Why Do I Write Crime Fiction?

I enjoy writing and reading crime novels. The human drama and the tragedy of the characters compel sympathy for virtuous and wicked alike, so I like to write about the compromised protagonist because even in the best, there are shades of grey, and in the worst, isn’t there a little room for sympathy, or humour?

An old adage is to write what you know. My characters are as complex as people and are often close facsimiles of real people I’ve worked with, the honourable and the unholy, the serious and the light-hearted. Take the container ship captain in Murder and Redemption, who spoke with a gravelly voice and a Polish accent. I knew him in real life as a hotel owner, and he was a most unlikeable but exciting and entertaining character. I enjoyed fooling with him and prodding him to get a laugh from his scene.

To make my plot more realistic, I like to set down my characters among actual historical events and in locations I am intimate with and encourage them to talk to people I’ve known. And it’s eerie how the characters come to life and push the plot in directions I might not have taken without them. I’m currently writing about the underground mine where I worked 300 metres below the surface when blind pit ponies hauled coal and miners worked in conditions that, for man or beast, would not be tolerated now.

I enjoy my characters. Whether good or bad, they are approachable, and their internal turmoil, memories, humour, and regrets play out against the backdrop of the crime. Hidden motives fill their stories, and characters respond differently to intense situations.

The job of a crime author is to turn fantasy into a credible possibility. I prefer to employ the minimum of violence to achieve tension and fear from peace and harmony. If you can accept the proposition that there is a mixture, in all of us, of the beautiful and the ugly, the serious and the comical, then you can feel a certain sympathy for the greedy, the cowards, the vengeful, and the flawed. Dennis Lehane and Joseph Kanon tell their stories through complex characters who defy descriptions of saint and villain. In Gold Coast, Nelson DeMille had me full of sympathy and understanding for the Mafia Chief, his victim, her lover and the FBI agent.

It’s not about who done it, but why they did it. The decent versus evil of human existence, the recognition of both sinister and saintly surrounding us, the greed and the generosity of spirit, the lust and the comedic, vengeance and reward, cowardice and heroism – that’s why I read crime and thriller novels, and why I like writing them.