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As his latest novel, Rush of Blood, continues to generate critical acclaim, Mark Billingham tells Emma McClelland about the processes behind his work and shares his thoughts on David Morrissey’s portrayal of his most famous character, Detective Inspector Tom T orne
R
ush of Blood is the kind of book you stay up all night reading, hunched over like Gollum from T e Lord of the Rings. It’s the kind
of book into which you fi nd yourself shouting “Oh my God”and it’s the kind of book that gives you the shock of your life in its fi nal chapter! Put simply, it’s the kind of book that you simply have to read. T e novel blurs the boundaries of
psychological thriller and crime-fi ction, presenting us with six central characters instead of the standard single protagonist and allows us to see through each of their eyes. T e narrative jumps from the past, when the six characters, comprised of three British couples, are befriending one another on holiday in Florida, to the present, when they are back at home and maintaining a strained kind of friendship during a series of very tense dinner parties. All of them know that the daughter of another holiday-goer, who disappeared whilst they were in Florida, has been found dead, but when another young girl who fi ts exactly the same profi le goes missing in England, the suspicion falls upon them. When I call Mark I am bursting with
questions, many of them about his decision to write from multiple viewpoints using many of the character’s voices, including, I had been delighted to discover, the anonymous voice of the killer him or indeed herself. I am keen to know how diffi cult it was to write those passages without giving away the identity of the culprit by slipping into a style of speech that we might recognise in any of the central characters. When I ask Mark this question he laughs, “Yeah, it’s tricky to get those parts right. T e biggest challenge I had with that was the audio book. If a reader reads one of those characters speaking in a particular voice then how do you handle it when the actor who’s reading the book has to read those passages?” I suddenly realise the huge obstacle that this must have presented and I am surprised when Mark says nonchalantly, “I actually had to rewrite them for the audio book and sort of take them out of the fi rst person. It was done in the voice of the narrator rather than in the voice of the character, which you can do on paper of course without giving anything away but, yeah, it was pretty tricky with the audio version.”
I am also interested to know about the way the sequence of events oscillates between the past and the present so I ask him why he chose such a non-linear structure. To this question he jokes, “To make things more interesting for myself really. I mean, what I do for Rush
of Blood is write about the past in the present tense and the present in the past tense. It slightly disorients the reader and it makes it rather more challenging. But, you know, you’ve got to challenge yourself as an author if you’re going to make something that the reader’s going to fi nd interesting to read.” As you might expect, novels containing elements of police procedure demand a certain amount of research and Mark explains that he consults professionals, usually police offi cers and medical advisors. “People are really helpful,” he explains, “Not only will they answer the questions that need answering but they’ll also give me all sorts of other ideas. People are forever trying to tell me interesting ways of killing somebody!” And it’s not just professional consultants that are keen to keep Mark accurate. T ere are plenty of readers keen to point out the slightest mistake, no matter
how minor. “Ah, the letters you get,” he laughs, “It’s very strange when people complain to me that I’ve put a branch of Starbucks on a street where there isn’t one. You go, “hang on a minute... so you’re perfectly willing to suspend your disbelief to buy into my series of elaborate murders but you’re upset about the branch of the coff ee shop where there isn’t one?” Fortunately, the occasional fi ctional coff ee shop hasn’t hindered Mark’s success in any way. His debut novel, Sleepyhead and follow up novel, Scaredy Cat were recently made into a television series entitled T orne on Sky1 and starred actor David Morrissey. T e story follows Detective Inspector Tom T orne as he attempts to fi nd the killer of several young women. When one of them survives in a state of locked-in syndrome T orne receives a letter from the perpetrator and realises that the actually aren’t trying to kill anyone but to paralyse them, trapping them inside their own bodies! When I ask Mark where he got this idea from he explains, “I’d read a book called T e Diving Bell and the Butterfl y, which was written by someone who had locked-in syndrome who had to dictate the entire book by blinking. I was thinking about just how horrendous this was and suddenly had the idea that someone could do this on purpose!” Mark then ran this idea by a medical advisor to ask whether this would be possible. “He came back and said, ‘yes, you could but it would be horrendously diffi cult and if you got it even slightly wrong you’d end up killing them,’ Mark reveals. “It was like a light bulb went off in my head and I just thought, ‘yeah, I’ve got a crime novel here.’” As our conversation draws to a close I ask
Mark what we can expect from him next and I am pleased to hear that the next instalment of the Tom T orne saga has already been written and will be on sale next year. Oh well, I suppose in the meantime my only option is to re-watch David Morrissey being all intense and moody in the television series... It’s a hard life sometimes!
To fi nd out more about Mark Billingham and his work visit
www.markbillingham.com
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