FEATURES

THE MERRILY WATKINS NOVELS … A readers’ guide

1998 The Reverend Merrily Watkins, who was first brought to life by Phil Rickman in The Wine of Angels in 1998, is, on one level, your average workaday Anglican parish priest. For starters she is a woman, and the Church’s own website tells us that while male ordinations are declining, those of women are increasing rapidly. Secondly, Merrily faces a declining congregation in her Herefordshire village – just like hundreds of other parishes up and down the country. Thirdly, she observes – at a distance, admittedly – the continuing friction between modernising progressives and the traditionalists in the hierarchy of the Church of England.

But the Reverend Mrs Watkins is crucially different from most of her fellow vicars. Some of them may also be single parents, but not many would have had a husband who was a crooked lawyer, and fewer still would have lost him in a fatal car crash. While Merrily is very far from a Merry Widow – she is much too introspective and self-examining for that – she does have a love life. The object of her affection is a talented but tormented singer-songwriter called Lol Robinson. His career as a latter day Nick Drake has been blighted by stage fright and self doubt but, so far at least, unlike the late and lamented Drake, he is still in the land of the living. Rickman’s own love of music and guitars shines through in his portrayal of Robinson, and if you want a slightly left-field novel involving musicians and the supernatural, you could do far worse than to read Rickman’s December (1994), a chilling retake on the impact of the death of John Lennon.

While Merrily’s relationship with Lol is, despite her attempts to be subtle, the worst kept secret in the village, her secondary occupation is known to very few of her remaining parishioners outside of her churchwardens. Merrily is, to use her official title, the diocesan Deliverance Consultant. That is Deliverance as in the words of the Litany of The Church of England:

From all evil and wickedness; from sin;
from the crafts and assaults of the devil;
and from everlasting damnation,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Merrily Watkins does not like to use the ‘E’ word when talking about her work, as that tends to bring into people’s minds swiveling heads, the projectile vomiting of green slime and teenage girls with a rather gruff and inventive turn of phrase. Instead, she tries to offer solace and the comfort of The Holy Spirit; sometimes to people, but more often to places where the presence of the dead is disturbing those who live within the four walls. She is never sure whether she is trusted by her boss – the Bishop of Hereford – or simply tolerated. Bishops come and go, however, and in the most recent novel, Friends Of The Dusk (2015) a new incumbent brings with him the proverbial new broom, and Merrily has to put herself in personal danger if she is not to be swept away.

So, when Merrily encounters ‘the crafts and assaults of the devil’, does she believe what she is seeing and feeling? She is certainly susceptible to atmosphere, and Rickman is clever enough to keep things subtle; there are no movie special effects here, but the temperature might drop a degree or two, a weathered stone carving might take on a sinister aspect in the fading light of dusk, and a creaking floorboard is usually enough to have us reaching for the crucifix.

One of Rickman’s many skills is the way he allows real life characters to inhabit Merrily’s world. Over the series, he has brought in a star-studded cast of people who have had a real connection with the Welsh border country. In The Remains of An Altar (2007) the shades of Sir Edward Elgar and Alfred Watkins (The Old Straight Path) pay a visit, and The Magus of Hay (2013) we meet The Hay on Wye entrepreneur Richard Booth and, slightly at a tangent, Eric Gill and Beryl Bainbridge. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle puts in a retrospective appearance in The Prayer Of The Night Shepherd (2004) when Merrily’s teenage daughter Jane has a holiday job in a hotel every bit as spooky as The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, and which is the place that perhaps inspired ACD to write his masterly The Hound of The Baskervilles. The sinister presence of Fred West lurks in the corner of The Lamp of The Wicked (2003) and in The Wine of Angels (1998) the life and words of the 17^th century mystical poet Thomas Traherne echo throughout the plot.

Jane Watkins, dear, dear Jane. Rickman shamelessly uses daughter Jane to scare the pants off us on a regular basis, in that she goes where angels – and her mother – fear to tread. Jane seems to age on a slightly different timescale to the adult characters, but we basically see her through sixth form and away to university. She might be what older and less charitable folk call a ‘snowflake’. She is environmentally aware, probably quite left wing, and very much the feminist. Fortunately, we have yet to hear her demand Safe Spaces or clamour for the No Platforming of some speaker with whose views she disagrees, but her vehement defence of archaeological sites has led her into conflict with some pretty unpleasant corporate types, and she is forever wandering off – usually while mum is preoccupied – into situations where she makes herself a prime target for the bad guys.

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There are several regular members of the Phil Rickman Repertory Company. Gomer Parry is a roll-up smoking drainage contractor who is intensely supportive of Merrily, and acts as a kind of Greek Chorus offering commonsense views on distinctly unusual situations. Franny Bliss is Merrily’s point of contact with the police. We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that these novels are, albeit with a decided twist, crime fiction novels, and so the Liverpudlian copper, based in Hereford, is an essential player. If Parry and Bliss sit on the Profane benches, then two occupants of the Sacred side of The House must be mentioned. Huw Owen is a bluntly spoken northern priest who has seen more of The Devil’s works than he cares to mention, but he is the closest Merrily has to a spiritual advisor, even though he spends most of his time in an obscure retreat away in the Welsh hills. Sophie Hill is the Bishop’s secretary, and she ought, by rights, with her severe manner and unimpeachable Anglican pedigree, to be very sniffy about the Vicar of Ledwardine, but she is one of Merrily’s most subtle – and caring – allies.

We have talked about Merrily’s metaphorical and spiritual landscape, but the physical landscape of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and the Welsh borders is a constant and sometimes sinister presence. The dark little valleys with their decaying Victorian chapels, the remote manor houses with their fragments of medieval and Tudor stonework and the isolated, hard-scrabble farms where lonely men might – and sometimes do – become quite mad, provide enough chills of the earthly kind even before the unquiet dead need to put in an appearance.

Phil Rickman is a fine writer and his earlier stand-alone novels and his John Dee series are proof enough of that, were any needed. It is in the Merrily Watkins novels, however, that Rickman interweaves the threads of murder, police procedure, the power of landscape and faint but potent wisps of the supernatural to produce a literary cloth of gold which is little short of miraculous. Merrily Watkins is a brilliant creation. She is brave, vulnerable, demure yet sexy and, above all, completely believable.

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October 16, 2016 0

WW2 Historical Crime Fiction – (5) A Man Without Breath

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels bestride the 20^th century, from the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany to the post war period when many countries still sheltered mysterious German gentlemen whose collective past has been, of necessity, reinvented. Gunther is a smart talking, smart thinking policeman who has kept his sanity intact – but his conscience rather less so – by dealing with such elemental forces as Reinhardt Heydrich, Joseph Goebbels, Juan and Evita Peron, and Adolf Eichmann.

A Man Without Breath (2013) sees Gunther is working for an organisation whose very existence may seem improbable, given the historical context, but Die Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle (Wehrmacht Bureau of War Crimes) was set up in 1939 and continued its work until 1945. In 1943, on a mission from the Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, Gunther is sent to Smolensk and entrusted with proving that the thousands of corpses lying frozen beneath the trees of the nearby Katyn Forest are those of Polish army officers and intellectuals murdered by the Russian NKVD, and not those of Jews murdered by the SS.

The action is set against a resurgent Red Army slowly grinding its way west, and a small but growing body of opinion among the more aristocratic members of joseph-goebbels-speaf9d239 the German military that Hitler is a dangerous upstart who has already damaged the country beyond repair, and must be stopped. Adrift on a sea of violent corruption, Gunther constantly plays the role of the decent man, but in the end, he follows one theology, and one theology only. If he wakes up the next day with his head firmly attached to his shoulders, and has feeling in his extremities, then he has done the right thing. His conscience has not died, but it is far from well; it competes a whole chorale of competing voices in his head, each wishing to be heard. As he is left helpless by the world of spin and disinformation orchestrated by Dr Goebbels, (right) he must resort to his basic copper’s instincts to protect himself and uncover the truth.

The Katyn Forest murders are a matter of historical record, but it is only in relatively recent times that Russia has officially admitted responsibility for the massacres. As recently as 6 December 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed commitment to uncovering the whole truth about the massacre, stating “Russia has recently taken a number of unprecedented steps towards clearing up the legacy of the past. We will continue in this direction”.

History tells us that the dead of Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 85 privates, 3,420 non-commissioned officers, and seven chaplains, 200 pilots, government representatives and royalty (a prince and 43 officials), and civilians (three landowners, 131 refugees, 20 university professors, 300 physicians, several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers, and more than 100 writers and journalists.

We know the terrible details but Gunther only has his suspicions. Kerr weaves a brilliant tale where Gunther’s arrival at the truth has the ironic consequence of removing culpability for the deaths from one group of brutal criminals and bestowing it upon another. Those of us who are old enough to remember the post-war years, if only as children, will be familiar with the feeling that the Russians were bastards every bit as awful as their Nazi opponents, but at least they were our bastards – at least until they reached Berlin.

A Man Without Breath is available in all formats.

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October 14, 2016 0

INTRODUCING GARY CORBIN

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Let’s meet Gary Corbin. Gary is a writer, actor, and playwright, and he lives in the city of Camas, which is actually still in Washington State, but a stone’s throw from Portland Oregon. If the stone thrower had a particularly strong arm, he could probably lob the rock over the 49^th Parallel and have it land in America’s noisy neighbour, Canada.

Gary’s creative and journalistic work has been published in the Portland Tribune, The Oregonian, and Global Envision, among others. His plays have enjoyed critical acclaim and have enjoyed several productions in regional and community theaters. He is a member of PDX Playwrights, the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, the Willamette Writers Group, 9 Bridges Writers Group, and the North Bank Writers Workshop, and participates in workshops and conferences in the Portland, Oregon area.

When he is not busy writing, Gary is a home-brewer as well as a maker of wine, mead, cider, and soft drinks. He is a member of the Oregon Brew Crew and a BJCP National Beer Judge. He loves to ski, cook, and watch his beloved Red Sox, and hopes someday to train his dogs to obey. And when that doesn’t work, he escapes to the Oregon coast with his sweetheart.

lying-in-judgment In his debut novel, Lying In Judgment, he has created both a cunning title and a positively perverse plot. Peter Robertson has left his youth behind but, having become a ‘thirty-something’, he is appalled to find out that his wife is being actively – very actively – unfaithful. He becomes obsessed with his wife’s betrayal and decides to confront her lover. The confrontation turns violent, and Robinson exacts a terrible kind of justice on the man who has broken up his marriage. Except – and it is as big an except as you could imagine – Robertson has made a stupid mistake, and battered to death a completely innocent stranger.

In a dreadful turn of fate that is worthy of Thomas Hardy, Robertson finds himself called up for jury service, and the big case in front of what was known, in less enlightened times as “Twelve Good Men and True” is the prosecution of a man for an apparently motiveless murder. And the murder victim? Yes, you’ve got it – it is the man Robertson killed because he mistook him for his wife’s lover.

Corbin plays the fascinating possibilities for all he is worth, and leads the reader a merry dance across the fields of guilt, conscience, deception and psychological trauma.

Check UK Amazon for more details of Lying In Judgment.

tmmd Corbin opts for a slightly lighter atmosphere in his second book, The Mountain Man’s Dog. I guess that’s obvious, as dogs, being such cheery souls for the most part, don’t do Noir and psychological intensity. We are still in the wilds of the North West, Clarksville Oregon, to be precise, and we are introduced to one of its more rugged citizens, the delightfully named Lehigh Carter. Mr C is far more at home working under a stand of timber than he ever is in polite company, but his innocent love for a feisty girl, Stacy McBride, has him in all sorts of bother. The dog? Well, Stacey McBride, Carter’s former fiancee, persuades him to adopt the stray, and she only has to flutter her eyelashes for him to agree.

The problems start when Stacey’s pop – an ambitious local politician – decides that the the well-meaning but unsophisticated Carter is not suitable to become a member of his extended family. After all, what would the voters think? Carter may not be the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, but he is as honest as the day is long, and the closer he gets to the world of Senator George McBride, the more the smell from the politician’s crooked dealings offends his nose, a nose more used to the clean smells of pine resin than those of corporate corruption. Carter’s honesty wins through, and you will have to buy the book to see if Carter gets his girl – or just the dog.

Check UK Amazon for more details of The Mountain Man’s Dog.

October 8, 2016 0

THE JOURNEY OF MICHAEL PARKER … An American Odyssey

MICHAEL PARKER is a law enforcement officer created by the author Merle Temple. This feature takes a look at the Michael Parker trilogy, and discovers something quite remarkable.

A Ghostly Shade of Pale (2013)
We are beamed down into the explosive and turbulent USA of the mid-70s, a country engulfed by the social and military repercussions of the Vietnam War. The new perceived peril which threatens to engulf Middle America does not come from the commies, however, but from the debilitating tide of cheap drugs in the hands of mobsters and crooked cops. As we absorb the atmosphere of the Deep South, where bugs the size of golf balls clatter into the kerosene lanterns and, out there on the river, vines hang from the live oaks as nameless creatures snuffle and snort in the brackish water. The King still lives in Graceland, and out there, down some back road, there’s a shotgun shack with a doped-up redneck biker sitting on the porch.

Temple introduces us to his central character, Michael Parker. He is an idealistic man who has forged a career in law enforcement. After surviving a dangerous spell as an undercover narcotics agent, he is drawn into an investigation of clubs where cheap drugs and expensive women are provided for bent politicians and minor mafia characters. Parker battles a truly Gothic horror of an opponent called Frederick who is barely human – a killer, and an albino. His pigmentation problem alone might have driven his fragile psyche into a bad place, but he is also schizophrenic. The voices he hears belong to the epic psychopaths of the 20th century, including the deranged British satanist Aleister Crowley, and Adolf Hitler.

In the end, Good just about prevails, but not before Michael has locked horns with the evil angel Frederick in a fight to the death which, as described by Temple, is as allegorical as it is actual.

A Rented World (2014)
Michael Parker’s odyssey continues, but now his enemies are not the sleazeball criminal hoodlums he battled in A Ghostly Shade of Pale. His latest foes wear expensive suits, have personal assistants and, instead of the nightclub pallor of small time scammers, they have Malibu tans. Parker learns to his cost that politicians and corporate fixers have one aim, and one aim only, and that is to sell. What is on sale? You name it, they’ve got it. Bodies, buildings, allegiance, honour, integrity – all can be bought if you can meet the asking price. Temple punches home his point early on the book. He says:

“The cops counted corpses, the courtiers buried truth beneath flattery, and political grifters brokered deals in a rented world ..”

In the end, Parker comes to grief at the hands of men – and women – whose feeding at the trough of public money has been disturbed by his integrity. He has sent many men to jail and now, thanks to the over-arching powers given to law enforcement agents since 9/11, he must join them.

The Redeemed – A Leap of Faith (2016)
The book is almost entirely the tale of Parker’s journey through the American prison system and, like that of the Greek warrior, it is a journey of wandering, omens, tragedies, friendships and, ultimately, a homecoming. The home, however, is not the one that Parker bade farewell to when he fell into the pit made for him by his enemies. It is a sobering thought that Parker is sent to a Federal Correctional Institution. These establishments are at the lower end of American prisons in security terms, but Parker still has to survive terrible infestations both human – in the way of brutal and malign prison officers, and animal – such as the ever present danger from hideous Brown Recluse Spiders.

Temple’s writing is sometimes not subtle, and sometimes not silken. Instead, it often marches to the drum of anger and indignation against the incalculable human cost of criminal greed and corporate avarice. All the extreme emotions and human qualities are invoked: repentance, purity, revenge, honesty, malice, regret and redemption all cry out to us for attention. Readers also need to be aware that the books, particularly the second and third, are openly evangelical in tone. Temple is a committed Christian, and his Christianity is straight down the line: good is good, and evil is evil, but the mantra is one of redemption.

American reviewers have commented on the similarity of the characters in A Rented World to real life movers and shakers in the state of Georgia at the time in which Temple sets the novel. One critic suggests that this is almost an autobiographical novel, with Parker/Temple as a David challenging the Goliath of the American corporate world. Until I spoke to Merle Temple on-line recently, I had no idea whatsoever how prescient this judgement would be. I now understand that the whole narrative across the three books is, for the most part, a factual account of the adult life of Merle Temple. He has used some fictional devices to make sure that the books read well as novels, but other than that, they are his life story. He says, of the events in The Redeemed:

“I served five and a half years of an eight year sentence. The real psychologist in The Redeemed, who was so helpful to me, just asked me to return there to speak. They use my books now for inmates, and she told me that the movie nights are still going strong after nine years, and are now in English and Spanish. As I left each facility, I passed the baton to another inmate and asked him to do the same. I go into prisons and shelters to speak to men, as one of them, about a better way. They need lots of love, and most I’ve known are nothing like the stereotypes offered up by some in government and media in that unholy trinity of politics, crime, and business.”

If there is one section of the three books that I could read over and over again, it is the death and funeral in Memphis of Parker’s sweetheart, Dixie Lee Carter, in the first book of the trilogy. The prose is brimful of anger, passion, love and regret. Not many writers could get away with the concluding passage, but Temple does:

“On an adjacent hill in the old cemetery with weathered monuments, a solemn man in dark glasses, with black hair and sideburns, quietly watched Michael’s last farewell to Dixie. As Michael rose to leave, he saw the familiar figure point to the sky – once, and then again – to emphasise “The One”. He saluted crisply and held it, and then – framed by a pink coral sun that blistered the juncture of day and night at the skyline and branded the final resting place with sudden darkness – he turned and walked down the green hillside towards a waiting limo that would return him to Graceland.”

Check out Amazon’s author page for Merle Temple

October 1, 2016 0

A PILGRIMAGE … In search of William Tyler and Ralph Joscelyne

In the 1830s, the problem of burying the dead had reached crisis point in London. The rapidly increasing population meant that existing graveyards and crypts were – literally, in some cases – full to bursting. One such example was the nightmarish Enon Chapel in Clement’s Lane. An unscrupulous clergyman had come up with a scheme for bargain burials. These may have been at a knock-down price, but they were not burials. The body of your loved one would simply be tipped into the crypt below the chapel, to join countless others. The enterprising minister was also of accused of recycling the wood from the coffins to sell to the poor for kindling. The crypt was only separated from the chapel above by a flimsy wooden floor, through which all kinds of noxious gases and vile insects would pass, to plague the worshipers as they sat down in the pews to praise the Lord. Even more bizarre was the conversion of the chapel to a dance hall, where customers could literally dance on the dead.

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Eventually, the authorities decided that enough was enough, and began the business of commissioning seven huge new cemeteries outside if the inner city boundaries. Highgate and Kensal Green are the best known of these, principally due to the numbers of famous people buried within, but it was to one of the lesser known of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ that I traveled, on a pilgrimage to visit the graves of two people who certainly made the headlines in their day, but are largely forgotten now.

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You can read the story of The Tottenham Outrage elsewhere on the site but, briefly, on Saturday 9th January 1909, two Latvian anarchists ambushed the wages delivery for the Schnurmann Rubber Factory on Chestnut Road in Tottenham and made off with the loot, firing at their pursuers with sophisticated automatic pistols. Both criminals died as a result of their efforts, but a policeman and a young boy were killed in the chaotic chase.

The cold blooded murder of PC William Tyler caused a national outcry, and his funeral was a public event on a grand scale. The deaths of police officers in the course of their duties have always been thought shocking in Britain and, happily, they remain rare events. PC Tyler was laid to rest in Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington. Fortunately for the visiting explorer, his simple but imposing memorial is near the path, and is easily found. The number carved on the pediment is, of course, his police number.

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Just a few feet away from Tyler’s grave is a rather humbler cross which marks the grave of an even more tragic casualty of the madness of 9th January 1909. Like countless others before and since, young Ralph Joscelyne had a Saturday job. His was to help a local baker deliver bread to the families in that part of Tottenham. As the Latvian gunmen tried to shoot their way to safety, a stray shot hit Ralph as he tried to hide behind his employer’s cart in Mitchley Road. The ten year-old was cradled in the arms of a bystander, but was pronounced dead by the time he reached hospital.

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On 29th January 1909, the funeral cortège for Joscelyne and Tyler passed along a 2.5 mile route lined by 3,000 police officers and an estimated crowd of 500,000. The lengthy procession included white-plumed horses drawing Joscelyne’s coffin and black-plumed horses drawing Tyler’s coffin, draped in a Union Flag, which were escorted by hundreds of policemen, a police band, men from the local fire brigade, men from the Scots Guards and Royal Garrison Artillery, and tramway employees. A volley of guns was fired at the conclusion of the funeral.

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Ralph Joscelyne’s mother, Louise, was to raise another seven children, but she kept the pair of boots Ralph was wearing on the day he was killed. When she died in 1952, the boots were buried with her. In more recent times, both Joscelyne and Tyler have been commemorated. WIlliam Tyler has a plaque on the wall of Tottenham police station, while Ralph Joscelyne is remembered in a memorial outside a church in Mitchley Road. There is an abiding irony that the corner of Tottenham where the robbery occurred and the resultant chase began is exactly where the catastrophic riots of 2011 started. An initially peaceful protest by relatives of Mark Duggan, a gangster shot by police, did not get the required response from officers within the police station. It then, as they say, “all kicked off.”

Ralph’s memorial in Abney Park was paid for by fellow scholars at his school, Earlsmead, which still stands in Broad Lane, Tottenham (below) and distant relatives of the unfortunate lad have, as mentioned earlier, ensured that his death will not be forgotten against the backdrop of more recent troubled times in London.

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According to some Tottenham residents, however, the boy has not completely left us. This, from the pages of a local newspaper:

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September 30, 2016 0

COMPETITION … Win The Book of Mirrors by EO Chirovici

The good people from Penguin Random House made an inspired choice of the venue for last Wednesday evening’s drinks ‘do’ to introduce Romanian author Eugen O Chirovici (pictured above, with Francesca Russell from PRH) and his forthcoming crime mystery The Book of Mirrors.

The Ten Bells in Spitalfields is a pub steeped in criminal – and literary – history. It takes its name from the bells in the tower of the adjacent Christ Church, which in turn featured strongly in Peter Ackroyd’s atmospheric 1985 novel, Hawksmoor. Allegedly, the pub was frequented by the victims of Jack the Ripper, and legend has it that Mary Jane Kelly, who was the subject of the final and bloodiest assault, plied her trade on the pavement outside.

So, in a spookily lit upper room we met the writer, who is not only an award winning economist and has penned best-sellers in his native Romania, but also the author of a stunningly good new novel – the first he has written in English. The book is set partly in the present and partly in 1987, and it tells the story of the murder of a controversial professor of psychology at New Jersey’s Princeton University. His death is observed by different narrators, and Chirovici (left) has constructed an ingenious literary version of the old fairground attraction of distorting mirrors, so that we reach the final pages still not really sure who is giving us the correct image of events on the fateful night.

Not only is Chrirovici a very gifted writer, but he is also a very engaging person to talk to, and my colleague and I spent forty minutes or so with him, dissecting European politics and generally putting the world to rights.

Thanks to Century, we have two copies of The Book of Mirrors – which will not be generally available until January 2017 – to give away. Entering couldn’t be simpler. Just email Fully Booked at:

fullybooked2016@yahoo.com

– and write The Book of Mirrors in the subject box. The competition will close at 10.00pm GMT on Sunday 9th October, when the first two names out of the proverbial hat will win the books. Due to postage costs, the competition is open to UK and Irish Republic readers only.

RULES

Competition closes 10.00pm London time on Sunday 9th October 2016.
One entry per competitor.
All correct entries will be put in the proverbial hat, and one winner drawn.
The winner will be notified by email, and a postal address requested

September 30, 2016 0

WW2 HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION (4) – The Dead of Winter

Rennie Airth, a South African by birth, now lives in Italy, but I mention these details only because his descriptions of wartime England in The Dead of Winter are so evocative that it is hard to believe that the writer did not experience the conditions at first hand. More of this in a while, but first, the story.

We are in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1944, deep in what would prove to be the last winter of a war which, thanks to the Luftwaffe, had brought death and destruction to the doorsteps of ordinary people in towns and cities up and down the country. German aircraft no longer drone over the streets of London; instead, the Dorniers and Heinkels have been replaced by an even more demoralising menace – the seemingly random strikes by V1 and V2 rockets. Despite the fact that the rockets need no visible target to aim at, the ubiquitous blackout is still in force. An Air Raid Precaution Warden, whose job has become as redundant as that of those manning anti-aircraft batteries, makes a chilling discovery. He stumbles – literally – on the body of a young woman. Her neck has been broken by someone clearly well-versed in killing, and the only clue is a number of spent matches lying by the body.

The dead woman is soon identified. She is Rosa Nowak, a Polish girl who has sought refuge in Britain, and has been working on a farm in Kent. What was she doing in London? Visiting her aged aunt, apparently. The police struggle to find a motive for the killing. It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t robbery, so who on earth stood to gain from the murder? The investigation is led by Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair, a senior detective who might have retired years ago, were it not for the manpower shortage in the Metropolitan Police caused by the war.

With one of those wonderful coincidences which only ever seem to happen in crime novels, Sinclair learns that the farm where Rosa had been working is none other than that owned by a former colleague – John Madden. Rennie Airth introduced us to the former Inspector in River of Darkness (1999) and we followed his progress in The Blood Dimmed Tide (2004). Madden served with distinction in The Great War, but the conflict has left him with scars, more mental than physical and, despite marrying, for the second time, a country doctor who he met in River of Darkness, he still grieves for the deaths of his first wife and their young daughter.

There is more than a touch of The Golden Age about this novel, but it is much more than a pastiche. Although the killing of Rosa Nowak is eventually solved, with a regulation dramatic climax in a snow-bound country house, Rennie Airth allows us to breathe, smell and taste the air of an England almost – but not quite – beaten down by the privations of war. Many of the characters have menfolk away at the war, including Madden himself and his wife Helen. Their son is in the Royal Navy, on the rough winter seas escorting convoys. The contrast between life in the city and in the country is etched deep. In the city, restaurant meals are frequently inedible, the black market thrives unchecked due to depleted police manpower, and even the newsprint bearing cheering propaganda from the government is subject to rationing. Travelling anywhere, unless you are fiddling your petrol coupons, is arduous and unpleasant.

“Though inured like all by now to the rigours of wartime travel, to the misery of unheated carriages, overcrowded compartments and the mingled smell of bodily odours and stale tobacco, he was still recovering from his trip down from London that afternoon when for two hours he had sat gazing out at a countryside that offered little relief to the eyes weary of the sight of dust and rubble, of the never-ending vista of ruined streets and bombed-out houses …..”

There is an element of the modern police procedural about the book, but such is the quality of Airth’s writing that we willingly forgive him for John Madden’s occasional flashes of insight which redirect the well-intentioned but bumbling coppers in their search for the killer of Rosa Nowak.

In addition to the two previous John Manning novels, our man returns in The Reckoning (2014) and is set to make another appearance in 2017 with The Death of Kings.

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September 16, 2016 0

BOOKS BEHIND BARS … The story of Roy Harper (2)

This is the second part of the extraordinary saga of a real life inmate of America’s toughest correctional facilities, and his struggle to get his story into print. You can read Part One here. Henry Roi is the PR Manager for Crime Wave Press, and here he tells of just what it took to get Roy Harper’s work from inside a jail cell onto bookshelves and e-readers.

The Tribulations Of An Author Convict

Tool’s Law was written in a hostile environment, a Mississippi Supermax, where the strongest of minds deteriorated from incessant chaos, government oppression, and inhumane treatment condoned by local culture.

Roy Harper has been many things in his life. A thief, bank robber, car-jacker, kidnapper, an armed and dangerous fugitive. He doesn’t brag about these things, though he is unapologetic as well. He accomplished his proudest endeavors as a convict, spending over a decade advocating prisoner rights and was instrumental in the civil suits that ultimately closed down Unit 32 Supermax, starting a ripple-effect that changed correctional philosophy around the country.

After 40 years of an intense criminal life, Roy can now add “Published Author” to his timeline. In 2004 Roy decided to write a book. A novel that would, hopefully, sell enough copies to pay for a pardon. Money was the original motivator for penning Tool’s Law, though as the process developed, it became an outlet, an escape from a harsh reality. As the characters took on a life of their own the project became far more than just a way to make money; the project became a great source of PRIDE, a real self-motivator, and the first legit hard work Roy had ever embarked on without grinding his teeth in reluctance. Hard work – years of it – in a hard environment. How could he possibly look forward to that? Because every completed chapter elevated his sense of accomplishment.

Roy’s workspace was adequate for writing. But the inadequacies far surmounted any conveniences: No computers, word processors or typewriters were available. Paper was hard to get, and because of the high-security, regular ink pens were banned. Every page, 1,162 in total, was handwritten multiple times to render a final clean draft with a “flex-pen”, a plastic ink cartridge with a soft, flexible rubber shroud. These sub-par ink dispensers are immensely taxing on the hand.

Outside of his cell was an endless dissonance. Unit 32 was filled with the worst-behaved prisoners in the state. Mentally ill or terribly disruptive, the psychotic, violent and juvenile actions pervaded the buildings without interruption, exacerbated by policies and staff that offered no incentives for good behavior – no T.V., radio, fans, or even shoes. They acted like animals because they were treated as such.

For High Risk inmates like Roy, shakedowns were a weekly treat, as were movement to different cells. Officers routinely trashed property, out of spite or under orders, and did not care about the perceived value of a prisoner’s property. Family photos, artwork, cherished letters from loved ones, legal work, poems, and manuscripts like Roy’s were commonly trashed or taken during these movements and shakedowns.

It took several days to get mentally adjusted to a new cell, with new neighbors, noises, smells, critters, floods, fires, and fears of who must be watched to avoid being scalded, stabbed, or assaulted with excrement. After acclimating to a new cell, Roy would work on Tool’s law during lulls in the chaos.

In 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union took interest in several lawsuits filed about inhumane treatment in Unit 32. Roy worked closely with the Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project, Miss Margaret Winter, who used a 5^th Circuit ruling filed by Roy in previous years to supplement the class-action that eventually closed down Unit 32. A federal judge issued a court decree ordering the Mississippi Department Of Corrections to provide Long-Term Segregation inmates, including High-Risk, incentive programs that allowed well-behaved prisoners a chance to earn more privileges and freedom of movement.

In 2008, Deputy Commissioner E.L. Sparkman created the High-Risk Incentive Program. Roy was the poster-man Mr. Sparkman used to promote the program, “selling” it to other states and even the federal system. Mr. Sparkman’s change of correctional philosophy – from take everything and lock ‘em down to providing them incentives for good behavior – was a national success, and the Supermax facilities around the country began closing as other states took note.

Out of appreciation for Roy’s help and good behavior during the development of the High-Risk Incentive Programs, Mr. Sparkman helped Roy with Tool’s Law, appointing a deputy warden to have the manuscript scanned and burned onto DVDs.

No further progress was made on Tool’s Law until 2012, when RAW T.V. producer Jenny Evans contacted Roy to interview him for a feature in National Geographic’s Breakout! series. RAW T.V. wanted to do a documentary about Roy’s May, 2000, escape from Unit 32 Supermax. Miss Evans could not pay Roy for the story (that is illegal), but offered to help with Tool’s Law. She had the brilliant idea of recruiting Facebook friends to help type it, and over the next six months the entire manuscript was typed by more than a dozen awesome, caring people Roy had never met and would never know.

Three more years went by before any more progress was made. The handwritten pages were typed, but they needed to be edited, proofread, and submitted to publishers. The Incentive Program had more privileges, but Internet access was off-limits. And Roy had no help on the outside…but he had help on the inside.

Roy’s friend and fellow outlaw, Chris, is a self-published author who had access to the Internet via a Galaxy Android smartphone (which, after possessing for several years, was confiscated from Chris after a gangbanger snitched on him). Chris had no experience with writing apps, but learned quickly, working closely with Roy to edit and proof – read Tool’s Law. Roy drew his own cover art, which Chris took pictures of and used his image editing apps to create the book covers. Together they published Tool’s Law in a four-book series on Lulu.com, a self-publishing service.

A couple of months later, Roy and Chris had sold only a few books. After constant research about creating online platforms, they learned how limited they were, lacking money for data, and the online time needed to successfully grow an Internet presence as authors. They changed tactics, using what they could do very effectively: submitting queries.

After studying numerous examples of queries in books about writing, they started a query campaign that lasted over a month, submitting to publishing houses, big and small, around the world. During this period there was a constant fear of the phone being discovered. They were, after all, escape risks housed in maximum security and the Incentive Program did not lessen the frequency of shakedowns. The manuscripts, queries, sample chapters – every file created for submitting to publishers and agents – was at stake.

Success! When Roy read the first email from Crime Wave Press the relief on his face and in his body language was profound. All the years of hard work and stress to get Tool’s Law to this point was vindicated. It wasn’t all for nothing, as he had feared often. Crime Wave Press was highly interested, having read and loved the first two books. Roy knew they’d like books three and four as well. He was right.

The contract was drafted, negotiated, and signed. The final product, a leaner and meaner version of Tool’s Law, edited by Tom Vater, will be released in two volumes this Spring/Summer, 2016, as Tool’s Law Book I: SHANK and Tool’s Law Book II: HEIST.

Roy is currently working on another novel, inspired and enjoying the feeling of having a real purpose in life: entertaining people with his unique crime fiction stories.
No-one who has ever tried to write a novel – and get it published – will claim the process is easy, or without heartbreak or moments of despair, but Roy Harper’s struggle is something else altogether. In the final part of this stranger-than-fiction story there will be more from Harper himself, and also a transcript of his interview with Henry Roi (pictured below)

henry-roi

Shank is available on Amazon

September 12, 2016 1

BOOKS BEHIND BARS … The story of Roy Harper (part 1)

There have been several examples of literature being written by imprisoned authors. Described as the first modern novel, Don Quixote, was conceived while Miguel de Cervantes was in jail for debt, although it was finished and published after the author was freed. Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis was a poignant letter to his fickle lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, and was composed while the author was serving his sentence for indecency. The powerful Ballad of Reading Gaol was, however, written after Wilde’s release.

The French novelist, playwright and poet, Jean Genet was what my late sainted father would have called “a thoroughly bad lot”. As a young adult, he seems to have spent more time in prison than out of it, and his provocative homosexuality scandalised France at a time when such activities were meant to be carried out behind closed doors. His 1944 novel Our Lady of The Flowers was written while Genet was yet again under lock and key, but such was its quality that the author attracted powerful admirers such as Sartre, Cocteau and Picasso. Genet was released and, while he never became the Gallic version of a National Treasure, he never went back to prison.

Closer to home, the seventeenth century political and religious rebel, John Bunyan, completed much of his epic Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress while festering in Bedford prison for his Non-Conformist views and antipathy towards The Church of England.

Roy Harper would not claim literary kinship with Cervantes, Wilde and Genet, yet he shares the unique kinship of living a life behind bars. He also writes, and after an exercise in smuggling manuscripts out of prison that merits a novel all by itself, his first book – Shank (Tool’s Law 1) – was published in May 2016. Let Henry Roi, of Crimewave Press, take up the story.

Roy Harper has been isolated for the safety of society. Bank robberies, high speed chases and gun battles with law enforcement are crimes most teenagers watch on television, but for Roy it was simply a way of life. He began stealing cars, running from cops in high speed chases, at fourteen; robbing banks and engaging police in deadly gun battles – in multiple states – at seventeen. “Maximum Security” are just words to him, no matter what state sentenced him to prison, or how many times, he escaped from them all. Even Parchman Farm’s notorious Supermax, Unit 32. His insanely daring escapes were highly publicized by national media, causing a public outcry that still echoes today.

The extreme transgressions against the United States Government – its law enforcement, correctional institutions and citizens in numerous states – culminated into four life sentences… with a few more decades added on for good measure. The Habitual Offender Act (popularly known as The Three Strikes Law) made the life sentences mandatory, and signaled the end of any chance of Roy being paroled as a free man.

Roy Harper (right) never murdered anyone, and the worst that ever befell those he encountered while on the run was to be shocked, and then accosted and harassed by reporters looking to sell the news as entertainment. Raised in Tempe, Arizona, Roy enjoyed exploring the desert and playing at gun fighting, and was fascinated by outlaw cowboys, the most infamous being Public Enemy No.1, John Dillinger.

Roy’s elementary school principal believed in, and was heavy handed in, corporal punishment. Roy didn’t share that belief. So, he was expelled when he was in the fourth grade. Soon after, he discovered that gun fighting was no longer “playing”.

By the time his teenage years were turning a boy into a man, Roy Harper’s misdeeds had ranged from stealing toucans from the Phoenix Zoo at eight years old, stealing cars by the time he was ten, escaping juvenile detention facilities at twelve, and sneaking out of his parents house at night to steal, run from the police, and lurk in the dark shadows fearful of the Boogeyman his mother warned him about. It was a moment of self realisation when it dawned on Harper that he probably WAS The Boogeyman.

You can get hold of a copy of Shank by following the link.

Learn more from the website of Crimewave Press