Shots
Magazine are delighted to see the return of Graham
Bartlett, following up his insightful ‘DEATH COMES KNOCKING’, a non-fiction
crime work that looks back over his career as a Sussex Police Commander. That
work was written in-conjunction with the award-winning [and best-selling] Peter
James, as there is a link to the fictional world of Roy Grace.
Peter
James is favourite writer of mine, a former Film Producer who’s writing
traverses Horror and Speculative Fiction but best known for his police
procedurals set in a dangerous Brighton, as well as international excursions
that Roy Grace has to undertake in his investigations. It was excellent to hear
that this singular
creation is being adapted for TV. In fact, 2020 appears an important year
for Peter James, as we reported at last year’s Christmas Lunch that the author generously
organised – more information about what the year has in store for Peter James’
readership HERE
So as Bartlett’s
Babes in the Wood [the follow-up to Death Comes Knocking] has
been unleashed, what’s in store?
On 9
October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play
on their Brighton estate. They would never return home; their bodies discovered
the next day concealed in a local park. This devastating crime rocked the
country.
With
unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, former senior
detective Graham Bartlett and bestselling author Peter James tell the
compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local
man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the
history of Brighton policing – a shock result sees Bishop walk free.
Three
years later, Graham is working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is
abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a
suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time,
and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes? Both
gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil
man, Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett with Peter James is a fascinating
account of what became a thirty-two-year fight for justice.
Read More
from Pan Macmillan HERE
This link tells
more from the author –
Graham
kindly provided Shots Readers, a little more background to his change from
Police Officer, to Investigative
Consultant and Writer -
When I
hung up my epaulettes after thirty years of policing, I loved writing and had
many plans but none were to become a best-selling crime writer. That was all
Peter James’ fault when he set me the most extensive and challenging piece of
homework I’d ever faced.
‘Write a
non-fiction with me,’ he said. ‘Linking your career with the Roy Grace stories,’
he said. ‘And you’d damned well better make it worthy of my name,’ he joked.
From the age of eighteen I’d written nothing but witness
statements, incident reports and, as the commander of Brighton and Hove police,
pleading submissions against the cuts. So, when WH Smith customers’ “greatest
crime author of all time,” threw down that
particular gauntlet I picked it up with trepidation.
It was the
hardest yet most fulfilling journey I have ever embarked on. Rejection after
rejection because my voice (what even was that?) was too policey only spurred
me on until finally, after three years and more drafts than I can bear to
remember, Death
Come Knocking – Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton was published. A week at
number 7 in the Sunday Times Top Ten earned me the label of “Best Seller” but,
more importantly, I caught the bug.
Our second book, Babes in the Wood – published in
February 2020 - took even longer to write. It tells the inside policing story
to how, after thirty-two years and three trials, child killer Russell Bishop
was finally brought to justice.
Having been wrongly acquitted for killing
nine-year-olds, Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, in 1986, Bishop went on to
kidnap and to get within a hairs breadth of killing a seven-year-old girl in
near identical circumstances three years later. That was the first major
incident I investigated and it formed a compelling chapter in Death Comes
Knocking. However, two weeks before our final deadline, a court order crashed
in to my inbox banning us – and the world’s press – from publishing anything
about Bishop as he had been re-arrested for Karen and Nicola’s murder. Despair
quickly turned to elation when it hit me that the relaxation of the double jeopardy
safeguards – which stopped acquitted suspects being re-prosecuted – and the
advance of DNA science meant that finally the little girls’ families had a chance
of justice.
Peter and I decided to write the whole story, from
the girls going missing to what we then hoped – and were proved right – would
be guilty verdicts. We would tell it using first-hand accounts from the
officers who answered Karen’s mum’s desperate 999 call, to the officer who
found the bodies and every senior detective – and many junior – who had
anything to do with the cases. – including me. There was a lot of hanging
around for the re-trial but eventually we interviewed those key cops and finished
the book, busting five myths about the case in the writing.
Despite being a career-detective, I have always
tried to find the good in people. Most killers, rapists and robbers I have met have
at least a flicker of humanity if you dig deep enough. The vast majority I
could describe as being “people who have done evil things,” rather than “evil
people.”
Bishop was the exception. He is wicked to the core.
His crimes, depraved, brutal and unforgiveable,
speak for themselves but we saw in his interviews and in court a living,
breathing psychopath. How else do your describe someone who tries to gas-light
wizened and wily interviewers into believing a story that flip-flops around the
evidence on a minute by minute basis that, were the case not so serious, it
would be laughable? Who else would brazenly defend sending sexually explicit
letters to a thirteen-year-old girl – and he knew that – by saying he thought
she was fifteen? Only someone like Bishop could be so dismissive of a grieving father’s
decades-long anguish that he could accuse him of watching a video of her being
raped then later sexually assaulting and murdering both her and her friend. If
Bishop were ever released, children would be in mortal danger.
As well as writing I advise Peter James, and now many others, on
achieving pinpoint accuracy in their police procedure and characters. Plenty of
former cops offer themselves up to do this but not many are published authors. Few
understand the narrative process and can meld a story with authentic procedure.
Combining my years as a detective, firearms commander and city police chief with
my new career as an author, I put the plot first and work the authenticity into
that. I share the secrets of how crimes are actually investigated and solved,
from the corpse to the courtroom and help shape the characters who do that.
That makes me a real pain to watch TV drama with or
to read ill-researched crime fiction. It’s unfair on other authors that I use Peter James and Mark Billingham
as my benchmarks of what can be achieved, but many put the hard yards in and
produce great – authentic – novels. Elly
Griffiths, Dorothy
Koomson, E V Seymour and Adam Croft are just a few of those whose books I
fly – wince-free - through. Sometimes though, I like to avoid any chance of
critiquing when I should be enjoying and my two favourite authors who write in
a world I know nothing about are Gregg
Hurwitz (Orphan X series) and Deon Meyer
(Benny Griessell series). I doubt Gregg’s world of deniable assassins hung out
to dry by a corrupt US government exists (Naïve? Moi?). Likewise, Deon’s
South Africa Police Service is nothing like the provincial UK force I am familiar
with so I can just read and enjoy – as the authors intended.
I’m moving away from non-fiction for now and am editing
my first novel. Supported wonderfully by my agent Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedman
and the lord and master Peter James, I have written a story I’m quietly proud
of which shows the horror of what happens when policing is cut so much that
state-sponsored vigilantism takes over. Watch this space for more news on that.
So, we’d recommend grabbing a copy, especially as
this weird COVID-19
is in the air, and many turning to books while we isolate ourselves.
This link tells more HERE
Babes
in the Wood – by Graham
Bartlett with Peter James is published by Pan and available from Amazon, WH Smiths,
Waterstones, Asda and other good bookshops.
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