Cambridge Festival of Ideas – Crime Fiction, Extreme Pleasures

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I made my way through the labyrinthian corridors of Anglia Ruskin University to find Lab 3 and wondered what kind of literary experiment this might prove to be. I was to be disappointed only in the title of the talk: `Crime Fiction: Extreme Pleasures’  to which no reference was made. I therefore remained unclear whether the extreme pleasures in question were on the part of the reader, a somewhat bold claim, or the writer, engaged perhaps in some sado-masochistic dance with their agent or editor.

The panel was chaired by Mick Finlay, author of `Arrowood’, set in Victorian London, featuring the eponymous detective who hates Sherlock Holmes. Dr Mick Finlay is also a social psychology lecturer at Anglia Ruskin.

The other three panel members were all women: B.A. Paris, or Bernadette, who has written three psychological thrillers, including `Bring Me Back; Nicola Upson, who mixes fact with fiction in her seven books featuring Josephine Tey, a real crime writer from the 1930’s and Alison Bruce who has written seven books in the Cambridge based DC Goodhew series, one standalone and two non-fiction books. The latest, her standalone book, `I Did It For Us’, apparently arrived in her head in 30 seconds during an event she attended with her agent who was quite concerned for her wellbeing as she was behaving most strangely! She signed the deal with her publisher before it was even written, so it was obviously a golden moment.

Apparently crime fiction has become the most popular genre in the UK with 18.7 million books sold last year, up 19% since 2015.

Why is it so popular?

The panel suggested various answers to this question: there are so many great crime series on TV and Netflix; it’s very different from your own humdrum life; people like to be scared in the safety of their own home. Readers also prefer strong characters they can relate to and this happens particularly with a series, where the main characters become familiar and well loved. Equally, in these troubled times, things can be put right on the page and evil punished, which so rarely happens in real life. Both detectives and criminals are often outsiders, which readers can relate to and the latter enjoy trying to beat the author, analysing clues and guessing surprise twists.

How did you come to write crime?

B.A. Paris wrote `Behind Closed Doors’, a domestic noir, first. She had never considered writing a psychological thriller, but couldn’t get her novels published and was told to write something `for these times’. She bases her plots on something she’s heard or stories from friends which capture her imagination.

Nicola Upson started writing her series because she was a big fan of Josephine Tey, who was very ahead of her time as a writer and whose books have never been out of print. In fact Nicola Upson set out initially simply to write a biography of Tey, but ran into difficulties because Tey was such a private character. Her partner then told her to `for God’s sake, make it up’.

Alison Bruce initially planned to write a film script, but was told it was easier to get a book published than a script filmed. She ended up writing what was later described as a police procedural, because she initially put Gary Goodhew into a scene as she needed a policeman to answer the phone in her first written (but third to be published) book, `The Calling’.

Mick Finlay came up with the idea for `Arrowood’ because he thought `God, I’d be annoyed with Sherlock Holmes if I was a Victorian detective.’ His next thought was `There’s a book in this.’

Part Two to follow this week.