Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill

Jean is an ordinary woman. She owns a bookstore, is passionate about literature, lives in Toronto. One day a regular customer swears blind he’s seen her some other place, in the local market; he tries to pull off her hair, convinced it’s a wig, that she’s playing a trick on him. Mortified when he realises that it’s not, he retreats, leaving Jean shaken. So starts a disturbing psychological quest, a tale of obsession, where Jean becomes more and more preoccupied with the notion that she has a doppelgänger.

This is a novel that starts off as a psychological thriller, but soon morphs into something more than that. Jean begins to spend more and more time in Bellevue Square, where she believes her doppelgänger frequents. This is a park that’s home to a variety of down and outs, patients of a nearby psychiatric hospital, and other drop outs. She pays them for information on sightings of her double, fully aware that some of them are leading her on. So why does she do this? As the story unfolds, we soon learn that Jean’s hold on reality has not always been as firm it might be, that she has more in common with the denizens of Bellevue Square than we might have first guessed.

Cracks soon fracture in Jean’s home life and it’s here that the novel moves from psychological thriller territory into something deeper, an examination of sanity, identity and sense of self. As Jean struggles to comprehend reality, we as readers are forced to question the nature of consciousness also, for how does one know what is real and what is fantasy? At points in the narrative this is both sinister and deeply disturbing, at other’s philosophical and almost whimsical. 

There are points in Bellevue Square where the narrative risks sliding into self-indulgence, the author straying into ontological metaphysics. He never quite surrenders to the urge however and the novel kept my interest until the ambiguous, and yet satisfying, denouement.

Bellevue Square is an engrossing study of one woman’s tenuous grip on her world and will have the reader questioning their own assumptions of reality. It is a challenging read and one that won’t be forgotten quickly.

Tom Callaghan Q&A

Tom Callaghan is the author of an excellent series of novels to feature   Akyl Borubaev of the Bishkek Murder Squad. I've followed the series from book one, An Authumn Hunting being the fourth instalment afterA Killing Winter (which I reviewed here: https://bit.ly/2Nbf2Ay;  A Spring Betrayal (see here for my review: https://bit.ly/2OTXpFM); and A Summer Revenge: (https://bit.ly/2BAjCa7). I caught up with Tom to pick his brains for one of my Q&A's. 

Where did you get the idea behind An Autumn Hunting?

Each of the Akyl Borubaev books has a loose theme - political corruption, paedophilia, trafficking - and for AN AUTUMN HUNTING, drugs were the central theme. Of course, it’s a worldwide issue, but I wanted to suggest how it might apply to Kyrgyzstan. But as always, that sounds rather more intentional and plotted than how I actually write.

I’m a big fan of your Akyl Borubaev series, they have a tremendous sense of place, as indeed does An Autumn Hunting. You clearly know the region well. How did your relationship with the area come about and what made you choose to base your novels there?

I married a Kyrgyz woman and acquired a 7-year-old stepson. He’s now 21, towers over me, and we live together in Bishkek. So naturally, I know large parts of Kyrgyzstan very well, and having family there obviously gives me insights not usually afforded to tourists.

Why Kyrgyzstan? Well, all the usual locations - NYC, LA, London, Miami and so on - have been done to death, and to try to better the masters like Chandler, Hammett and Leonard in those places would be horribly daunting.

Kyrgyzstan has had two revolutions since independence from the USSR; lots of crime and corruption; poverty… what more could a crime writer ask for? For example, only a few days ago, someone tried to kill a Russian businessman with a bomb, two streets away from where I live. They failed, but there’s a story behind that which could be very interesting.

How do you get your ideas? What’s the process and how do they go from vague inspiration to fully fleshed out notions?

My main concern, to sound rather pretentious, is to explore Akyl’s changing view of the world and himself, and his relationship with Saltanat. The crime aspects of the books serve to help bring them together, or to keep them apart. Part of my job is to be true to Akyl’s character as revealed through his thoughts and actions, so I tend to let that take me where the characters determine. I have a vague idea that I want to go from A to Z, but I don’t travel in alphabetical order, visiting every letter, if that makes sense.

Tell me about the research that goes into your writing?

Living here does a lot of the research for me. Again, family tell me about a lot of local events. And I just make the rest up.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Pantser, for sure. If I can surprise myself with what I write, there’s a vague hope of being able to do the same for my readers.

I’m interested in whydunnit, not whodunit; my books don’t involve murder in the library with a candlestick, and I have no interest in ‘crossword puzzle’ mysteries. I find Agatha Christie-style ‘Golden Age’ mysteries unreadable; my little grey cells are completely disinterested.

As a pantser, how do you make sure you don’t go off on wild tangents? 

Who says wild tangents are a bad thing? They might be the most interesting part of the journey.

Tell me about your writing, do you write full time?

I try to, when the need to do the washing up doesn’t feel too overwhelming and urgent.

When is your most productive period of the day?

Whenever the logjam of life temporarily opens.

Is any part of your writing biographical or are any of those characters inspired by real people? 

No, but remember I tell stories for a living.

An Autumn Hunting is the fourth novel in the series and the titles are taken from the seasons, which implies it will be the final instalment. Will there be a fifth novel in the series? If so, can you tell us anything about that?

I’m just finishing a new book, but superstition forbids me saying any more about it, other than Donald Trump isn’t in it.

What other writing projects are you working on? 

For some reason, calling writing a ‘project’ seems to diminish it for me, like calling it a hobby.  (Read Basil Bunting’s poem, ‘What the Chairman told Tom’.) There’s a moment in ‘The Shining’ where Jack Nicholson says he welcomes the solitude to finish a ‘writing project’, and I knew then he was mad.

Finally, I’m going to shamelessly poach two questions the author Mark Hill (author of His First Lie and It Was Her) used to put to writers on his blog. Like me, Mark was a book blogger before he became a successful author and I like to think that the answers to these questions helped him glean valuable help for his own writing. Certainly, reading them on his blog is helping me. So here goes:

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

The washing up/ laundry/ cooking/ gazing out of the window can all wait.

Give me some advice about writing?

Read as much as you can in the genre you love, but not exclusively so. Then read some more.

Hunt down your stylistic tropes and put them to death.

Never tell people the plot of your book; you’ll lose interest in telling it on the page.

Avoid praise; seek only criticism - that’s what helps you write better (or less badly).

Just get on with it; your laptop has a delete button after all. Dreaming about the perfect sentence usually means you just end up dreaming.

Mark Hill Q&A

Mark Hill is the author of two great novels, His First Lie (which I reviewed under its previous title, The Two O’Clock Boy, see here:https://bit.ly/2KGGYig) and the recently released sequel, It Was Her (see my review here: https://bit.ly/2AJVT6R). 

Before becoming a successful novelist, Mark was a book reviewer, blogging under the guise of the Crime Thriller Fella. This was a blog that I found hugely influential, not least for the Q&A’s he hosted with other writers. Unlike many such Q&A’s, his were always focused on the craft of writing which I imagined he used to help hone his own efforts. Well, it clearly paid off and I’ve been replicating the Crime Thriller Fella Q&A style ever since in the hope that I too might learn a thing or two.

Obviously now Mark’s made it I wanted to know a bit more about his writing process, in the shameless and undisguised hope that some of his magic might rub off on me. Luckily, he was happy to oblige.

Where did you get the idea behind It Was Her? While we’re at it, where did you get the idea behind His First Lie?

I started writing His First Lie back in the distant mists of time and it evolved an awful lot. I think I wanted to write about a corrupt copper and initially there was plenty of banging heads together and fisticuffs and high-octane action with people smashing down doors and some choice language. But that wasn’t really my style, so I went in a different direction. I’ve always loved those books and shows that have two timelines – there’s a mystery in the present and it’s connected in some weird way to a mystery in the past - so I played with that, and added a conspiracy element, and over time it kind of became more of a psychological thriller. 

With It Was Her, I knew I wanted to write about someone who went into other people’s homes and made themselves comfortable, a kind of cuckoo. But I kind of wondered what would make a person do such a thing and explore the reasons for that. And, of course, I couldn’t resist my two timelines format – two mysteries! One in the past, one in the present! - which has become a big part of what I do. 

How do you get your ideas more generally? What’s the process and how do they go from vague inspiration to fully fleshed out notions?

These are really hard questions. I’m not sure I can answer this fully comprehensively, but I do think idea generation is like any other muscle. The more you do it, the more it becomes easier. Once I’ve got an idea I’ll open a new document and I’ll sit and type out ideas – flinging down as many as I can onto the page – bits of dialogue, characters, possible scenes, relationships - and, sooner or later, connections form, ideas begin to interweave, and a narrative begins to lift off the page. That document can end up being very long indeed. 

And, of course, the best ideas pop into your head as you’re washing-up or drifting off to sleep. A rather good writer once told me that you never have to write the good ideas down, and that’s absolutely true, they stay with you, but you do have to fight your way into a new book, you have to lay siege to it, until it bends to your will.

Tell me about the research that goes into your writing?

I’ve got some nice policemen who help me an awful lot - they are unbelievably helpful considering I tend to ask the same questions over and over - and a really helpful paramedic. Usually, I’ll try to write the first draft and then worry about research. But sometimes, if there’s a scene I want to write and I’m not sure it would happen – cops water-skiing down the outside of The Shard, for example – I’ll check on the feasibility first.

  

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a plotter. I like to know where I’m going. The idea of just, you know, making stuff up as I go, terrifies me. I like to put in some twisty stuff and have to tend to set that up early - and the best way to do that is by plotting. A lot of people swear by it, but pantsing just doesn’t seem like a lot of fun to me, there are already thousands of micro-decisions to make in every chapter. One day I’ll pants my way through a book - I’ll see if I can do it, I promise - but it’ll probably be the most-boring book ever. It’ll be two people in a room making each other cups of tea for 100k words. 

  

Tell me about your writing, do you write full time?

Yeah, I’m lucky enough to write full-time, and I try to write every day, too. It’s taken me a long time to get to the stage where I’m doing something I love, really love, and to do it for a living, and it kind of consumes me now. I take my hat off to anybody who can hold down a full-time job, bring up a family and manage to write books. 

When is your most productive period of the day?

There is no right or wrong time. I don’t tend to write in the early hours anymore because – well, I like my sleep. I like to write in the morning and usually I’ll carry on into the afternoon. But I’m a great procrastinator so I do a lot of pointless reorganising of documents. I’m also highly inefficient and disorganised, and more than once I’ve lost great swathes of polished text by reorganising everything. Don’t be like Mark, kids. Remember to back up your files at the end of every day.

Is any part of your writing biographical? Any of the characters based on you or inspired by real people?

I’m afraid not. I’ll take the odd characteristic from people. Reviewers have often commented on how my characters are neither good nor bad, but a little bit of both, and I like that ambiguity in people. I’m fascinated by our flaws, they’re what make us all different. However, stay tuned, because Sasha Dawson is going to be new territory for me…

What other writing projects are you working on? 

I’m thrilled to be starting a new crime series for Head Of Zeus which features a new detective, the awesome DI Sasha Dawson. Sasha is the antithesis of Drake – as well as being terrific at her job, she’s a nice woman, funny, empathetic, and her team are devoted to her. Trouble is, she’s always rushed off her feet trying to sort out other people’s problems, pulled this way and that – if it’s not the investigation, it’s her big, troublesome family. I love Sasha, I’ve loved spending time with her, and I hope readers will love her, too. 

Finally, I’m going to shamelessly poach two questions from your old Crime Thriller Fella blog. I like to think that the answers to these questions helped you glean valuable help for your own writing. Certainly, reading them on your blog has been helping me. So here goes:

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

That Crime Thriller Fella knew how to write a killer question, didn’t he? Writing a novel is a long, hard slog. It takes ages to write a book. Well, it does for me. It’s a mountain to climb and there are absolutely no short cuts. And it’s like wrangling cats, too, as you struggle to pull all the threads of it together into a whole and get it into shape. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, like that feeling when you eventually finish it, but the process can’t be rushed.

Give me some advice about writing?

To quote the great John Irving, you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.