BRITLIT CRIME FICTION by Ludovic Assémat

BRITLIT CRIME FICTION INTERVIEWS FROM BCNEGRA AND BERLIN LITERATURE SEMINAR 2016 JAKE ARNOTT, SOPHIE HANNAH, PHILIP KERR, PETER MAY, VAL MCDERMID, DENISE MINA, BETHAN ROBERTS, LOUISE WELSH

Introduction

In 2016, British Council Spain and Germany hosted two outstanding series of events which brought together the very best of British crime writing, and invited authors to Berlin and Barcelona to discuss their work. Participating in the British Council literature Seminar were Val McDermid, Jake Arnott, Sophie Hannah, Philip Kerr, Bethan Roberts. While the literary festival BCNegra welcomed the Scottish contingent: Peter May, Denise Mina and Louise Welsh. The events offered a fantastic opportunity to explore the work of some of the most exciting contemporary crime writers, at a time when the genre is so hugely popular. After gathering together a "conspiracy" of writers for the seminar, we asked them to share their thoughts on paper. Here, we have compiled their thoughts and words with an introduction from Paco Camarasa, the director of the literary festival BCNegra. To our authors: thank you for your time, and for your enthusiasm.

Scotland With Franco, during the dictatorship, there was no crime fiction or detective novels. With Franco, during the dictatorship, we officially lived in the “best of all worlds”. Only a mad man or a lefty would want to challenge the order and calm. It didn’t matter if that calm had its roots in fear and terror.

the rule of law.

The only crimes were political, against “Franco’s peace” committed by lefties and masons. The police were extremely effective; they neither deduced nor induced but tortured instead. Torture was the chosen method of extracting confessions. It made no difference if any semblance of truth was purely coincidental.

That same year, in a collection called Great Detectives, we discovered that Glasgow existed. There, we read and were surprised for the first time by William McIlvanney’s Jack Laidlaw.

Therefore when democracy arrived and we began to read P.D. James with her Adam Dalgliesh, not only an honest and educated policeman but also a poet; or the psychological insight of Ruth Rendell’s Wexford; or the aristocratic Sir Thomas Linley created by Elizabeth George, we couldn’t quite believe that policemen like that existed. It was our first literary encounter with police who investigated within the rule of law, who respected the presumption of innocence. They modernised the classic murder mystery, the "ladies of crime" from before the war. The key was to find the murdered so that the order could be re-established and normality restored to our tranquil everyday lives. The chaos, the corruption, the underbelly of society and organised crime came to us from the other side of the Atlantic. The American cities with their hard-boiled narratives that, because of the French, we started to call the Noir fiction. Authors and books arrived badly translated, with no editorial criteria, confused and disordered. We felt more at home with those that talked of corruption, those that were in search of justice and did not associate it with

In Spain, it took some time before a policeman could have a positive role in novels. And it wasn’t a he but a she: Petra Delicado, a policewoman created by Alicia Giménez Bartlett.

The policemen were not poets, nor aristocrats. Glasgow was a hard city and we found out about the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers was not just about football but about religious differences. Then John Rebus would come and uncover the real Edinburg for us. We enjoyed it so much that here in Barcelona we wanted Ian Rankin, his creator, to have one of our most treasured awards: the Pepe Carvalho Prize for life time work. We continued to learn about Scottish geography: Aberdeen, Inverness, Lewis Island by Peter May. A real Scotland removed from the stereotype and Loch Ness. Even one of our novelists shares the same name as one of Val McDermid’s main characters: Tony Hill. We like Scotland, we like the Scots and Scottish. And for that we will always be grateful to the second Scot we read: William McIlvanney. The first, there is no need to say, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Paco Camarasa Director of BCNegra

Writers

SOPHIE HANNAH Sophie Hannah is an internationally-bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction, published in 32 languages and 51 territories, and a poet. In 2014, Sophie published a new mystery novel starring Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s famous detective. Sophie’s Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, was written with the blessing of the Agatha Christie estate and was an international bestseller, reaching a top five position in the book charts of more than fifteen countries.

JAKE ARNOTT Jake Arnott was born in Buckinghamshire, England in 1961. His novel, The Long Firm, the story of the charismatic gangster Harry Starks, was published in 1999 to critical acclaim and commercial success and was subsequently adapted as a major BBC drama serial. Along with He Kills Coppers (2001), also adapted for television, and truecrime (2003) his first three books form a noir trilogy that spans the last four decades of the twentieth century. His fourth novel, Johnny Come Home (2006), takes place in the summer of 1972 amidst the world of glam-rock and radical politics. The Devil’s Paintbrush (2009) set in Paris in 1903, concerns the fall from grace of the British Empire hero, Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald in a shocking scandal and examines imperialism, sexuality and the nature of belief. Jake Arnott lives in London. His latest novel is The House of Rumour (2012). https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/jakearnott

In 2013, Sophie’s novel, The Carrier, won the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the Specsavers National Book Awards. Two of Sophie’s crime novels, The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives, have been adapted for television and appeared on ITV1 with the series name Case Sensitive in 2011 and 2012. In 2004, Sophie won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her suspense story 'The Octopus Nest', which is now published in her first collection of short stories, The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets. Sophie has also published seven collections of poetry. Her fifth, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 T S Eliot Award. Her poetry is studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK. From 1997 to 1999 she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and between 1999 and 2001 she was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She is forty-four and lives with her husband, children and dog in Cambridge, where she is a Fellow Commoner at Lucy Cavendish College. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/sophiehannah

PETER MAY PHILIP KERR Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh and read Law and Philosophy at Birmingham University, subjects which drew him to Germany: “The most interesting legal philosophy is German, so naturally I went to Germany, particularly to Berlin, quite a bit.” Following university, Kerr worked as a copywriter at a number of advertising agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi. Here he started working on his first novel about a Berlin-based policeman. His first Bernie Gunther novel, March Violets, was published in 1989. After leaving advertising, Kerr worked for the London Evening Standard and produced two more novels featuring Bernie Gunther: The Pale Criminal (1990) and A German Requiem (1991). The trilogy was published as an omnibus edition, Berlin Noir, in 1992. Breaking with Bernie Gunther, Kerr experimented with a range of different forms and stand-alone stories over the next two decades, including children’s literature (The Children of the Lamp series), and science fiction science fiction, such as his techno-thriller, A Philosophical Investigation (1993), before returning to his famous Berlin-based detective in The One from the Other (2007) and seven subsequent novels, the latest being The Other Side of Silence (2016). He has also written another series of novels on Scott Manson: January Window (2014); Hand of God (2015); and False Nine (2015). Philip Kerr is married to writer and broadcaster Jane Thynne. The couple live with their three children in Wimbledon. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/philipkerr

Peter May is the award-winning author of the internationally best-selling Lewis Trilogy, set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland; the China Thrillers, featuring Beijing detective Li Yan and American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell; the critically-acclaimed Enzo Files, featuring Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, which is set in France; and several standalone books, including the multi awardwinning Entry Island (Quercus 2014) and his latest Runaway (Quercus 2015). He has also had a successful career as a television writer, creator and producer. One of Scotland's most prolific television dramatists, he garnered more than 1000 credits in 15 years as scriptwriter and script editor of prime-time British television drama. He is the creator of three major television drama series and presided over two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland before quitting television to concentrate on his first love; writing novels. Born and raised in Scotland he lives in France. The Blackhouse was published in English by the award-winning Quercus. It went on to become an international best seller, and was shortlisted for both Barry Award and Macavity Award when it was published in the USA. The Blackhouse went on to win the US Barry Award for Best Mystery Novel at Bouchercon in Albany NY, in 2013. Entry Island won the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2014 and the ITV Specsavers Crime Thriller Club Best Read of the Year 2014. http://www.urweb.net/PeterMayMain/petermay.htm

Writers VAL MCDERMID Crime writer Val McDermid grew up in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and studied English at Oxford University. She trained as a journalist and worked on various national newspapers for 14 years before becoming a writer. Her first published book was Report for Murder (1987), and since then, she has written a large number of crime novels. These include three different series of books: The Lindsay Gordon Mystery series; The Kate Branningan Mystery series; and the Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Mystery series which includes, among others, The Torment of Others (2004), which won the 2006 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and The Wire in the Blood which has been made into a successful 6-part television series. Her book Stranded (2005), is her second collection of short stories. The first collection, The Writing on the Wall and other stories was published in 1997. She is also the author of several books of non-fiction, including A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Women Private Eyes (1995) and Forensics (2015). She has also dabbled in Children's literature, publishing the book My Granny is a Pirate in 2012. In 2014 she rewrote Austen's Northanger Abbey for the modern age, part of the Jane Austen Project. Val McDermid was a crime reviewer for the Manchester Evening News for four years, still writes occasional journalism, and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages. In 2010 she won the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. In 2011, Val McDermid was the recipient of the Pioneer Award at the 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/valmcdermid

DENISE MINA After a childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school early. She worked in a number of dead-end jobs, “all of them badly”, before studying at night school to get into Glasgow University Law School. Denise went on to study for a PhD at Strathclyde, misusing her student grant to write her first novel. This was Garnethill, published in 1998, which won the Crime Writers Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel.She has now published 12 novels and also writes short stories, plays and graphic novels. In 2014 she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame. Denise presents TV and radio programmes as well as regularly appearing in the media, and has made a film about her own family. She regularly appears at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, leads master classes on writing and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2014. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/denisemina

LOUISE WELSH After studying history at Glasgow University, Louise Welsh established a second-hand bookshop, where she worked for many years. Her first novel, The Cutting Room, won several awards, including the 2002 Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger, and was jointly awarded the 2002 Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Louise was granted a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award in 2003, a Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award in 2004, and a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2005. She is a regular radio broadcaster, has published many short stories, and has contributed articles and reviews to most of the British broadsheets. She has also written for the stage. In 2010 she wrote two plays with Zoe Strachan entitled Panic Patterns and Christmas Spirits.

BETHAN ROBERTS Bethan Roberts was born in Abingdon. Her first novel The Pools was published in 2007 and won a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Award. Her second novel The Good Plain Cook, published in 2008, was serialised on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was chosen as one of Time Out’s books of the year. My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover, followed in 2012, and was chosen as that year’s City Read for Brighton. Her latest novel, Mother Island, is the recipient of a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. She also writes short fiction (she has won the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Prize and the RA Pin Drop Award), and drama for BBC Radio 4. Bethan has worked in television documentary, and has taught Creative Writing at Chichester University and Goldsmiths College, London. She lives in Brighton with her family. http://bethanrobertswriter.co.uk/about/

Her second book, Tamburlaine Must Die, a novelette written around the final three days of the poet Christopher Marlowe's life, was published in 2004. Her third novel, The Bullet Trick (2006), is a present-day murder mystery set in Berlin. Naming the Bones (2010), is set in the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. From 2010-2012 she was Writer in Residence for the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art. In 2012, she wrote the libretto for “Ghost Patrol”, a touring production by the Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales, in collaboration with musician Stuart McRae. In the same year her novel, The Girl on the Stairs, was published. In 2014 Louise was co-founder and director of the Empire Café, an award winning multidisciplinary exploration of Scotland’s relationship with the North Atlantic slave trade. The project was included in the City of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme. Louise has written the libretto for the forthcoming production of a new opera ‘The Devil Inside’, music by Stuart MacRae, which will tour in 2016. She lives in Glasgow with the writer Zoë Strachan. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/louisewelsh

Writers HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE YOURSELF AS A WRITER? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR MOTTO IS? Jake Arnott : I’m wary of definitions, I wouldn’t call myself a ‘crime writer’ for example, it’s too limiting. I like to play with all genres of literature if I can. Holes are for pigeons (maybe that should be my motto). Sophie Hannah: I am a writer of psychological crime fiction. My motto is: never think that anything is too weird for a human being to be capable of it. Nothing is too strange to be plausible. Philip Kerr: As a writer I avoid definitions of myself and what I do. I think most writers do. I think I am lucky to be doing what I always wanted to do, to get paid for doing it, and paid well, and to have survived - I’m still being published after 25 years as a full time writer. If I have a motto it’s trust your own imagination and never speak to blondes at parties. Peter May: I am a storyteller. I believe that those of us in society who write stories are the descendants of those who told stories around the fire in the early days of Man. We should entertain, inform, and reflect the human condition in our shared experience. My motto would be “To Entertain”. Val McDermid: I’ve always resisted the idea of narrow definitions. I think of myself first as a writer of fiction, though I’ve also published nonfiction and I write radio drama and documentary scripts. Those who like to stick writers into categories would doubtless classify me as a crime writer or a mystery writer. But regardless of those classifications, character is at the heart of all good fiction. As to a motto, I’ve always liked Samuel Beckett’s maxim: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

Denise Mina : I write mostly in the crime genre, but have also written plays, comics and short stories in other genres. What would my motto be? Keep going, you'll get better, and remember how lucky you are to be going at all. Bethan Roberts: I’ve never thought of myself as any particular kind of writer. I try to write things that I would like to read myself. I don’t think about genre or market. I try to think very hard about character and situation. I’m not very good at planning or plotting, so I’m definitely not a real crime writer. I think I write about secrets, rather than mysteries. That is to say, I’m very interested in what people are hiding, how they present themselves, and the stories they tell themselves and others about their lives. I’m also very interested in place – how a person’s place in society (in terms of class, era, geography) defines them and gives them something to push against. To be honest, I feel rather resistant to mottos... but if I had to have one it would be something like ‘dig deeper.’ Louise Welsh: I think of myself as a storyteller. My motto would be: Write from the Heart

DETECTIVE NOVELS HAVE IN THE PAST CENTRED AROUND MYSTERY, METHODS AND MOTIVES. WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL BE THE NEXT FOCUS AND WHAT CHALLENGES WILL IT FACE? Peter May: I think that the true soul of a crime novel has become increasingly difficult to define, encompassing many facets of life, love, death and human nature. The more a book focuses on the effects of the crime, on its perpetrators, victims and investigators, rather than the crime itself, the closer the genre moves towards literature. Val McDermid: I don’t see any reason why mystery, methods and motives should be supplanted. All human life is there, after all! Developments in forensic science mean we have to take on board different challenges in terms of making the story work, but the motive springs remain the same. Because human nature never changes… Denise Mina: That’s a very astute analysis! I hope it will move from individuated stories of people who do wrong to collective narratives about how systems work. Very hard to do in a narrative because we are so bogged down in individuated stories with one protagonist. That’s certainly what I’m striving to do.

Bethan Roberts: I honestly don't know! For me it’s never about mystery or methods, and entirely about motives. But I’m not a crime writer, so I’m not really qualified to say. Louise Welsh: It’s hard to look into the future. I’d like to think books would show more respect for the dead people at their centre, rather than treating them as devices to turn the page – but I may be onto a loser there! Jake Arnott: Reality, I suppose. The problem I have with much of crime fiction is that it requires much suspension of disbelief, with brilliant detectives solving endless complex murders when we know this bears little reality to most police work. In my novels it is often the detectives that turn out to be the real villains. Sophie Hannah: For me, mystery will always be the focus – solving the puzzles presented by the hidden minds and hearts of others, in order to make sense of our own lives and experience. Philip Kerr: I think mystery, methods and motives are what always will drive all fiction. Anything else is just jerking off.

CONSIDERING THE LONG BRITISH LITERARY TRADITION, WHERE WOULD YOU SAY THAT NOIR FICTION AND DETECTIVE NOVELS STAND AT THE MOMENT IN THE UK AND GLOBALLY?

Sophie Hannah: Because detective/crime fiction is mystery-driven, and mystery is the best ingredient that you can put into any story. Philip Kerr: I really don’t know the answers to these questions. I think a lot of noir fiction should feature crackling dialogue, interesting characters who are never quite what they seem, and a story that has a proper beginning, middle and end. It’s not experimental stuff. Which is why people read it I think. Nobody likes to be experimented upon. I like sentences with commas, and full stops, and similes, and metaphors. Old fashioned writing, some would call it. I wouldn’t say they’re more popular. I think they’re not as popular as they were, perhaps. Because no novel is. People don’t read as much. People talk about peak oil. Well, we’re well passed the era of peak read. People want Siri to tell them stuff, not to read it. They want Angry Birds, not the Thorn Birds. They want an e-Book not a nice new hardback from Jonathan Cape.

Peter May: I regard noir fiction and detective novels as quite different. I live in France where the police procedural is more likely to be defined as a “polar”, while noir fiction would be labelled “roman noir”. I think there is a fine distinction between everyday detective entertainment and noir novels that raise the

genre to a level more akin to literature. But as with everything, this is entirely dependent on the writer. There a good and bad exponents of both. Great detective fiction is great and bad noir novels are bad. Val McDermid: Crime fiction has never been more popular than it is now. I think there are several reasons. We live much more isolated and alienated lives than previous generations – we often don’t know the names of our neighbours, never mind their occupations or their history. That makes for a greater sense of insecurity. The crime novel offers a certain kind of comfort – no matter how bad things are, there are heroes who will effect some sort of resolution. These are also fictions that take us inside other people’s worlds and give us a sense of being insiders in environments we’ve never experienced. I’ve always enjoyed that feeling of learning something as I read that the crime novel often provides. And of course, we all love to be scared and thrilled in a safe way. It’s like riding the rollercoaster – our hearts are in our mouths, we scream in terror, we are gripped by fear. Then we get off and run round to join the queue to do it all over again. It’s exciting and nail-biting to be gripped by a good crime novel, but we know it’s safe because it’s a fiction.

Denise Mina: I have a feeling that we may be at a tipping point, Noir is such a dominant form right now, there has to be a decline at some point. In the UK noir dominates the sales charts, TV and movies. All genres are absorbed into the mainstream and I think this might be happening now. Bethan Roberts: I suspect that noir fiction – or, at least, fiction that dwells on the dark side of life – has always been popular. Charlotte Brontë wrote about threatening domestic secrets and dysfunctional relationships, didn’t she? People love looking under stones for whatever terrible thing lurks beneath. I don’t think that will ever change.

but I reckon they’re in a healthy place, both critically and commercially. Jake Arnott: There’s something primal about such stories, ever since Cain slew Abel (with God as detective) And the law-abiding public have always had a thirst for blood. Crime novels are easier to market, I suppose, but I’m never sure whether popularity is a good thing.

But I do think there is a trend currently for crime stories – just look at TV drama in the UK: it’s awash with police tape, blood and bodies. Perhaps, in this age of social media, there's a greater nervousness about what’s real and what’s not, about what identity means. And perhaps our anxiety about these things is reflected in our cultural output and/or choices. Who is this person, and what is their real motive seems to be a very urgent question for lots of people at the moment, and crime stories can address this in a very direct way. Louise Welsh: Noir fiction and detective novels encompass a huge and varied genre. It’s hard to pin down their place in the literary canon,

IT IS OFTEN SAID THAT NOIR FICTION HAS A FIGHTING SPIRIT WHICH HIGHLIGHTS THE DARKER SIDE OF SOCIETY. DO YOU RECOGNISE THIS DEFINITION? IF SO, HOW DOES YOUR WORK REFLECT THIS?

Philip Kerr: I am the darker side of society. I am like a method actor. My job is to go where others fear to tread and report back. Sometimes at the peril of my own soul and mental health. I am not joking. Lately I have come to feel that I am suffering from PTSD as a result of what I have written. That might sound laughable to some. And it probably is. But that is how it feels. Peter May: I think that good noir fiction explores the darker side of human nature, rather than society. All good literature is an examination of the human condition and experience, with which we can all identify. Noir fiction explores those elements of it which lurk in the shadow. Val McDermid: I think the crime novel has increasingly become the novel of social history and commentary. The themes of my stories often have their roots in a sense of outrage about injustices of one sort or another. But the narrative drive of the crime novel is so strong that it’s not overwhelmed by those underlying themes. The book remains an entertainment even though it does deal with serious social issues at the same time. There’s something about the scope of the crime novel that often allows the underdog a voice.

Denise Mina: It does have a dark eye on society. This comes from the origins of the form: low class adventure stories about working class people. Because it is so familiar now it has become diluted. I try to use it as a familiar frame to look at aspects of society which are uncomfortable or rarely reflected in literature. Bethan Roberts: Yes. I've always liked fiction in which there are no easily identifiable heroes, and which focuses on those aspects of human life that the dominant society finds distasteful or taboo. There’s a feeling of urgency, often, about these fictions: a feeling that something difficult needs to be looked at with an unflinching gaze. My first novel, The Pools, is about the murder of a teenage boy by another teenage boy, but I was interested not so much in the murder itself but in the people around that act. I suppose I had a sense that, when a small community suffers a loss, we all have blood on our hands. My Policeman considers what it is like to live in a society which criminalises homosexuality, and how people fight against or submit to that society. In my latest novel Mother Island, I tried to imagine what would drive a nanny to steal a child, but for me the taboo which drove the book was the taboo of the ambivalent mother - that was the difficult thing which needed to be looked at.

Louise Welsh: There is no dark without the light. My fiction is full of jeopardy and does not flinch from dark territory, but it also features love, loyalty and hope. Jake Arnott: The Italian writer Laura Grimaldi once said to me: ‘Mystery is order, noir is chaos’ and I’ve always taken that to heart. I’m not particularly interested in the solutions to specific crimes or any kind of murder mystery. It’s the greater crime that interests me, that of society itself and how it often masquerades as justice. Corruption is a common theme to my work, and I’m interested in how it pervades all levels of society. Sophie Hannah: The darker side of society is made up of the small, unique darker sides of individual human beings. I write about both, but starting from the dysfunctional minds of a collection of individuals. We are all, at some level, a little warped and dysfunctional! Life would be far less interesting if we were all perfectly well-adjusted and sane.

British Council Spain / Germany www.britishcouncil.es www.britishcouncil.de arts@britishcouncil.es