Did you hear the one about the actor, the comedian and the novelist? Mark Billingham Interview

Billingham dressed to kill Pic by Donna-Lisa Healy.

Did you hear the one about the actor, the comedian and the novelist?

Well, they're all the same man! Boom Boom!!

Not much of a punchline granted, not even a punchline, but it's the best I could come up with after weeks of footie fatigue; the World Cup being in full swing. And although it might be inane it is fitting to precede our interview with bestselling crime/thriller writer Mark Billingham. 

Billingham, born in Solihull, grew up in Birmingham and spent most of his formative years there. After leaving university, with a degree in drama, he remained in Birmingham and helped set up Bread and Circuses, a socialist theatre company, and after several years of touring shows he left for the bright lights of London to pursue a career as a jobbing actor. It was now the 1980's and Billingham saw himself taking small parts in shows like Dempsey and Makepeace, The Bill and Juliet Bravo. His best known role was as Gary, the dim witted guard employed by the Sheriff of Nottingham in the successful children's series, Maid Marion and her Merry Men.

Billingham though soon grew tired of acting, feeling that the  secret for success was largely based on how an actor looked rather than talent  -' I seemed to be offered bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper or a bent copper' - and he instead opted to concentrate on stand up comedy. Staring out with 5 - 10 minute unpaid open mic sessions, he soon moved onto 30 minute paid slots, and from there he found himself headlining gigs at the prestigious Comedy Store. 

' Back then it was fairly easy to get into,' Billingham says of his stand up comedy career.  'You'd go to a couple of clubs and do what are called 'Try-outs' which are unpaid spots. You got five minutes, and if you did well that progressed into 10 minutes, and then 20 to 30 minute paid slots. But now it is really big business, and there are big chains of Comedy Clubs. I feel sorry for young comics of 18 or 19 today, as it is so tough now. It's a lot tougher now than it used to be.'

Despite his success as a stand up comedian though, Billingham's first love was writing, something he had been doing since an early age and although his first attempt at a novel, the Birmingham set Mechanic (as yet unpublished), which was a comic crime thriller that he abandoned before completion, the writing bug had bitten.  He loved reading crime novels and so he decided to concentrate on a straight forward crime novel. This would become Sleepyhead - the 2001 novel that all but make him an instant

bestseller. 

Sleepyhead is a serial killer thriller with a truly ingenious twist, since if a victim dies the killer considers this a failure. He's not trying to kill his victims but rather to induce a permanent catatonic state through the skillful manipulation of nerves and pressure points - it's called Locked In Syndrome or pseudocoma, a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles except for vertical eye movements and blinking.

The thriller introduced us to hard living, country music loving, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and readers instantly took to this new cop on the fictional crime landscape. Despite his rather dodgy musical taste, the reading public loved him and this past month saw the publication of The Killing Habit, the fifteenth book in the Tom Thone series.

TAINTED ARCHIVE: So after so many books featuring the same group of characters, I wonder if the author found it difficult to maintain reader interest. Is it actually easier now that the readers are so familiar with Thorne's universe or is it harder to keep them interested?

MARK BILLINGHAM: I suppose it's a little of both. The tricky part is writing a book in the series which honours those readers who have followed the Thorne novels since the start, while not alienating those who may not have read any of them. It's a tough balance to get right. There SHOULD be pressure, because unless you're always trying to write a better book than you did last time, you really should not be bothering. You certainly cannot take reader familiarity for granted...


TA: A particular strength in the Thorne series are the secondary characters - Tanner, Hendricks, Helen etc. In some way there's something of a soap opera vibe to series fiction in the way that the private lives of character that make up the fictional universe come and go. How to do you keep track of everything that is going on with such a large cast of recurring characters? Is there a series bible for instance?

MB: No, there's no such thing as a bible when it comes to my fictional world. It was a choice I made early on, specifically for Thorne, that I would not lay everything out or know everything about him and the same goes for Phil, Helen and the rest. This can cause problems of course, the most obvious one being that I forget stuff. But I think it's the right way to go in the long run, because it means that the characters can stay unpredictable. If they're surprising me then they have more chance of surprising the reader.

TA: to step away from Thorne for a moment - from time to time you write standalone thrillers. Are these a chance to rest from Thorne's world? Do they enable you to tackle subjects that may not work in a Thorne thriller? 

MB: That's absolutely right and it's a lesson I learned from writers like Michael Connelly. I think it's the best way - possibly the ONLY way - to keep a series from getting stale. You need to step away once in a while and do something else. That way, in theory at least, you can return to your series a year later fired up and ready to get back into it. While it's sometimes scary - and you ask yourself why you didn't just play safe and write another series novel - it's enormously liberating to leave your comfort zone. The standalones are among the favourites of all my novels and I'll certainly be doing some more. As you say, sometimes it's a story that simply has no room for a miserable north London copper... 



 TA: You are all over social media - often giving live Facebook broadcasts whilst wearing some pretty loud shirts, hosting the excellent Podcast A Stab in the Dark. How important is social media to the modern writer?

   
MB: Social media has, of course, become tremendously important, both to writers and publishers. On the down side, it can be a way for some publishers to do marketing and "publicity" on the cheap, but from a writer's point of view it's a fairly easy way to keep in touch with readers and fellow writers. To let people know what you're up to. Increasingly in recent years, writers have needed to sell themselves as much as their books, so a presence on social media has become pretty much compulsory. For those of us who are not averse to showing off, it's great, but it can also be an enormous time-suck, so I look at it as a treat that I need to earn. I get a chapter done, I can treat myself to 10 minutes on Twitter or whatever. the podcast was great fun and I hope we'll be recording some more very soon.




A STAB IN THE DARK PODCAST: I would urge fans of crime thrillers to check out the podcast - it can perhaps boast the finest line of big name guests of any podcast. Sofia Helfin, Mark Gattis, Michael Connelly, Belinda Bauer and Patricia Cornwell are just a few of the luminaries who have appeared recently. Find details HERE



TA: Given your knowledge of the genre, let's touch on other writers. Who do you particularly like? Are there any authors who you read as each book come out?


MB: There are SO many great writers out there at the moment. In terms of those writers whose early copies I scrounge from publishers it's all the usual suspects. Mick Herron is definitely one of those. His books are like crack! Same goes for Belinda Bauer, Martyn Waites, John Connolly, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly, Steve Cavanagh, Susie Steiner, loads more that I've forgotten and, of course, all my band-mates from the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. I'm only in that band so I can hang out with them.

THE FUN LOVING CRIME WRITERS:  The band, genre fiction's answer to John, Paul, George and Ringo are Mark Billingham, Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre,  Stuart Neville, Luca Veste and Doug Johnstone, and they regularly appear at festivals and - in their own words: murder songs for fun. 

 This month they will be appearing at the Harrogate Crime Festival and later this year they will be appearing at Bloody Scotland, the highland's own international crime writing festival.


 


 
TA: Along the same lines - what are your influences?
  

MB: There are so many influences. When I was a student I read all the classic US authors - Hammett, Chandler, McDonald, and then later those writers who were shaking things up in their wake - Burke, Ellroy. Before I'd written a word I'd read pretty much everything by the likes of Connelly, Pelecanos, McDermid, Rankin and Harvey, and I still do. It tickles me constantly that all those writers are now my friends. I think I was as influenced by TV and film as much as by anything I read.


TA: The crime/thriller genre in itself is in rude health with some great stuff out there. And it is so fluid - I recently listened with great interest in you chat with John Connolly in which he stated that setting does not define a crime novel. He used a hypothetical crime story set in the old west as his example and I think I agree with him. Another case in point is Brookmyre's Places in the Darkness being taken for SF. I guess what I'm trying to ask is are there genre boundaries that can't be crossed without a work transforming into an entirely different genre? Are there firm and hard rules to the crime genre? Your thoughts on this please.

MB: I really enjoyed that chat with John, who is another writer whose stuff I will try and read as early as possible. I agree that the genre is in great shape and I really don't believe it has boundaries. There are certain conventions and I think you'd be foolish to ignore all of them, but there really isn't anywhere you can't go. That said, if you're writing a crime novel that features wizards and dragons, then even though it might still BE a crime novel, it's also fantasy. Maybe mash-ups are the way forward.


TA: Let's get onto your own writing - your work habits?   

MB: I don't really have work habits. I write a book every year, so there are obviously certain things I have to do, but it's not a 9-5 job. If I'm on the road promoting a book that's just come out, I won't be writing the current one. I can't do both things at the same time. I need my office, my desk, my things. When I AM working, it's usually done at night. I TRY to write during the day but I'm easily distracted, so it works best when emails aren't arriving and Twitter has gone quiet. On top of that, I think it suits the kind of stuff I'm writing if I can look out of the window and see only darkness. 

TA: And back to Thorne - what are the chances of him returning to TV?


MB: The notion of bringing Thorne back to TV surfaces every six months or so and there has been plenty of interest, but nothing's going to be happening very soon. Mind you, in television nothing EVER happens very soon. Rush Of Blood is still in development and I'm working on something original for TV, but 99% of all my energy and attention is focused on the books. Oh, and the band of fellow crime-writers I sing and play guitar with. 


 THORNE TV SERIES: The series debuted on Sky 1 in October 2010 with David Morrisey in the title role. Despite considerable success the series has yet to return.



TA: Finally, will be ever see the return of Nicklin? If Thorne is Holmes then he is his Moriarty, and the character is a huge hit with readers. So will our favorite psycho come back?


MB: Ha! I get asked this a lot. Nothing is certain, but the book that will come out in 2020 will be my twentieth novel and will mean 20 years of Thorne. If I WAS going to bring Nicklin back - for one last appearance - that would probably be the time. But I won't do it unless I have an idea that really works...



FIND MARK BILLINGHAM HERE
FUN LOVING CRIME WRITERS HERE

   

Book Review: The Killing Habit by Mark Billingham

The Killing Habit is the fifteenth book in the hugely popular Tom Thorne series.

The previous Thorne, Love Like Blood was a truly exceptional crime thriller and it must have presented the author with quite a challenge to follow up, but thankfully Billingham was more than up to the task. Again the book uses highly topical issues as its starting point - this time dealing with animal cruelty. Specifically a series of cat killings - this case is based on the real life UK Cat Killings in which someone, still at large, is responsible for the brutal killings of hundreds of cats.

Thorne knows the serial killer archetype and is convinced that someone who kills cats, mutilates them and leaves their bodies on the doorstep for their owners to find them, will progress to killing people, indeed may have already done so. And so Thorne, once again teamed with DI Nicola Tanner begins to investigate. Thankfully the descriptions of the animal torture are mostly kept off scene, and it is not long before the plot moves on and becomes a cat and mouse game (excuse the pun) between Thorne, his team and the demented killer.

There is also a secondary though equally important plot in which Tanner is keeping a man in a safe house while she tries to track down a woman, known as The Duchess who has links to organised crime. As well as all that we also have details of the everyday lives of the main characters, and this soap opera aspect so necessary to long running series is something that Billingham does so well. Thorne is at odds with his partner Helen, feeling that her sister is coming between them and deliberately trying to ruin their relationship, Tanner still mourning the loss of her own partner is flat hunting and the rest of the regular cast put in their obligatory and entertaining appearance. I can never get enough of Hendricks, for example.

Billingham juggles everything with considerable skill and there is a real sense of urgency as the plot unfolds, which leads to a (I didn't see that coming) climax that will have major ramifications as the series progresses.

Later this week the Archive talks to the author in an exclusive interview.

Mark Billingham arrives at the Archive

To celebrate the release of Mark Billingham's new Thorne thriller, The Killing Habit (available now in hardcover and eBook) the Archive will proudly be presenting an interview with the author himself over the coming weeks. And later this week I'll post my review of the new novel - I'm reading this book a little slower than usual.....Hey, it's hard to read with the World Cup in full swing you know...If Mark Billingham will release his books to coincide with the biggest footie tournament of them all then it's his fault. I'm currently half way through and already I can say that the book provides far more thrills than Germany managed in the cup. Yep, you can safely say that Thorne is on top striking form here.



How do you catch a killer who is yet to kill?

We all know the signs. Cruelty, lack of empathy, the killing of animals. Now, pets on suburban London streets are being stalked by a shadow, and it could just be the start.

DI Tom Thorne knows the psychological profile of such offenders all too well, so when he is tasked with catching a notorious killer of domestic cats, he sees the chance to stop a series of homicides before they happen.

Others are less convinced, so once more, Thorne relies on DI Nicola Tanner to help him solve the case, before the culprit starts hunting people. It's a journey that brings them face to face with a killer who will tear their lives apart.

'A new Mark Billingham is always a treat and The Killing Habit hurls the reader straight into the action. Thoroughly enjoyable for being so very real' SUSIE STEINER

'Mark Billingham on superb form. A finely paced and polished procedural, with twists and turns galore and an ending that will chill your soul' CARA HUNTER

'An unconventional literary superstar' MAIL ON SUNDAY

'As ever with Billingham, a rich cast of characters and tense situations are marshalled with panache, leading to a final terrifying encounter' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Thorne is a terrific invention' IRISH INDEPENDENT

FREE book PROMOTION

Over at Amazon the latest Granny Smith eBook is free for the next five days - what better time to catch up on Granny's adventures! Go grab a freebie and PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW...it doesn't have to be long, a few words will do and reviews help immensely.

There'll be a new Granny book this year.

Here's a little histoy of the character.

STEALING FROM THE DETECTIVES

My own series character, Granny Smith is an amalgamation of varied pop culture detetectives - when I was creating the character the biggest influence was, of course, Miss Marple. I like the idea of a fish out of water, and that's just what Granny is - a busybody pensioner who becomes embroiled in one crime after another, usually besting the police and bringing the guilty to justice. In creating the character I wanted to build her character by taking traits of other detective characters... some of these traits were so ingrained in detective fiction that they had become stereotypes. However stereotypes are not always to be avoided, and can be used almost as a kind of shorthand in character building.

Granny smokes a pipe - that comes from Sherlock Holmes and indeed the silhouettes used on the book covers are very much based on Holmes. I instructed artist, Tony Masero, -  to think Holmes as an old lady, when creating the illustration. It can of course be argued that every fictional detective holds genomes of Holmes in their DNA. For Holmes may not have been the first fictional detective, but in terms of creating the modern genre he was indeed standing on Ground Zero.

(C) Tony Masero

Granny's love of music - this primarily came from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. The author used Morse's love of music to flesh out his character, and often to power the plots -  but where Morse enjoys classical music and opera, Granny is more into heavy metal and rock operas. It seemed to be that most fictional detectives had a leaning towards one form of music or another - Ian Rankin's Rebus was into his rock music, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch loves his Jazz, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne likes country and western and Inspector Frost - well, I like to think he woud have enjoyed his music if only he could find a CD player amongst the chaos of his office. Music, of course, holds a long tradition in detective fiction - think Sherlock Holmes and his violin. Then again we have Lord Peter Wimsey who was written as an amatuer musician of note (pun intended).

Thorne had tried, once, to tell him. To explain that real country music was fuck all to do with lost dogs and rhinestones. It had been a long night of pool and Guinness, and Phil Hendricks - with whichever boyfriend happened to be around at the time - heckling mercilessly. Thorne had tried to convey to Holland the beauty of George Jones’s voice, the wickedness in Merle Haggard’s and the awesome rumble of Cash, the dark, daddy of them all. A few pints in, he was telling anybody who would listen that Hank Williams was a tortured genius who was undoubtedly the Kurt Cobain of his day and he may even have begun to sing “Your Cheating Heart” around closing time. From Lazybones by Mark Billingham (2003)

Maigret - another pipe puffing sleuth

Granny is something of an anti-establishment figure. This of course comes from the long tradition of  maverick detectives  - there have been so many - detectives with their own code of right and wrong, detectives who don't mind breaking the rules if the end justifies their actions.

Granny's fashion sense is, to say the least, unconventional - something I borrowed from the wonderful character of Michael Belker from Hill Street Blues. This guy looked truly unique and this was something I felt was important for Granny's character.


Granny Smith was thought by most to be an odd sort, altogether harmless but decidedly odd. She dressed, an unkind person would say, like a dosser. While more kindly souls would have to admit that her style of dress was, to say the very least, eccentric. She usually wore tight leggings that were better suited to a woman half her age and would wear these with a variety of T-shirts and a body warmer of navy blue fleece.  She always wore that body warmer, zipped up in winter and open during the warmer months. And if all this didn’t make her look bizarre enough she topped it off with the corncob pipe that seemed to be permanently clamped between her teeth. From Granny Smith Investigates by G M Dobbs (2012)


Yep...Granny Smith's character came from a lifetime of enjoying the wonderful creations of others, and wanting to take my own spin on the Agatha Christie type of amatuer crimebuster.  The fourth Granny Smith novel, Murder Plot is free at Amazon at the moment. Granny is a character who has been called both Miss Marple on Steroids and Batman with dentures. The pop culture references are suitable since in creating Granny I thought long and hard about those who had gone before - we are all standing on the shoulders of giants, you know.

Gene Hunt - The hardrinking cop from Life on Mars actually owed much to Jack Regan from the 1970's classic, The Sweeney. And on the surface you'd think that Gene Hunt was a million miles

away from Granny, but the character had a straightforward way of speaking - delivering banter which was often crude but mostly hilarious. This non PC attitude is something that was very important to the creation of Granny Smith. Granny doesn't take no shit and she abhors political correctness, seeing it as a form of censorship.

 Jessica Fletcher played memorably by Paul McCartney lookalike, Angela Lansbury, owed more than

a little to Miss Marple herself. The character lived in Cabot Cove, Maine, which seemed like an idyllic seaside resort but had an alarming murder rate: Lansbury encountered a total of 274 killings, despite the town having a population of just 3,500.  Granny's own village of , Gilfach has a smiliar population and whilst the murder rate may not be so high it is certainly climbing.

Another character I kept very much in mind when writing the first Granny Smith was Columbo as played by the wonderful, Peter Falk - the detectives bumbling manner concealed a razor sharp mind. In the murder investigations he becomes involved in Columbo often seems to be the underdog pitted against a much smoother foe. I still love Columbo and can (indeed I often do) watch the old episodes over and over again, so it is no wonder that a little of the detective seeped into the creation Granny Smith. Where Columbo has his shabby raincoat, Granny has her tatty body warmer.

Have I mentioned location - well yeah I have briefly, but the location in which the Granny Smith books would be set needed to be fleshed out to a point where the village of Gilfach became a character in itself. This is something that other authors are particularly good at - Ian Rankins Rebus books thrive on the well realised depection of Edinburgh, and Morse would be nowehere without the donnish Oxford he inhabits. Wilkie Collins Moonstone (1868) displayed the importance of location in crime fiction by setting the expertly plotted story in a remote country house. And so I was aware that the location, the setting of the Granny Smith books was of vital importance. I decided on a fictional version of my own village, Gilfach Goch which is situated in the South Wales Valleys. And so the village of Gilfach in the Granny books may not an exact watercolour of the real Gilfach Goch but it is certainly an abstract representation.


The Granny Smith series are available in all major eBook formats, as well as audiobook...do a Google search on Granny Smith by G M Dobbs and you'll find your way to Granny's madcap world of murder and mayhem. I do hope you stay for awhile, and please please do leave some sort of review.

Book Review: Love Like Blood by Mark Billingham

'Writing about cultures and religions that are not your own brings with it a degree of responsibility, and so it should. I have endeavoured to do so with care, sensitivity and, crucially, with respect. In Love Like Blood I have tried to display the utmost respect for Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and for those who practice their religions peacefully. ' Mark Billingham


Tackling a subject like this in a crime thriller is fraught with perils, but Billingham pulls it off and at no point does the book stray into needless sensation - This is the 14th novel featuring the author's series character, Tom Thorne - (I've been on a bit of a Billingham kick lately and this is the third novel of his I've read this month - back to back reading I add. This brings me up to date with the character, I believe there's a new Thorne novel due later this year) - and the subject matter gives the book a sharp edge. Razor sharp; you could slice a finger turning these pages.


When Detective Inspector Nicola Tanner's partner is murdered in their own home she is left seething with the need for vengeance and justice. She has been investigating a series of honour killings in the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities and she is convinced the murder of her partner is connected, but Tanner is pulled from the case, put on compassionate leave. She won't leave the investigation alone though and drags Tom Thorne into her case; unofficially of course. The book contains all the usual elements of a successful thriller - there are hit men, red herrings galore, more twists than a Curly Wurly and above all an engaging team in Thorne and Tanner. This book is nothing short of excellent and gives great insight into  honour based violence, which is something that is more common than we realise.

Official figures are that there are around a dozen or so honour killings in the UK each year, with around five thousand each year globally - a thousand of these killings take place in Pakistan alone. However according to the police many of these crimes are unreported and if you include assault, mutilation and kidnapping in with honour based violence then the figures are totally staggering. It is estimated that the true figure for the UK alone would be 20,000. Any woman who deviates from some arbitrary patriarchal law is at risk. You can be killed for simply smiling at someone the wrong way.

Billingham, in this book tries to separate the religion, of which he shows the utmost respect, from the honour crimes of which he hates, but he is walking a tightrope creating a fictional thriller around such an emotive subject. He pulls it off though....he pulls it off really well. The book does what it is supposed to  as a thriller, keeping the reader turning the pages, giving us believable characters but at the same time allowing us a glimpse of a world in which we know very little about.


'I've always thought if you write a book with an agenda,' Billingham told the Independant newspaper
at the time of the book's original publication. 'That you are going to write a bad book. 'And I stand by that. Even if I am writing something topical the story has to be front and centre. And it has to be character driven.'


'Honour killings have also been documented in Jewish and  Christian communities,' Tanners says in the book. 'If fact I think the only ones without blood on their hands are Buddhists and Rastafarians...maybe Jedis.'

All in all then another exceptional thriller from a crime writer who is at the top of his game...and one that could, excuse the cliche, have been ripped from today's headlines.

You can read the details of the true case that inspired Love Like Blood HERE

Book Review: Time of Death by Mark Billingham

This is the 13th book in Mark Billingham's series featuring his tough as old boots detective, Tom Thorne - I've not read the entire series but after really enjoying the previous book in the series, The Bones Beneath (review HERE) I felt the immediate need for more Thorne and so I started on Time of Death.

Like The Bones Beneath, which was something of a departure from the standard London setting of the novels, Time of Death also uproots Thorne to a different location and presents him in a somewhat unfamiliar situation. This time Thorne is not on a case at all, but on holidays with his partner Helen Weeks (also a cop and the main character in Billingham's novel, In The Dark which I have but have not yet read). However their planned holiday is called short when Helen decides to return to her hometown, Polesford in Derbyshire to comfort an old friend whose husband, Stephen Bates, has been arrested on suspicion of child abduction.

When one of the missing girls turns up dead, the police believe they have their killer and all of the evidence seems to suggest so, but Tom Thorne is not so sure and his suspicions soon put him at odds with the local police force while he heads towards a showdown with a ruthless, and bat-shit crazy killer. There is also suspense because the reader knows the second girl is still alive - will Thorne get to get before she too is finished off?

The main narrative though concentrates largely on Helen and her relationship with her old friend Linda  Bates- it shows how the lives of innocent people, namely Linda and her two children are torn apart when her husband, the children's stepfather is arrested initially for abduction and then charged on counts of both murder and abduction. As the evidence mounts up against the man a press feeding frenzy begins and the Bates family find themselves under siege from not only the press but hordes of angry people who seem to take it upon themselves to punish the family for the alleged crimes of Stephen Bates. This aspect of the story is handled extremely well and avoids the trap of becoming soap opera'ish. Not once does the ordeal the family go through seem anything other than real...real, unfair and bloody tragic.

Now the unspoken rule with crime books is that the author can't just pluck the guilty party out of thin air at the end of the book, the reader must have met the guilty party  during the narrative, and using this logic I figured I sussed it all out by the mid-way point. There were enough clues to point me in the direction I took only to have the rug pulled out from beneath my feet towards the novels end. It's at this point that you can stand back and see where the author led you on a merry dance - and in this book, Mr Billingham dances so well.

To sum up, Time of Death is a bloody excellent thriller with real depth of character, and Tom Thorne, Billinghams's main character, has become an excellent creation - an Everyman copper, who you'd quite like to sit down and share a pint with, but keep him away from the jukebox or you could end up line dancing down the high street after a bellyful of strong ale.

Book Review: The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham

I've not read any of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne novels for a few years - there's no real reason for that but I followed the series for maybe the first five books, getting the books as they came out,  before I started reading other series crime novels. I wanted see how other's authors tackled the problem of carrying the same character through a series of books and I went through a lot of Rebus, the entire Jack Frost series and of course the excellent Wallander books. Since then I'd become hooked on Nordic Noir and have been reading the likes of Jo Nesbo and going through the Jowall and Wahoo's Beck books. So many book and so little time.

I'd always intended to go back to Tom Thorne but for some reason (probably because I always had my nose buried in some book or other)  I never got around to it...until now. Reading the blurb for Billingham's twelfth Tom Thorne thriller I discovered that Stuart Nicklin played a big part - Nicklin was the deranged serial killer in the second Thorne book, Scardey Cat, and it was this reason that attracted me to the novel. My memories of Scardey Cat is that it was an exceptional thriller - it's a cliché to say you couldn't stop turning the pages but in the case of Scardey Cat I remember that as being true. In the years since then and now it seems that  Nicklin's become Thorne's Moriarty and from what I learned reading The Bones Beneath he's appeared in bit parts in several of the Thorne novels I've missed. I'll have to remedy that and go read the ones I've missed because, The Bones Beneath is absolutely brilliant.

It doesn't matter if, like me, you haven't read the entire series because in terms of the story, The Bones Beneath reads just a standalone thriller, it can be read on its own without any loss of enjoyment. It's pretty much a self contained story but of course there has been a lot of character development during the earlier books, but Thorne's just as I remember him, though these days he seems to be in a loving relationship and has only just returned to his Detective Inspector role after being busted back to a uniformed officer, for something that occured in one of the previous thrillers.

The Bones Beneath gives us Billingham's answer to the locked room mystery - well sort of, since the bulk of the book takes place on a remote Welsh Island with a limited cast of character. The weather's turned nasty and there is no way off the island which Thorne shares with deranged killer, Stuart Nicklin, another killer who is anything but deranged named Jeffrey Batchelor, seveal other police officers, a few prison guards and a myraid group of people who live on the island. The reason we are here is that there was once a young offenders hostel on the island, and Stuart Nicklin had been an inmate. Now Nicklin reveals that he once killed a fellow inmate there and wants to reveal where the body is to finally bring closure to the family - echoes of the real life drama when Ian Brady cruelly refused to reveal where he had buried the body of Keith Bennet despite the anguish this caused the young boys mother. Brady of course took that secret to the grave with him.

Nicklin though wants to show where the body of his victim is buried, but he has several conditions - firstly that his fellow, Long Lartin (a Catagory A high security prison) inmate Jeffrey Batchelor comes on the trip, and that the police officer leading the search is none other than his nemesis, Tom Thorne. Of course we know Nicklin has his reasons for these conditions but when the truth comes out towards the end of the book, you think - 'Shit, why didn't I spot that?'

The book plays out far differently that the reader expects and the suspense is excellently built up until we are, here's a variation on that cliché again, turning the pages at the speed of knots - the nautical term is apropos given that the sea plays such a part in the book.

Welcome back Tom Thorne....let's not leave it so long next time.

BOOK REVIEW: Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

This is the first book I've read by the author, and it certainly won't be the last. I heard the author talking about the book on Mark Billingham's excellent podcast, A Stab in the Dark. And the fact that the book was set in an area that I knew really well, prompted me to take a trip up the Amazon and click my way into getting the book on the Kindle.

What followed was several hours of getting sucked into the story - I finished the book over two evenings, the best part of a bottle of Penderyn and a packet or two of Doritoes.

The story is largely told using three concurrent story-lines - one of the narrators is a man in a coma following a crash on the A470 (Believe me that can be a bugger of a road), a self obsessed nurse called Tracy and the main character, Patrick. Though it is Patrick, a young man suffering from Aspergers, who really carries the book through. Personally I know next to nothing about Aspergers Syndrome but the character of Patrick really came alive in the story and I was left feeling that I had a better understanding of the condition.

What is interesting, and no doubt testament to the author's skill, is that Patrick is such an emotionless character, and yet he evokes empathy and a genuine affection from the reader.  He stands apart from everyone else - the only thing akin to love he ever really knew was his relationship with his now dead father, while his exasperated mother seems if not to hate him, then at least to find him intolerable. Her feelings are perfectly understandable in the context of the story, but then her reasons may be far more complex than they seem on the surface.

Patrick is an anatomy student and whilst dissecting a corpse, known as Number 19, he finds something that leads him to believe the man has been murdered. And this is the main thrust of the novel - Rubbernecker is a thriller with very little violence but plenty of scenes that will have the reader squirming. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and immediately bought another by the same author (Black Lands) upon turning the final page.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a compelling, intelligent thriller and would liken the author's style to the psychological thrillers Ruth Rendell used to produce alongside her more traditional Wexford thrillers.

Quite brilliant.

Stealing from the Detectives

My own series character, Granny Smith is an amalgamation of varied pop culture detetectives - when I was creating the character the biggest influence was, of course, Miss Marple. I like the idea of a fish out of water, and that's just what Granny is - a busybody pensioner who becomes embroiled in one crime after another, usually besting the police and bringing the guilty to justice. In creating the character I wanted to build her character by taking traits of other detective characters... some of these traits were so ingrained in detective fiction that they had become stereotypes. However stereotypes are not always to be avoided, and can be used almost as a kind of shorthand in character building.

Granny smokes a pipe - that comes from Sherlock Holmes and indeed the silhouettes used on the book covers are very much based on Holmes. I instructed artist, Tony Masero, -  to think Holmes as an old lady, when creating the illustration. It can of course be argued that every fictional detective holds genomes of Holmes in their DNA. For Holmes may not have been the first fictional detective, but in terms of creating the modern genre he was indeed standing on Ground Zero.

(C) Tony Masero

Granny's love of music - this primarily came from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. The author used Morse's love of music to flesh out his character, and often to power the plots -  but where Morse enjoys classical music and opera, Granny is more into heavy metal and rock operas. It seemed to be that most fictional detectives had a leaning towards one form of music or another - Ian Rankin's Rebus was into his rock music, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch loves his Jazz, Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne likes country and western and Inspector Frost - well, I like to think he woud have enjoyed his music if only he could find a CD player amongst the chaos of his office. Music, of course, holds a long tradition in detective fiction - think Sherlock Holmes and his violin. Then again we have Lord Peter Wimsey who was written as an amatuer musician of note (pun intended).

Thorne had tried, once, to tell him. To explain that real country music was fuck all to do with lost dogs and rhinestones. It had been a long night of pool and Guinness, and Phil Hendricks - with whichever boyfriend happened to be around at the time - heckling mercilessly. Thorne had tried to convey to Holland the beauty of George Jones’s voice, the wickedness in Merle Haggard’s and the awesome rumble of Cash, the dark, daddy of them all. A few pints in, he was telling anybody who would listen that Hank Williams was a tortured genius who was undoubtedly the Kurt Cobain of his day and he may even have begun to sing “Your Cheating Heart” around closing time. From Lazybones by Mark Billingham (2003)

Maigret - another pipe puffing sleuth

Granny is something of an anti-establishment figure. This of course comes from the long tradition of  maverick detectives  - there have been so many - detectives with their own code of right and wrong, detectives who don't mind breaking the rules if the end justifies their actions.

Granny's fashion sense is, to say the least, unconventional - something I borrowed from the wonderful character of Michael Belker from Hill Street Blues. This guy looked truly unique and this was something I felt was important for Granny's character.


Granny Smith was thought by most to be an odd sort, altogether harmless but decidedly odd. She dressed, an unkind person would say, like a dosser. While more kindly souls would have to admit that her style of dress was, to say the very least, eccentric. She usually wore tight leggings that were better suited to a woman half her age and would wear these with a variety of T-shirts and a body warmer of navy blue fleece.  She always wore that body warmer, zipped up in winter and open during the warmer months. And if all this didn’t make her look bizarre enough she topped it off with the corncob pipe that seemed to be permanently clamped between her teeth. From Granny Smith Investigates by G M Dobbs (2012)


Yep...Granny Smith's character came from a lifetime of enjoying the wonderful creations of others, and wanting to take my own spin on the Agatha Christie type of amatuer crimebuster.  The fourth Granny Smith novel, Murder Plot is published today. Granny is a character who has been called both Miss Marple on Steroids and Batman with dentures. The pop culture references are suitable since in creating Granny I thought long and hard about those who had gone before - we are all standing on the shoulders of giants, you know.

Gene Hunt - The hardrinking cop from Life on Mars actually owed much to Jack Regan from the 1970's classic, The Sweeney. And on the surface you'd think that Gene Hunt was a million miles

away from Granny, but the character had a straightforward way of speaking - delivering banter which was often crude but mostly hilarious. This non PC attitude is something that was very important to the creation of Granny Smith. Granny doesn't take no shit and she abhors political correctness, seeing it as a form of censorship.

 Jessica Fletcher played memorably by Paul McCartney lookalike, Angela Lansbury, owed more than

a little to Miss Marple herself. The character lived in Cabot Cove, Maine, which seemed like an idyllic seaside resort but had an alarming murder rate: Lansbury encountered a total of 274 killings, despite the town having a population of just 3,500.  Granny's own village of , Gilfach has a smiliar population and whilst the murder rate may not be so high it is certainly climbing.

Another character I kept very much in mind when writing the first Granny Smith was Columbo as played by the wonderful, Peter Falk - the detectives bumbling manner concealed a razor sharp mind. In the murder investigations he becomes involved in Columbo often seems to be the underdog pitted against a much smoother foe. I still love Columbo and can (indeed I often do) watch the old episodes over and over again, so it is no wonder that a little of the detective seeped into the creation Granny Smith. Where Columbo has his shabby raincoat, Granny has her tatty body warmer.

Have I mentioned location - well yeah I have briefly, but the location in which the Granny Smith books would be set needed to be fleshed out to a point where the village of Gilfach became a character in itself. This is something that other authors are particularly good at - Ian Rankins Rebus books thrive on the well realised depection of Edinburgh, and Morse would be nowehere without the donnish Oxford he inhabits. Wilkie Collins Moonstone (1868) displayed the importance of location in crime fiction by setting the expertly plotted story in a remote country house. And so I was aware that the location, the setting of the Granny Smith books was of vital importance. I decided on a fictional version of my own village, Gilfach Goch which is situated in the South Wales Valleys. And so the village of Gilfach in the Granny books may not an exact watercolour of the real Gilfach Goch but it is certainly an abstract representation.


The Granny Smith series are available in all major eBook formats, as well as audiobook...do a Google search on Granny Smith by G M Dobbs and you'll find your way to Granny's madcap world of murder and mayhem. I do hope you stay for awhile.

Would you like Earl Grey or a copy of Sleepyhead?

Billingham

Mark Billingham, author of the Tom Thorne detective series, criticized the growing self-publishing industry that allows writers to sell their work electronically for pence.Billigham made his comments at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, after fellow author, Stephen Leather spoke about self publishing during a panel talk. Stephen Leather  said e-books provided a better deal for readers and writers, who can undercut those using traditional publishers and agents.

However  Billingham received applause from the audience when he responded by saying books were devalued if they were sold for “less than half the price of a cup of tea”.

Leather

 What makes this so interesting is that both men are well respected novelists, but Leather who both self publishes as well as having many of his books with trad publishers, has long championed self publishing and had success with both backlist and new titles. While Billingham does have a point about books being devalued he is far wide of the mark if he thinks this is down to self publishing - for years now, long before the self publishing boom, UK supermarkets like Asda and Tesco have been selling books at a loss, and that includes Billingham's titles. I bought one of Billingham's Thorne series for £1 at Asda and that may just be enough to cover a cup of tea, but it certainly won't stretch to a couple of dunking biccies.

The devaluation of the book is something that's been happening for years and years, and before Amazon even invented the Kindle, Waterstones were doing this in order to lure readers away from the small bookstores who couldn't afford to discount titles so heavily. And what are stores like The Works doing if not training consumers to pay less for books?

Yes the book is being devalued.
Yes it is wrong.
But it is not only down to self publishing, and is a trend that's gone on ever since the UK NET agreement was done away with.The thing that self publishing has done is empower writers like never before and it is changing the industry. The old publishing model had been around for a long time now and maybe change is inevitable.

Mark Billingham interview

“The golden age is popularly thought of to be the 20s and 30s with writers like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. But I would argue, and a lot of people would agree, that we’re going through a real golden age at the moment."

You'll find a great interview with crime writing heavyweight Mark Billingham HERE

Mark Billingham live on Litopia

Litopia is an online radio show that is essential listening for writers everywhere - it's totally interactive via a chat room which is regularly visited by the presenters during the show. Tonight's episode is extra special in that it features crime writer, Mark Billingham as the star guest. Find it HERE

It's always better to listen live and take part via the chat show but each show is also uploaded as a podcast and available via the usual sources.

Thorne Sleepyhead

I've just watched all three episodes of Sky 1's adaptation of Mark Billingham's, Sleepyhead. I'd been eager to see this, having followed Mark Billingham's crime series since the first Tom Thorne novel. Indeed along with Peter Robinson's Banks series (which is also coming to TV) the Thorne books are among my favourite crime series. I'd recorded all three episodes to my Sky+ box and this evening sat down to watch them back to back.

What initially attracted me to the Thorne books was that they promised crime in the harder edged American style with a British setting. Thankfully the makers of the television series seem to have realised this and the show is shot in the fast style of the best American TV Thrillers. British crime dramas tend to be slower paced but this one starts out at maximum speed and doesn't let up until the climax. And all without forsaking any of the all important characterisation.

Thorne as played by David Morrissey is a tortured soul who is forced to face his own dark past when the trail for a present day serial killer leads back to something Thorne would prefer to forget -there's another neat stylistic touch when the characters are thinking back to the past and we see the present day characters while the past is played out around them in diffused colours. These are the kind of touches you'd expect to find in shows like CSI and not British crime dramas.

Aiden Gillen is also superb as the gay coroner Phil Henricks who also happens to be Thorne's best friend. Hendricks is a complex character who straddles two worlds and the actor brings alive the various facets of his character with blistering reality. And the rest of the supporting cast are also excellent in their roles and will no doubt be developed as more stories are filmed.

Apparently Thorne is a six part series, with the first three episodes being the debut novel, Sleepyhead while the second Thorne book Scardey Cat is to follow. On the strength of these first three episodes I would say Sky have a hit on their hands. In fact the only thing missing from Thorne is a punchy theme tune that could help define the series.

Mark Billingham must be chuffed at this version of his bestselling book.

Thorne new TV tie-in editions

The Tom Thorne series of books by Mark Billingham are now available in new TV tie-in editions - I've yet to catch SKY One's version of Thorne but I am eager to see what they make of this great series of crime novels.

The thing with the Tom Thorne books is that unlike Rebus and Morse, which I discovered when the series had a good few titles under their belt, I have been with the Tom Thorne series since day one.

The first Thorne novel, Sleepyhead seemed a kind of a horror hybrid with its cleverly macabre plot, which is what initially attracted me to the books. And as soon as I read the first I was hooked and have followed the series ever since.

If you've not read any then now is the time to enter the murky world of Tom Thorne's London.

Check out the author's website HERE for news on the Thorne series both in print and on the small screen.

British Crime writing at its best - Mark Billingham talks about London