The first notion I had for A Small Death in Lisbon was that it would be a thriller based on Nazi gold. There was substantial proof that Portugal and Spain had been two of the main thoroughfares for looted European gold and I thought there had to be a story in this. I was with my wife in a London library researching for an African book and I asked her to cross reference Nazi gold with Portugal and see what she came up with. In fact she was back in minutes with the first book she had opened which had a piece about Portuguese gold reserves going up seven fold during WW2 all due to a product called wolfram. Great. But what is wolfram? Wolfram proved to be tungsten an alloy used for hardening metals to make into tank armour, armour piercing shell heads, cannon barrels etc. At that moment I realised I had the hook on which to hang the story.
The ideas grew from that point. I decided after endless discussion with my wife, that I would have one story which would be third person, huge, epic and brimming with Portugal's very interesting history during the war and then afterwards leading up to the 1974 revolution. The other story would be told through the first person voice of a detective who was investigating the murder of a young girl in modern day Lisbon. These two apparently disparate stories would then miraculously link up…somehow.
As I became more involved with the story and the characters, themes began to build: for instance the idea of history, not as dry, dead facts laid down in books, but as a living, personal experience, whose good and evil was passed on from generation to generation. Hitler's thirst for revenge for the way in which Germany was treated after their defeat in WW1 was no different from the need for revenge of many of my characters, although clearly the effects were more devastating with his kind of power. I saw revenge as a cycle, each act triggered another. I also saw that in life and history everybody has a choice. They could be active or passive. They could see or ignore. They could decide that their need for revenge must be satisfied or that the cycle could be broken. It was all hugely ambitious and my nerve wavered throughout the eight months it took me to write the book. Eventually I seemed to hit some kind of twilight zone where all the characters were so deeply embedded in the story that they began to dictate how things should go. It was like being the conductor of an orchestra where the musicians suddenly became a part of the music and they no longer needed to look up for instruction, they knew what they were doing and where they were going.
There were two writers in particular who influenced me, both inimitable. To show how late I came into reading crime, the first Raymond Chandler novel I read was when I was thirty-four years old and that was the epiphany for me. If you can still capture people's imagination and make them laugh fifty years on, you are doing something extraordinary. He was the initial inspiration because he introduced me to noir. I wanted to write a noir series and I believed that West Africa was the best setting. It was exotic, extreme (wealth/poverty), had an appalling climate, both weather and political, and was peopled by some of the shadiest characters I've ever come across. I felt that Chandler's particular brand of noir writing lent itself to this setting: highly descriptive with sharp, dry dialogue. What I had on my side was that I would never be imitating Chandler because he always wrote about LA and I was, and still am, truly inspired by West Africa, its people and its cities. So although my African series was Chandleresque, very few commentators picked up on him as one of my influences. The other influence was Elmore Leonard. What is particularly interesting about his work, apart from being massively entertaining, is technique. He has developed this 'subjective third person', which gives him the extraordinary benefits of being able to tell a story in the third person: being able to come at it from all angles, but also, by going into various characters' heads and giving their point of view, he has gained the immediacy of the first person too. I've never tried to imitate this technique but it has inspired me to experiment and not always tread the same path. He is also a master of economy and one of the few writers who can grab you with the first line and haul you in.
The way I came into crime/thriller writing was through writing pieces about my travelling experiences, especially in Africa. A friend of mine, who was writing crime novels in Australia, read some of these pieces and thought I should have a go at crime thrillers. These travel pieces were more about people in strange places than they were about actual travel and I do remember them with affection although I never look back. The only novel prior to Instruments of Darkness was my first attempt at writing noir in an African setting and, not only is it not in a bottom drawer, it has already found its way into the fire-lighting equipment and will never be seen again.
As you've probably gathered from my earlier admissions, I was never a crime buff but I have always been a writing buff. I'm always interested in writers who can say things differently, make things you've seen before feel fresh, have new and interesting perspectives and ideas. Because I started off by writing noir I was more immediately drawn to the Americans. James Ellroy in his retro-noir novels uses language in a very powerful way. I read The Big Nowhere and it encouraged me to read The Black Dahlia as well. He's a good writer but one with the alarming habit of detonating his plots half way through, savagely ripping out a main character and leaving one destitute. Elmore Leonard is out there on his own. Since I finished my Bruce Medway series I have been working more in the crime/thriller genre which has lead me to writers such as Robert Harris, whose phenomenal creation of the scenario in Fatherland encouraged me to read his other two. I liked Philip Kerr's earlier work, especially A Philosophical Investigation. I came across a very impressive storyteller last year, sent to me by a bookseller: An Operational Necessity by Gwyn Griffin, who was writing in the 60s - a gripping, moral and moving tale of the horrific decisions that have to be taken in wartime and their repercussions. In terms of pure crime I read very little, but I think Ian Rankin is a very generous writer, you never come away from one of his feeling short-changed on any level. Val McDermid's books have tremendous narrative drive and Reginald Hill crafts his work with the expertise and detail of a master cabinet-maker. Outside the thriller genre I always read Martin Amis, William Boyd, John Banville and Ian McEwan. Tim Winton, the Australian writer, is excellent too. I was knocked out by Pat Barker's trilogy, am a big fan of Anne Tyler, think Toni Morrison is one of those writers who just fills you with ideas, was mesmerised by The God of Small Things and think Lorrie Moore is one of the funniest (and wackiest) short story writers I've ever come across.
A writer will only ever write with conviction about stuff that matters to him or her. If you are interested in politics your work will always have a political dimension. If you are particularly supportive of a party, or hold extreme views, this will inevitably find its way into your work. Crime writing tends to be about society, and politics affects all aspects of society so it would be unusual for a crime writer to manage an apolitical stance. Politics being the devious business it is, it offers the opportunity to work that old theme of appearance and reality.
The African novels were written in a completely different way to A Small Death in Lisbon. With them I just started writing with the very barest of bones for a story. Characters would develop, some would stay, others would fall by the wayside, sometimes a minor character would come to the fore and vice versa. At about half way I would stop and see what I'd got. I would then plan to the end of the book and do any necessary reworking of the first half. It was laborious but it meant that there was always the opportunity for the unexpected to happen, and what's a crime novel without that? A Small Death in Lisbon was a more complicated affair and required a detailed plan, not only to sell the idea but also to work from. This detailed plan was however a long way from the finished book. I did a lot of research but that was mainly because there was very little written about the period - 1940s Portugal. Censorship was then government policy and locals were not in the habit of keeping diaries. I worked hard to find interesting nuggets of fact but I worked even harder to make them into stories. Of the research I did, I barely used ten percent, the rest was imagination.
My working regime usually starts at 5.30am and I work until midday. In the summer I have a siesta and then have an afternoon/evening session. Creative work is only ever done in the morning. The afternoon is reserved for research and typing up. I always write the first draft long hand, that way I don't have too much faith in it. I start the day by rewriting the previous day's work and then I put down anything from 500 to 1,000 words of first draft material. When I transfer to the computer, every word and line goes through a process of reading and rereading until I'm satisfied that it's smooth. I personally put the work through a minimum of four drafts. It will then go through several others when my wife, editor and copy editor read it. When I'm not actually at the desk working I spend at least two hours of the day just thinking about the story, a scene, or the next day's work. When I first went into writing I didn't envisage it as such an all out effort: I imagined a lounger on a terrace with ice cold beer on tap being a feature of the working day, but it hasn't quite turned out that way.
I am interested in film. I see a movie a week. Because there isn't much choice where I live I go to see anything they put on. I'm not sure that by going to the movies it will help you write something that a production company would want to buy. Most movies are derived from books but because the art of screenwriting is a completely different discipline to novel writing, I find it fascinating to see the difference in the product. The two outstanding scripts so far this year for me have been American Beauty and Sixth Sense which were completely different movies (the former stylised and artistic the latter commercial) but were both accomplished pieces of screenwriting.
They say great books make poor movies and weak books, great movies. It seems ridiculous to say it but… films are short and books are long. Often a great and complex book defeats the film-maker because they try to do too much whereas from the weaker book it might be easier to extract the kernel. Anthony Minghella didn't try to film The English Patient he took the filmable elements and made them into a great movie.
I think a sense of setting is probably the most important thing to start with, an atmosphere that I can enter into wholly. Once I have that inside me the characters seem to form, and if they're good characters they will move the plot of their own accord. Before I started writing I never thought that story was such an important element. It was certainly the weakest discipline for me. Now I see it as perhaps the most important aspect of a novel because I think most readers want story above all else. Even the most sophisticated reader finds a good story difficult to resist and if you look at the great writers of the last 150 years - Austen, Eliot, Dickens, Hemingway, Greene - they could all tell a good story. Nowadays modern storytelling demands that the writer tells the story through the action. Certainly readers of genre fiction don't want to spend an excessive amount of time in analysis. This is something that's changed since the 1960s and 70s where, for instance, Le Carré would move his plot along in inches while giving in-depth characterisation. His novels were almost all character but they clearly suited the times. I'm not sure we have the patience for that now. The three second culture and all that.
My first real inspiration for a setting came when I was travelling through Africa. Those West African cities (Lomé, Accra, Abidjan, Cotonou, Lagos) were all extraordinarily vital locations. They were not places to which you would have no reaction. They demanded your attention whether it was to be disgusted and horrified or amazed and overjoyed. There was very little middle road in any of those places, or if there was I never found it, not even amongst the most anodyne of the expat community.
Lisbon is another city with a very strong atmosphere. There's a tremendous sense of activity but it's also cut with a deep melancholy. It's also a place with noticeable differences in character between each section of town, perhaps something to do with its wild and extremely hilly geography.
I'm particularly drawn to Spanish cities at the moment.
The most difficult thing about getting a book published is that you believe it's been published because it is good. You therefore believe that naturally the publisher will throw their weight behind it. This is not always true. Nowadays, since publishers have become conglomerates, they do not always have a marketing budget for every writer. You have to prove yourself first, normally with great reviews but preferably with sales, and not only that, you have to have people on the inside who are selling your genius to marketing and advertising directors. There will inevitably be disappointments in this sort of regime. I've enjoyed a steady climb in profile in my six years at HarperCollins. My editor has always sold me hard internally, and gradually the marketing people have responded by giving me support. There are times when I would have wanted it to be quicker but in retrospect I've come to see everything as earned.
The number of times commentators have said that such and such technology will be the end of the book, and what's happening? There are more and bigger book stores, book clubs are still thriving and high technology is now actually helping sell books through on-line book stores. There has been talk of the plastic electronic book onto whose pages you can download from the net the latest offering of your favourite writer. I can see this having some appeal to beach readers or people who don't form any emotional attachment to books. I have a friend, for instance, who, when he finishes paperbacks, throws them away and the cleaner, appalled and mystified by this practice, retrieves them from the bin. My friend is interested in the words not the books, his cleaner regards books as sacrosanct. Reading will always be important. People read from the Internet all the time. Books will always be bought because they are one of the most mobile forms of entertainment going and, in a world in which TV is moving rapidly towards pay-per-view for almost everything, cheap too.
I think a strong sense of the presence of good and evil is certainly helpful in writing crime, as is a moral stance. In the African books I wrote about the voodoo religion which, you may be surprised to learn, is the official religion of the Republic of Benin where Bruce Medway lived. The Western view of voodoo is that it is essentially summoning up bad spirits, which is not the case. It is a religion in which there is communication with ancestors and animistic deities some of which can be bad but of course others are good. It is an immensely powerful spiritual world and should not be taken lightly. Africans are deeply respectful of voodoo even if they are Catholics, Muslims or Anglicans themselves. Many practice both. I found it fascinating that my African characters could draw on the darker side of voodoo powers to help them in the struggle against evil.
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