How difficult is it to write a crime novel? Is a 'novel of crime' novel different from a novel of crime? Are they aimed at different readerships? Do publishers resist genre novels that don't fit their niche market? In a crowded market, at a time when every writer is turning to writing historical, fantasy and crime novels, first-time novelists looking for a publisher need patience and perseverance. There are eight million stories out there in the naked literary city - this is just one of them.
Who? Matthew McAllister is me and a mate (as in long-time friend, not as in Tarzan and Jane) who decided to write a crime novel together. We weren't doing much else, and how hard could it be? Everybody else seemed to be doing it. If a bandwagon is on a noisy, colourful roll, get on board.
Me? I've written non-fiction books of travel, literary biography, a great little book about denim and I'm a regular reviewer of non-fiction for newspapers and magazines. So, ok, no big track record as a writer of fiction, but like everyone else I've got some stories and unfinished stuff in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. I didn't want to write another big biography. I wanted writing to be recreational for a while. Fun, with any luck.
My mate? A writer whose first stories and novels, published by Faber, were well received. Though he hasn't published for a while, he has kept writing and the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet is much better stocked than mine with literary novels, plays and stories. He can't hardly give them away.
We figured we could have fun writing a crime novel. I'd be doing something new and interesting and my mate, a stylish novelist, might kick-start his career again.
We started plotting a novel. Since we were starting as know-nothings, except for all the crime novels we'd read in a couple of lifetimes pretty much filled indiscriminately with books, there were five good, basic journalistic questions to ask before we started: Who? What? Where? Why? When?
Who? The police. After all, who usually gets to investigate a crime? A policeman. Or a policewoman. Usually more than one police person. A crime team. So, a police procedural.
What? A murder. Maybe several. And some associated criminality would probably be good.
Where? Familiar ground seemed safest: a London area of mixed socio-economic and racial groups.
Why? What motive for murder? By intention or accident? Motive should derive from the characters.
When? The present day. No trouble to get the social detail and language right in the 21st century.
So what had we got? A present day police procedural, an investigation of a murder, located in London. Wow! Bet nobody's done one of those before! Good brainstorming! But good enough – it was an armature, so to speak. All it needed was a suit of clothes, made to measure, exactly fitted.
It's still a mystery how the plot and characters coalesced around the concept. Ideas came from talking. We talked a lot. We drank a lot of coffee. We met for brunch at the Electric Cinema Café or Mike's Café in Portobello Road and we talked. We wrote down what we talked about and then we walked. We walked and talked. We walked the crime scene – an area at the end of Portobello Road, SW10, which we knew well – and we talked about it. As one idea was elaborated, others emerged from it and others faded away. Only the strongest survived. The same for the characters: some who started off as principals were relegated to bit parts; and cameo parts, too small for a sharp-elbowed, full-blooded bitch or snotty-nosed, high-end bastard, were enlarged to full starring roles. And suddenly it was no longer a standard police procedural. The police were still there, but not fully in control. Now they were competing with the villains who were well-matched to give them a run for their blood and their money. And there were the victims: victims, we realised, were not passive. A body was not just a McGuffin. The death of a victim was significant and provoked knock-on effects.
The varied cast of characters we invented, their various domestic, professional and criminal activities, the theatre of the territory they owned and operated in, the complex consequences of their behaviour ... well, as any writer knows, there is always more material than can usefully be presented in one novel. We decided there needed to be a sequel. Not every character would survive the first novel, but there would still be a core cast of police and villains. We plotted the second novel and decided that there was still enough material in the social themes and strength in the characters to sustain a trilogy. And finally, there they were – three novels: the first fully written, the second fully plotted, the third an armature ready to be dressed. The crime element was still primary, but somehow the novel had taken on elements of social criticism, so that the story had become less a thud and blunder crime novel than a more complicated 'novel of crime'. There is, I suppose, a subtle difference, to be discussed in another place, another time.
So far, so good. So far we'd done what we intended to do. And so good in the sense that we were pleased with the novel as an inventive, stylish, professional, piece of work. We reckoned we had created memorable characters, given them interesting things to do, complicated their lives (now and again fatally) and provided a dramatic pay-off that left enough loose ends to lead into the sequel.
But writing is stage one. Stage two is getting the writing to market. First thing to do is send the near-as-dammit-finished novel to an agent, right? I have an agent. I got lucky at the start of my career: we have been together since my first book in the mid-1980s. She is high-end and hot shot. When she sends out a manuscript it gets read. It had been a few years since my last biography had been published, but she still knew who I was. We'd had little difficulties in the past, but I figured I was still on her list. I sent the text of the novel to her by e-mail and waited for a response. A month went by and- nothing. Another month - still nothing. Either then, or later, she said, "Darling, I'm resisting reading it."
I invited her to lunch at the Electric Cinema Café and in retrospect it was noticeable (if I'd been paying attention then) that I paid for lunch. That had never happened before. Maybe I made the big mistake, first, of collaborating with another writer, of presenting her with what I described as a 'genre' novel and finally saying that the novel was commercial. The word I used, inadvisedly, was 'product'. Her eyes glazed over and that was it. The rest of the lunch was given over to talking about dogs. Neither of us can resist dogs. Much later, when we were both at a book launch party, I said to a friend "For three good reasons, she's resisting reading my novel." "Only three, darling?" she said. To our credit, we both laughed.
I didn't mean that I (or my co-writer) hadn't taken the novel seriously. Indeed, it may have been written as a genre novel, but by no means was it product. Any writer will know – try writing 'product' and see how quickly the 'product' resists a formula, see how fast it takes on a strong life and intense character of its own, see how it insists on being itself. The only thing to be done with it is harness it, rein it in. Control it.
Since my agent was resistant to reading, far less sending out the novel to publishers, I figured I needed to market it myself. Fortunately, I've been in the business of writing and reviewing long enough to know pretty much where to send a crime novel. I drew up a long list of probable publishers (at least half a dozen) and calculated the strength of my contacts at each of them. Then I e-mailed the text to the first of them.
To cut a long story short, half a dozen publishers have loved the novel – been intrigued by the characters, been beguiled by the writing style, praised the plotting and pretty much all have said that here is something new, something genre-busting ... but here are a few sample reviews:
"Believe me, my colleagues are all sitting up for this – the reader of the report said that your hero is one of the most terrifying young men since Tom Ripley that it's an extraordinarily good thriller and she found herself wanting to read a sequel. You are writing a sequel...?" (Corvus)
"Here is a striking new voice in crime fiction, written in pithy, sardonic prose. McAllister's shifting points of view are all authoritatively handled, with dialogue (whether the initially hospitalised hero, murderous hoodies or cynical cops) that crackles with authenticity." (Crimetime)
"It's very sharp, and the sense of place is brilliantly done, and I love its social conscience and characterisation; but because it rather straddles genres and is so wide-ranging (thriller, crime, black comedy, social satire, etc) I fear this would be tricky to push through, let alone publish with a real bang." (Macmillan)
After they have all said, "love this, our reader has raved about it, thank you for sending it to us", they say, "but we don't see how to place it, how to pitch it. It crosses genres, It is this last point at which they stick. It is understandable that publishers are cautious in the current economic climate, but it is surely also the time for them to take the occasional chance to move the genre forward.
This is not a moan or a whine: though I've been annoyed by resistance, by delay, by timidity, by high praise followed by regretful turndown, I've been lucky. Compared to some potential writers, I've been able to get my work read, commented on positively, and I'm confident that the novels will be published. But maybe I am a tad pissed off –if it's difficult enough to write a good novel, how difficult should it be to get it published? If the writer has done his or her job, publishers could perhaps do theirs with a little more confidence. At least writers now have options: the alternative used to be vanity publishing, but now there is self-publishing. Now there's a challenge: setting up a website. How hard can that be ... ?
Iain Finlayson
