With the explosion in popularity of true crime, I’ve been asked by a few people of late if I would ever consider a return to the genre.
Most recently, it was a bookseller in Glasgow who raised the subject. I had the day before interviewed Professor David Wilson at a sell-out session for Aye Write in Glasgow on his latest book, My Life With Murderers. As we spoke, Caron was setting up a display All That Remains by Professor Sue Black. Like David’s book, it is proving to be a hot property.
My answer, though, is generally no.
But never say never.
Yes, true crime has languished in the remainder bins for a time but of late we can’t switch channel or tune into a podcast with coming across something related to it.
In case you didn’t know, I began my book scrivening career in the genre. There were ten in total, either direct true crime or somehow related to it, beginning with Blood on the Thistle and ending with Glasgow’s Black Heart. Another two non-fiction titles dealt in an off-beat way with Scottish history and culture.
Of the ten, only one was a “serious” book because it examined a notorious miscarriage of justice. The others were examples of the storyteller in me wishing to relate real-life tales as accurately as I could while still delivering a good read. I think I managed that, although I admit I’m as capable as the next person of getting something wrong.
The rights to most of these books have no reverted to me. Three titles remain with a publisher for certain formats and one of those I dislike so much that – should I ever wrest the rights back – I will thrust a stake through its heart to ensure it never rises again.
There is a handful of the remaining titles that may be resurrected at some future date. It’s been suggested that I could self publish them but that route is not for me at the moment. I’m essentially lazy and that’s waaaaay too much work!
I still receive a few emails a year asking me to write someone’s true life tale. I politely decline them all. There are two historical cases I have written about previously and they sit in the back of my mind, taunting me to probe further and do something full-length. Apart from them, I have no burning desire to return to the genre – yet I know the longer I wait, the greater the chance someone else will do something on those two cases. It’s only a matter of time.
What I learned during my true crime period – writing and reading – will always stay with me and inform my fiction (yes, even The Janus Run to an extent, which had echoes of the real life stories I used to lap up about the Mafia and New York mob).
So, for the moment, it’s fiction all the way.
