Thursday 28 April 2022

Writing No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride

Normally it can be quite difficult for me to identify the exact genesis of a story, but that’s not the case with No Less the Devil. Years and years ago, back when I was young and fresh faced… Well, that’s a lie. Back when I was slightly less haggard and grumpy. That’s more like the truth. Anyway, way back then I was asked to write a short story to be read out on Radio 4. I, being an international man of mysteries, was on my way to South Africa at the time to do a lovely wee festival there and a bit of a book tour, and as it was one of those overnight flights I decided to fulfil my short-story obligation on the plane. I never sleep on these things anyway – why not put the time to good use?

So, between Heathrow and Johannesburg I sat in my seat and came up with what I thought was a nice little family tale with a crime-fiction twist. Emailed it off when I got to my hotel, then forgot all about it.

Just before I was supposed to get on the plane back to the U.K, having enjoyed a very nice time in lovely South Africa, thank you very much, i got an email from the BBC saying that my nice little family tale was far too dark to broadcast on the radio!' with more than a whiff of ‘what’s wrong with you?’ about it.

Right.

In if they didn’t like that one (which has never been published, by the way), then I would write them something else on the plane home. And somewhere over Zambia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I had an idea. And I wrote a fragmented short story about a little girl called Lucy and her little brother and a very naughty dog called Mr Bitey. Which seemed to go down OK. Not too dark for the delicate sensibilities of the British radio-listening public. And that was that.

Or it should’ve been.

The trouble was that Lucy really intrigued me, not in a ‘thinking about it every day fashion’, more a ‘niggling away at the back of my skull’ kind of thing. As the years went on I’d come to from a dwam, and find I’d been staring out the window for a while, pondering what Lucy would be like when she grew up. Would she be happy? Would she have changed? What would she be doing now? And what would happen if she joined the police…

This is what we shall now refer to as: Tab A.

Slot B came into being before the first lockdown was announced, but it was a vague and fuzzy slot without clearly defined edges, and then the pandemic hit. And then all the stories of VIP lanes, and massive contracts worth hundreds of millions doled out by sleazy idiots to their avaricious cronies. Cronies with no experience supplying the things they were now being paid massive sums of tax-payers’ money to supply. Things that often didn’t work and cost twice as much as they should have.

It's been clear for years that we live not in a real, genuine, un-bought-and-paid-for-by-entities-and-individuals-who-do-not-have-our-best-interests-at-heart democracy, or even a kleptocracy (though it sometimes feels that way), but an ineptocracy. Where we’re governed by people wholly unfit for the task, whose only qualification is that they’re privately educated and sound a bit posh.

Which made me wonder – what if all the staggering displays of ineptitude on daily display weren’t just because these people had the intellectual heft of what could be dug from your average tumble dryer’s fluff filter after doing a load of socks and pants? What if they were part of a pattern? What if they were part of the plan?

Hell, what if they were the plan. What if the only reason these people had, to claw their way up the greasy political flagpole, was to enrich people exactly as venal and useless and overprivileged as they were?

At which point Tab A slid neatly into Slot B, and No Less the Devil was born.

Then all I had to was write it, which is a different story entirely…

No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride (Transworld Publishers) Out Now 

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. It's been seventeen months since the Bloodsmith butchered his first victim and Operation Maypole is still no nearer catching him. The media is whipping up a storm, the top brass are demanding results, but the investigation is sinking fast. Now isn't the time to get distracted with other cases, but Detective Sergeant Lucy McVeigh doesn't have much choice. When Benedict Strachan was just eleven, he hunted down and killed a homeless man. No one's ever figured out why Benedict did it, but now, after sixteen years, he's back on the streets again - battered, frightened, convinced a shadowy 'They' are out to get him, and begging Lucy for help.It sounds like paranoia, but what if he's right? What if he really is caught up in something bigger and darker than Lucy's ever dealt with before? What if the Bloodsmith isn't the only monster out there? And what's going to happen when Lucy goes after them?



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