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.

Little Siberia by Anti Tuimainen

I first discovered this author when I read his novel, The Healer, a post-apocalyptic story set in a Helsinki beset by the effects of calamitous flooding and climate change. It was a brilliant novel - and with climate change increasingly seen as an emergency - one that was ahead of its time. I next encountered this author’s work when I read one of his first novels to be published by his current British publisher, the always brilliant Orenda Books. The Mine was crime noir set against the backdrop of economic and political corruption and was another gripping tale of noir. 

Tuomainen’s output was crime thrillers at this point, but he then took a turn towards black comedy with his darkly comic book, The Man Who Died. Then followed Palm Beach, Finland, in the same vein. And now his latest book, Little Siberia. This is the third in his darkly comic crime novels, all of which have something of the Fargo about them, none more so than this offering.

A meteorite falling from the sky and crashing into a car is the event that sets this novel’s plot going, for it soon transpires that the space rock is made from rare metals and is worth a fortune. For now, it is being kept in the war museum of the town of Hurmevaara in Finland, an isolated rural spot that is just a short distance from the Finnish/Russian border. In a couple of days it is due to be collected and transported first to the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and then to London, for scientific analysis. 

Joel, a local priest and war veteran (he was a pastor in the Finnish contingent to the international force in Afghanistan), is taking his turn guarding the rock when he is assaulted by burglars intent on stealing it. That robbery is foiled, but it soon transpires that a lot of people have their eyes on the meteorite and wish to swipe it away before it’s taken to Helsinki. Having learnt that his wife has been unfaithful to him, and angered that someone tried to steal the rock from the museum while he was guarding it, Joel becomes obsessed with both discovering the identities of those who assaulted him and protecting the meteorite from those who wish to profit from it. 

Like the television series, Fargo, (or indeed the original film), there’s a cast of weird and wonderfully eccentric characters that Joel has to choose from as to who might be the robbers (and indeed, who might be his wife’s lover, another mystery he wishes to solve). He sets about his investigation with gusto and is soon in greater danger as he gets closer to the truth.

Little Siberia is a wonderful book, just like all the novels Tuomainen has written to date. He’s on a roll with these darkly comic tales, and I look forward to reading what he writes next. Will he return to the more serious noir? Will he pen another dark comedy? Or will he strike out with something different altogether? Whatever he decides, this is an author of great talent and I’m sure I’ll enjoy whatever he comes up with next.

5 out of 5 stars

The Day It Finally Happens by Mike Pearl

The author, Mike Pearl, is a journalist who’s articles I’ve long enjoyed in Vice and Vice Motherboard. His articles often focus on speculative - what would happen if? - scenarios, and range from the plausible to the less so. regardless, they are always an entertaining and thoughtful read and. So I was intrigued when I learnt that he had written a book based on the same premise, and keen to give it a read.

Each chapter in The Day It Finally Happens focuses on a speculative possibility. These range across a broad sweep of speculation and topics include The Day the UK Finally Abolishes its Monarchy, the first chapter and a personal favourite of mine as I’m anti-monarchy,  The Day Antibiotics Don’t Work Anymore and The Day Nuclear Bombs Kill Us All. 

Some scenarios are difficult to imagine: The Day The Entire Internet Goes Down, for example. This is an unlikely scenario as is The Day A real Jurrasic Park is Opened. Some, like The Day the US Completely Bans Guns are unrealistic for other reasons (does anyone ever believe America will come to its senses?). But others, such as The Day Humans Become Immortal are easier to visualise with the news constantly reporting advances in scientists' quest to combat ageing.

There’s something here for everyone and this book is well worth a read, but the real strength is the author’s ability to get readers thinking about things differently. As a journalist who worked for nearly twenty years in television, I’m well versed with many of the arguments, but each chapter gave me at least one angle I hadn’t considered.

This is a great book, thoughtful and concise, and I would highly recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars

Bodyology by Mosaic Science

This is a book supposedly about the science of the human body, but it is indeed much more. I was attracted to this title by some of the chapter headings: “What’s it like to be struck by lightning?” “How to fall to your death and live to tell the tale?” (What can I say? As a crime fiction writer, I’m attracted to the morbid).

Reading the book though, it quickly transpires that while the chapters answer the questions posed, they do so in a roundabout way that encompasses the science of the subject they’re examining. Take the chapter “How to fall to your death and live to tell the tale?” This becomes a fascinating examination of balance, how humans walk, what causes someone to fall or trip over, how science and technology are attempting to mitigate falls in the care of the elderly and more.

Each chapter contains a fascinating wealth of information and so answers more than the question it sets out to do. This book is another popular science book that’s well worth a read.

4 out 5 stars

Cage by Lilja Sigurdardottir

This is the third title in the author’s Reykjavik Noir series and I have a confession to make. When invited to review the title I had not read the previous two titles in the series (despite having them on my kindle) and so I quickly read all three back to back. I toyed with the idea of writing an individual review for each title, but in the end, I have opted to just write the one review, which while focusing primarily on Cage, is really a review of the trilogy as a whole. If this sounds a little lazy of me, it’s not, because while with some series individual books can be read as standalones, the Reykjavik Noir trilogy, in my opinion, can’t. I really would suggest reading them as a series, and reading them in order, as the structure of the books and the character development will really only make sense to the reader if they’ve read the previous titles. 

There are two main characters in the series, Sonja and Agla. Sonja begins the series in the first book, Snare, as a drug mule, having been tricked into it by a dodgy lawyer after a messy divorce. Her lover, Agla, is a banker, a “bankster” accused of manipulating the market prior to the financial crash. By book three, Cage, Sonja has risen to the top of the Icelandic drug trade, while Agla is in prison serving a short sentence for financial crimes. But Agla has fingers in many pies and is always making huge sums of money from one scam or another.

Each book introduces a colourful cast of supporting characters, many of whom are recurring, and also contains a strong subplot which supports the main arc that spans all three books. In Cage, the two subplots are a scam to make money out of the world’s aluminum supply (if that sounds dull, don’t worry, it’s much more gripping than it sounds) and two teenagers building a bomb (to blow up what is revealed at the end). 

These books are noir in the truest sense of the word, meaning that none of the characters are particularly likeable or sympathetic. A cliché said about writing is that a protagonist has to be likeable, that the reader needs someone they can relate to. But true noir often eschews this. One of the most famous examples is James Elroy’s novel White Jazz, the protagonist of which, a character named Dave Klein, is, in turn, a lawyer, bagman, slum landlord and mafia killer who’s also in an incestuous relationship with his sister! Somehow Elroy, one of the best writers of noir, makes this work. While the reader never comes to like Klein particularly, they can’t help but root for him. 

The Reykjavik Noir series is very much of this mould. None of the characters are particularly likeable, in fact, I would go as far as to say that they’re all pretty despicable (just like Klein, the character in the Elroy novel). An example, the first title, Snare, begins with Sonja smuggling drugs through an airport. To do this, she surreptitiously switches her luggage with that of another, wholly innocent woman (she buys an identical case in duty-free). Only when the other woman has successfully passed through customs does she approach her to admit her “mistake” and swap the luggage back again. Now think about that: if the other woman had been caught, her life would be destroyed, as she would be convicted and possibly imprisoned for drug smuggling. And yet Sonja is one of the main characters, a person we’re supposed to root for. Agla, the bankster, is even worse, the epitome of an amoral banker. Neither is there any let-up as the series progresses, throughout book two, Trap, and book three, Cage, the characters continue to profit from their criminality and unethical behaviour. 

But does it work as a trilogy? Well, yes, it does. Just as James Elroy pulled this trick off with White Jazz, which is seen as one of the classics of the genre and rated by his fans as one of his finest works, Lilja Sigurdardottir pulls it off with her series of novels. One just can’t help but root for Sonja and Agla, despite their despicable flaws. As a fan of noir, I really enjoyed these novels and grudgingly cheered for Sonja and Agla all the way. The author does a great job of telling their stories and these books are real classics of the noir genre. So if like me, you like books that are a bit more challenging than the average read where the protagonists are completely loveable and likeable, then the Reykjavik Noir series might very well be for you.

4 out of 5 stars

The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina

This is a book that I kind of happened upon by accident. Or rather, I misunderstood its content. When I got hold of this title, I thought it was going to be an investigation into organised crime’s use of the sea: drug trafficking, people smuggling, piracy. These topics are touched upon, but the bulk of this book is the author’s investigations into the trawler industry.

The oceans cover approximately seventy-one percent of the world’s surface. And this sphere is governed by a patchwork of ill-enforced law. Ships are supposedly governed by the laws of the nations whose flag they sail under; beyond that, there’s maritime law that governs the oceans but it’s patchy at best. All this means that when something happens at sea, jurisdiction is often messy. Then there’s the problem of enforcement. It’s not like someone can just dial the emergency services and summon the police. Then there’s the problem of investigation. The ocean by its very nature does not make a good crime scene. Apart from its lack of solidity, evidence can simply wash away. Similarly, boats move and have to be tracked down. 

Despite the fact that this title only touched on the issues I was expecting, I quickly found myself engrossed, for the author reveals stories of shocking cruelty and criminality. I knew something of illegal fishing - trawlers breaking quotas and illegally fishing in the seas of other nations - but I didn’t quite know its scale. Nor was I aware of the brutality meted out as commonplace to crews. It transpires that many of the world's trawlers are crewed by slave labour. Seafarers are recruited from the poorest slums in the poorest nations on earth, their identity cards are taken so that they can’t leave, they are made to sign contracts that they cannot read, which pledge them to multiple charges, thus ensuring their debt bondage. They suffer beatings, sexual assaults, and rapes, and sometimes worse - murders and executions are regular occurrences. 

The author spent five years investigating all this, teaming up with environmentalists and activists, and the under-resourced law enforcers who struggle to uphold what laws there are and bring at least some of the perpetrators to justice. There have been all too few successes.

This is a deeply troubling book, not least for those like myself who’ve chosen to cut down on meat (for health and environmental reasons) and to eat more fish. I knew that there were concerns about plastic and chemical pollution in the seas and in farmed fish, but now anyone eating fish has to ask whether they are propping up a corrupt industry that operates on the backs of the enslaved. And there are the roaches. This is a minor issue, certainly, when considering the brutality the crews endure, but it is worth noting. One thing the author reveals is that the trawlers are crawling with cockroaches. So the fish are not exactly kept in the most sanitary of conditions.

To put all this in context, if this was happening on land - on a farm, a slaughterhouse, a factory - there would be an outcry. We’re used to seeing environmentalists and animal rights activists exposing the conditions within the meat industry, yet what the author details here is much, much worse. Imagine if a meatpacking facility was found to be cockroach-ridden, employing slaves who were beaten, raped, even murdered, who flouted the law with impotence and arrogance. They would be shut down within days, those responsible prosecuted. Yet this is precisely what happens every day and night on our oceans.

It is not every day that one comes across a book that shocks and changes one’s perception of the world. This is such a book. Deeply moving and concerning, this is a powerful and important exposé.

5 out of 5 stars

Weirder War Two by Richard Denham and Michael Jecks

This is the second collection by the authors of weird stories gleaned from the events of the Second World War. Their first collection, Weird War Two, was published in 2018, and this title follows the same format: small chapters that outline a curious fact or tale. The second book doesn’t follow on from the first, it’s not imperative to have read the first title at all, and both can be enjoyed separately.

Like its predecessor, Weirder War Two doesn’t break new ground in the sense of revealing anything new. The authors have not spent hours studying archives or prising documents from governments through FOIA. But that is not what they set out to do and it’s not the value of this book. Rather, both titles seek to introduce the reader to little known, and yet fascinating, stories. Readers are then free if they like to search out more information on any they might be interested in.

A good example of this is the first story in the title, The Avengers, which details the efforts of Jewish resistance fighters and vigilantes to avenge the holocaust by killing Nazis after the war. The chapter gives a good overview, including recounting the plot to poison Nazi prisoners held in an American POW camp near Nuremberg. If anyone reading this wants to know more they can soon find books that cover the story in more detail (such as the excellent history of Israel’s targeted killings, Rise and Kill First. Written by the Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, while it mostly focuses on assassination by Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services and special forces, early chapters focus on The Avengers and similar groups). But that said, the overview in Weirder War Two is a good and concise introduction to the topic.

As with its predecessor, Weirder War Two contains a variety of topics that run the full gamut of the Second World War. Some are funny, some ridiculous, some fascinating, some heartrending, and some horrific. Bamse the Dog and Wojtek the Bear are heartwarming stories of animals that were adopted by fighting units and became mascots to their men. But I challenge anyone to read The Shrunken Heads of Buchenwald and not feel nauseous. 

There are many chapters that span the emotions between these two extremes, but it is perhaps tales like the latter, challenging though they are to read, that explains the enduring fascination of World War 2. No conflict before or since has produced so many books. Even the first world war, which rivalled the second in its carnage, has failed to produce the weight of pages dedicated to its chronicling. There’s a sentence in the chapter on The Shrunken Heads of Buchenwald that I think explains this: “A civilised western nation, a Christian state, had experimented and shrunk a man’s head.”

While this sentence refers to the moral outrage the Nazi’s atrocities provoked, it speaks to the second world war as a whole. That a modern nation such as Germany had fallen into the grip of utter psychotic insanity is something the world is still trying to explain. All the tales in this book arise from that insanity - the heartwarming to the horrific - they all occurred due to that mass psychosis. 

In conclusion, like the authors’ previous outing, Weirder War Two is a fascinating collection. It’s the kind of book you can dip into, and no matter one’s knowledge of the conflict readers are sure to find something surprising among its pages.

4 out of 5 stars