Q&A with Val McDermid's new crime stars

Oliver Harris: People are looking for new angles on the conventional genre structures, but it’s almost impossible to predict. All people ask for is for a new element – perhaps the location, their job, their personal situation in life – and then just execute it well. Avoid the clichés. 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Haynes: I’ve worked for the police for seven years, and it’s a vey fine balancing act between making it real and making it clear about how dull it can be working in that environment (in an office setting). I think there’s a lot of crime writing out there that sacrifices the authenticity in the plot, but there’s a lot of people that are reading it that know it doesn’t happen that way. A lot of my police colleagues don’t read crime fiction anymore, because it’s very distracting.

 

 

Kate Rhodes: I think the standard of crime fiction is incredibly high at the moment, particularly in the UK. And of course, we have the massive surge of Scandinavian writing as well, so I think you have got to have a really distinctive voice. It’s not just the tale that you tell, your voice has got to be quite different otherwise people might feel cheated if it feels the same or very similar to someone else. 

 

 

 

 

 

DM: Unbelievable. To be chosen by Val as a decent writer was in itself a real treat. Val’s opened up a lot of doors for me by just giving me an endorsement. I’m quite new to the whole crime scene, I don’t know much about these festivals but it’s been explained to me how important [they] are and to be in the kind of company that I’m in and for Val to be interested is terrific. She’s a legend. 

 

OH: It felt amazing. The beauty of the crime world is the community and how people are so supportive. But at the same time not everyone goes out their way like Val and Mark [Billingham] to help new writers; it’s not something they need to do but they know how valuable it is. And the thing with Harrogate is you are guaranteed a decent audience, which is such a rarity with any event. 

 

EH: Amazing – I know this is going to sound really daft, but it hit me yesterday that Val must have read my book. I’ve been a massive fan of Val, years before I started writing crime fiction myself, so to be in the same hotel as her, never mind being interviewed by her, is going to be a completely awesome experience.

 

KR: Absolutely brilliant, I did a mini Mexican wave! I was really surprised; I don’t think anybody writing now doesn't know about Val and her incredible writing. She is one of my favourite authors, so to be chosen by one of your heroes is quite something. 

 

 

DM: Every story has to have a beginning, middle and end and there’s something about a story that involves a death that gives you that. It sets the tone and structure. Whereas when I read literary fiction, I sometimes wonder - other than spending time in the company of well-drawn people - I sometimes wonder what I’m supposed to take away with it. I don’t find it a particularly enriching experience.

 

OH: People love the worlds they create. In the hands of a great crime writer you know you’re guaranteed a read that’s diverting and entertaining, while learning something about the world. 

 

EH: I think it’s the same thing that people get out of romance and from other genre fiction, and that it’s escapism. I think for most people, their experiences of crime are limited to what they read about in newspapers or in crime fiction and it’s a safe way of exploring your boundaries of fear. Because real crime isn’t like that at all; real crime is dirty, horrible and painful and involves lots of arguments. It’s a tangle to unravel, and immersing yourself in that crime fiction world you can immerse yourself into believing that things will have a resolution or a happy ending – whoever has committed a crime will be caught and punished. It’s a way of people making sense of a world that, thankfully, most of us don’t have any experience of. 

 

KR: I think if you read a crime novel, you don’t have to go out and be in danger yourself. There’s a bizarre sense of cosiness about sitting down with a cup of hot chocolate and reading about people in immense danger. It means you don’t have to go out and face any perils yourself. We are all thrill seekers.  

 

 

DM: Being a journalist since I was 17 is research enough. I’ve had a very bizarre career – I went from being at school on a Friday to covering murder trials on the Monday. That was a good baptism. By the time I had spent a few years as a journalist, what I knew was how unpleasant life could be - how seedy, how grimy  and how people have no idea what they are going through. Some people whose lives are touched by so much tragedy and misery and there are other people who make their living off that. Some of them are journalists, some of them are police. They don’t want to, but that’s their job. In terms of the police procedure, I was a crime reporter for a long time, so I know pretty much a lot of the basics. And where I set the book, they were my streets in Hull.  

 

OH: A lot of it was done from research I had done for previous novels that I had tried to write. I had always been introduced in white-collar crime, which is in no way central in The Hollow Man, but it’s become an aspect of it. I was also interested in the culture of police and what it’s like for police detectives. It’s surprisingly hard to find books on that. And I spoke to a few surveying police offices to get the day-to-day stuff.

 

EH: At the time of writing it, I was working as a police intelligence officer and my specific role at that time was looking at violence in the borough. For our borough, that involved youth violence, violence in the night time economy and domestic abuse. At the time, reading about it, I suppose I had my own stereotypes of domestic abuse violence challenged, as having no personal experience of it, I had assumed what the sort of person would be like being a victim of domestic abuse. To my surprise it affects people from all social backgrounds, all ages, it can affect anyone. I wanted to show how it had never happened to me, but it could have. If I had been in that environment, out clubbing with my friends all of the time, potentially looking for a new relationship, and I came across someone who was charming, good-looking, gorgeous and absolutely focused on me, I could have been a victim. 

 

KR: I was working in Borough at the time and I just went for a walk with my husband and came across Crossbones Yard, the prostitutes’ cemetery. And then read the legacy behind it – thousands and thousands of prostitutes are buried there and it made me fascinated that there is this deconsecrated prostitutes’ graveyard with no memorial stones. There’s no noise about it, no publicity. So I went off and did research about it becoming the start-off point for the novel.  

 

 

DM: Agincourt by Bernard Cornwall  - and The Burning Soul by John Connolly 

 

OH: The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet 

 

EH: Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

 

KR: Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

 

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes (Myriad), The Dark Winter by David Mark (Quercus), The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris (Jonathan Cape) and Crossbones Yard by Kate Rhodes (Mullholland Books) are out now.