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Exclusives

• An Interview with Sophie Hannah
• Sophie Hannah's Top Ten Crime Novels

An Interview with Sophie Hannah

Where did the idea for The Other Half Lives come from?

I was watching an episode of The Bill, and there was a scene that involved a suspect confessing to a crime he obviously hadn't committed. He was saying, 'I've no idea when I killed him, or where, or why, and I can't tell you what the murder weapon was, but I definitely did it.' The detective replied, 'It wasn't you really, was it? It was your son, and you're confessing in order to protect him.' Watching this, I thought to myself, 'I've seen this so many times on cop drama shows - someone confesses to a crime they haven't committed in order to protect someone else.' Then I thought, 'But what if someone confessed to a crime no one had committed: the murder of somebody who wasn't dead?' The idea intrigued me, because I like taking something that's ordinary to the point of cliche, and twisting it slightly so that it becomes something very unusual. Why would someone confess to the murder of a woman who was alive and well? What possible reason could there be? At first I couldn't answer that question, but the idea of it almost scared me, because it seemed so sinister. I imagined how scary it would be to get a visit from a policeman expecting to find you dead, how frightening to find out that someone has confessed to killing you. All my crime novels start with mysteries that intrigue me and that I can't immediately solve. I then have to solve them (ie work out the rest of the plot and how it will all slot into place) in order to feel confident enough to start writing the book.

There's a lot in the novel about art and artists - why did you decide to set the story in this particular world?

I knew that Ruth, the heroine of the novel, was going to be traumatised and damaged, because that was necessary for the story, and I liked the idea that her love of art helped her to recover from her pain - looking at a beautiful painting made her realise that life was worth living after all, but it's also her obsession with a particular painting that leads her into danger. I believe that art really does have the power to enhance people's lives. I love art, and often visit galleries and buy paintings (never expensive ones by famous artists, just relatively cheap ones that I really like from local library and art society exhibitions), and I really believe that art has the power to enhance people's lives. I've got paintings all over my walls that lift my spirits every time I look at them. In particular, I have lots of paintings by my favourite artist, a Yorkshire painter called Jane Fielder (to whom The Other Half Lives is dedicated). Jane's art is so brilliant and has such a positive energy about it, and she is also a lovely person, so I suppose it's only to be expected that her work would have the 'feelgood factor'. This got me wondering, though: if someone was dangerous or harmful, could they still produce works of art that lifted your heart every time you looked at them? Or would their negative energy on a personal level affect their art? Do unhappy, bitter people produce 'heavier' art, and happy people 'lighter' art, in terms of atmosphere? I decided that Aidan Seed, Ruth's troubled boyfriend, should be a picture framer, and that he should confess to having killed a woman who is an unhappy artist - one who refuses to sell her work to anyone and doesn't even want anyone to look at her paintings. Again, when I had this idea, I had no clue why Mary Trelease didn't want to share her amazing art with anyone - I was adding another layer of mystery, but, ironically, the more I mystified myself, the more desperate I became to solve all the mysteries. I knew that it was therefore more likely that I would care enough to provoke the perfect ending/resolution into surfacing from my subconscious.

So is the mystery aspect of crime fiction very important to you?

Yes. In many ways it's the most important thing. People are often a bit disparaging about the puzzle/mystery element of crime novels, as if a book with a puzzle in it can't be real literature. I totally disagree with this. In real life, puzzle and mystery are absolutely central. If we all knew exactly what would happen tomorrow, or the day after, we'd have no motivation for getting out of bed in the morning. People constantly wonder and hope and try to figure out what's going on in the minds of others. If we could read each others' minds, life would be dull and predictable, with no subtlety. So, in a way, I think the puzzle/mystery element of crime fiction reflects real life in quite a fundamental way.

Does that mean that you think some people can be snobbish about crime fiction?

Definitely. I know a lot of people who love detective or suspense novels, and read them by the bucketload, but feel guilty about it, as if it's a dishonourable thing to do, and say things like, 'I must stop reading all this junk and start reading proper novels'. A crime novel, like any other novel, can be good or bad, well written or poorly written. It can have depth and substance, or it can lack both. But being in the crime genre doesn't make a novel any less good. I think people who are snobbish about detective fiction are actually insecure about their own cleverness - they feel the need to read so-called highbrow books in order to be perceived as clever and intellectual by their friends.

So would you prefer it if there were no categories or genre labels? Should crime fiction be mixed in with general fiction in the bookshops?

No - I love the genre label of crime, because I'm a huge fan of the genre. Ninety per cent of the fiction I read is crime/thriller/suspense, and I like to be able to go to a particular section of the bookshop and find my favourite sort of book easily. I have always wanted to write crime novels, and I'm proud to be a crime writer. Though, interestingly enough, I have met some thriller writers who have said, 'I don't really see myself as writing crime - I'd rather my books were in the fiction section of bookshops'.

What matters more: plot or character?

Neither one is more or less important than the other. If you have a brilliant plot with unreal, cardboard characters that are no more than names on a page, readers won't care about what happens to them. If you have fully realised three-dimensional characters who don't do anything interesting, readers also won't care. My experience of writing is that plot and character develop together, completely interwoven and inseperable. In The Other Half Lives, for example, I knew that the action would start with Aidan behaving rather oddly - claiming he's killed a woman, but refusing to go into any more detail than that, even though Ruth, his girlfriend, is clearly distraught and desperate to know the full story. I needed Ruth to care enough about Aidan to stick around and try to help him, and work out what's going on, which meant she couldn't be the sort of person who would say, 'Oh dear, it seems my boyfriend's a weirdo - I'm off!' I asked myself why anyone would persevere with the relationship, in the face of Aidan's oddness, and I decided that Ruth had to have a secret too, so that she would understand Aidan's reluctance to share a traumatic experience. If you are cagey and inconsistent yourself, you're more likely to be sympathetic to a cagey, inconsistent partner. So that was the root of Ruth's character - but once I had that as a starting point, Ruth felt like a much more real and sympathetic heroine to me, and at other points in the novel, her character drove the plot. The analogy I always use for this interplay between plot and character is braiding hair - sometimes the right strand is to the fore and sometimes the left strand is, but you need both to get a good braid!

There are police characters in The Other Half Lives, but it still reads more like a psychological thriller - do you see it as one or the other?

I see it (and all my thrillers) as both. They are police procedurals, because my regular police characters are central to each book and the police investigation forms quite a large part of each book, but they are psychological thrillers in the sense that each one has a female protagonist who narrates at least half of the book in the first person, and the reader hopefully identifies with her as much as with the police. I deliberately blended these two sub-genres. In lots of police procedurals, the police are the only real characters that the reader cares about. The people murdering and being murdered are just names on a page. This detracts from the reader's sense that what's happening really matters. I decided I wanted to have a real heroine that people cared about in each book, someone who is personally deeply affected by whatever mystery the police are trying to solve, so that the reader would have a sense of there being much more at stake than simply a police officer doing his job by solving yet another case.

There are some quite shocking, violent events in The Other Half Lives. Did you have any qualms about including these aspects of the story?

No. Though I can completely understand that some people prefer not to read about bad things happening to people. But my main interest, as a writer, is how people relate to one another, and you can't deny that sometimes people make each other suffer in quite horrible ways. I'm fascinated by how people respond to emotional pain. Do they try to ignore it, try to pass it on to someone else by becoming tormentors themselves? Do they become wiser, or more cut off from the world? For me, it would feel naive and almost dishonest to write about people and relationships and life without touching on the dark side of these things.

Sophie Hannah's Top Ten Crime Novels

Plots and Errors by Jill McGown. The story of a very twisted family and a complicated, vindictive will that gives the characters plenty of reasons to want to murder one another. McGown, who died, sadly, a few years ago, was the queen of the intricate, ingenious plot. Plots and Errors has a brilliant, elegant structure, plausibly flawed characters and loads of unexpected twists.

The Memory Game by Nicci French. This novel is so gripping, I stayed up all night to finish it. It's an intelligent and sophisticated psychological thriller about a woman whose best friend's dead body turns up years after she disappeared. Contains a moment of revelation towards the end that made me gasp!

See Jane Run by Joy Fielding. A woman finds herself in a shop wearing a bloodstained coat, its pockets stuffed full of money. She knows she has come to the shop to buy the ingredients for a cake, and she knows the cake recipe, but she has no idea who she is - she's completely lost her memory. Then a man she doesn't recognise comes forward claiming to be her husband. A perfectly paced and constructed crime novel.

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine. Two sisters turn against each other over a child - they both claim to be its mother. Soon one is dead, and the other faces the death penalty for her murder. Vine, who is also known by her real name, Ruth Rendell, writes better than anyone else about dysfunctional minds. Her writing reflects, transforms and deepens the world we know.

Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie is a master at creating suspense and making you so desperate to find out what's going on that you can't turn the pages fast enough. Her love of stories and storytelling shines through every word she wrote. Sleeping Murder is one of her very best - you can't quite believe she's going to make such an ambitious plot work, and then she does.

The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin. One of the weirdest, most surreal, most atmospheric crime novels I've ever read. It's American noir, but completely transcends any genre label. A man goes to see a psychiatrist, claiming that a strange dwarf is paying him to wear flowers in his hair for no apparent reason...and it gets much weirder.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. The heartbreaking, shocking story of a teenager who kills his classmates in a high school massacre, and his unconventional mother, who has to live with the consequences. This novel has the most brilliant twist and is very moving. It's generally regarded as highbrow literary, not a thriller, but if a novel with a massacre in it can't be described as a crime novel then, quite frankly, what is the world coming to?

Half Broken Things by Morag Joss. Three misfits are thrown togther by chance and become a sort of family - the only problem is, they have to commit murder in order to be able to stay together. Stunning writing, surprising and original plot - unique and unforgettable.

The Torment of Others by Val McDermid. McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels are more gripping than any other procedural series. Tony and Carol are interesting, spiky characters with a fascinating relationship, and the psychologically informed books in which they feature prove that brilliant plotting and proper characterisation can co-exist.

In the Woods by Tana French. French is the absolute best of the new generation (ie under fifty!) crime writers. In the Woods combines past and present mysteries to stunning effect. Three children go for a walk in the woods and only one comes back. Years later, that one is a detective trying to solve a murder that took place in those very same woods.

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