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Born
Coventry 1953
Best subject at school maths
University York (NOT New York as one of my blurbs
states!)
First career research scientist
Current home Sheffield
Past homes Coventry, York, Liverpool, Milton Keynes
Family Barbara (wife) and Colin (son, born 1982)
Source of ideas the news, science, my own interests
Favourite teenage book The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Output 10 Point Crime books, 9 thrillers and 7 short
stories
Football Club Coventry City
Believe
it or not, until Easter 1996, I was a Lecturer in Chemistry
at The Open University. I carried out research in the fields
of chemical aspects of cot death and the analysis of drugs,
and I taught mainly organic chemistry. The teaching part
of the job involved predominantly writing, with some radio,
TV and video work. The job left very little time for fiction
writing which I tackled mostly after midnight. Perhaps that
is why some of my strongest scenes are set on dark nights!
Anyway, I am now a full-time writer.
Many
people think it odd and fascinating that a scientist should
also be a novelist. In fact, at The Open University, there
are two more scientists who are published novelists. A physicist
and a biologist have both been very successful. I do not
find it so strange. After all, scientists do write a lot;
in particular, they produce textbooks and papers on their
research. They also have to be creative and show perseverance
to carry out research. Anyone who can stick to a task, is
imaginative, and knows how to construct a sentence, has
the credentials for writing a novel. In addition, my chemical
research is aimed at understanding a little better some
aspect of human life. A novel also seeks to illuminate some
aspect of human life. The aims are similar although the
tools are different.
I began
writing stories while I was carrying out research at York
for my D.Phil. degree in chemistry. Writing became a means
of escape from everyday life. While I was at York, my then
girlfriend (now wife) was taking a subsidiary course on
children’s literature. At one point she read one of
my efforts and commented that I ought to try and get it
published. I had never thought of writing as anything other
than a hobby. Besides, as I thought then, a budding chemist
couldn’t possibly be any good at it! Anyway, I joined
a writers’ club to find out how to submit a manuscript
and, to cut a long story short, found a publisher in William
Collins for my first novel, Rift.
I am
now 48 years old, married and have one son (Colin) at university.
I read aloud all of my stories to Colin and my wife - who
help me by criticizing them. Colin believes that my best
book so far is Son of Pete Flude. Until recently,
it was also my favourite because I became so involved with
Seb Flude as a character. Now, a newer novel, Tunnel
Vision (published in 1996) may have taken over as my
favourite. To date I have published twenty novels and seven
short stories.
My books
can be classed mainly as thrillers or crime, but I like
to include issues in my fiction. I am not sufficiently naive
to believe that I can resolve them in a novel, but at least
I can raise awareness. For example, the most obvious issue
in The Highest Form of Killing is chemical and biological
warfare. Is it ethical? Is it more or less acceptable than
conventional killing or nuclear weapons? Of course, I used
my knowledge as a chemist in this book.
In America,
The Highest Form of Killing was nominated for an EDGAR
award (in a sense, a literary equivalent of the OSCAR).
It did not win, but it was pleasing that the book was considered
to be among the top five young persons’ novels of 1992.
The book was particularly noted, I’m told, for its
“devastating” climax. The issue in Son of Pete
Flude is illicit drugs. By design, it is meant to be
emotionally involving! The story has been said to be a tragic
thriller but many reviewers did not comment on its humour.
In fact, the only two to do so were young people reviewing
the novel for school magazines. Without the humour in the
book and Seb’s spirit, the tragedy would not be so
striking.
My next
book, The OBTUSE Experiment, began life as a straight
comedy (set on a ship off the beautiful coast of Norway).
After a couple of serious thrillers, I felt that I could
try my hand at something different. However, as I got deeper
and deeper into the novel it became increasingly apparent
that I was writing another thriller - albeit with humour.
The OBTUSE Experiment was selected by the Young Book
Trust as one of its Books of the Year, 1994, in the category,
Fiction for Older Readers.
Tunnel
Vision also has a strong theme: racism and athletics.
Another thriller with a tense ending. I have frequently
been asked about a particularly severe and cruel racist
attack that appears in the book. It is not of my own making.
I took the scene from newspaper reports of such an attack
in England in the 1990s. After publication of Tunnel
Vision, it was reported (in 1997) that racist groups
planned to send parcel bombs to white sports people in England
who had black partners. Nail bombs planted in London in
1999 were also aimed at the black community. Being uncannily
close to the events in the novel, such news authenticates
the realistic and extremely worrying plot. Tunnel Vision
was selected by the Young Book Trust as one of its 100 Best
Books 1997 in the category, Adventurous Readers. It also
won the Angus Book Award 1997.
Circle
of Nightmares may appear to be a conventional horror
story but the horror is not supernatural. It arises from
a real and, in my view, horrible electronic weapon currently
under test. A later book of this type is called Flying
Upside Down and it is a very short and punchy book about
bullying at school. It also involves an old envelope and
an even older coin! I was moved to write the story after
reading several newspaper reports of teenagers who had committed
suicide after being bullied.
I commented
above that I am very fond of my character, Seb Flude. I
decided to ‘get inside’ him again and write the
next chapter in his life. I am really pleased with the result.
This sequel to Son of Pete Flude is called Breathing
Fear and it does not involve the illicit drugs trade
but the ethics of the arms trade. Also Seb now finds himself,
like his father, in the music industry. But does he have
a future in it?
Another
thriller, called Plague, concerns the very real threat
of a virus outbreak. I decided to let this particularly
nasty virus run wild in Milton Keynes where I used to live.
That way, I did not have to do much research on the setting
of the book. Anyway, the army is called in to seal off part
of the town, trapping my young characters in a barbed-wire
ghetto. Where did the virus come from? Will they survive
it? I am really excited about this fast-moving story but,
BE WARNED, there are lots of gory details about the virus
invading human bodies and what it does to the innards. If
you thought flu was bad, wait until you read Plague.
Yuck! This book also won the Angus Book Award and was joint
winner of the Lancashire Children’s Book of the Year
Award.
In a
way, Bloodline is a follow-up to Plague. It
is another biological thriller and the plot involves a realistic
genetic weapon. The advances in the science of genetics
may make it possible to target a specific ethnic group -
or any collection of people with a common genetic make-up
- with a biological weapon. Clever physics has given us
smart missiles for use in war, now clever biology may be
about to give us smart biological weapons. Bloodline
explores this possibility through the eyes of a small
boy in South Africa, a young chemist in Cambridge, and a
race-hate group in America.
I also
contribute to the well-known Point Crime series (for
12+ readers). In these books I aim primarily for an exciting
read (usually a who-dun-it). Within Point Crime I have my
own series called Lawless and Tilley books,
featuring two detectives with those surnames. Brett Lawless
is a detective with a background in science and therefore
he has a strength in dealing with the forensic details of
crime, especially all those gory bits! The books allow me
to develop the characters of Clare Tilley and Brett Lawless
much more than in a single Point Crime book and I
aim for a realistic portrayal of the capabilities of forensic
science.
The
first two titles are The Secrets of the Dead and Deep
Waters. If you want to see how Brett and Clare tackle
a truly horrible series of crimes, try the third book called
Magic Eye. The fourth novel in the series, Still
Life, is a kidnap story with a really tense ending and
a very creepy cover. Just what is that insect thing on the
book sleeve? And is it important to the story? You’ll
have to read the book to find out. The fifth book is really
gruesome and, some will say, controversial. Make up your
own mind by reading Fire and Water. After the events
in Fire and Water, Lawless and Tilley deserve a break.
In Lethal
Harvest, they go to the tropical island of Tobago but,
even when relaxing among the beautiful reefs, they still
don’t get their break. It seems that, despite appearances,
calm and colourful reef life can provide a motive for murder.
On the way back from Tobago, Lawless and Tilley get involved
in a terrible threat to aircraft. The novel is called Flying
Blind. Is it the last of Lawless and Tilley?
Profile
supplied by Malcolm Rose.
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