I had a great time in Motherwell Library on Thursday night.
It was part of the North Lanarkshire Encounters Festival, an annual event that attracts some top writers (and me) to venues across the Shire.
The audience on Thursday seemed to appreciate my act and asked a number of great questions.
One was, how risky was it to write books from the point of view of criminals when the majority of the readers are law-abiding?
I didn’t think of it as risky but I know what the person was saying.
The majority of crime fiction, certainly in the UK, is written from the point of view of law enforcement – Cops, private detectives, lawyers, even journalists.
When I started the Davie McCall series I decided not to go that route.
It was already being done and being done very well. There was nothing I could add.
US style
In America it’s slightly different. Yes, you have your cops and private eyes and your hacks. But there is a long tradition of crime fiction focussing on the darker side.
Dennis Lehane’s ‘Mystic River’ is one example. Its central characters all inhabit a twilight world on the edges of legality. As does ‘They Live By Night’ and his latest novel, ‘World Gone By’. And his screenplay for ‘The Drop’ is almost totally focussed on small-time crims.
While British TV still gives us an almost daily diet of small screen coppers, US cable companies have presented us with ‘The Wire’, ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire.’
‘Ray Donovan’ also stumbles over the line into the dark side.
Going back in time, Richard Stark was a regular visitor to that twilight world, as was George V Higgins. Even Ed McBain put his 87th Precinct badge down every now and again to write one-off novels centering on hoods and thugs – ‘Guns’, springs to mind, and ‘Big Man.’
Davie McCall follows in a Western tradition of a man trying to escape his past, like Josey Wales or William Munny, both played by Clint Eastwood
Anti-hero
I do have police officers in the Davie McCall books, and journalists and lawyers. I have crooks and straight arrows, bad guys and good guys and guys you can’t really tell if they’re good or bad.
Another question was whether Davie is based on a real person or an amalgam of people.
My answer was that Davie is a traditional anti-hero – tortured, brooding, with a lot of good in him.
As any regular reader to these musings will know, I’m a huge fan of western movies and I’ve often likened Davie to the gunfighter who wants to take off his belt and hang his weapons away. He’s ‘Shane’, if you like or Josey Wales or William Munny in ‘Unforgiven’ – a man who cannot escape his past.
It’s a theme I’m revisiting in something I’m writing at the moment. It’s a book that may never see the light of day but I’ve just realised that one of the characters is a man with a particular set of skills, as Liam Neeson said in ‘Taken.’
I’d like to thank everyone who came along on Thursday. It was great to meet people who have read and enjoyed the Davie McCall books. They actually get Davie, which is a relief!
Also thanks to the staff of North Lanarkshire Libraries for inviting me along.