AMERICAN DEVIL by Oliver Stark (Headline) marks the debut of a striking outstanding new talent. 'An impressive debut... Stark is an exceptional new British talent', said the Daily Mail. Stark made his first attempt at crime fiction at the age of sixteen. Needless to say, this never reached publication... unlike his gripping debut novel. He talks to Crime Time...
Inspired by the American Devil
The AMERICAN DEVIL comes out of a love of the American crime writing tradition and the city of New York - a mythical place I first knew through films and novels. I only later got to know it as a real place.
America is an enormous and dramatic backdrop for fiction. It is also the home the modern day devil - the serial killer. This American Devil tends to look like some regular, everyday guy.
However, this pathetic figure preys on defenceless people for some internal meaning or purpose – excitement, pleasure, anger. It seemed to me to be the very definition of evil: a purposeless and determined destruction.
I was inspired to write the book a little by chance. A copy of James Patterson's Along Came a Spider was left in a hotel room and I picked it up. The pace and tension of the story gripped me immediately and I wanted to write something that exciting for the reader.
Once I had that idea in my head, the story came out of a chance event. I saw a man – a harmless looking but strangely determined overweight man struggling along wheeling a suitcase beside him. He wore a red turtleneck and his trousers were an inch too short.
The story that came to mind for this guy was that of a killer, trundling along with a body in a suitcase. The American Devil grew from the sight of that man and the possibilities he suggested.
I wanted the cop to be a man on the edge – with the fantasy of a happy life crashing about his ears, his own anger breaking in – who wants to run away from it all. And instead, he has to put it to one side and help catch a ruthless killer.
I wanted to explore the idea that violence is a way to cope or run away for many people – cops and criminals. It's a way to react to the world that disappoints us or which we disappoint.
I hope you enjoy reading AMERICAN DEVIL!
Oliver Stark
American Devil is published by Headline
