. And as far as influences are concerned how can I not evoke Bob Dylan when he declared that we ‘are what we eat…’, ie everything we’ve seen or done, every person we’ve met, kissed, touched and every landscape we’ve travelled through affect us and changes us and eventually finds a way back into the lines we write.

How much sexual pathology do you think is tied up in murder?

Frankly, it’s a question I’ve never preoccupied myself with.

Sex can be at the root of certain crimes, and certain perversions can sadly lead to murder but essentially sex is as much a part of life as it is of crime, and better people than me have attempted to analyse this.

Let me just say that I can understand crimes of passion and fail to grasp the twisted pathology of sexual crimes, if that makes sense. My sympathy does go out to those who mistakenly commit a crime because of love and passion, and I have total disregard for serial killers and murderers of all ilk whose twisted view of sex leads to their atrocities.

When you write erotica to what extent do you still need to observe the constraints of gender conditioning?

It’s not something I even think about.

I just write by instinct, whether erotica or in other genres, and let others analyse afterwards!
I often write from a female character’s perspective, and even do do in first person and no one has ever highlighted this is a fault. You try to immerse yourself inside the character’s mind and just hope for the best. It seems to have worked so far.

What was it like working for Time Out?

Writing a monthly column was blissful. I was initially contacted by the then lit editor Maria Lexton, and was given total editorial freedom to review whichever crime books I wanted, and not once was I forced to cover a title I had no interest in. Then after her departure, Brian Case took over and he was equally relaxed about it.

How would you like to be remembered?

It’s now how, but the fact I would be remembered at all.

Or at any rate by my children and grandchildren and not just as a romantic pornographer….

How have your cultural roots influenced your writing and your perceptions of literature?

Absolutely. Being born in London of Polish father and English mother (albeit with immigrant Russian parents herself) and then been taken to France at the age of 3 and having been educated there (have never been to school in the UK, with the exception of my final secondary school year at the French Lycee in London’s South Kensington, I have strong European roots and background and I know it has had a major influence on what I write. And then to complicate matters even more, I married a Russian and then lived several years in Italy. But rock music is also a major influence on what I write as it never ceases to inspire me, and my tastes there veer significantly to US music.

Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin, how does US rock cross pollinate with the UK?

Am a fan of neither really… I feel it’s a symbiotic relationship, where both musics counter-influence each other, breed, mix, diverge and meet again. For once, it makes me approve of incest…..

Maxim thank you for an insightful and great interview.

Links: Find everything Maxim Jakubowski at his website here.