Like so many others I’m often asked why I write and where
did it come from. I have to go back to my roots to explain this and I’ll go on
to describe how Grace Macallan came to be.
I was born into a deep-sea fishing community, the child
of generations of men who earned their living on the water and many of them
served in the Royal Navy during times of conflict. So, from a very early age I
was listening to stories often dominated by loss or great drama, and my own
great grandfather was lost with all of his crew in a terrible storm. As a child
I was fascinated by books and coming from such a tight knit community they
exposed me (at least in my imagination) to so many other words and lives. At
the tender age of 15 I went to sea which meant growing up quickly and there
were no favours even from those men from the same community. The work was so
hard, endless hours on exposed decks and weeks away from home. Apart from
working and sleeping there was nothing much else to do apart from reading. On
the long trips to the fishing grounds and back I devoured books and I often
think that’s where I carried on with my education such as it was. After 8 years
at sea I decided I wanted to see something else of the world and joined the
police.
So, I entered another community of storytellers in the
force. Cops love to tell stories and of course why wouldn’t they given what
they see in the course of their job? After 3 years I moved into criminal
investigation and never put a uniform again for the rest of my career.
During
my time as a detective I saw so much that could have turned me against the
human
race, but at the same time witnessed some incredible acts
of humanity that in a couple of cases changed me as a person. I had started to
write poetry (not that well) and liked to draw and paint on the rare occasions
I had time off and the idea of writing was developing. Looking back there was
no way I could have done it at the time and still dealing with the job I was
doing. I worked on murder squads for many years and then moved into specialist
work with a covert surveillance team. During the following years I moved into
intelligence work in London and several years in Holland and during these
periods I worked on numerous cases involving the death of sex workers and
trafficked women. The plight of those women stays with me and in all the books
I’ve written there’s always a character who is a sex worker or trafficked in
some way. In book 3, Shores of Death, which comes out in June I really bring
out some of my previous life as there are fishing boats used for trafficking
women so clearly my experience comes out in the writing. The ideas were
starting to form for a fictional story but I had made up my mind I would have
to wait till I was finished with the job.
When the time came I sat down at the computer and all I
had was this idea about a detective lying in the road after being hit by a car.
I wrote it as a prologue and still had no idea what was coming next. So, I just
let my imagination take over - I had spent several years working in Northern
Ireland and there I was imagining a scene in the Ormeau Road, the location of
some terrible events during the Troubles. Then Grace just appeared and became
the central character in all of the books.
I suppose writing crime fiction lands you in a big pool
with some particularly big fish and the question is what do I bring to the table?
I try to make the books authentic as far as possible in a few hundred pages. By
authentic I mean the way the characters interact whether it’s the criminals or
the investigators. Grace is very human, like all of us she’s flawed and makes
mistakes. She’s no super sleuth and like me and so many other detectives looks
at what she sees and just becomes more confused about what it all actually
means. I’m also very keen to bring in the smaller characters who get caught
between the law and the opposition and not mentioned enough in most fiction in
my humble opinion. So, there are all sorts in the books who play significant
roles. I’ve mentioned the sex workers and the trafficked women plus there are
small time dealers, minders and in Shores
of Death even a pimp’s dog gets quite a good role! I also try to reflect
what modern detectives have to deal with in that the stories take place on
quite a wide canvas. So Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and Belfast are all
linked in various ways and in the book I’m writing just now Dublin turns up in
a few scenes. Although there is a serial killer in the first book I go for
other issues in the later books to reflect what happens in the real world. I
think there are more than enough serial killers around in crime fiction as it
is!
So Grace is alive and well and good for another few cases
yet I think.
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