Leigh Russell's fans range from Jeffrey Deaver to a Dalek. And her first novel, 'Cut Short', has just been nominated for the prestigious CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an award whose previous winners include Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, Louise Welsh and Denise Mina.
Cut Short (July 2009) is the first of two psychological thrillers starring DI Geraldine Steel and was described by Jeffery Deaver as, 'a stylish, top-of-the-line crime tale, a seamless blending of psychological sophistication and gritty police procedure.' Road Closed (June 2010) received glowing reviews, from the renowned Times critic Marcel Berlins amongst others, and Dead End will be published in June 2011.
'I had a phone call from my publisher about the New Blood Dagger and I was sworn to secrecy because it was about a week before the announcement,' Leigh tells me excitedly over coffee. We're in a snug in the aptly named Heights Bar on the 15th floor of St Georges Hotel off the top end of Regent Street. Through the plate-glass window we have stupendous views over London's West End.
'I did tell my husband and my publisher joked, "If he talks you might have to kill him!" It was a week of excitement but I couldn't tell anyone. It reached the stage where I told myself I must put it out of mind.'
Leigh was so excited that she went to the Harrogate Crime Festival for the day. 'I thought, "This is my moment." I was so stunned. I met Ian Rankin and Mark Billingham, who are both very tall. I felt dwarfed by two giants.' Leigh's infectious enthusiasm leaves me in no doubt that she means 'giants' metaphorically as well as physically.
Mark Billingham was, along with Ann Cleeves, a host for Forensic: Murders, Mysteries and Microscopes, a festival event that Leigh attended. The renowned forensic experts Professor Dave Barclay, Dr James Grieve and Dr Lorna Dawson explained the realities of forensics and how crime fiction measures up. On this subject, Leigh mentions the tension between needing to be authentic and needing to serve the story.
'For example, at the end of Road Closed, Geraldine is awaiting the results of a DNA test. It usually takes a minimum of six weeks to get results – my team get the results in 24 hours. But it comes at the end of the book. You can't keep readers hanging around. I now have quite a few advisors; I do my best to make the details authentic but there's always a tension between realism and drama. I want my readers to believe the story, so there's something realistic – and then something dramatic happens. There's also a tension between characters and plot. Characters are serving the plot but you can't have them acting out of character.'
On the subject of research, I ask Leigh about Dr Leonard Russell, who is credited in the Acknowledgements section of Cut Short. Any relation? 'My dad. He's a retired GP. It's great to have him on topic. I also acknowledge a professor of forensic medicine [Derrick Pounder, of the University of Dundee, credited in Road Closed]. I enjoy doing research. I like talking to people and generally find them very helpful. People say that writing is a very solitary occupation; I haven't found that.'
Also acknowledged are the Red Watch team at Harrow Fire Station. In Road Closed, a man dies in a domestic gas explosion, another nearly dies in a house fire – and, in the gripping finale, another house goes up in flames, with killer and cop trapped inside.
'I had a wonderful afternoon at the fire station. I'm aware that I write about worlds I've never inhabited. On the Internet you can find all sorts of details, like the time the sun set on October 11th 1968, but I like to talk to real people as much as possible.'
Does knowledge acquired from research affect the plot? 'I wanted a fire but I wasn't sure how it would happen. Similarly, I have a character who is a market trader, which is another world I don't inhabit. When I was in York for a book signing, someone said I should talk to the market manager. I spent half an hour or so talking to this guy. I wanted to know what they think about.'
The telling detail? 'Banana boxes. They're particularly strong and market traders use them for carrying their goods around.' And when Leigh had her market traders squabbling, it wasn't over their pitches (which would never happen) but over parking places.
Savvy readers want realism and authenticity, but will quickly sense if a writer has done a research dump. The challenge is to get the right level of detail. 'How much do you spell out for your readers, so they don't either feel patronised or frustrated?'
Another challenge for the novelist is getting the structure right. Some novelists start from a single situation then improvise, while others are meticulous planners. Crime fiction, which relies on tight plotting, probably requires more planning than most genres. I ask Leigh whether she's an improviser or a planner.
'I hadn't planned Cut Short out at all. It took me only six weeks to write, then I went to the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook and two weeks later No Exit Press contacted me and then signed me up for three books. I had to do quite a lot of work to sort the manuscript out after that, because I'd been just writing for myself. With Road Closed, I wrote down what each character was doing on each day. When I'd written it, there was too much going on at the end but a lull in the middle.' The solution was to move some of the action from the end to the middle. 'But it's like dominos,' Leigh adds with a heartfelt sigh, referring to the continuity knock-on effect of shuffling scenes. 'By the time I was planning out Dead End, my agent suggested writing a ten-page synopsis.'
Despite Leigh's careful plotting, her characters can still surprise her. 'Sometimes it just feels right, and only later do I understand why a character has said or done something. Something's going on unconsciously, whereas I work out plots consciously. But I don't know where my characters come from; sometimes they're just there. When I wrote Cut Short I didn't realise I was writing a series. I was fascinated by my killer; he just crawled off my pen onto the page and in some ways Jim is as much a victim as the characters he kills. Because I write psychological novels, I have to get inside my characters' heads. When you're writing about a killer, what makes them kill? It's a huge question. In each of my books, it's someone coming from a different place.'
Are psychos the most fun to write? 'Yes, absolutely – and they're easier to write. You're constrained with the detective but with the killer you're liberated. I really felt I knew him. I'm fascinated by people and working out the plot. As a writer it's a satisfying combination of intellect and going with the flow with the characters.'
Killers may be fascinating to write but, as Leigh's editor said to her, 'The detective is the character who carries over into the next book.' Hence Geraldine's strained relationship with her sister and lover – largely caused by the pressures of police work.
I ask Leigh whether she thinks that workaholic detectives are so appealing to writers because in some way they reflect the lonely and obsessive nature of writing itself. The difference, Leigh points out, is that if the writer stops working, people's lives aren't on the line. 'If you're engaged in that kind of work, how do you switch off? It must be really hard to deal with. If you talk about your job dispassionately you're a monster, but if your emotions were engaged you couldn't do your job. But, yes, writing is quite compulsive. I understand the obsessive in Geraldine.'
A complex personal life is important for giving depth to Geraldine but, Leigh says, 'I don't want to veer into chick lit.' Hence a big twist about Geraldine's family history in Road Closed. 'This was a story that I thought would give her a lot to engage with emotionally. I'm setting things up for her and I don't know where it's going.'
And of course, 'not knowing where it's going' is what thrills readers of crime fiction. Leigh herself loves the puzzle aspect of mysteries, citing Conan Doyle as one of her heroes. 'I like "what if?" For example, you're alone in the house and hear a door close. Or Hitchcock's Rear Window, the idea that we're all this close to a terrible crime.'
Leaving something to the imagination can be incredibly powerful as well. 'In the Hitchcock film Frenzy there's a serial killer whose catchphrase is, "You're my kind of girl." He says it to a woman and then there's a shot of an empty hallway and music and you know he's upstairs killing her.' Leigh herself uses what she calls, '... the Jaws technique. Once you know the shark is in the water, the moment a kid's in the water you've got tension.'
One dramatic 'what if?' started the idea for Cut Short. 'The park [in which several women and girls are strangled] is based on my local park. I was walking through the park and it was raining. There's a tangled copse of trees and as I came round the corner I passed a man. What if I walked on and there was a body in the bushes? I always start with the body and work backwards. It's great fun because it's problem-solving. Sometimes everything just slots together so neatly it's fantastic.'
Then of course there is the thrill of being published. 'But the real buzz is the writing. I absolutely love it. The great thing about being published is that I can write whenever I want. I'm amazed I didn't discover my passion years ago; I've only been writing for about three years. Since writing I have little time to read. That's the only downside, but I'd rather be writing than reading. If the time comes when I'm writing fulltime, I may have time to read. I actually started writing when my children had left home and I'd stepped down from a senior position at work. I discovered I have a lot of creative energy that I didn't know I had. But I really feel this is me. I'm in my mid-fifties and I reinvented myself.
'If I'd had this success when I was a lot younger, I think I'd have been a lot more earnest. Now I'm a lot less precious about it. I get in my little boat, put the sail up and see where it goes. I don't think I'd have had that attitude when I was thirty years younger.'
Success has brought surprises, including an oddball signing at Collectormania London. 'I sold a book to a Dalek. I was terrified of Daleks when I was a kid. The lid came up but I couldn't bring myself to put my hand in.'
With the runaway success of Leigh's first two novels and a third due in less than a year, Leigh's likely to have many more book signings – not all of them, one hopes, quite so bizarre.
Cut Short is publshed by No Exit
