1) What can you tell us about your first book? Is it the start of a series?

Yes it is. SLEEPYHEAD is the first in a series of books featuring Detective
Inspector Tom Thorne and a cast of supporting characters! In this first
novel, Thorne is on the trail of a man who deliberately induces strokes in
his victims and has left three women dead and a fourth in a coma. The police
think that in leaving this woman alive, the killer has made his first
mistake. The horrifying discovery Thorne makes early on is that it is the
dead women that are the killer’s mistakes. The fourth victim, Alison Willetts
is his one success. Alison lies in a hospital bed suffering from a hideous
condition called “locked-in syndrome“. She can see, hear, feel but she is
completely and utterly unable to move. Thorne is hunting a man who for
reasons he cannot fathom has a unique agenda - to leave his victims at the
mercy of machines, neither alive nor dead but somewhere in between. Thorne
has got to find the killer before he “succeeds” again and Alison, the one
person who holds the key to his identity, is unable to tell anyone.

2) You have also written for television right? What kind of stuff did you
write for tv?

Oddly, (considering the dark stuff in the books), I used to write a lot of
children’s comedy and drama. I began writing as part of the creative team
behind a show called “Maid Marian And Her Merry Men” which I was also in. It
was a comic version of the Robin Hood story created by a great writer called
Tony Robinson who you may know as Baldrick from “Blackadder“. Since then
I’ve written both my own shows and as part of a team on other peoples shows
for the BBC. I think writing comedy for kids is hard. They’re so much more
picky about what they laugh about. I truly believe that it’s actually tougher
to get an honest to goodness laugh out of a twelve year old than it is to get
one from a drunk at half past Midnight at the Comedy Store. Plus, the kids
are rarely bigger than me and they don’t throw glasses...

3) As a new author, what is your take on the whole publishing industry? Was
it hard to get the first book published? Is there anything about that
surprised you?

The publishing business in the UK seems to be quite an old-fashioned one in
many ways. Deals are made on trust and a certain level of professional
etiquette tends to be observed. It may be the same in the US but I was
astonished that when various publishers were bidding for SLEEPYHEAD, they
never checked the figures in the auction that they were being given by my
agent, and at no time do they know who they are bidding against. It’s all
done on trust and I think that’s amazing and very refreshing. I think I got
very lucky in terms of getting the book published. I’d written about one
third of it when it got sent to publishers and I suppose the manuscript
landed on the right desks at the right time. It jumped through the necessary
hoops quite quickly and the publisher did a phenomenal job in helping get the
book into the top ten bestsellers here. I’m still hugely excited about the
whole process and having gone through the euphoria of publication and so on
in the UK, I’m now gearing up for the huge thrill of publication in the US
which is one book behind. I find the whole process of checking proofs,
looking at jacket designs, all of it, immensely exciting. Maybe I won’t in a
few years time but at the moment I’m still pinching myself...

4) What other jobs have you had?

I’m also a stand-up comic and I was a jobbing actor so it would be true to
say that I’ve never done a proper day’s work in my life. Hang on, I did work
as a cleaner at a holiday camp one Summer just before I went to University
but I got scared after a few weeks and came home. I was working on the night
shift with some very rough characters. One guy was a punk rocker who was
trying to look like Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols. He worked in the
kitchens, and every day after he’d unloaded the meat he would put handfuls of
fresh blood from the meat trays into his hair to get just the right amount of
spikyness. He also had a padlock on a chain around his neck. It was a nice
image but unfortunately he’d lost the key and his neck was turning green.
These were scary people. These were the sort of people who because I had
stayed at school beyond the age of fourteen, called me "professor"?...

5) Does Thorne have any of you in him?

Well, he’s around the same age and he likes a little of the same music but
aside from that, not really. He’s definitely shorter than me! Sometimes, if
the character is musing about the state of London - the public transport, the
health service, whatever, he may voice an opinion or two that I happen to
share, but I don’t see the point in just putting yourself on the page. It’s
fiction, not autobiography. I certainly have a much different life from Tom
Thorne in domestic terms. Thorne is, to say the least unsettled, but that of
course goes with the territory. Cops have unhappy love lives and dark pasts
in the same way that cowboys have six guns and Stetsons. It goes with the
territory. I’m sure there are detectives who have perfectly blissful private
lives and go home to their families every night and drink hot chocolate and
watch television. I’m just not interested in reading about those characters
and certainly not in writing about them.

6) Do your friends read this book and wonder about all this dark twisted
stuff in your head?

Yes, there was a certain amount of that, a few odd looks. I think we all have
dark, twisted stuff in our heads and, cliche as it is, it’s probably
therapeutic to get it out of there and into the heads of other people.

7) What authors do you like to read?

Most of my favourite writers are American. We have some great crime writers
in the UK, writers I admire hugely - Rankin, Macdermid, John Connolly but the
ones I salivate over are definitely American. Michael Connelly, James Lee
Burke , Daniel Woodrell (who should be far bigger than he is). I am a massive
fan of Dennis Lehane. We now share an editor in the US which is a huge thrill
for me. She kindly sent me an ARC of “Mystic River” as I was writing my
second book and it was so outrageously good that I couldn’t write anything
for a month! My very favourite writer is George P Pelecanos, whose novels
have elegance, grace and integrity dripping from them. His DC Quartet is as
fine a piece of writing as anything in the last fifty years and his next
book, “Hell To Pay” is truly, truly a masterpiece I think.

8) Was there anyone along the way that inspired you to write, or to just
keep trying to do what you wanted to do?

I was inspired to write simply from reading, and all of the people I’ve
mentioned inspired me and continue to do so. The day that I stop reading
stuff so great that it makes me want to give up, is the day I will give up.

9) Are you going to continue to write for television?

I haven’t really decided. There is other stuff I am still doing, TV work,
comedy, the screenplay for an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical ??!! But
increasingly it all feels like an interruption from writing the books which
is where my heart is at the moment.

10) There are actually other crime fiction writers who also did stand up
comedy. John Ridley also started out doing stand up, and then moved to
writing for television. Do you think a certain amount of humor is important
to being able to do this kind of writing?

Yes, I think humour is pretty crucial in any kind of writing and yes,
strangely, the darker the subject matter the more this tends to be true. What
is certainly true, and rather odd, is that writing crime fiction and
performing comedy both use many of the same techniques. First off, a strong
opening is important. That first gag has got to be a cracker if the crowd is
to trust you and to relax into your material. Ditto the readers of your book.
Most have not got time to give a novel the “benefit of the doubt” or to
“persevere” if it doesn’t grab them straight away. If the audience/reader
is to be engaged, it needs to be done pretty bloody quickly. Whether in a
sweaty, smoky club or nestled in a favourite armchair, good money has been
paid and the attention has got to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck if you
are not to be heckled off the stage or find your novel discarded in favour of
another. The same applies to the climax of your act/novel. The big finish is
all important. Whether your loose ends are to be tied up or left dangling,
whether you leave the audience on a shaggy dog story or a song, a bang is
always preferable to a whimper. The most striking similarity between writing
comedy and crime fiction is the use of what comics call the reveal. In joke
terms, this is the moment when it becomes clear that you have been led down
one path only for the punchline to come rushing up the other and smack you in
the face.
My grandfather died last week.(Audience goes “aaahhh“) No, it’s OK. He died
very peacefully, just sitting there in his chair. He went very quietly.
Unlike the passengers on his bus... Crime or mystery fiction uses reveals
like this all the time. The writer chooses the most effective or dramatic
moment to reveal key information. This is often a clue, though the biggest
reveal of all of course, is usually the identity of a killer. In the case of
whodunnits, it might be said that the whole book is one extended pull back
and reveal. I enjoy writing for both these mediums. If either were to cease
being enjoyable I should stop doing it but right now that seems unlikely. For
the present I get the best of both worlds. Death, blood and terror. And then
there’s the crime writing...

11) Where would you like to see yourself in ten years time?

Reflected in the silver of the World Cup trophy, which I am holding aloft,
accepting the plaudits of 100,000 fans, having been called up (at a somewhat
advanced age its true) to play football for England, and captaining them to
victory in the final against Germany. Or...just happy and healthy, coping
with two teenage kids and with a dozen well-thought-of novels under my belt.

12) When you write, do you need solitude, or does having a family close to
you make it easier?

Having a young family around certainly makes it impossible to get too “up
oneself“. Of course solitude is necessary for the actual fingers on keyboard
stuff, but I often get my best ideas or visualize the most affecting images
while doing the most humdrum family things. It would be strange but true to
say that some of the nastier moments in SLEEPYHEAD had their birth in the
car, on the school run with “The Wheels On The Bus” on the cassette player.

13) I guess this is an obvious question, but I’m going to ask anyway. Were
you a class clown in school?

Yes, I was the class clown. However, I was also the class bully. If people
didn’t laugh at my jokes I would poke them with something sharp...

14) In the book the media is portrayed kind of like sharks circling a body
in the water. Do the papers in the UK tend to sensationalize crime to sell
papers?

Yes, they do, but no more than anywhere else I don’t suppose. What has become
quite repulsive here is the way the media has whipped up quite natural
feelings of disgust and repulsion towards pedophiles into something
approaching mob rule. A certain ghoulish “shrine” mentality has grown up
here that can be traced back to the death of Princess Diana I think. People
will travel the length of the country to lay a bunch of flowers at the side
of the road where a child they did not know has disappeared. The media feeds
this kind of frenzy, taking advantage of the natural compassion in people
until it becomes something ugly. Rumours are fed by the media and flames of
bigotry and ignorance are fanned to the point where justice is no longer
possible. There was an incident here recently where a woman was hounded out
of her home because of a sign on her door that told people what she did for a
living. She was a pediatrician. She looked after children! PAED... was
however enough for some people, and she was forced to flee after violence.
You couldn’t make that sort of dark, dark tragic-comedy up...

15) Did you have to do any research for the book? And if so, what kind?

I had to do a fair amount of medical research for SLEEPYHEAD, for which I am
eternally grateful to one, hugely creative doctor friend and the crime
writer’s very best friend - the internet. Ditto with police procedure, I did
enough research to get the basics right. That’s all I’m interested in
really. As long as there aren’t any glaring errors I’m happy. I know
(because I am one) how picky crime readers are about mistakes so I will take
every step necessary to avoid them. Crime writers owe it to readers not to
insult their intelligence but they should also honour their imagination. I’m
writing fiction and not documentary so I want to take the facts and use them
to my own dark and dastardly ends so as, hopefully, to entertain the people
that read the books.

16) Was the title, Sleepyhead, your idea?

Yes, and it was a title I came up with very early on. The word itself is
highly significant polities as well as being appropriate for a story which in
many ways is about a woman who is permanently trapped somewhere between being asleep and awake. The word also has a childlike, innocent quality to it
which, in the context of the book becomes something altogether spookier and
far from reassuring.

17) Minette Walters once said that she sees her books as a chance to play a
game with her readers. To see if they can pick up the clues and figure out
the ending before they get there. What is your take on this? Do you give the
reader a fair chance to figure it out, or do you want them to buckle up and enjoy the ride?

Both. I want the ride to be enjoyable certainly but it isn’t one that’s
dependent on clues or puzzles. I think (I wait to be corrected!) that a lot
of US crime readers have a perception that British writers specialize in
these books which stand or fall on solving elaborate puzzles. Some do of
course but an increasing number of writers here are creating stuff that is
character driven, that comes from a concern for certain issues and I would
certainly place myself in this camp. Of course I want the reader to be
enthralled until the very end and there is of course the big reveal which I
have given them, I think, every chance to figure out, but this is not solely
what the book is about.

18) It seems that a lot of British writers are starting to catch on in the
states. Do you think it’s important for the books to do well outside of the
UK?

I think my agent thinks it’s important! Yes, I certainly hope that the books
do OK. I am an enormous Americophile (I may have invented that word). the
genre of crime fiction I like was invented over there and so, for my books to
be well thought of by US crime readers would be fantastic. It’s such an
enormous market over there that I think it is quite hard. It’s tough enough
for any number of brilliant American writers to get a foothold in the States
so I am thrilled to have even got a deal over there. Anything else will be a
huge bonus. And of course a good excuse to come to Bouchercon!


19) I believe that Death on Deansgate was your first convention as a writer.
What was it like to interact with the other authors as one of them?

It was great. I’d actually done some panels at this year’s Crimescene at the
National Film Theatre but Deansgate was my first real chance to hang out with
some of these writers. Crime writers generally seem a pretty nice crowd - far
less bitchy than other groups I’ve spent time among (notably actors and
comedians!!) and very welcoming of new blood. It was great to meet some
writers for the first time - John Harvey, Steve Booth and a real treat to get
to know George Pelecanos, who I had the honour of interviewing on stage for
the convention. He was hugely supportive of my book and very generous. Even
though everyone was there to hear him talk about his work I had to keep
working very hard to stop him steering the conversation round to mine! That’s
an absence of ego that you would never encounter among actors or comedians...

20) Any thoughts on why UK television does mystery and crime stuff so much
better than it’s done in the US?

I don’t think it does do it better, it just does it differently. We do those
languorous, rather elegiac treatments of stuff like Morse or Frost or
Dalziell & Pascoe very well and in recent years, series like Cracker
have developed more of an edge. I don’t think any of these shows though can
hold a candle to US shows like Homicide or NYPD Blue or The Sopranos or Oz. Like I said earlier, I’m an Americophile. Perhaps we are
all drawn to...otherness.

21) What are some of your favorite movies?

Oh, all sorts of stuff. I’m a huge movie fan. Comedy wise it doesn’t get
funnier than “Manhattan” or “Spinal Tap” and I’ve a soft spot for
everything from the Ealing comedies to the best of the Carry On series. I
love stuff ranging from epics like the Godfather series through to
beautifully made self-contained crime stories like “The Usual Suspects” and
“One False Move“. My top ten, which of course changes all the time, would
feature everything from “Blood Simple” to “Its A Wonderful Life“.

22) And ...what kind of music do you like?

Like I said, I share some musical passions with Tom Thorne - notably his love
of (proper) country music. Cash, Haggard, Williams, Parsons, Earle. Aside
from that I’m pretty retro I suppose, still into the singers and bands that I
was a fan of at eighteen. The Clash, the Jam, XTC and above all the mighty
Elvis Costello, the finest singer-songwriter of his generation. Always easier
of course to say what you don’t like - folk music, hip-hop and it goes
without saying all boy-bands, who should be tortured live on national
television.

23) Do you have another book in the works now? Can you tell us about it?

I’m actually working on the third Thorne novel at the moment. The second one
is finished and delivered. It’s called SCAREDY CAT and will be published here
next July, at the same time that SLEEPYHEAD is published in the US. In
SCAREDY CAT, Thorne is investigating a series of killings whose origin dates
back to a school playground and the disappearance of a young girl fifteen
years before. The book is about is about the nature of fear. How certain
individuals can be manipulated by it into the most terrible acts. How those
that have the ability, and the lack of conscience to inspire it possess the
most powerful weapon there is.

24) Are you going to be setting up a website?

I already have one, though I am about to have it shut down and redesigned. It
was set up a while ago, before I got a book deal and so is there solely as a
publicity tool for my career as a comic. It is therefore very silly and
somewhat rude and not representative, as it should be, of my new found and
very very sombre and arty persona as an (ahem) serious writer...

25) What is the one thing that’s always in your refrigerator?

An electrically powered refrigeration system. If not for this, my
refrigerator would just be a big, shiny, white cupboard.