Nicolás Obregón Q&A

Blue Light Yokohama, Sins as Scarlet, and your latest novel, Unknown Male, all feature your protagonist Inspector Kosuke Iwata, but are all very different books. What was the original inspiration for the character?
Ah well, he has many mothers. I always had an idea for a ‘different’ kind of detective kicking around in my head, probably inspired by Rick Deckard, Chandler, and Seichō Matsumoto. But the moment that that 'character' became Inspector Iwata specifically was the 17th of April 2014 in a hotel in Hiroshima. I’d been obsessed with the Miyazawa Family Murders for years and that night I picked up a newspaper about the real-life cold case. It had been unsolved for 15-odd years by that point. In the photograph of the detectives bowing outside the house where the family died. The photograph was grainy but one of them seemed particularly moved, almost in tears. I wondered what it was that moved him so deeply, wondered if maybe this was more than a job to him. Perhaps it snagged at some trauma of his own, buried away. And then I imagined writing about a fictional version of that sad detective, hunting a fictional version of the man that murdered the Miyazawa family. And lo, Inspector Iwata was born.

What was the inspiration, the first spark, for each of the book’s plots (Can be brief, of course)? 

Blue Light Yokohama, Iwata’s first story, is covered above. 

Sins As Scarlet, the sequel, is set a few years later in 2015, between LA and Northern Mexico. I knew I wanted to move Iwata to California, (like me, he’s grown up in two cities, between two cultures, and two languages), in order to both homage and subvert the classic Los Angeles gumshoe narratives we’re so accustomed to. I also knew that I wanted him to be a private eye, to lose the powers he had as a Tokyo homicide detective. I just needed to find a case for him. That’s how I came across the story of an unidentified dead man in the desert. He was carrying a hummingbird in his pocket, which in some indigenous Mexican cultures is a messenger between the living and the dead. It’s likely he carried it for luck as he tried to begin a new life but he ended up as bones in a desert. I pictured Iwata investigating a case that would take him into that world and I realised then that I was going to write a story where murders in LA would lead him out into the desert during the midst of the migration crisis that we’re still seeing today.

And finally, as for Unknown Male, I wanted Iwata to close his trilogy back in Japan, investigating the murder of an English exchange student on the eve of the 2020 Olympics. This was most directly inspired (not sure if that’s the right word) by the murders of both Lucie Blackman and Lindsay Hawker.

Your novels have a tremendous sense of time and place, the first and last novels taking place in Japan, the second in a Mexico wracked by the cartel wars. What research did you do to achieve this?

I'm glad you think so! I’ve spent a fair amount of time in both places and that obviously factors into the writing. Sometimes you go to a place without any intention of writing a book, you’ve left your butterfly net at home, so to speak. That’s usually when the really good stuff presents itself... So yeah, walking the streets, smelling the smells, talking to people. That definitely informed the Iwata trilogy. In the case of Sins As Scarlet, I’m fluent in Spanish so that helped a lot in writing the Mexico-based scenes and I’d also spent five years working with Mexican lawyers in my old job so there was an element of writing what I knew. Sometimes it's the little things that I think really pop - little turns of phrase, local dishes people eat, the way someone might drink their coffee. If you speak to a Londoner about an arrogant colleague, they might say 'he thinks he's all that and a bag of chips'. You have the same conversation with an Argentine, they might say 'he thinks he's the last Coca-Cola in the desert'. Those little quirks have always fascinated me and I think if you're able to lace those details in without being heavy-handed, they really deepen the richness of the place. 

Then, of course, it goes without saying that a shedload of reading goes into the stew. Everything from academic papers to speaking to an undocumented immigrant working as a cleaner in Downtown LA - both of them have their own perspective of the cartel war. So the time-honoured method of just simply hitting the books is a big part of being able to create a sense of place - beyond just your own experiences of it - to be able to create a version of a said place that is informed by reality. But there also comes a time when research and striving for authenticity can get in the way of getting the actual chapters down. 

Have you always been attracted to the crime thriller genre? 
Yes and no. I’ve always loved it and some of my earliest heroes were detectives. But at the same time, I never really expected to write crime novels. Inspector Iwata presented himself to me and his job was to hunt bad men and put them in jail. But maybe if he were a zookeeper or an investment banker I’d be writing shitty rom-coms or long-winded pseudo-literary family sagas. (Or, more likely, I’d still be drowning in the quicksand of my old dead-end office job). I suppose I just mean it was never really the plan per se to write a detective novel, but in the process of doing that, I completely fell in love with them. It’s a pleasure to be part of this genre. Chekov said, in the end, all novels are detective novels as the protagonist is always trying to come to their truth. This is what detectives are, it’s why they exist. I can’t imagine ever wanting to not write that.

What’s your process and how do you go from vague inspiration to fully fleshed out notion?

From inspiration to an actual solid concept can be a bit chicken and egg sometimes. But essentially, once you feel that you’re baking something tasty, I think there has to come a time when your research is put to one side while you get your actual chapters down. Maybe it's a eureka moment and everything flows togehter. Or maybe it's more of a slog where you have to cobble a story into shape. But either way, I think in some sense a fully fleshed out notion is where you surrender all other possibilities and all expectations and really grasp the nettle of your narrative.

Part of that is allowing yourself to cut certain corners, especially in early drafts, in order to write the best story you can. That sounds easier than it is. As for my own process, it's a bit haphazard, to be honest with you. I don’t have a magic formula that I’m ready to flog as a YouTube class... But I would say that my writing process is a period of eliminating and whittling. You reduce and reduce and reduce until you fully understand the essence of what you want to write - put simply, I think I have to understand WHY I'm making these choices. From there, I can then put all the baubles on the Christmas tree that I want.

My own writing (and the writing that I tend to enjoy) concerns itself more with the why than the what. So a stunning twist or a gruesome MO or a unique investigation? All of that is great. But I care more about the people pushing those things forward rather than the things themselves. I don’t want to write puppets that exist to just progress plot. So, in a very roundabout way, my process is mainly a period of getting to know the people that are going to live in my story. Who are they? What are they afraid of? How are they going to suffer? That's crucial to me. After all, my story only exists because of them and the answers to those questions. 

When do you know if an idea isn’t working? Have you ever had to abort a story because it just isn’t “doing it”?

I’ve never aborted a story once I’ve seriously started to write the thing. But then I’ve only written three novels. There can be a thousand reasons why you might not fully commit to an idea and intangibles such as ‘not feeling it’ are part of that. But I have definitely thought this is the draft and then, lo and behold, it needs another draft. I think many writers want to get on with the actual writing itself rather than get bogged down with the nitty-gritty of plot holes etc. I've definitely been guilty of that, having to go back to the beginning and make sure things are all happening for a reason. Theoretically.

Tell me about the research that goes into your writing?

I think I touched on this a bit in question 3. I suppose to add to that, every research phase is as different as each story. I write quite instinctively and let myself meander sometimes and then reign that back in as I get closer to the final draft. So there’s a period when I read and read and read while taking notes. Then that might lead me in a vague direction of a narrative which, in turn, branches off in a new direction of research. But yeah, there comes a point in which you have to say, OK, I know this topic inside out but I’m not giving a TED talk, I’m writing a story. A lot of the time the research doesn't even make it into the final draft. Or initial images that sparked the entire book end up being written out - despite having inspired the whole bloody thing. Them's the breaks, I suppose.

Last thing I’ll say on research, I get asked sometimes, if you could ask a question to any writer, what would it be. And my answer is: I wouldn't. I would trade my question in for a look at their browsing history instead.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

A little of both?

If you plot, how do you go about plotting your stories? 

Kicking and screaming.

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

I think wild tangents are great personally. Whether your editor does or not is a different matter…

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

I do. I have a good pair of slippers and I drink too much coffee. That's about as exciting as that gets.

When is your most productive period of the day?

I think some days flow better than others but I tend to write office hours, Monday to Friday. Of course, I’ll still be chipping away on Sunday night but to give my life some routine, I try and stick to that. 

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

Some characters are definitely modeled on real people I’ve known/know. Sometimes, you fuse people together. But a writer is a magpie, forever stealing little bits and bobs for their nest. I think on some level, all my characters are versions of versions of something in my life. 

As for biographical, perhaps, though not intentionally. I might share a few traits with Iwata here and there but we're nothing alike. Certainly, the older he gets, the more concrete he becomes as a completely distinct persona from me. The more time you spend with your protagonist, the more separate from you they feel. Maybe like a child. (Not that I would know). 

What writing projects are you working on now? 

I’ve got a lot of plates spinning but sadly I can't go into too much detail: a book due out with Penguin/Michael Joseph next year which will be a standalone mystery novel set in rural America which I can’t say too much more about. 

Then there are also one or two things happening in terms of adapting Inspector Iwata for the screen which is exciting although rather surreal. Then again, Hollywood is 99% maybe and 1% we'll see. 

And I’ve got a side hustle right now writing a screenplay set in the murky world of insurance fraud. I live in LA after all so I thought I would embrace the cliche.

Some writers get published with their first attempt at a novel (even if it takes years of changes) others have aborted previous attempts. Was Blue Light Yokohama the first novel you tried to write? Do you have unpublished novels that have never seen the light of day?

I wrote a half-hearted thriller about a translator who gets sucked into a conspiracy in Latin America about 10 years ago when I was 25. It was more of a fun exercise than anything else, I was never serious about shopping it around. But I did learn some really important lessons that I think helped me later on. 

I started writing Blue Light Yokohama when I was 29. So I suppose it was my second completed novel that was my big break. Certainly, I had a suspicion that it had some value. But, although it's stupid, you don't want to jinx it so you tell yourself not to get your hopes up. Plus, it's impossible to disassociate yourself from your writing far enough to be able to look at it completely impartially and judge its merits fairly. But yes, I did have a feeling that Blue Light Yokohama was of a publishable standard. 

As for unpublished novels, I’ve got a box full of ideas but I’m trying to take them in turn. Certainly, I haven't tried to sell them yet. I'm yet to be laughed out of the pitching room.

Yet.

Tell me a little about your journey to success, how did you secure that all-important agent and first publishing deal?

Success is relative. When I was unpublished, success looked like X. Then you get published and success morphs into Y. That's not to be contrary, I just think being a writer is an ongoing examination rather than the end of a rainbow. But, as far as my journey, I think it’s a fairly standard story. (Although it still feels like a fairytale to me).

I wrote a book, made a list of agents that I loved the sound of, and told myself that if they all told me to jog on I’d take it as a sign that I only thought I could write and not actually write. If that happened, my plan B was to pack it in and write graphic novels instead or something. 

So I sent off a query email with the first three chapters of Blue Light Yokohama and a few paragraphs on what it was and why I'd chosen that particular agent. Luckily the planets aligned for me and the first agent I reached out to asked me to send him the full novel. We worked through it, a few weeks later I signed an agreement with him, and then publishing deals ensued.

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 hardest lesson? 

Hm, I suppose that writing is a business, in the end. Of course, it's something you understand intellectually from the outside, but it's just so oblique it hardly seems real, somehow.

I went into this without knowing a single thing about that side of publishing. That’s not to say you need to become Gordon Gekko to be a successful writer, but just getting to grips with the machinations of how the industry actually works — it’s not an easy thing, especially when you have to ignore it to some extent in order to be creative again and produce another book that is actually by you and isn't trying to please everyone at the same time. 

So I would say to unpublished authors, as well as swotting up on the writing process and really understanding the genre in which you want your story to sit, it's definitely worth researching the world of agents and the world of publishers as these are the two oceans that your little paper boat must sail on. 

Give me some advice about writing?

Only take career advice from people that actually have the career that you want. That's all I've got for you. 

So I'll steal from others instead. Now I can’t remember where I read this but: writing is sowing a seed of truth and then planting a tree of your own making. I think there’s a lot to that. Also, I always go back to the words of my secondary school English teacher:

‘I don’t care so much what the story is about. You just have to make me care.’ 

I've never forgotten that. Your story can be very well written. It can be polished. It can stay perfectly in tune. And yet…It can leave the reader nonplussed. 

Not that I would profess to be an expert here, but I think the thing that makes people want to push your book into the hands of other readers is the emotional connection they have with your characters. If that’s not happening, it’ll just be another crime novel. You have to remember that they’ve read a million crime novels before. If you’re not giving them some kind of feeling to connect with, then they’re just left with plot. Not saying that’s bad, I just think, as a writer, it’s your job to make readers feel things.

Unknown Male by Nicolás Obregón

Nicolás Obregón is an author whose trilogy I’ve read from the start. His debut, Blue Light Yokohama, introduced us to his protagonist, Inspector Kosuke Iwata. Iwata was a newly appointed Tokyo homicide cop and was on the trail of a serial killer, the Black Sun Killer. Iwata was an outsider in the force and the events of that novel led him to leave the Tokyo Police under a cloud; he relocated to the United States, where he worked as a private detective, and this is where we found him for the sequel, Sins as Scarlet. In Obregón's second book, Iwata was asked to look into the death of a transgender relative and stumbled upon a cesspit of corruption and violence in the US/Mexican borderlands. Both Blue Light Yokohama, and its sequel, Sins as Scarlet, were brilliant novels, and so when the author brought out the third novel in the trilogy, I was keen to read it.

Unknown Male takes Iwata back to Tokyo, Japan. A British student, Skye Mackintosh, has been found murdered and with the world’s press taking an interest, the Tokyo Homicide Department is desperate for a quick result.  Iwata’s old boss, the head of the unit, is dying of pancreatic cancer and determined not to have the Mackintosh murder unsolved, and thus a blot on his legacy. He calls Iwata back to Tokyo to lead the investigation, installing him as a consultant, though in actual fact he is in charge. Joining him as an observer is DC Anthea Lynch of London’s Metropolitan Police. She has as many issues as Iwata and has been sent to Tokyo to keep an eye on the Japanese investigation into Skye’s murder as a means of keeping her out of trouble back home.

Alongside the high-profile investigation into the murder of Skye Mackintosh is a second investigation which is receiving much less attention, the disappearance of a number of sex workers. It is not clear how linked this is to the murder of Skye and the author does not reveal this until the very end. Neither does he reveal until the end what link, if any, and to which case, the seemingly normal but in actual fact brutal serial murderer, Mr Soto, has. The author weaves all these strands together throughout the novel, each barely touching the other, but doing so enough that we know that one or more are going to impact with each other in the finale. He does this deftly and the plotting of Unknown Male is impressively done.

This isn’t a particularly violent or gruesome novel, but Unknown Male has some horrific elements. Most noticeable is what Mr Soto does with women he’s kidnapped. I won’t go into details but the drink he prepares for them is the stuff of nightmares. But like Hitchcock, the author knows the power of imagination, and these elements are touched on lightly, with much left to the reader to picture for themselves. This is much more effective, in my opinion, than those writers who graphically describe in technicolor and visceral detail.

Unknown Male is perhaps the final book of the author’s to feature his hero Kosuke Iwata. The book closes his story nicely, and while it’s left open for his return in a future novel, it’s also quite possible that his journey has come to an end. It’s a brilliant novel and a fitting end to a brilliant trilogy.  Nicolás Obregón is now working on a standalone and some scripts and if they’re as good as this series of novels then I await them eagerly.

5 out of 5 stars

The End Is Always Near by Dan Carlin

Being a writer of fiction that tends to the dark side - crime, horror, dystopia - I’m a big fan of popular science and history books that look at things that reflect such interests. So it was that I came across Dan Carlin’s The End is Always Near, a history book that looks at moments in history of near apocalypse. 

Based on a popular podcast, which I must confess to having never heard, Carlin’s book is split into chapters, each of which focusses on a different event. For example, and to give an idea of the scope of the book, we have a chapter on the Fall of the Roman Empire, another on the plague, and another on the use of nuclear weapons.

I found this book illuminating and a fascinating read. I learnt a lot too and felt that while each subject might be covered in more detail in more specialist books, it gave an entertaining and thought-provoking overview.

This is a book that is both cautionary and optimistic. Time and again we learn of human hubris. While apocalyptic thought has been a feature of human imagination down the centuries - from religious texts such as the Book of Genesis, through literature and film - none of these societies that actually faced it ever really felt that they were on the cusp of a disaster. But equally, it is undeniable that we are better prepared than ever to deal with some of the challenges we face (for example, we know more about epidemiology than ever and thus are more able to staunch epidemics of disease). 

This is a fascinating collection of popular history and I highly recommend it.

5 out of 5 stars

Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver

This is actually the first Will Carver novel I’ve read and it’s a brilliant book. But as other reviewers have observed this is a very hard book to review. It’s literature/crime fiction/dystopian observation all rolled into one. Added to that is the fact that there is no central character as such. Rather, there are a number of recurring characters who are dotted throughout the narrative and who gradually take on greater significance.

A lot of people die in this book, and while the blood and guts are not piled on too high, there are some gruesome descriptions of how they die. Most surprisingly, all these people’s deaths come at their own hands. For this book is about a suicide cult (I should be careful with the C-word, as will be explained) calling themselves the “People of Choice”.

The People of Choice are a seemingly spontaneous cult. Ordinary people, who for reasons known only to themselves, congregate in public places with other members, all of whom have never met until that day, and throw themselves off buildings. Needless to say, this causes widespread public concern, media panic, and the resultant pressure on the police, who have no idea how to stop it.

As mentioned, this book is not written in a conventional way. Another author might have written this as a straightforward narrative, perhaps following a detective trying to solve this spate of suicides. But Nothing Important Happened Today is instead written from the perspective of lots of people. Most chapters are written in the third person and from the perspective of those planning on killing themselves, though these chapters are distant from their subjects and so we never really get an understanding of what they’re thinking. Other chapters are told from the perspective of the uncle of one of the victims, and from that of a police officer, and these are closer to their subjects. Running through the book, and interspersing the character chapters, is text from some kind of manual dictating how to create a cult, what is wrong with that word - the author postulates that it is often the reaction of outsiders, those who label something a cult, that cause tragic results - and serial murder. The significance of this is only realised at the end.

One reason this book is so difficult to review is that to explain why it is so good is to risk spoilers. So I will try to be circumspect with my final thoughts. That said, if you’re a reader who’s really concerned with spoilers, perhaps it’s best to stop reading at this paragraph. If you are reading this review, and do decide to stop reading it here, just take it from me that this is a brilliant book, extremely original and one that will stay with me for a very long time. I can’t recommend it enough. 

Still reading? 

Ok, so what I really liked about this book is how it considered free will, control, compulsion, and influence. I studied Criminology as a masters at the LSE and this stuff is discussed all the time. For example, believe it or not, there are studies that show the smell of fresh bread makes people more peaceable and less prone to violence. There have been discussions of piping the smell of baked bread into city centres, I kid you not (as far as I know it’s never been tried). Furthermore, there’s serious evidence that derelict buildings, broken windows, and graffiti, lead people to have less respect for a neighbourhood and subconsciously take cues that anti-social behaviour is permitted. This has led to numerous initiatives, from city clean-ups, on the one hand, to zero-tolerance policing on the other. 

All this is taken to the extreme in the Darren Brown TV programmes, where the mentalist takes an unwitting volunteer and subjects them to psychological cues to see if they can be made to do something. And this, to me at least, is at heart what Nothing Important Happened Today is all about: how much free will we actually have, can we be compelled to do something catastrophic against our better interests and under what circumstances. 

This is a deeply disturbing novel and the author has clearly done his research. It’s also not for the faint-hearted, for not only does the author tackle difficult subjects (suicide, our fragile free will) but he also doesn’t let wider society off the hook. Throughout he also shows how, while less malign than whatever is causing people to kill themselves, social media and celebrity culture are also working against our psychological well being.

A brilliant and chilling piece of fiction, this is an author who I will be sure to read more of.

5 out of 5 stars

Violet by SJI Holliday

This novel opens with Violet in Beijing. She’s been travelling the world – it’s not clear for how long – and has recently split from her boyfriend, Sam. In Thailand, Sam wanted to stay longer and party while Violet wanted to keep to their agreed itinerary. He stayed, falling in with a bunch of German travellers, drinking and partying, while she continued on alone without him. In Beijing, Violet meets Carrie, another lone woman traveller of about the same age, who has two tickets for the Trans-Siberian Railway. Carrie is also travelling alone due to unforeseen disaster, though in her case it was that her travelling companion, her best friend Laura, broke her leg on a drunken night out just days before their departure. Carrie gives Violet her spare ticket and the two embark on their rail journey.

This is a psychological thriller and it soon transpires that both women have their secrets. The bulk of the narrative is told from Violet’s perspective, and she is the person with the most to hide, but it’s never really clear who is playing who. They develop an abnormally intense relationship, though again it’s never clear whether this is all in Violet’s mind and if Carrie feels the same way. Encounters with others become battlegrounds between the two where they assert superiority and try to find out more about each other.

The settings of the Trans-Siberian Railway are vividly brought to life and there are various stops along the way. The train stops in Mongolia, and Irkutsk, both of which are well described. Later, the characters travel to Moscow, and then Berlin, both locations also brought to life. It was no surprise to discover that the author travelled the Trans-Siberian Railway when younger and she clearly knows the locations well. 

At heart this is about how well we can know others, and how strangers we meet have the potential to be anybody. It’s also about friendship and obsession. This novel reminded me very much of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, as just as in that novel, the characters adopt personas to please those they want to impress, with dark and sinister consequences.

If I have one criticism, and it’s very much a personal one, it’s that I was a little disappointed with the denouement. But this wasn’t that it was poorly written, but rather that the character who got their comeuppance I had enjoyed spending time with! As the narrative unfolds, they’re revealed to be deliciously wicked, and in the same way that readers have been drawn into rooting for Tom Ripley or Hannibal Lector, I kinda hoped this character would get away with it and perhaps even return for a future adventure. But who knows, perhaps they still might. There is after all a passing reference to Rosalind House, the commune that features in the author’s previous novel, The Lingering, so it’s always possible that the character concerned might feature in the author’s future work.

I really enjoyed Violet. This is a great novel. I’m not a massive fan of traditional psychological thrillers, the domestic noir that’s so popular these days, but SJI Holliday is crafting psychological suspense that branches away from such territory and the result is very enjoyable books that have kept me eagerly turning the pages.

5 out of 5 stars

The Lingering by SJI Holliday

Jack and Ali are looking for a fresh start and so move to Rosalind House, a commune on the site of an old Victorian asylum deep in the fens on the east coast of England. The asylum itself was built on land that had been used for witch trials and has a troubled history, with inhabitants of the nearby village viewing the place with suspicion. 

Rosalind House was founded by Smeaton Dunsmore, who grew up on a commune himself and then travelled the world honing his religious and philosophical outlook. Upon his return to England he founded his own commune, which while not overtly religious, embraces a new age-like spirituality of self-sufficiency and eschewing the modern world as much as possible. The residents of Rosalind House are all damaged to some extent, or wafs and strays, people who have found the modern world very difficult for one reason or another and thus have chosen to turn their back on it. 

Jack is a former police officer who worked in child protection, while Ali is a former psychiatric nurse. Smeaton is normally very particular about who he lets come to live in Rosalind House and there are all manner of vetting and procedures he makes prospective residents go through, but he has made an exception for Jack and Ali as they offered a large amount of money. While the commune is largely self-sufficient, there were expenses that had to be paid, such as for a new boiler, and so this once he had given in. While the other residents are wary of this, they have accepted it. But when Jack and Ali move in they quickly find it hard to gel with the other residents and there’s things about the way they behaviour which raises other resident’s concerns.

In particular Angela’s suspicions are raised. She’s a young woman who has lived in Rosalind House for a while. A believer in the paranormal, she is always trying to investigate the hauntings and supernatural phenomena that many believe afflict the property. She in particular soon develops strong suspicions about the new residents.

The Lingering is a gothic horror/psychological thriller. It’s a good mix and one that works well in this creepy and sinister tale. I started this book expecting the commune itself to be villain, that Smeaton Dunsmore would turn out to be a Jim Jones/David Koresh type figure, but I’m not giving away too much to say this isn’t the case (we learn within the first few chapters that events will surround the new arrivals). 

The characterisation in this novel is very strong, though we really only get to know Jack and Ali, Angela and Smeaton. The rest of the supporting cast are just that, and it will be interesting if see if the author ever returns to Rosalind House or its characters for there’s enough here to give her a rich seam of storytelling. The plotting is deft, and this is a tale that really is very unsettling. A very good read.

5 out of 5 stars

The Silent War by Andreas Norman

I first came across Andreas Norman, the author of this Swedish spy thriller, back in 2014 when I read his debut novel, Into a Raging Blaze. Norman, a former Swedish diplomat, had written a prescient novel at a time when Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass NSA surveillance were rocking the world. In Into a Raging Blaze, his protagonist, Bente Jenson, the head of Swedish Intelligence’s station in Brussels, had to contend with a devious MI6 and the impact of mass surveillance. I gave the book three stars – there was a little too much detail of the workings of the EU for my liking – but thought it strong enough to want to read anything else the author went on to write.

Fast forward to 2019 and finally there’s a sequel, The Silent War. Featuring many of the same characters from the previous title, not least protagonist Bente Jenson and calculatingly sinister antagonist, MI6 man Jonathan Green, this is yet another topical thriller. This time the plot surrounds the torture of terror suspects - ISIS members being tortured in an MI6 safe house just across the border from Syria in Turkey - and how reliable the intelligence gleaned from them can be.

Bente has a war to fight on two fronts in this novel. On the domestic front she has suspicions concerning her husband’s fidelity, while her son is playing up at school and has anger issues. On the professional front she has been passed a USB drive exposing MI6’s involvement in torture in Syria, and when she passes it up the line to her superiors it is unwelcome. Sweden relies on intelligence from MI6 and thus does not want to rock the boat. Jonathan Green, for MI6’s part, wants the information back and is willing to countenance anything to get it.

Whereas the author’s debut, Into a Raging Blaze, was a solid and worthy, albeit plodding affair, The Silent War is a much more assured effort. This is a much better novel than the first in the series; it’s gripping yet cerebral, a page-turner, yet one that maturely grapples with important issues that face the intelligence services and their masters to this day. It’s a cliché when writing a review of a spy thriller to compare the author to John Le Carré, but with his background in diplomacy and security matters which shines through in his research and the narrative of his novel, in this case the comparison seems apt.  

The Silent War is a brilliant novel that really holds its own in the annals of the modern espionage thriller. The author has really come into his own with this novel and it will be interesting to see what he does next. Without divulging spoilers, the novel ends on a note that could see the end of Bente Jenson’s journey (and that of MI6 man Jonathan Green) or might lead to a third outing for the characters. Either way, whether the author writes a third in the series or something new, on the strength of this outstanding novel I’ll be reading it.

5 out of 5 stars 

The Plotters by Un-Su Kim

Reseng is a hitman for hire. Abandoned in a bin outside a nunnery as a baby, he was taken in by Old Racoon, a cantankerous man who owns a library full of dusty tomes which nobody ever borrows. To those not in the know, Old Racoon’s place is just a library; to those that do, it’s a hub organised crime where assassinations can be arranged for the right price. Reseng has been raised to be a killer and he’s one of the best hired guns in the business.

Set in modern day South Korea, the novel’s premise is that after the fall of the country’s dictatorship and embracing of democracy, the government could no longer just kill with impunity. Assassinations needed to be disguised as accidents, or the bodies disappear. And it’s not just the government. As the economy boomed, corporate entities also got in on the assassination game, taking out business rivals and others. The assassinations themselves are ordered and paid for by the “Plotters”, shadowy and powerful characters who act as brokers for those paying for an assassination and commissioning the assassins to carry it out.

If readers have seen a Korean thriller or crime movie, such as Oldboy, then they’ll know the country’s film industry has a tendency towards the surreal, the disturbing, and rather farfetched, albeit entertaining plots. The Plotters fits very much into this mould, but while entertaining in movie format, it becomes a little draining in narrative fiction. I found the plot of this novel just a little too inconsistent and stretching of credulity and towards the book was losing my interest.

To be fair, the characterisation in this novel is effective in that the reader warms to the main character, Reseng, despite the fact that he’s a hitman. To be sure the violence isn’t graphic, and he doesn’t kill gratuitously, but the author also fleshes him out as a person. So, I was invested in the character and wanting to know how his story panned out, which kept me turning the pages. 

This was just as well as there were just too many plot holes and I have to admit having struggled to stick with it around the 50% mark. I nearly gave up on this book. Luckily the last third picked up the tension enough to see me through to the denouement, which was satisfying in its way, though the central questions raised in the narrative were never fully answered.

All in all, I found The Plotters to be a disappointing read with an interesting premise which never fully met its potential. This is a novel that might well make an entertaining popcorn movie in which the fast-paced action sequences can paper over the flaws in the plot, but as narrative fiction it left a lot to be desired.

2 put of 5 stars    

The Club by Takis Würger

This is a surprisingly timely novel in the context of the UK’s 2019 General Election. With former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, alumni of the notorious Oxford University drinking fraternity, The Bullingdon Club, the activities of such elitist societies are now in the news.

Hans Stichler is a young German boy who lives a rather idyllic life in the country. He’s a loner who when bullied takes up boxing and is quite good at it. This doesn’t make the other children like him but ensures he’s left in peace. After his parents die in twin tragedies, he is sent to boarding school where once again he’s ostracised by the other children. He continues his boxing and dreams of being back in the country.

Hans has an aloof aunt, Alex, a professor at Cambridge University. One day, as he’s nearing the end of his time at boarding school, she asks him whether he will go undercover at the university. She will guarantee his entrance under a false surname and in return he gets to study there. She tells him cryptically that there is a crime she wishes him to investigate. Hans eventually agrees and it soon transpires that Alex wishes him to join an exclusive drinking society, the Pitt Club. Hans obtains membership, his boxing skills aiding him, as the most prominent members of the club box for the university.

Over the course of the novel Hans gets more involved in the life of the university, the life of the fraternity, and the University’s boxing club. He meets Charlotte, a female student who is helping Alex to expose the crime and falls in love with her. I won’t give anything further away about the plot other than to say that it’s no surprise that the crime involves excess, alcohol and drugs, and sexual violence. 

The book is relatively well-written, though I did find it’s constant shifting of perspective from character to character (including sections from some minor character’s perspectives) a little confusing. That said, I did take to it after a while and it did keep me turning the pages.

The Pitt Club is a real Cambridge University drinking fraternity and interestingly the author has real experience of it.  Takis Würger is a German journalist who writes for Der Spiegel, but when a young man he enrolled at Cambridge University and joined the Adonians, the Hawk’s Club and the Pitt Club, before dropping out of the university. Whiles these clubs aren’t as notorious as Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, they are drinking societies that are riotous and are exclusive.

This is a novel about wealth, power, and the impunity that comes with it. At a time when two Prime Ministers come from such backgrounds, and at university were members of a club that revelled in smashing up restaurants and general antisocial behaviour; when Prince Andrew is accused of consorting with a convicted sex offender and faces little in the sense of concrete consequences, this is a vital novel that addresses important issues.

4 out of 5 stars

Gordon Brown Q&A

Where did you get the inspiration behind Highest Lives?

It was a simple thought. What if the most outrageous serial killer of all time was on the loose and what if Craig McIntyre, who has spent the last three books on the run from the US government, is asked to help out an LAPD detective with an investigation into the murders. Then to add mustard to the idea I was recently watching a programme on what billionaires spend their money on. Things like $100 cups of coffee with gold flakes sprinkled on top. These people are constantly looking for the new and the super-expensive. That got me thinking. What if the LAPD detective was also investigating a new recreational drug for the super-wealthy – for those bored with life and looking for something new – something insanely expensive and mega out-there. And, bingo, Highest Lives was born. 

Highest Lives is the fourth in a series of conspiracy thrillers. This one touches on narcotics and serial killing. What attracted you to these storylines?

Craig’s world is a serious mess. His innate and preternatural ability to bring out the worst in people means he is always in trouble or on the run. I wanted to settle him down in one place for this book and the idea of him becoming a Private Investigator appealed. Over the last three books Craig has developed as a character and I wanted him to undertake a new role while still facing his old challenges. When I landed on the idea of him helping out the LAPD I needed a seriously ‘out there’ set of circumstances to give a reason as to why Craig would be brought in. When the detective, Sarah Tracy, learns of Craig’s background he seems the most obvious person to help her look into a set of crimes that seem all but impossible. And, as with all of Craig’s books, nothing is quite as it seems. On the face of it we have an outrageous serial killer and an insane new drug – but is that really what is going on?

You’ve had success with this series of conspiracy thrillers, the first, Darkest Thoughts, nominated by The Reading Agency as one of its Books of the Year for 2017. What attracts you to this genre?

I’m actually a conspiracy theory debunker in real life. I find the need in some people to look beyond the obvious, for a more Machiavellian reason to explain events, fascinating but ultimately flawed. The Internet provides the perfect vehicle to drive such behaviour. It’s easy to find, interact and agree with like-minded people on the web.  In psychology it’s called confirmation bias – the in-built desire to strengthen your own beliefs and to ignore, or tear down, evidence to the contrary. So, when it comes to Craig McIntyre - his story sounds like a wonderful conspiracy theory – he’s a screwed-up result of a military experiment that can now influence people’s behaviour remotely. A sort of psychological Hulk. When he gets stressed people around him die. And yet in my books this is no conspiracy – it's real. In fact the Senator who runs the black ops agency that is always on Craig’s back uses conspiracy theories to cloud what he is really up to. And that’s what appeals to me about the explosion in conspiracy theories today – you can cover up an amazing amount of stuff if you just lie hard and often enough – because there are always people out there who will believe, and even champion your version of events.

What's your process for developing ideas from from vague inspiration to fully fledged ideas?

I wish I knew. I’d write a book on it. But the process is different for everyone. I’ve rarely met two authors that write in the same way. But there are some basic tenets I stick with. I run a creativity training business called Brain Juice - where I work with businesses to improve their creative thought and action. And some of the techniques I teach come in handy. 

The reality is that I usually start with a book title and a single line – and then I write. But my methodology has changed a bit of late. I used to sit down with a blank page and start writing until I had 80,000 odd words written. Then I’d go back and try and wrestle it all into shape. Lately I’ve refined that process somewhat. I now come up with a ‘big’ idea for the book – a simple one-line strapline is often best – something that will provide the bedrock to build the book upon. I sit down and write a few thousand words. Then I stop, put away the laptop for the day and get on with life. But, as the rest of the day unfolds, I’ll find ten or fifteen-minutes head-time to ask myself what happens next in the story. When an idea pops up I bag it and the next day use it to help move the story on another couple of thousand words. And so on – until I finish. I also review what I’ve written every ten thousand words or so. Going back over my work – sorting out typos and plot issues – not in depth – more a first ‘light- edit’. When I’m finished the whole book, I read it all through once more and give it a more serious edit. Then it’s dropped into the back of the virtual sock drawer and I leave it alone. When I dig it out, a month or so later, I give it another edit. After this my wife will read it and make comments and I’ll give the book another run through before sending it off to my agent or publisher. After that I wait for the comments and work on those.

Tell me about the research that goes into your writing?

Most of it comes from my head. I’m not given to extensive research. I’ve always read a lot, both fact and fiction, and that serves me well for research. When I do need to conduct some research, I’ll dip into the Internet, maybe to fact check or seek out an answer that is bugging me, but not that often. I tend to set my books in places I’ve visited or lived. I’m a big believer that if I’ve been to a place then I’m better at bringing the book to life. It’s just easier to place characters onto streets or into buildings that I’ve been on or in. I can see the characters walking or driving around a familiar landscape as I type. This makes it easy to describe places and to bring genuine atmosphere to scenes. 

I also do research on the run, as I call it. I’ll be walking along a street or sitting in a café and I’ll see something interesting and investigate it a little more. For instance, in Highest Lives I have set one scene in an old abandoned movie lot. Many year ago I made TV ads in LA and I explored every inch of the movie studio we shot on. And now it has become the abandoned lot in the new book. I love that sort of research. It’s hard to beat the richness that using a real place can bring to a book.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

The latter – only as I said earlier this has changed a little and I now do ‘daily-plotting-light’ – for want of a better term. My main reason for avoiding too much plotting is three-fold:

• Firstly, I’m inherently too much of a doer to take the time to sit down and plot. I like to write, not plan.
• Secondly, I’m of the opinion that if I don't know what is going to happen next in a book, then neither will my reader. If I surprise myself with what I write then I’d like to think I’m also going to surprise my readers.
• Thirdly, I love the notion of the unexplored land that a white page promises. Plotting would be like handing me a Sat-Nav and I don't want, or need one – I adore getting lost in the story and having to figure a way out. It’s what I enjoy most.

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

I go off at wild tangents all the time. That's why I like flying by the seat of my pants. I never know where I will end up. Okay, I need to try and fix things once I’ve got it all down - but I find that easier than trying to plot it all out in the first place.

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

I still have a day job, although it’s a lot less frenetic than it was a couple of years back. I’m a marketing consultant and used to fit my writing around the job – now I fit the job around my writing.

When is your most productive period of the day?

I don't really have one. Because my job used to involve industrial amounts of travel I got used to writing on trains, planes and hotels at every conceivable hour of the day. At one point I considered asking United Airlines for sponsorship as I’d written so much on their transatlantic and US air routes. But if I was to pick a time of day I feel most creative – I’d pick first thing in the morning – and I mean early - five o’clock early – my head seems clearer at that time of day.

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

There’s always something of people you know in characters but I don't base them on real individuals. I tend to hear phrases and they make it into the books - but most of the characters are a little bit me and an awful lot of imagination.

What writing projects are you working on now? 

I’ve just landed a new book deal with Polygon for a crime book set amongst the expatriate community in Spain – and it comes out in 2020. As a result, I’m working on the second in this series. I’m also playing with ideas for McIntyre 5 but haven’t put finger to keyboard on it yet.

Tell me a little about your journey to success, how did you secure that all important agent and first publishing deal? 

I was the Marketing Director for STV a good few years back, on a contract basis. I’d been writing since my teens but when I knew my contract was finishing I said to my wife that I wanted one last throw of the dice at writing a book that would get published. So I spent the summer writing and about a month editing. I sent three chapters and a synopsis to four publishers and one wrote back and said they liked what they had read and could I send the rest. I was so excited that I e-mailed a copy of the finished work straight away. I then went to meet the publisher who told me that he loved the first three chapters but the rest was a mess of typos, plot holes etc. It transpired that in my keenness to send the publisher the book - I had sent a very old, and very poorly edited, version - but I still got a book deal.

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?

You should never stop writing, ever. The book you are currently writing may be a million seller in the waiting – but it may not. That accolade may be waiting for your next book or the next. I’ll give you an example. Last year I wrote a Scottish crime book and although there was interest from some publishers – it was not picked up (I’d even written the second by the time it became obvious that things were slow). I could have kept plugging away with the book, looking for a publisher, but I had a meeting with my agent and he suggested that maybe we should park those books and I should write something else – and that was tough – but I did it. That new book is the book Polygon have just picked up. I meet people who have been plugging the same book for years and, although they still might get published, my one piece of advice to them is to write something new – and never stop writing something new.

Give me some advice about writing?

I have a few rules - borrowed or learnt over the years:

• Start writing: I meet so many people who say they are going to write a book – and never do. If you start writing then you move from telling people ‘I’m going to write a book.’ to informing them ‘I am writing a book.’ If you tell people you are writing a book there is artificial pressure to get the job done because they will ask how it is going. The proverbial kick up the arse as it’s called.
• Write about something you enjoy: I hear people say you should write about what you know – fair enough if you also enjoy it but for me just knowing about something isn’t enough to light up a page. In my case I really need to love what I’m writing about for it to be good. Imagination is there for the stuff I don't know.
• Set yourself a word count target for writing: I aim for two thousand words a day when I’m in the zone. But even if it’s five hundred words a week you’ll get there eventually – if you don’t set a target the chances are high you’ll never get the thing written.
• Let others see the work – and not friends: Find people who will give you genuine, honest feedback that you can work with.
• Don’t stop writing: Ever.