The Intel: Peter Lovesey

Peter Lovesey is crime fiction royalty. The author of nearly forty novels – featuring Sergeant Cribb, Peter Diamond and Hen Mallin, among others – he’s been nominated for nearly every award worth having, and in 2000 won the prestigious Cartier Diamond Dagger for his lifetime achievements.

His latest Supt Peter Diamond novel is called Down Among The Dead Men and features the consequences of what happens when a car thief makes off with a stolen BMW. When the police pull him over, a nightmare discovery in the boot earns him a life sentence for murder.

Years later, Diamond finds himself investigating that old case, and his formidable colleague Hen Mallin, and dealing with with spirited schoolgirls and eccentric artists. But more people are going missing…

We’re all kinds of thrilled about this intel – Lovesey is an engaging and generous interviewee. He discusses the evolution of Peter Diamond since his first – and last – appearance 25 years ago and the series’s debt to Ed McBain – and he reveals the one question fans always ask that always makes him uncomfortable….

Tell us about Supt. Peter Diamond… 

When he first appears he is asleep on a trolley outside the post mortem room while an autopsy is going on inside. This helps to establish him as a stubborn yet sensitive man who does his own thing regardless of what is expected. His ample shape suggests a dinosaur luring in a primeval swamp. I wanted to suggest he was one of the old school of detectives, an anachronism in modern policing. He’s overweight and dresses in a raincoat and trilby as if he’s stepped out of one of the black and white movies he loves. I’d know him if I met him, but if he knocked on my door I’d think twice about inviting him in.

Diamond made his first appearance in 1991’s The Last Detective – how has he changed down the years?

As the title implied, that first book was intended to be a one-off. By the end of it Peter Diamond had quit the police. End of, I thought. Unexpectedly it won the Anthony award for best novel (I wasn’t in Toronto and didn’t find out till later, which meant I didn’t even have to make an acceptance speech). Diamond was already middle-aged. When asked if I would write another story with this character I revised my writing plans and did one called Diamond Solitaire, with him getting involved in crime as a civilian. By then I saw he had potential for a series, so The Summons was my way of getting him back into the police. He has now been a detective superintendent at Bath for another twenty-five years. How has he changed? Not at all. Peter Diamond is a portly, middle-aged Peter Pan. He has the gift of eternal middle age.

Down Among The Dead Men features Diamond investigating the disappearance of an art teacher – what was the inspiration for the novel?

They say you should write about what you know. I went to university to study fine art. I would have applied for English, but in those days they insisted everyone studied Latin and I was so abysmal at it that I didn’t even take the exam. The art was my back door route to an English degree. I wrote some essays the English professor saw and after a couple of terms he invited me to switch – with nothing said about Latin. Later I did some teaching in technical colleges. I was wary of writing fiction about art and teaching in case an old colleague recognised herself, but I’ve finally bitten the bullet.

You’ve said your supporting cast of detectives is a nod to Ed McBain – do you have any favourites among Diamond’s colleagues?

Yes, Ed and I shared the same agent and became good friends. Under the name of Evan Hunter he’d written The Blackboard Jungle, so we had teaching in common as well. He was the father of the police procedural novel and his writing doesn’t date, even fifty-eight years on from Cop Hater. I learned a lot from him about handling a team of detectives rather than just the sleuth and his sidekick. Among my characters I liked Julie Hargreaves, but she couldn’t stand Diamond and asked for a transfer.

The main female interest now is Ingeborg Smith, formerly a freelance journalist. I’m hoping she will tough it out with the old curmudgeon. Among the men, there’s John Wigfull, an enemy of Diamond’s who does PR for the police. And I enjoy writing scenes for Leaman, the inspector who does everything by the book and is the eternal fall guy.

DCI Henrietta ‘Hen’ Mallin – who spun off into two of her own books – makes another appearance in Diamond’s life. Do you have any plans to return her to the limelight in another novel?

I like Hen and enjoy making sparks when she works with Diamond. Nothing is planned and she doesn’t have a spot in Another One Goes Tonight, the next book. People sometimes ask if I have another book inside me. I tell them I don’t. It ‘s uncomfortable.

How did you start writing?

Like everybody else, at school. I won a prize at 15 for writing a history of my town . The first book I wrote was about long distance running and the first novel  was also about running and called Wobble To Death. It was used to launch the Macmillan crime list in 1970. Being set in Victorian times, it was different and got me started on a series of eight books that eventually appeared on Granada TV as Cribb, starring Alan Dobie as the detective.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

Never get too excited about the promise of getting onto the big screen. Wobble To Death was optioned by Carl Foreman (of High Noon fame) and The False Inspector Dew by Peter Falk (Columbo). I was lunched by the great men and started counting the days (‘It won’t be long, Peter’) but ultimately neither project went into production.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

It’s unfair to mention living writers. I still enjoy Ed McBain because he was such an innovator and a stylist. And Donald E. Westlake, whose Dortmunder books are the funniest crime series ever. Who else? Patricia Highsmith, who didn’t invent the inverted crime plot, but made it into high art. And Arthur Conan Doyle, who is undervalued as a comic writer.

Give me some advice about writing…

Always have the next book written (or well under way) before the previous one is published.

What’s next for you?

Another One Goes Tonight is the seventeenth in the Diamond series and appears in July. Number eighteen is under way. I can’t say well under way, but hell, there’s plenty of writing to be done between now and then. This is where I stop answering your questions and get back to work.

***

Down Among the Dead Men by Peter Lovesey is published by Sphere, price £8.99 in paperback.

You can find out more about Peter at his website www.peterlovesey.com

Hold That Thought

With Crime Thriller Fella’s summer readership flatlining faster than Jessica Fletcher’s Christmas Card List, it’s time to take a short break to catch some rays and recharge the batteries.

I’ve really enjoyed doing this blog over the last few months, and I’ve been amazed and gratified by the reaction to it. I’ve learned a lot about writing, and the blog has introduced me to some brilliant new authors.

There’s nothing more dispiriting, more likely to bring a lump to the throat, than a slowly-stagnating blog page, so I’m going to put up some archived reviews and other stuff, starting below. But feel free — if you’re new here, or just really love wasting time — to take a look around.

Back in a jiffy.

Criminal Minds: Agatha Christie

Think you know about crime thriller writers? Have nothing to contribute around the dinner-party table? Amaze your friends with some astonishing facts about the genre’s leading authors… First up, the woman who has sold more books than anyone, with the possible exception of God.

1/ Agatha Christie wrote her first book after a dare by her sister Madge. The Mysterious Affair At Styles was turned down by six publishers. Since then, she’s sold about four billion novels. That’s four billion. She’s only outsold by The Bible.

2/ Christie famously made the headlines in 1926 when her car was found abandoned. She was missing for ten days. Her disappearance made the headlines, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even trotted out one of his  mediums in an attempt to find her. She was discovered staying under an assumed name in a Harrogate Hotel. The incident has never been fully explained – she refused to discuss the incident – but it’s suggested Christie suffered a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and the discovery that her husband had had an affair. She was booked into the hotel under his lover’s name.

3/ The final Miss Marple and Poirot books, Sleeping Murder and Curtain, were published in 1975 and 1976, but were actually written in the 1940s and kept locked away until Christie’s death – there’s forward thinking for you! In the event, she died in 1977.

4/ Curtain is a controversial end to the career of Christie’s Belgian detective – and the book ends with a vicious little twist. When Curtain was published in 1975, Poirot received an obituary in the New York Times, the only fictional character to have done so. If you haven’t read it, you’ll be able to see what the fuss was about when ITV broadcasts it as the final episode of the long-running David Suchet series.

5/ Christie grew to dislike her most famous creation, but the public’s appetite for Poirot never dimmed. By the 1960s, she had descended to name-calling. She regarded him as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.” Christie  claimed to have seen him twice, once while taking tea at the Savoy.

6/ And Then There Were None is Christie’s bestselling book, with 100 million copies sold since 1939. Ten people, all implicated in murder, are invited to a remote island, and bumped off, one by one. Arguably, this concept has been used as a template again and again in countless slasher movies.

7/ Christie wrote romantic novels as Mary Westmacott, a pseudonym she managed to maintain for twenty years until it was discovered in 1949. It was as Westmacott that she reputedly wrote a whole novel, Absent In The Spring, over a weekend.

8/ Her play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November, 1952, with Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, and, of course it’s still running. One cast member has survived all the cast-changes down the years. Deryck Guyler can still be heard reading the news bulletin.

9/Christie was irrirated that the last of the four Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films – Murder Ahoy! – wasn’t based on one of her novels. It was a flop at the box-office, much to the spurned author’s delight.

10/ When Christie died in 1976, London’s West End theatres dimmed their lights in respect.

For a the top ten best Christie novels, as listed by Agatha expert John Curran, go here.

Thrill Seekers: Sherlock Holmes

Here are some more pointless facts — most of which you probably know anyway, being clever people — about another legendary crime thriller character. This time round, Sherlock Holmes.

1/ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous creation first appeared in the novel A Study in Scarlet, which was turned down five times by publishers – will these foolish publishers never learn? However, the novel wasn’t at all successful. It was only at a dinner-party in 1889 that Doyle was persuaded to write another Sherlock Holmes novel by an editor. And what a swell party it must have been. At the same reception, Oscar Wilde was also persuaded to write a novel — The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in the same year as The Sign of the Four. However, it wasn’t until A Scandal In Bohemia was printed in Strand Magazine that the Holmes character really took off.

2/ The Great Detective’s name was originally going to be Sherrinford Holmes, and Dr John Watson was to be called Ormand Sacker. However, Doyle thankfully changed his detective’s name to Sherlock – after a cricket player.

3/ Holmes was famously inspired by a real-life lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Joseph Bell, who had the uncanny  ability to diagnose patients simply by looking at them, and also a forensic scientist called Sir Henry Littlejohn.

4/ Holmes was an habitual user of cocaine – which he injected in a seven-per cent solution – and occasionally used morphine. Both drugs, however, were legal in the 19^th Century.

5/ Doctor John Watson moved in with Holmes after returning penniless and invalided from Afghanistan. It was only when he was disturbed by the crowded comings and goings in their lodgings – bloody flatmates! – that he discovered Holmes was a Consulting Detective.

6/ Watson’s narratives of his companion’s triumphant cases over the course of more than fifty stories contain many discrepancies, and the old dog alludes to up to five wives. Incidentally, Holmes’ famous deer-stalker cap is never mentioned in the prose, but was featured in the illustrations by Sidney Paget. Nor did he ever say: ‘Elementary, my dear Watson!’

7/ Holmes never mentions his parents, but has a brother called Mycroft whose powers of deduction surpass even his own. However, Mycroft is corpulent and lazy and works in some vague capacity in Government. Holmes also claimed that his great-uncle was the French painter Vernet.

8/ Holmes is often portrayed as a fey, cerebral character, but both he and his good friend Dr. Watson were not shy of getting stuck in. They carried revolvers, which they used to pistol-whip people. Holmes was also adept with a cane, a sword, and also at bare-knuckle fighting and martial arts, which he used to fling Moriarty to his death.

9/ Tired of the character, Doyle killed Holmes off in The Final Problem, saying ‘I am weary of his name.’ But reader pressure – and some serious cash – forced him to change his mind and bring Holmes back. Holmes apparently spent the three years after he supposedly fell to his death from the Reichenbach Falls travelling the world.

10/ Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, has been celebrated as Holmes’s great antagonist, but he only appeared in two stories, and was created specifically so that Holmes could meet his end in The Final Problem. A number of people have been suggested as the model for Moriarty, including famous London criminal Jonathan Wild, spiteful astronomer Simon Newcomb, and mathematician George Boole. However, there may be a more Freudian explanation. Conan Doyle went to school with two boys called Moriarty. Similarly, Irene Adler, another character who has become more prominent in the Holmsiverse in recent years, only appeared in a single story.

Now you have the facts at your fingertips, go forth and amaze the world.

Criminal Minds: Agatha Christie

Think you know about crime thriller writers? Have nothing to contribute around the dinner-party table? Amaze your friends with some astonishing facts about the genre’s leading authors… First up, the woman who has sold more books than anyone, with the possible exception of God.

1/ Agatha Christie wrote her first book after a dare by her sister Madge. The Mysterious Affair At Styles was turned down by six publishers. Since then, she’s sold about four billion novels. That’s four billion. She’s only outsold by The Bible.

2/ Christie famously made the headlines in 1926 when her car was found abandoned. She was missing for ten days. Her disappearance made the headlines, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even trotted out one of his  mediums in an attempt to find her. She was discovered staying under an assumed name in a Harrogate Hotel. The incident has never been fully explained – she refused to discuss the incident – but it’s suggested Christie suffered a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and the discovery that her husband had had an affair. She was booked into the hotel under his lover’s name.

3/ The final Miss Marple and Poirot books, Sleeping Murder and Curtain, were published in 1975 and 1976, but were actually written in the 1940s and kept locked away until Christie’s death – there’s forward thinking for you! In the event, she died in 1977.

4/ Curtain is a controversial end to the career of Christie’s Belgian detective – and the book ends with a vicious little twist. When Curtain was published in 1975, Poirot received an obituary in the New York Times, the only fictional character to have done so. If you haven’t read it, you’ll be able to see what the fuss was about when ITV broadcasts it as the final episode of the long-running David Suchet series.

5/ Christie grew to dislike her most famous creation, but the public’s appetite for Poirot never dimmed. By the 1960s, she had descended to name-calling. She regarded him as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.” Christie  claimed to have seen him twice, once while taking tea at the Savoy.

6/ And Then There Were None is Christie’s bestselling book, with 100 million copies sold since 1939. Ten people, all implicated in murder, are invited to a remote island, and bumped off, one by one. Arguably, this concept has been used as a template again and again in countless slasher movies.

7/ Christie wrote romantic novels as Mary Westmacott, a pseudonym she managed to maintain for twenty years until it was discovered in 1949. It was as Westmacott that she reputedly wrote a whole novel, Absent In The Spring, over a weekend.

8/ Her play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November, 1952, with Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, and, of course it’s still running. One cast member has survived all the cast-changes down the years. Deryck Guyler can still be heard reading the news bulletin.

9/Christie was irrirated that the last of the four Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films – Murder Ahoy! – wasn’t based on one of her novels. It was a flop at the box-office, much to the spurned author’s delight.

10/ When Christie died in 1976, London’s West End theatres dimmed their lights in respect.

For a the top ten best Christie novels, as listed by Agatha expert John Curran, go here.