The Eclectic Margaret Murphy

Margaret Murphy

Just because she's one of CT's most valued contributors doesn't mean we can't ask Margaret Murphy to talk about her own non-pareil crime-writing…

Macmillan have published Past Reason, which begins with a young boy, found wandering the streets of Liverpool in his night-clothes, traumatised and mute. He is allocated to foster-carers Jenny and Fraser. Jenny's concern for the boy grows when she senses he is anxious around her husband.

The story came into being as the result of a strange phone call. I had been on a regional TV news programme the night before - you know the sort of item - Local Teacher has Murderous Imagination... The next day, the school was bombarded with telephone calls from a man insisting he must talk to me. He wouldn't leave a message. When he finally caught up with me, 'Mr Hunter' claimed to be a private detective working for someone who was trying to trace their natural parents.

'What?' I said, 'And you think I may be one of the parents?' He did. I had to disappoint him: I don't have any children. He hung up before I could ask him all the questions I should have asked before answering his question. The call bugged me until I came up with an idea to work it into a story. Mr Hunter features in Past Reason, as a shadowy figure who telephones Jenny, the heroine, and triggers painful memories for her.

I had the notion that one of the characters might recover memories of past abuse, but when I did the background research, it became more and more apparent that recovered memories are the result of suggestion and coercion. Memory is fallible, and no matter how fervently we believe something, it doesn't make it true. So my plot line on recovered memory became one on false memory.

This gave me a whole new strand within the novel - one reason why research is essential for me and can be so exciting. The story became an interweaving of the characters' perceptions of their past; how they remember or misremember events.

So saying, I can't be sure how reliable my memories of wanting to write are, but (if you'll believe me) the desire goes right back to my childhood. I didn't do much about it in my youth, beyond a few faltering efforts in my late teens, but the hankering after authorship remained with me throughout my adult life - a yearning for the click of the keyboard, and a legitimate excuse to daydream.

In my early thirties I was seriously ill, and there's nothing like a serious illness to force you to take stock. As I gradually recovered, I made the decision to write a short story. It ended up at around 40 000 words! I'm not a great talker, but I suppose you could say I'm one of those people to whom writing gives a voice.

My first novel was rejected, as were my second and third, but I don't consider the effort wasted. Some editors (and when I gave up on the editors' slush pile, agents) were kind enough to comment on the books; sometimes only a line, but I was hungry for feedback and I was grateful for every crumb. In the main, they were encouraging, but I had missed the mark in terms of genre. My second (unpublished) novel was described as "not dark enough to be horror, but too dark to be a convincing thriller". The same editor also observed, however, that "Murphy can write", a comment I hung onto as a lifeline for months after. In fact, I framed the letter and it hangs in my study, even now. Sad, huh? Anyway, the important thing is each unpublished book taught me something new - I'm still learning now - and rather than sit around biting my nails, waiting for the publishers to reply, I simply got on with the next. It was a long slog before I was accepted, five years after starting that 'short' story.

I didn't set out with the intention of writing crime fiction; My first and third (unpublished) books were both techno-thrillers - I am science trained, and my interest in biotechnology was a big influence. Goodnight My Angel was going to be a supernatural story, until my agent suggested it might be crime. She can be very persuasive, and I agreed to think about it. When I looked at the story from the new angle of crime, it opened up so many possibilities I couldn't resist! The novel was accepted by Macmillan, and since it was short-listed for the First Blood Award for debut crime novels, I am glad I persevered.

I get on well with my editor, and I've been fortunate in the rapidly changing world of publishing to have remained with the same editor for all four of my books. She has a light touch, but has suggested some structural changes at the editing stage which have been very effective. Sometimes it might be moving a scene forward in the narrative, increasing the impact, or something as simple as deleting a line or two may heighten the tension of a scene.

After I decided that crime fiction was an attractive prospect, my agent advised me to catch up on what was happening in crime fiction. I had filched my parents' collection of Desmond Bagley, Alastair MacLean, G K Chesterton and Agatha Christie in my youth, and enjoyed them hugely, but I wanted deeper characterisation than thrillers would allow and I wasn't interested in writing elegant puzzles set in comfortable middle class settings, so I was concerned that crime fiction would be too narrow a furrow to plough. I was delighted to discover that the genre has expanded enormously. It is diverse and vibrant, and while the classic 'cozy', still exists, the genre is a much broader church these days - and one that tolerates heretics. I am confident it will provide enough variety of scenarios and levels of expression to keep me happy for the next millennium!

I'm an eclectic reader - some might say disorganised - and I often have three books on the go at any one time, not including factual texts for research. I'm a great admirer of John Banville, whose carefully crafted prose and wonderful use of simile can make me sigh with pleasure.

For me, Thomas Harris is the master of the crime genre - his insight into the minds of serial killers is unparalleled; he also creates characters with whom you can empathise: I'm talking about Will Graham and Clarice Starling rather than Hannibal Lecter, although he gives Lecter admirable qualities too - no bad guys in black hats for Mr Harris. I hugely enjoyed Liza Cody's Bucketnut for it's innovative qualities, and I admire the wit and humour in Val McDermid's Brannigan novels. Reg Hill can evoke, with enviable facility, the nature of the inhabitants as well as the meanness of the scene in a deceptively simple description of something as prosaic as smoke rising from a chimney pot. John Harvey's Resnick series have a seedy nostalgia I find peculiarly alluring, but I suppose the writers who have most influenced my style are Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine), and Patricia Highsmith's psychological novels - I couldn't take to her Ripley yarns.

It puzzles me when writers say they don't read in case they are influenced by others' work: musicians, artists, film-makers all recognise the importance of their antecedents, and for me, the best way to learn your craft is by reading good writers within the genre - it doesn't necessarily follow that your writing will be imitative.

Long before I started writing, I read books on psychology. I went through a bad relationship in my early twenties, and the reading helped me to make sense of my partner's behaviour as well as my own tolerance of it - it also provided acres of material for my novels! I tried to get on an MA course in criminal psychology (that's how obsessive I can be), but they lost my application... I was seriously pissed off for a day or so, until I decided to apply for an MA in writing. It's helped fill in all those gaps in my education caused by my dropping English after O Level - I now understand what people mean when they talk about structure. I spent the first year of the course adapting Goodnight, My Angel for screen, which although it wasn't accepted by any of the TV companies, taught me a lot about plot and dialogue.

I was frequently asked by others on the course, 'Why on earth do you need to do a course in writing? You're already published.' Insecurity, perhaps to an extent, but also ambition; you can't afford to stagnate in the publishing business: first you write a book, then try to find a publisher willing to take it on, then you have to write another - only this one has to be better than the first, after which you try to build a reputation.

This is far more difficult than I imagined it would be. Publishers do not, as a rule, invest money in marketing a new author, and for the first three books I had no marketing budget at all. The reasons are complex: publishers say they need a base of material, and preferably a portfolio of good reviews before they can start hyping an author - a rational argument, but cold comfort for the struggling tyro.

Humphrey Carpenter in the autumn issue of The Author asks why literary festivals promote the big authors while ignoring the unknowns: film and music festivals are showcases for newcomers as well as for the big names, and film companies will go to see the low budget films to sniff out new talent; not so Cheltenham and Hay-on-Wye. Perhaps it is the ephemeral nature of both film and music, coupled with the huge profits that can be made short-term which makes the producers sit up and take notice of newcomers - it takes much longer to establish a reputation as a writer - but since I've already been around longer than the average 18 months life span of most pop groups, I'll settle for what I've got. Someone once said to me that the being a writer was like riding a roller-coaster, but when you look at it from this perspective, it's more like a slow climb up a sheer rock face. You do need a level of determination - some might even say insane optimism - to succeed. But enthusiasm alone isn't enough, you also need discipline.

I don't have the sort of discipline that allows me to write Monday to Friday, 9-5, with weekends off. That smacks of school, demands for the essay of the season. I never could perform on cue, or to others' stipulations, and my English teacher was generally disappointed by my creative writing submissions. No - I mean the sort of discipline you need to write when you would rather be doing something else, sticking with it when the going is tough.

I have a sprawling working day: usually I'll do a few hours in the morning and take a break for lunch, but I'll often interrupt myself with domestic tasks, to check my email, or make a phone call. I researched study skills when I was still teaching full time, and apart from those magic occasions when the creative juices flow and the pages seem to write themselves, I firmly believe that working beyond the concentration span of about 30 minutes without a break is counter-productive. I try and do another couple of hours in the afternoon. I teach between 4 and 6 p.m. - I'm a trained dyslexia tutor - and after the evening meal I'll often settle down to another hour or two. The evening is my most creative time, and I often get my best ideas just as I'm drifting off to sleep - which can lead to a lot of lost sleep in a particularly productive phase!

The novel I'm currently working on is set in a school. Like many schools, it has its drugs subculture, but things go tragically wrong when an apparent drugs experiment results in the death of one of the boys. One of the teachers doesn't believe it was an accident, however, and she puts herself in danger when she tries to investigate. I left mainstream teaching eighteen months ago and didn't consider setting a novel in a school for at least a year after I left - I couldn't have been objective about the setting if I'd tried to write it immediately after I'd quit my job: I need distance between me and the subject.

I enjoy teaching, especially now I'm in control of how much work I do, and I have never regretted the switch from teaching biology to tutoring children who are dyslexic. For me, reading is as natural as breathing. I grew up in a big family: eight brothers and sisters in a four bedroom terrace, so there wasn't much space for privacy, or much opportunity for quiet reflection, but I could escape entirely into a book - I mean I was in that other country, I was gone... But many dyslexic children are actually frightened of books - I've seen a nine year old hyperventilate when she was asked to read - and they can't even gain the basic benefits of the written word. These children are discriminated against at every turn because in school we communicate through text, and we assess using written tests, so a child who is talented in science or history is denied access to higher grades, not because they can't answer the question, but because they can't read it. I teach only a small number of children, but they are boys and girls who would otherwise be allowed to fail before anything was done to help them.

Teaching provides a break from the intensity of writing, but when I've finished tutoring, I can easily switch back into the dark, dangerous side of the human psyche. The sinister aspects of humanity perplex me, and my books reflect this preoccupation. I was interviewed by Counselling News last year; the journalist told me that the themes of alienation and repression are present in all of my novels. It's not something I set out to do, but I suppose the subconscious finds outlets for its own pre-occupations. The psychology of what motivates the killer, and how the survivors of violent crime cope with the aftermath are both strong elements in my fiction.