The Intel: Tom Callaghan

Earlier in the week we walked the charming streets of Bishkek in Tom Callaghan’s excellent debut, A Killing Winter, which features the debut of Inspector Akyl Borubaev. Callaghan’s brutal post-Soviet noir is brutal and muscular and funny. In a corrupt state full of bad eggs, Borubaev is as hardboiled as they come.

We promised you Tom Callaghan would give you the intel on Borubaev, Kyrgyzstan and his writing, and here at Crime Thriller Fella, we deliver. Born in the North of England, Callaghan is quite the gadabout. An inveterate traveller, he divides his time between London, Prague, Dubai and Bishkek. Me, I get a nose-bleed crossing postcodes.

Tell us about Akyl Borubaev.

Inspector Akyl Borubaev of the Bishkek Murder Squad in Kyrgyzstan is tough, honest and dedicated. Having recently lost his wife to breast cancer, he is in mourning, unsure that he does any good, caught in a deep depression. But the murders continue, and he has to solve them.

Where did you get the inspiration for A Winter Killing?

I’ve always loved crime fiction, hard-boiled noir for preference, and so that was always going to be the kind of book I’d write. But who needs another crime book set in NYC, or LA, or Miami? Kyrgyzstan is an unknown place, with a lot of problems – what more could a crime writer ask for? As for the plot; (whispers) I made it up.

In the novel, Kyrgyzstan is a state engulfed by gangsters, corruption and sleaze – what do you think the good citizens of Bishkek would make of it?

After two revolutions in ten years, it’s clear that the Kyrgyz will put up with a lot as long as there is food on the table, but when corruption becomes too overt, they act.

What’s your own relationship with the country?

I was married to a Kyrgyz woman, I have a Kyrgyz son, and a home in Bishkek. It’s a country I love, for its beauty, for its culture, for its people. It’s a unique place, in an increasingly homogenised world.

It’s a very timely novel, what with many of the post-Soviet satellite countries afraid that Russia is flexing its muscles again. What do you think the future holds for Kyrgyzstan?

Now that the US air base at Manas has closed, following troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and with Kyrgyzstan signing trade agreements with Russia over import and export tariffs, people are worried about a decline in living standards. Only time will tell. But I don’t see Putin moving eastwards.

How did the spellchecker on your computer cope with some of the more challenging, consonant-heavy names?

I ignore it: I know how to spell, to parse a sentence and the rules of grammar. Orwell’s rules are ones I live by.

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

Laundry and doing dishes always seems more important when you stare at a blank screen.

How do you deal with feedback?

As a professional writer, I have no problems with other people reading what I’ve written. I like to think I’m reasonable and open-minded to fair comment. At the same time, I’ll defend my work if I think I’m right. If I can improve my work through someone else’s suggestions, I will.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

The Classics: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson. Murder taken out of the drawing room and put down a dark alleyway, where it belongs.

The Hard-Boiled Americans: Lawrence Block, James Lee Burke, Robert Campbell, Michael Connolly, Robert Crais, James Ellroy, Carl Hiassen, Joe R. Lansdale, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, George Pelecanos, Peter Spiegelman, Andrew Vachss. Crisp dialogue, more twists and turns than an electric eel, great locations.

The Bold Brits: Mark Billingham, John Connolly (alright, Irish, but I had to list him somewhere), John Harvey, Mo Hayder, Simon Kernick, Val Mcdermid, Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson. Murder doesn’t just happen in the USA, you know.

Foreign Settings: John Burdett (Thailand), Sebastian Fitzek (Germany), Stieg Larrson and Henning Mankell (Sweden), Jo Nesbo (Norway), Mike Nichol (S Africa). Because murder happens to non-English speakers as well.

What’s next for you?

The sequel, A Spring Betrayal, is with my agent and publisher, both of whom are very encouraging, and I’m plotting the third book now. Both of them feature Akyl Borubaev. A Killing Winter is already out in German, UK paperback and US publication is in the autumn, and Spanish and Portuguese editions follow next year.

Give me some advice about writing…

Don’t talk about it  –  nothing diminishes the desire to write as quickly as having told everybody the story. Read a lot. I mean a LOT. Read every day. Write every day. Ask for criticism, not praise; that’s what mirrors are for.

Follow Kingsley Amis’ advice: apply the seat of your trousers to the seat of your chair. Learn to spell and use grammar correctly; if you can’t make yourself clearly understood, how is your reader going to cope? Love one genre, but explore others; everything is an ingredient, to use or not, as you see fit.

Try not to be afraid of the blank page/screen, but don’t be over-confident either.

A Killing Winter – Tom Callaghan

I think we can safely say that we’ve hit peak Soviet Detective — been there, done that, let’s move on –- but Tom Callaghan’s hugely enjoyable debut A Killing Winter puts new meat on some old bones.

His debut detective Akyl Borubeav walks the mean post-Soviet streets of Kyrgyzstan —  and the streets of Bishkek are meaner than most.

The blurb needs a snifter:

‘The Kyrgyz winter reminds us that the past is never dead, simply waiting to ambush us around the next corner’.

When Inspector Akyl Borubaev of Bishkek Murder Squad arrives at the brutal murder scene of a young woman, all evidence hints at a sadistic serial killer on the hunt for more prey.

But when the young woman’s father turns out to be a leading government minister, the pressure is on Borubaev to solve the case not only quickly but also quietly, by any means possible. Until more bodies are found…

Still in mourning after his wife’s recent death, Borubaev descends into Bishkek’s brutal underworld, a place where no-one and nothing is as it seems, where everyone is playing for the highest stakes, and where violence is the only solution.

Bishkek, as filtered through Tom Callaghan’s wicked imagination, is a brutally corrupt place where everything and everyone is going to hell in a handcart. Borubaev finds himself caught between vicious gangsters and the implacable cruelty of the toxic state apparatus, which busies itself with clinging to power. Its citizens are dropping like flies thanks to a poisonous new drug called Krokodil, which literally makes bits of you fall off.

The foul stench of corruption pervades every page of A Killing Winter — after sampling some choice Bishkek nightlife over a couple of chapters, you’ll be scratching your groin and brushing your teeth to get the fetid stench of vodka off your breath.

The melancholy and cynical inspector Borubaev, our first-person companion,  is, of course, a kind of compromised old knight in the noir style. Following the death of his beloved wife, he’s trying desperately to pull his shit together. He’s the only person trying to stay off the vodka in a society which is drowning in it, as he trudges through the snow-covered streets moving from one consonant-heavy place to another, meeting charming ladies and gentlemen. Callaghan flips a few other noir archetypes on their head in the shape of the deadly femme-fatale Saltanat and Borubaev’s amiable gangster chum Kursan.

Kyrgzstan is a terrifically compromised state, forever on the verge of the kind of revolution that inevitably puts the same people back in power, bickering with its Uzbek neighbour,  and – very topical, this – attempting to stay under the radar of the Russian and Chinese superpowers that border it. What the good citizens of Bishkek must make of Callaghan’s portrayal of their city, which is both repellent and sentimental, god only knows

If the central mystery stumbles towards the end, then the journey is still hugely enjoyable. Callaghan is a hell of a writer, with a tremendous sense of pace and an arch ear for juicy dialogue, and the pages flies by. On the basis of this novel, however, I will not be saving up my air miles.

Many thanks to Quercus for the review copy, and I’m delighted to say that Tom Callaghan gives us the intel on Borubaev, Kyrgzstan, and the business of writing, later in the week.