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Mark Billingham Interview

An interview with Mark Billingham

I hope we might see Thorne on TV some time. Is there any chance of that happening?

Of course, it would be nice to see Thorne on TV, but only if it’s done well. The books have been optioned and scripts are being written, but this of course is no guarantee the show will ever see the light of day, so I’m not holding my breath in fevered anticipation. It’s a mixed blessing if it does happen. We all have our own ideas about characters and they rarely bear any resemblance to their TV incarnations. It’s not something you can take too seriously. I like to cast books in my head using only actors from ‘Carry On’ movies. So obviously Sid James as Thorne, Kenneth Williams as Hendricks, Hattie Jacques as Carol Chamberlain etc etc.

You have also written for television, right?

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 also acted in. It was a comic version of the Robin Hood story created by 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 people’s 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...

Thorne is a character who, with each book, becomes more complex. You make sure that past events affect him and you take care to pick up where the last story left him. How do you make his misery so very convincing?

If your characters remain unaffected by what has happened to them, then you are basically writing cartoons. Thorne would just become like Tom the cat in ‘Tom & Jerry’, his head battered into the shape of an anvil in one shot and then perfectly normal again in the next. Surely we all carry our pasts around, don’t we? Having said all that, there’s another line to walk here. Each book in the series has to stand on its own, and it can’t be too full of references to previous ones. It’s important to acknowledge the past, the scars that have been left inside and out, but without dwelling on it to the detriment of the new story you are trying to tell. I take it as a huge compliment that Thorne’s misery is convincing, because truly I am a very happy person. It’s certainly not something I’m dredging up from within myself.

Does Thorne have any of you in him?

Well, he’s around the same age and he likes 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. 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.

Do your friends read your books and wonder about all this dark twisted stuff in your head?

Yes, there’s a certain amount of that, a few odd looks. I think we all have dark, twisted stuff in our heads and, cliché as it is, it’s probably therapeutic to get it out of there and into the heads of other people. Dealing with the subjects I do, it’s inevitable that some scenes will be hard to deal with. You cannot write about violence, about the effects of violence, without to some degree laying them out. Obviously you need to walk that line between an honest depiction of these things and something that becomes pornographic or gratuitous.

Which 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 – Ian Rankin, John Harvey, Denise Mina, John Connolly in Ireland. But the ones I will always read are definitely American: Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke, Daniel Woodrell, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman. Elmore Leonard, of course. All of those writers are wonderful with dialogue and they rarely waste a word. It’s always great to have something to shoot for; writers who are raising the bar in terms of what we do.

You convey Thorne’s love of his father quite beautifully. Have you any experience of friends or relatives suffering from dementia?

No, thankfully it’s not something I’ve ever been close to, but it was a subject that I took very seriously when it came to the writing. As far as research goes, you learn which things you can take liberties with and which you have a duty to portray accurately. The portrayal of Jessica in The Burning Girl and the aftermath of facial scarring was one, and Jim Thorne’s Alzheimer’s through several of the books was another. While I tried to get it right, I was also keen that it wasn’t unremittingly bleak. Humour is important to me in this respect. I wanted Thorne’s father to be a funny guy, in the same way that I wanted Alison in Sleepyhead to be funny. A little light can really blacken the darkness, if you know what I mean.

You have an impressive mastery of police procedure and trot out police acronyms with amazing confidence. How come?

Over the course of the books, I’ve come to know several police officers very well and now have a number of good sources (both official and not so official) that I can call upon when I have to. I try to keep on top of the procedure because things change very quickly, not least of all the prosaic stuff like what things are called. In the course of seven books, the department Thorne works for has changed its name four or five times. Buried was actually the hardest book to write in many ways, because the Met is very protective when it comes to how kidnaps are investigated. So with Buried I was far more reliant on those unofficial sources I mentioned...

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 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.

You have involved Thorne with serial killers, with the squad dealing with London gangs and with kidnapping. Where are you thinking of planting him next?

He’s going to retire and grow vegetables, and work part-time as a Johnny Cash look-alike while solving mysteries with the help of Elvis the cat in a quiet Cotswold’s village. Or not. All I do know is that, after Death Message, I’m going to give him a rest for a year. I don’t really know what Thorne is going to be doing each time until I sit down and start the book. Suffice it to say he’s never going to be after people for non-payment of library fines.

What are some of your favourite 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 It’s A Wonderful Life.

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. It’s 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.

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, with two grown-up kids and with twenty or so well-thought-of novels under my belt.

Will reading your latest book save people’s lives?

Not unless someone uses it to fight off an attacker.

Interview: Jon Jordan © Crimespree Magazine Catherine Hunt © www.shotsmag.co.uk

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