The Intel: Leigh Russell

Some people have crime authorship sequenced into them at a genetic level. Take Leigh Russell. An incredibly prolific author, she can write two, perhaps three crime novels a year. She’s the author of the Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson crime series, and her first novel Cut Short was shortlisted for for CWA Debut Dagger Award for Best First Crime Novel.

Now she’s begun a series starring a brand new, globe-trotting heroine – Lucy Hall. In Journey To Death Lucy arrives in the Seychelles determined to leave her worries behind. The tropical paradise looks sun-soaked and picture perfect – but as Lucy soon discovers, appearances can be very deceptive. A deadly secret lurks in the island’s history, buried deep but not forgotten. And it’s about to come to light…

For many years Leigh taught pupils with specific learning difficulties. She guest lectures for the Society of Authors, universities and colleges, and runs regular creative writing courses. She also runs the manuscript assessment service for the CWA. She’s even got her own YouTube channel. Oh, and she only wears purple.

Leigh’s an enthusiastic and fascinating writer, and a generous interviewee – so Crime Thriller is thrilled that she gives us the intel on Lucy, her extraordinary writing routine and how a writer must nurture their own voice…

Tell us about Lucy Hall…

At twenty-two, Lucy Hall is struggling to recover from a broken engagement. Hoping to cheer her up, her parents invite her to accompany them on a holiday to the idyllic island of Mahé in the Seychelles. The trip takes a dark and twisted turn as a secret threatens to destroy them. As she fights for her life, Lucy learns that she is far tougher and more resourceful than she had realised. 

Where did you get the inspiration for Journey to Death?

I was intrigued by a first hand account of a political coup that took place in the Seychelles in the late 1970s. This true account was the inspiration for my story. Apart from the historical background, the narrative is fictitious, as are the characters. Like all my books, it started with the question, ‘what if?’, this time set against a beautiful tropical island background.

The novel is set in the Seychelles – what kind of research did you do on the tropical paradise?

My story was virtually written when I went to the Seychelles to check on the location. We spent two weeks walking along sandy beaches watching the fishing boats setting out at dawn, swimming in the warm ocean, and watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean. It was a magical trip. I spent time at the British High Commission, visited several police stations, walked around the market in the capital, Victoria, and went up into the Cloud Mountain, all of which feature in the book. Everyone I approached was incredibly generous with their time and expertise, and it all helped to add depth and credibility to my narrative.

You’re incredibly prolific, you write two or three books a year, and yet you’ve said you have no writing routine – how do you manage to fit it all in?

I ask myself that question all the time! The only answer I can give you is that I love writing. It’s fitting everything else in that’s the problem. I spend a lot of time on research, and also appear at literary festivals along with all the rest of the promotional activities required of authors. It’s great fun, but I am often exhausted. My typing is quite fast, but a book is not about putting words on the page. It’s about thinking and ideas, backed up by working out and research. Once my story is in place, off I go. My schedule is incredibly busy but I like to work hard, so as long as the ideas keep coming, I’ll keep writing.

You run the manuscript assessment service for the Crime Writers Association – what’s the one piece of advice you would offer aspiring crime writers?

The one piece of advice I would give is to trust yourself. Other people will challenge and question what you do all the time, and it’s vital for a writer to be able take advice on board when it feels right, but you need to have that inner core of belief in yourself as a writer or your voice will be lost.

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

A number of negative reviews appeared on amazon shortly after one of my books reached number one on kindle, but you have to learn to take negative experiences like that on the chin. I try to focus on the many positive reviews, and the encouraging messages fans send to my website, which I find really inspiring. I think most authors worry that readers might not like their books, so it’s important to be reminded that there are fans who appreciate what you do. So far I’ve been thrilled by the positive response my books have received. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Lucy Hall is also well received.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

Having spent four years studying English and American Literature at university in the UK, my reading taste is quite varied. I admire so many authors, it’s very hard to pick just a few, but names that spring to mind are John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Edith Wharton, Kazuo Ishiguro, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte… I could go on. Among contemporary crime writers Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver and Peter James, all of whom are fans of my books, Val McDermid, Ruth Rendell, Michael Robotham, Alexander McCall Smith… again I could go on. There are so many great writers around, we are spoilt for choice, thank goodness!

Give me some advice about writing…

The late great William McIlvanney wrote: ‘I didn’t tell people how to write. I encouraged them to write and to see that defying my advice was possibly as valuable as following it.’ To my way of thinking, this is excellent advice. There are no rules in writing, other than to make your writing work. If you want to try something that has never been done before, of course there might be a reason why no one else has attempted it, but why not give it a go? If you don’t try, you will never know if you could have succeeded. And challenging yourself is part of the thrill of writing.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on the second book in the Lucy Hall series. This one sees Lucy in Paris, which of course required more research. We stayed in several locations near the centre of the city, visiting sites like the Eiffel Tower, and exploring fascinating areas off the tourist map. While we were there, we tried out different sorts of French food and wine…  Yes, all this research is hard work!

***

Journey To Death is available now as a paperback and in ebook, published by Thomas & Mercer.

The Intel: Vaughn Entwistle

The winter nights are cold and dark, the wind is howling through the trees and you’re in the mood to curl up in front of a crackling fire in a top hat – or, if you’re a lady, a pretty bonnet – to read something dark and gothic.

Vaughn Entwistle’s new novel The Angel Of Highgate takes us back to October 1859. Lord Geoffrey Thraxton is notorious in Victorian society – a Byronesque rake with a reputation. After surviving a near deadly pistol duel, boastful Thraxton finds himself on the wrong side of the attending physician Silas Garrette, a chloroform addict with a bloodlust, and when Thraxton falls in love with a mysterious woman who haunts Highgate Cemetery he unwittingly provides the murderous doctor with the perfect means to punish a man with no fear of death.

Entwistle has got form where supernatural chillers are concerned. He’s the author of two novels in The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle series – of which The Angel Of Highgate is a prequel – The Revenant of Thraxton Hall and The Dead Assassin. He lives in north Somerset with his wife and cats.

Vaughn gives us the intel on his new series, Thraxton, gargoyles, and the secrets of Highgate Cemetery, and finding your killer concept.

Tell us about Lord Geoffrey Thraxton. Where did you get the inspiration to write such a deliciously wicked character?

Lord Thraxton is a bit of a naughty boy. I would describe him as “wicked” in the naughty sense of the word: wicked but not evil. He is impulsive, utterly without boundaries, and has a self-destructive streak that leads him to frequent brothels, smoke opium, womanise, fight duels and tempt fate at each and every opportunity. He’s a pastiche of several real-life characters. Like Lord Byron, he would best be described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” He’s also partially based upon also the Irish nobleman, The Marquess of Waterford, known by many as the “Mad Marquess” because of his drunken revels with a group of cronies that frequently ended in vandalism and public outrage.

But deep at the centre of Thraxton is a dark streak of melancholia. He was deeply wounded in childhood by the death of his beloved mother and the subsequent indifference of his stern father. In the novel. Thraxton is a metaphor for the Victorian preoccupation (some might term it, fetishisation) of death. The Victorian era was a time when, due to the prevalence of incurable diseases such as “consumption” (tuberculosis), many people died in the bloom of youth. (The Poet Keats is a tragic example.) The Victorians made an artform of mourning right down to strict conventions regarding the mourning clothes that had to be worn for a full year after the loss of a loved one. The creation of London’s “Magnificent Seven,” elysian necropolises such as Kensal Green Cemetery, Brompton Cemetery and, of course, the crown jewel, Highgate Cemetery, were the physical manifestation of the Victorian obsession with death and mourning.

Why are we so attracted to absolute rotters like Lord Geoffrey?

I think we are fascinated and drawn to scoundrels like Lord Geoffrey Thraxton because they have the power and influence to flaunt the conventions of society, where we do not (or at least not without suffering consequences). Although we all like to live in an orderly and safe world, I think readers get a vicarious thrill reading about a protagonist who follows his or her own path without fear of the social repercussions.

Why are we so fascinated by the Victorian underworld?

I think Dickens has to take a great deal of the blame for this. The criminal underword has always held a fascination for the rest of us. The Victorian criminal, from Jack the Ripper onwards, had the unique ability to slip away into the foggy night, evading capture by the authorities. As such, they become fearful shadows. We read horror and suspense novels because we like to be scared, and the Victorian underworld is filled with bogeymen. The two that feature in The Angel of Highgate: the Mobsman Mordecai Fowler and the deranged Doctor Silas Garette, are utterly ruthless psychopaths dredged up from your worst nightmare.

Which is your favourite grave in Highgate Cemetery?

To me the most spectacular part of Highate Cemetery is the Egyptian Avenue, a dark and gloomy passageway entered by passing through a massive, pharoahnic arch (Egyptology was all the rage in Victorian England). The dark passageway is lined on either side by brass doored tombs and gradually ascends to a circle of granite tombs called The Circle of Lebanon, so named after the towering cedar at its centre. If you’re a topophile like me, there’s nothing to match it for sheer gothic atmosphere.

Will we be seeing the return of your paranormal sleuthing duo Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde?

I certainly hope so. I’m currently writing the third in the series while plotting the fourth book and have ideas for dozens of future books in the series.

You’ve had your own gargoyle-sculpting business! What makes a really handsome gargoyle?

Ugly and scary is what you’re looking for in a gargoyle, which is why my best gargoyles are based on what I look like when I get up in the morning—before I’ve quaffed a big mug of strong tea and had time to pound the horns back into my head.

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

A novel takes a tremendous amount of work and consumes a huge chunk of your life. And yet I have written novels that will probably never see the light of day. Not because the writing was bad, but because the concept behind it was not commercial enough. You can write about any subject you like, but to attract the attention of an agent and then a publisher, you need a killer concept (something highly original, but not too way out). But a high concept alone is not enough; you must follow through with terrific writing featuring original characters, sparkling dialogue and vivid prose that crackles on the page.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

Of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because beyond providing the archetype for the detective story with Sherlock Holmes, he was also an incredible innovator who penned ghost stories, science fiction, historical fiction and adventure stories.

Neil Gaiman: the consummate professional. Although he’s been writing for years, he continues to produce fresh, original writing.

Elizabeth Hand. A terrific writer with gorgeous prose. A terrific “voice” and a good prose style are essential for me. I’ve abandoned many novels if the prose is dull and unoriginal. I’m very proud of my own prose style and many fans comment upon it.

Ramsey McDonald. Recognised by many as the master of horror. His short stories are the best in the genre.

Give me some advice about writing…

If you are not writing, you should be reading and vice versa. It takes hours and hours of writing to discover your “voice.” There is no short cut for this. You should also be well read in whatever genre you decide to write in. Not so you can copy others, but so you can avoid copying them. To stand out in today’s crowded marketplace, you must offer something utterly original.

 What’s next for you?

I am currently writing the third novel in the Paranormal Casebooks series, entitled, The Faerie Vortex. As you can guess from the title it’s about faeries. However, I always like to take an unconventional spin on whatever trope I use in my fiction. So these are not the Tinkerbell fairies of Disney, these are Faeries in the sense of The Fey: beings that are intimately linked with the Nether-realm that lies between life and death.

I’m also working on the plot of the fourth book in the Paranormal Casebooks series and when I’m not doing that I’m writing a collection of ghost stories.

***

The Angel Of Highgate is published by Titan Books on December 1st.

The Widow’s Confession – Sophia Tobin

Crime Thriller Fella was very happy to take part in The Widow’s Confession blog tour — that’s still perambulating around the countryside, I believe, if you want to catch up with it; you can find dates and places here — and took the opportunity to read the book in question.

And a very fine change of pace it was too. As you know, here at CTF we’re very contemporary fellows who enjoy the kiss kiss bang bang school of fiction, so this Victorian drama, with its tight corsets and stiff collars, was just the ticket to ease ourselves into the new year.

The blurb loves the view from the cliffs:

Broadstairs, Kent, 1851. Once a sleepy fishing village, now a select sea-bathing resort, this is a place where people come to take the air, and where they come to hide…

Delphine and her cousin Julia have come to the seaside with a secret, one they have been running from for years. The clean air and quiet outlook of Broadstairs appeal to them and they think this is a place they can hide from the darkness for just a little longer. Even so, they find themselves increasingly involved in the intrigues and relationships of other visitors to the town.

But this is a place with its own secrets, and a dark past. And when the body of a young girl is found washed up on the beach, a mysterious message scrawled on the sand beside her, the past returns to haunt Broadstairs and its inhabitants. As the incomers are drawn into the mystery and each others’ lives, they realise they cannot escape what happened here years before…

A compelling story of secrets, lies and lost innocence…

The Widow’s Confession is a love story — and a crime novel, of sorts, set in Charles Dickens’s resort of choice. The Goodwin Sands off the coast, where many a sea-faring soul has come to ruin, is a great metaphor for the treacherous psychological shifting sands that consume the characters.

The Widow’s Confession recounts the story of Delphine Beck, a disgraced American woman who is keeping her head down in the UK, accompanied by her cousin Julia. Delphine and Julia arrive for the summer in Broadstairs, where they reluctantly become part of a party of day-trippers, which includes the troubled priest Theo Hallam, a senior gentleman called Edmund Steele, and Miss Waring and her beautiful niece Alba. There’s also a gifted young painter called Ralph Benedict, with a touch of the rascal about him.

Many members of the party are haunted by tragic secrets and unresolved tensions, particularly Mr. Hallam, who’s got kind of a thing for Delphine, but who also has plenty of issues, and therefore is very unpleasant to her indeed. As if there isn’t enough strain between the incomers, every time someone suggests a nice day out they discover another young girl washed-up on the beach – deaded! There’s a killer roaming Broadstairs, who is leaving odd messages in the sand beside the unfortunate victims.

It’s all exceedingly genteel on the surface, but underneath… not so much. This is one of those novels that positively heaves with violent emotion, but it’s all packed down tightly , tamped beneath a heavy assortment of veils, corsets and widow’s weeds. The heavy baggage of these characters could slow a steam train.

Delphine is a very modern heroine, but she’s doomed by the conventions of the time to live in exile. Poor Mr. Hallam is positively crosseyed with guilt and lust – never an ideal combination – and Mr. Benedict’s embarrassing outbursts of temper invite as much opprobrium among the party as his eye for the ladies. So when the emotional moments do come — Delphine and Theo’s harsh words for each other are loaded with subtext — they hit you with the force of a sledgehammer.

The murder aspect of the narrative sometimes seems like a means to an end but the resolution is very satisfying and it dovetails nicely with the themes of the book. Sophia Tobin’s writing is both hugely atmospheric of the time and place, and archly knowing. The Widow’s Confession proved an enjoyable excursion into a totally alien world –- long lost now — which, behind the walks on the beach and afternoon tea and Sunday services, is molten to the touch.

Many thanks to Simon and Schuster for the review copy of The Widow’s Confession. Remember to scroll down a bit, a bit more, to see Sophia’s Guest Post about the inspiration for her Mr. Benedict.

Twist – Tom Grass

Twist by Tom Grass is a contemporary reimagining of Oliver Twist, by one Charles Dickens, in which a homeless young tagger and street artist falls in with a gang of art thieves to pull off an audacious art heist.

The blurb is reviewing the situation:

Eighteen-year-old Twist, one of the most daring street artists in London, doesn’t have much. No money, no home and no family. When he finds himself on the run from the police, Twist knows he’s about to lose the one thing he has left – his freedom.

That’s when he’s saved by the mysterious Dodge who introduces him to charismatic art ‘collector’ Cornelius Fagin and the beautiful but dangerous Red. Fagin has a big deal coming up involving the theft of a series of priceless paintings and Twist is just the man he needs for the job.

Twist is soon drawn deeper into the group and thinks he finally has the chance to be part of something. But as his feelings for Red grow, he discovers she has a secret – one that binds her to the bullying Bill Sikes and means that, unbeknownst to Fagin and the crew, they are no longer playing for money. They’re playing for their lives.

So a young whippersnapper has got his hands on a venerable old text and has the temerity to have fun with it. Twist is kind of like Dickens crossed with Grand Theft Auto. It’s a fast-moving and sly take on a timeless tale, even if the tone is a bit uneven.

The novel is a heist thriller, a love story, a cool Wallpaper style celebration of hoodie chic – is that magazine even still going? – and a gang melodrama. Author Grass has a background in film and computer games, so there’s a lot of free jumping and scrambling across rooftops and car chases, and suchlike. The set-pieces have plenty of exuberance about them – you can almost hear the drum and bass soundtrack kick in when the gang go to work – but the prose can get a bit tangled when it gets over excited.

Grass doesn’t lay the Dickensian social commentary on thick – there’s an enjoyably recycled tech noir feel to this tales of stolen artworks and Russian gangsters – but he’s clocked that the gap between the haves and the have-nots in London these days would make Dickens hold his head in his hands. So the action moves from condemned tower blocks in Newham and across the rooftops to fleshpots in Mayfair all the way up into the gleaming spire of the Shard. It’s all poverty and wealth, rooftops and pavements, and nothing in between.

There’s a lot to like here. Grass sets himself a tough ask with his double heists of six Hogarth prints – I’m a sucker for a good heist – and the thefts are clever and exciting. There’s a fevered description of a nasty Russian gangster’s lurid nightclub in which squid pump along transparent pipes.

I’m not sure I really cared about any of the characters, but they’re cleverly reimagined. Fagin, or FBoss as he’s known, is a Romanian thief, and his disintegrating relationship with his psychopathic former apprentice Sikes grows ever more fraught as Twist’s love for Red – that’s Nancy to you – develops.

At the end of it, you wonder why Grass doesn’t just go the whole hog and invent his own world and characters and be done with it, but I kind of have that opinion about any reimagining. I guess there’s life in the light-fingered urchin yet.

And, wait, a check on imdb tells us there’s a Twist movie in development. Yeah, drum ‘n’ bass loops, definitely.

Many thanks to Orion for the review copy.

The Intel: Barbara Nadel Reloaded

Crime Thriller Fella is taking a much-needed summer break. But don’t get down – we’re going to meet up again right here very soon. However, do keep coming back. Over the last year there’s been all sorts of stuff we’ve enjoyed plonking on the internet, and which you may have missed. This Intel interview with the excellent Barbara Nadel, for example…

We love writers here — I may have mentioned that before. With Barbara Nadel’s second Hakim and Arnold mystery, An Act Of Kindness, due to be published in paperback, Barbara kindly tells us about her new series of East End thrillers, her writing and why variety really is the spice of life.

Photo credit: Teri Varhol

As well as the Hakim And Arnold books — the first is A Private Business – Barbara has also written fifteen Inspector Ikmen novels, set in Turkey, and four books about undertaker Francis Hancock, set during the Blitz.

There’s a real sense of place in An Act Of Kindness. How would you describe the contemporary East End?

The contemporary East End I write about is a place that is changing fast. In a way this is in the tradition of the area which has always embraced new industries, innovation and immigration. However since the middle of the last decade and the coming of the Olympics, change has been very rapid and in some cases divisive. New cracks have appeared in the human make up of places like Newham which now run less along ethnic rather then income and social class lines.

You live in Lancashire now. How do you keep up with the extraordinary changes in the Upton Park area over the last few years?

I spend a lot of time in the East End and of course I have many contacts there. But it’s hard work and I’m moving much closer, to Essex, in June this year.

There’s a very real sense that the characters in the Hakim and Arnold books are struggling to keep their heads above water. How important is it to you that you address the grinding poverty in that part of London?

Addressing issues of poverty in my old home is very important to me. Newham has always been poor. When I was a child in the 1960s and 70s it was appallingly shabby and some people, including my own grandparents, lived in the kind of poverty that is more usually associated with Charles Dickens London.My own family had no proper heating, most people had outside toilets and we were all, often sick. But that was a long time and many advances in medicine and social care ago. Or is it?

One of the reasons I write the Hakim and Arnold books is to flag up the fact that for a lot of people in Newham very little has changed. In some cases things have got worse. And that offends me to the soul. If my stories can raise awareness of these issues as well as being good crime novels then I can feel I’ve done my job.

You’ve now three different series under your belt – the Inspector Ikmen, Francis Hancock, and Hakim and Arnold books. Do you thrive on the variety?

Yes I do thrive on variety. I’m a restless somewhat hyperactive person and I like to spread myself around. Crime is my first love but I have a fair few horror, magical and saga novels in my head (and some in an old drawer!) too. I’d also, at some time, like to take the Blue Badge London guide course as well. I’m told my unofficial tours of the East End are really great.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I generally get up early (about 6.30am) and then, if I can I go to the gym for an hour. I arrive home pretty wrecked if I’m honest but I have a shower and start writing at about 8. Then it’s straight through until 1 with about half an hour for lunch. I’ll usually work until 5 or 6 in the evening. Long hours and strict discipline for one so disorganised as myself but I do write two books a year and so it has to be this way.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

I’m quite left field and so I don’t tend to read a lot of hugely famous and successful crime novelists with the exception of Ian Rankin, James Lee Burke and Jeffrey Deaver. I love Rebus, adore James Lee Burke’s southern American vibe and just admire the hell out out Deaver’s plotting. But my read favourites include Lee Jackson’s London Victorian novels which remind me so much of the weird world of my death obsessed ancestors, Anya Lipska’s East End Polish novels which just reflect that world so accurately and I love the Hull novels of David Mark.

Outside crime I am a huge fan of Stephen King and I am an absolute Charles Dickens obsessive. Crime or not I like tales that include vignettes of everyday life and the struggles that afflict so many people in our apparently tidy world of Ikea and the school run. Not all lives include those things including my own!

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

That I’m not Marcel Proust. When I first wrote my first book ‘Belshazzar’s Daughter’ I thought  it was literary fiction. It wasn’t and isn’t and that’s OK but it was a shock at first!

How do you deal with feedback?

I like to be edited as it is my belief that an author can become too close to his or her work to be objective. I’m lucky inasmuch as I have always been edited sensitively and well. Predictably I take praise well and criticism less so. Although in my defence I have to say that I take constructive criticism well.

What I don’t like is when someone gives one of my books one star on Amazon reviews and then fails to review the book. To my mind that is cowardly and shows lack of courage of conviction. I would never do that to anyone however much I didn’t like their book. Every book has been written in good faith and deserves a truthful review even if it is negative.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

With regard to the Hakim and Arnold books the experiences that have most affected my writing are growing up in Newham and being poor. I’ve lived in damp, cramped slum landlord owned accommodation I’ve been a poor, far too young parent, I’ve been threatened by violent neighbours and exploited by criminal landlords. I know what it is like to be hungry and, like Mumtaz Hakim, I have been through the experience of being at risk of losing everything.

On another level as a graduate in psychology  who has worked for social services and in mental health services I  have met and worked with a vast range of people down on their luck and in poor health. I’ve worked with sexually abused teenagers, mentally ill in patients and offenders, drug dealers, prostitutes, immigrants (including those traumatised by the war in the former Yugoslavia) and of course social workers, doctors and the police.

Give me some advice about writing…

Don’t wait for the ‘muse’ to strike before you put pen to paper. Writing, except in very rare cases, really is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. Get going!

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace…

Find your own niche and make it yours. Don’t try to be the next anyone, be yourself and write what you care about. If you care enough then that will transfer to the reader.

What’s next for you?

Next for me is building my Hakim and Arnold series and putting those parts of Newham that are not the Olympic stadia or Westfield Shopping Centre on the map. I’d like to see my headscafed detective on TV or film – it’s about time that happened. As an aside I did some tour guiding for one of the script writers on the new Newham based fire service drama The Smoke last year, and so we’re getting there.

Apart from that I’m working on a new Ikmen novel set in Turkey last year during the Gezi Park protests. That’s a challenge! And then of course in a couple of months I have to move.  As I said before, I’m hyperactive…

***

We’ll be reviewing An Act Of Kindness at Crime Thriller Fella next week — look out for that.

The Intel: Barbara Nadel

We love writers here — I may have mentioned that before. With Barbara Nadel’s second Hakim and Arnold mystery, An Act Of Kindness, due to be published in paperback, Barbara kindly tells us about her new series of East End thrillers, her writing and why variety really is the spice of life.

Photo credit: Teri Varhol

As well as the Hakim And Arnold books — the first is A Private Business – Barbara has also written fifteen Inspector Ikmen novels, set in Turkey, and four books about undertaker Francis Hancock, set during the Blitz.

There’s a real sense of place in An Act Of Kindness. How would you describe the contemporary East End?

The contemporary East End I write about is a place that is changing fast. In a way this is in the tradition of the area which has always embraced new industries, innovation and immigration. However since the middle of the last decade and the coming of the Olympics, change has been very rapid and in some cases divisive. New cracks have appeared in the human make up of places like Newham which now run less along ethnic rather then income and social class lines.

You live in Lancashire now. How do you keep up with the extraordinary changes in the Upton Park area over the last few years?

I spend a lot of time in the East End and of course I have many contacts there. But it’s hard work and I’m moving much closer, to Essex, in June this year.

There’s a very real sense that the characters in the Hakim and Arnold books are struggling to keep their heads above water. How important is it to you that you address the grinding poverty in that part of London?

Addressing issues of poverty in my old home is very important to me. Newham has always been poor. When I was a child in the 1960s and 70s it was appallingly shabby and some people, including my own grandparents, lived in the kind of poverty that is more usually associated with Charles Dickens London.My own family had no proper heating, most people had outside toilets and we were all, often sick. But that was a long time and many advances in medicine and social care ago. Or is it?

One of the reasons I write the Hakim and Arnold books is to flag up the fact that for a lot of people in Newham very little has changed. In some cases things have got worse. And that offends me to the soul. If my stories can raise awareness of these issues as well as being good crime novels then I can feel I’ve done my job.

You’ve now three different series under your belt – the Inspector Ikmen, Francis Hancock, and Hakim and Arnold books. Do you thrive on the variety?

Yes I do thrive on variety. I’m a restless somewhat hyperactive person and I like to spread myself around. Crime is my first love but I have a fair few horror, magical and saga novels in my head (and some in an old drawer!) too. I’d also, at some time, like to take the Blue Badge London guide course as well. I’m told my unofficial tours of the East End are really great.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I generally get up early (about 6.30am) and then, if I can I go to the gym for an hour. I arrive home pretty wrecked if I’m honest but I have a shower and start writing at about 8. Then it’s straight through until 1 with about half an hour for lunch. I’ll usually work until 5 or 6 in the evening. Long hours and strict discipline for one so disorganised as myself but I do write two books a year and so it has to be this way.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

I’m quite left field and so I don’t tend to read a lot of hugely famous and successful crime novelists with the exception of Ian Rankin, James Lee Burke and Jeffrey Deaver. I love Rebus, adore James Lee Burke’s southern American vibe and just admire the hell out out Deaver’s plotting. But my read favourites include Lee Jackson’s London Victorian novels which remind me so much of the weird world of my death obsessed ancestors, Anya Lipska’s East End Polish novels which just reflect that world so accurately and I love the Hull novels of David Mark.

Outside crime I am a huge fan of Stephen King and I am an absolute Charles Dickens obsessive. Crime or not I like tales that include vignettes of everyday life and the struggles that afflict so many people in our apparently tidy world of Ikea and the school run. Not all lives include those things including my own!

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

That I’m not Marcel Proust. When I first wrote my first book ‘Belshazzar’s Daughter’ I thought  it was literary fiction. It wasn’t and isn’t and that’s OK but it was a shock at first!

How do you deal with feedback?

I like to be edited as it is my belief that an author can become too close to his or her work to be objective. I’m lucky inasmuch as I have always been edited sensitively and well. Predictably I take praise well and criticism less so. Although in my defence I have to say that I take constructive criticism well.

What I don’t like is when someone gives one of my books one star on Amazon reviews and then fails to review the book. To my mind that is cowardly and shows lack of courage of conviction. I would never do that to anyone however much I didn’t like their book. Every book has been written in good faith and deserves a truthful review even if it is negative.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

With regard to the Hakim and Arnold books the experiences that have most affected my writing are growing up in Newham and being poor. I’ve lived in damp, cramped slum landlord owned accommodation I’ve been a poor, far too young parent, I’ve been threatened by violent neighbours and exploited by criminal landlords. I know what it is like to be hungry and, like Mumtaz Hakim, I have been through the experience of being at risk of losing everything.

On another level as a graduate in psychology  who has worked for social services and in mental health services I  have met and worked with a vast range of people down on their luck and in poor health. I’ve worked with sexually abused teenagers, mentally ill in patients and offenders, drug dealers, prostitutes, immigrants (including those traumatised by the war in the former Yugoslavia) and of course social workers, doctors and the police.

Give me some advice about writing…

Don’t wait for the ‘muse’ to strike before you put pen to paper. Writing, except in very rare cases, really is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. Get going!

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace…

Find your own niche and make it yours. Don’t try to be the next anyone, be yourself and write what you care about. If you care enough then that will transfer to the reader.

What’s next for you?

Next for me is building my Hakim and Arnold series and putting those parts of Newham that are not the Olympic stadia or Westfield Shopping Centre on the map. I’d like to see my headscafed detective on TV or film – it’s about time that happened. As an aside I did some tour guiding for one of the script writers on the new Newham based fire service drama The Smoke last year, and so we’re getting there.

Apart from that I’m working on a new Ikmen novel set in Turkey last year during the Gezi Park protests. That’s a challenge! And then of course in a couple of months I have to move.  As I said before, I’m hyperactive…

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We’ll be reviewing An Act Of Kindness at Crime Thriller Fella next week — look out for that.