Michelle Spring Interview
Jan 2002

http://www.lydmouth.demon.co.uk/us/authors.htm

1) Your protagonist, Laura Principal is a great lead character. What can you tell us about her?

I didn’t choose my central character, she chose me. I began writing my first novel, EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE, quite suddenly, without a plan or even a storyline, and Laura Principal simply shot to the surface. She was just there, leaning over my shoulder, like an old friend. And once we’d worked together, I didn’t want to let her go.

Laura is a private eye. She’s based in Cambridge. Many of your readers will know Cambridge as a riverside city with ancient colleges and leafy lanes and teas on the lawn. But importantly, it is also a city of contrasts. Cambridge provides a perfect setting for a private investigator because it is teeming with people and yet only minutes away from tranquil countryside; quintessentially English, but cosmopolitan too, with visitors from all over the globe; a city steeped in ancient academic traditions, but a major global player in computer-based industry. It is a city of architectural splendours with a dollop of bitterness and violence. These contrasts are the grain that runs through all the Laura Principal books. NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN opens at St. John's College with a May Ball, an extravagant all-night party to mark the end of exams; but a beautiful student disappears during the festivities and in her search for the young woman Laura Principal exposes dimensions of college life that are grimmer and far more deadly.

Laura has a rich range of local contacts including her former student Nicole Pelettier, who is now a fast-rising Detective Inspector in the Cambridgeshire force. Laura has an insider's knowledge of the workings of the university, but she stands apart from it, too. She was one of a rare breed -- a Cambridge student from a working class family -- and even in her earlier career as an academic, she was always somewhat of an outsider looking in. This gives her an edge; she can move with ease between the university and the living, breathing city that is Cambridge today. She can, for example, deal with senior tutors and college masters (as in NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN) but she can just as easily win the confidence of ex-college servants or of residents of an old people's home; she is as effective in the village atmosphere of Grantchester (IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR) as she is at high table. She has, so to speak, a foot in both camps, and a vested interest in neither.

And in personal terms? Well, Laura Principal most definitely doesn’t follow in the footsteps of loner PIs from the past who are cynical about other people or driven by angst. She’ s thoughtful, athletic, warm and deeply loyal. She often gets drawn into cases that raise urgent social issues -- about violent children, or student prostitutes, or migrant workers -- about which she comes to feel passionately. Like most of the women I know, she is deeply embedded in relationships, even if her relationship with Sonny, the man who’s her partner in both the personal and the professional sense, is stormy. Laura’s efforts to balance her commitments to her lover, women friends, and her career provide a tension that slices through the series.

2) You've said that the first book in particular was kind of a therapy for you. Do they still work that way?

The first book emerged hot on the heels of a horrific experience. A student in the university where I taught until 1997 threatened to kill my husband and our children because he wanted to marry me. For eighteen months, he stalked us. Even after he was finally locked up, I was paralysed by nightmares of what might have been. Then, I wrote a crime novel. But once I’d started writing EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE -- about an art lecturer who lived and died in terror of a stalker -- the nightmares subsided.

Now the stalker is gone but I’m left with a strong sense that peace and security are temporary blessings. Life is still scary. Writing stories with a high suspense quotient helps me to live at ease. And The stalker is gone but I still have a very strong sense that peace and security are temporary.
Life is still scary. Writing stories with a high suspense quotient helps me to live at ease. And I sleep like a lamb.

2a) Does the experience of being stalked continue to affect your writing?

The stalking and other brushes with violence (I’ve had more than my share) have influenced not only what I write but also how I write. For instance…

I am acutely aware of how a single act of violence -- or even of its threat -- can reverberate on and on and on. Many of my books look closely at the consequences of violence.

I also know what’s it like to feel murderous. My stalking took place before England had anti-stalking laws and the police had told me that, until he injured one of the family, there was little they could do. I was outraged by our helplessness. Absurd as it might seem now, I even fantasised about a contract killer. That personal understanding of how a person can be moved to contemplate cold-blooded murder is helpful to a writer of fiction.

I think it is also the case that my experiences have affected my attitude to fictional violence. Death is a serious subject, and I try to give it the respect it deserves. But I prefer suspense to slashing. I try to steer away from truly grisly stuff, from sadistic violence. I don’t like reading the details of torture even in real-life accounts and I don’t want any sadist to get off on the stuff that I write.

3) The titles of your books relate to classic rock songs. Where did that idea come from?

While I was writing that first novel, I thought it might be called Inside Out -- because that’s what stalking does, it makes you feel as exposed as if your skin has been removed. But once I’d thought about that sinister Sting song Every Breath You Take, no other title would do. From then on, it was song titles all the way.

4) Your imagery of place in the books is more realistic than a lot of writers get. How important is where the books take place?

Jon, I love it when a novel like in Snow Falling on Cedars, or The
Alienist, or In a Dry Season, transports me to another setting, so I’m delighted that you feel that place is strongly realised in my writing. Many of my books have started with a place. NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN, the story of a student involved in prostitution, was influenced by my researches into the Spinning House. This was an ancient gaol in Cambridge in whose dark, unheated cells local women were imprisoned by university officials for consorting with undergraduates. RUNNING FOR SHELTER was kick-started by a house that caught my eye in a Victorian terrace in the Kensington area of London. It was a graceful house, and dusted with drifting cherry blossoms, but something about it made me shiver. A house with secrets, I thought. That ’s when I began to work to earnest on the story of a Filipina domestic, a slip of a girl, who vanished from a house just like that one.

Place figures perhaps most vividly of all my latest paperback, IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR. The novel focuses on a family whose four-year-old son goes missing. It examines how mother, father, sister deal with the disappearance -- and with the arrival years later of a sixteen-year-old who seems to be their son.

This novel started out with a moment on a magnificent set of cliffs above a crescent-shaped beach in Norfolk. The first time I climbed the path to the lonely headland a light fog was rolling in off the sea. As I made my way carefully along the cliffs, I saw two figures -- a tall man standing impressively erect and a slight fair-haired child. It wasn’t until they faded in the fog that I realised that there was no-one there. I’d seen a kind of vision. But it was a vision that struck me so powerfully that I knew I’d have to uncover the story of those two people and write it. And I did. IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR begins with a prologue that draws directly on that vision.

5) What made you want to move to England from Canada?

I moved to England in the 1970s while it was still rocking to the music of the Beatles and the Kinks and John Mayall and the Blues Breakers and the Rolling Stones. What really bowled me over was the landscape. Flying in over southern England I was stunned by the beauty of fields and hedgerows and rolling hills. And here I am today.

But I also have strong ties to North America -- to places like Vancouver Island, where I grew up, and to family and friends in the States and Canada. How else to explain my four transatlantic trips between May and November 2001 -- three of them after September 11th ? And of course it was on one of those trips -- from Indiana through Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. -- that I got to meet you!

6) What did you teach when you were at the University?

My official title was Professor of Sociology. But my interests are wide, and my courses and research covered quite a range. You want to learn more about how male and female teachers interact with their male and female students? About the caste system on the Indian subcontinent or slavery in ancient Greece? About the experience of infertility treatment? You name it, I taught it, at least for a time. And I guess what my sociological work has in common with crime writing is that both activities reflect a fascination with knowing what makes people tick.

7) When you are writing, do you set out to write about issues that are taking place in society, or does it just come out in the book organically?

Of course, my primary intention is to write the best novel I can, which is to say, gripping and entertaining. It should ring true. But as a writer, my best work comes when I feel passionate about something, and so when issues about which I feel strongly such as violence by (and to) children, or the unprotected status of domestic workers, or sexual harassment, or student prostitution, are incorporated in a story of mine, they tend to make the writing more powerful.

Take STANDING IN THE SHADOWS. STANDING IN THE SHADOWS explores the inner world of a child who confesses to the murder of his foster mother. Like millions of other people in Britain, I was riveted by the 1993 case in which a two-year-old by the name of Jamie Bulger was stolen away from his mother and tortured and killed. The murderers were ten-year-old boys. This brutal reminder of the capacity of children to kill -- since that time, brought to our attention repeatedly by incidents in schools -- is shocking enough. But the mother of two children not so far in age from Jamie Bulger’s killers, I found the case doubly painful. I felt an urgent need to understand why youngsters sometimes kill.

The plot for STANDING IN THE SHADOWS had already shaped itself in my mind before little Jamie was died. The Bulger case gave me fire. Gave me a motive for exploring more fully the issue of violent children. I examined sociological and historical and psychological studies of children who kill. I spoke to psychiatric pathologists. I visited a maximum security institution for violent boys who are detained under lock and key. I read everything I could about cases of violence involving children that occurred at that time. The story worked, and, in the end, after writing STANDING IN THE SHADOWS, I felt I had a better grip on children who kill.

8) Who are some of your favorite authors?

What a question! In the past few months, I’ve enjoyed novels by Dennis Lehane, Manda Scott, Andrew Taylor, Ann Prospero, Daphne DuMaurier, John D. Macdonald, Val McDermid, Frances Fyfield, Peter Robinson, John Harvey, Josie Shields, Anita Shreve, Helen Dunmore, Michael Ondaatje, Barbara Kingsolver, Ian McEwan, Jackie Kay, and E. Annie Proulx. Most but by no means all of these are crime writers. I like any writer who tells a good story and uses the English language like they mean it.

9) I've noticed that UK writers seem to have books with a little less action and more introspection than American writers. Why do you think that is?

Same impulse, perhaps, that makes British police surround a house containing an armed suspect with his hostage and simply wait there quietly until the man gives up and comes out; American police are rather more likely to burst in guns blasting and risk destroying the baby with the bathwater. Both approaches may succeed in getting their man. But both have a downside. In Britain, perhaps, it’s a no-can-do, hands-off mentality that too often lets tradition take the place of action. In America, it’s a reluctance to savour the moment, a restless insistence on rushing on to the next thing.

Personally, I like both action and introspection. Without action, momentum, forward movement -- without something happening, damn it -- what incentive is there to turn the page? Without introspection, a book skates over the surface and disappears before you even realise you've read it.

10) How would you describe a perfect weekend?

Family and friends. Good food and wine. The sea.

11) Do you think it's important for a mystery writer to "play fair" with the reader and give them a chance to figure it out while reading?

Yep. Ideally, the reader should be stumped three-quarters of the way through, but then suddenly, right near the end, everything falls into place. Of course, when you’re writing, that’s easier said than done. Some readers feel that the killer should have been placed more in the foreground in my first book; I can’t decide whether or not they’re right.

A lot of the clues in my books are psychological ones. They’re to do with the kind of people involved rather than with fingerprints or the method of death. One reviewer suggested that the Laura Principal series represents a new subgenre -- a cross between a private eye novel and psychological thriller -- and that sounds like a good description to me.

12) Do you have a writing schedule? Do you write a certain amount each day?

The rules of effective writing are simple. Write every day. Write first, before you do anything else. Write in your pajamas. Write until you have 1000 words minimum, 2000 words max.

Whether I manage to stick to the rules or not is a secret between me and my bank manager.

13) What else is there to being a writer besides just writing the book?

A hell of a lot.

Determination. Confidence. A friend who believes in you. Research -- avoid inaccuracies whenever possible; they can ruin a good read. Publicity events -- doing them and making sure the audience gets their money’s worth.

Checking -- proofs, prelims, jacket copy. Talking to readers; their
enthusiasm can carry you through a rough patch. Talking to writers -- pooling info about strategies for coping with the good times and the bad.

A gel pack (see below.)

14) If someone had told you at 18 years old what your life would be like now, would you have believed it? Or are you doing what you always wanted to do?

I grew up in a small town on Vancouver Island, the daughter of a deep-sea fisherman. I knew few people who read books, and no one who wrote them. The suggestion that I could make a living as a writer would have made me roar with laughter. Now that I’m doing it, though, it feels just like home.

15) What do you like about writing a series as opposed to writing stand alone books?

The characters. After I'd delivered EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE to the publishers, I was strolling down a London street not far from the head office of Aardvark Investigations, and suddenly I got an urge to drop in on Laura. She had become a friend. I wanted to know what happened to her next. And that's still the case today. I'm writing a stand-alone one-off at the moment but the minute I hand the manuscript in, I’ll set to work on the sixth Laura.

16) When you write, do you feel a challenge to try to outdo your previous work?

Not a challenge in the competitive sense that it must be bigger, must be better, must sell more. But a challenge to tackle new issues and try out new techniques -- yes. In the novel I'm working on at the moment, I've had my first full-blown go at multiple viewpoints. After five novels written mainly from Laura’s perspective, it is exhilarating to look at the world from several characters’ point of view.

17) Any thoughts on the increasing popularity of the mystery/crime genre?

Yes… oodles, but let’s save it until next time we’re in the bar together. Will you be at Left Coast Crime?

19) If your books came to a big or little screen, who could you see as playing your characters?

Any day now I’ll see the script for a television production of Nights in White Satin, because the BBC is considering doing a Laura Principal series. Several actors have been mooted as Laura, but I’ve not got a favourite at the moment. As long as she is played well, and as a grown-up woman, not a cutesy girl, I’ll be happy.

20) Do you enjoy spending time with your fellow mystery writers?

You bet. Mystery writers are great fun -- modest, friendly, unpretentious (well, most of them) and -- most important -- ready for a good time.

21) So, what is The Unusual Suspects?

Six writers with little in common except a dedication to the genre of crime writing -- and to each other. Since our launch at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre party at Crime in Store, London, we’ve done lots of gigs together -- everything from Bouchercon, in Washington, DC, in November 2001, to literary festivals around Britain. Our favourite topic is Taboos, Traumas and Temptations -- Things Crime Writers Dare not Write About. Though we’ve worked to this topic many times, it always comes out differently, and sometimes we even startle ourselves. Besides myself, the group includes Manda Scott, Andrew Taylor, Laura Wilson, Natasha Cooper, and Leslie Forbes …and you can read more about us on http://www.unusualssuspects.com.

22) What is the one thing you always have in your refrigerator?

A gel pack shaped like a pair of glasses. That way, whenever I get stuck on a scene, I chill out on the bed with the voice of John Lee Hooker or Aretha Franklin and a gel pack over my eyes. Heaven.