Living her inspiration by Dreda Say Mitchell

For readers and writers alike, it tends to be the characters we remember about the novels we enjoy and this is as true of the crime genre as it is of any other. While the well executed twist and the clever turn catch our attention while reading, it’s those who do the twists and turns that linger in the memory. We all know Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, even if we might sometimes confuse some of the cases they solved. I can still remember Regan and Carter chasing villains through docklands in ‘The Sweeny’ even if I can’t quite recall what they were chasing them for. It’s because of this that authors devote so much time to character development. Who are these people who feature in our stories and why would we be interested in them before the reader is?

I’m fortunate in that I grew up in an East End that was well supplied with real life characters of all sorts. There were the good guys and the bad ones and of particular interest to a writer the good/bad guys and the bad/good ones. For me the most interesting of those tended to be the women. There’s no particular rule that says an author should write about characters of their own gender but it was the women I knew who tended to draw you in and make you wonder about their lives and secrets. In a place like the East End, women are often face difficult decisions, awkward ethical dilemmas and divided loyalties; those of course are some of the basic building blocks of the any crime novel.

When I returned to writing about the East End after authoring two thrillers, it was the lives of women like these that I grew up with that I wanted to make the centrepiece of my new series. I knew plenty of matriarchs from those days and used them as the model for the Miller family’s mum, Babs. I knew plenty of good girls who got involved with the wrong guy and then had to pick up the pieces afterwards. I used those to create the character of Jen Miller while there were plenty of bad girls from the estates whose lives were good material for her sister Tiffany. It’s easy to turn kids who were knocked about by life in the East End into fictional victims. But whatever Dee Black’s problems, being a victim isn’t one of them. Meanwhile there are plenty of bad boys in this new series too but that’s another story.

Once a writer creates characters that live and breath for the reader, it’s just a question of putting them in high energy situations and then relying on them to do the work for you and the reader. To what extent a new novel works, it’s impossible to say until it’s published. But if I get feedback afterwards saying, ‘I knew someone just like Babs/Jen/Dee/Tiffany…’ then I’ll know it’s worked.

Blood Sister the first in the Fresh and Blood trilogy is out now (Hodder £6.99)

There are two ways out of Essex Lane Estate, better known as The Devil. You make good, or you turn bad.  Jen Miller is determined not to make the same mistakes her mother did. She's waiting to find herself a good job and a decent man.  Her younger sister Tiff is running errands for a gangster and looking for any opportunity for fun and profit. But she might just be in over her head...  The choices you make and the plans you have don't always turn out like you expect. Especially if you live on The Devil's Estate. When their paths cross with the unstoppable Dee - a woman with her own agenda - Jen and Tiff will learn that lesson the hard way.  At least they can rely on each other.  Can't they?

You can also watch Dreda Say Mitchell's video introducing Blood Sister below.

More information about Dreda Say Mitchell and her books can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @DredaMitchell and find her on Facebook.

Dangerous Promises with Roberta Kray

Sadie Wise has finally tracked down her husband Eddie, who left her five years ago, taking all her savings with him. Now in a new relationship, all she cares about is getting him to agree to sign the divorce papers so that she can move on. On the train to London to confront him, Sadie finds herself confiding the whole story to a stranger, Mona Farrell. In her mind, it’s a throwaway moment. In Mona’s mind, it’s a promise: she will rid her new friend of her husband, and in exchange, Sadie will kill Mona’s domineering father.

After securing the divorce, Sadie wants to put the whole experience behind her – but then she learns that just after she left, Eddie was stabbed to death. Mona took their chance encounter very seriously, and she won’t leave Sadie alone until she’s fulfilled her end of their ‘deal.’ Meanwhile, Eddie’s death has attracted the unwanted attention of the Gissings, a family Sadie doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of. They hold Sadie firmly responsible, and they want revenge.

Published in paperback by Sphere, 11th February 2016, £7.99

With the biopic Legend one of the biggest film hits of 2015, and a new Kray television documentary also released last autumn, our fascination with the East End gangland heyday shows no signs of abating.  Roberta Kray’s unique perspective into that world lends her latest fiction an authenticity that few could boast; coupled with fantastically-drawn, strong female characters and a pulse-racing plot.

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Through her marriage to Reggie Kray, Roberta Kray has a unique insight into London's East End. Born in Southport, Roberta met Reggie in early 1996 and they married the following year; they were together until Reggie's death in 2000.  Roberta Kray is author of the bestselling Nothing But Trouble, Strong Women, The Villain’s Daughter, Broken Home and Bad Girl.  She lives in Norfolk.

The Most Important Book I Have Written...

Today's guest blog is by author Barbara Nadel.  So far she has written sixteen books featuring Çetin İkmen, a chain-smoking and hard-drinking detective based in Istanbul, four books featuring Francis Hancock an East End undertaker and two books in her Hakim and Arnold series.

As authors we sometimes write books, or parts of books, that are personal or important to us.  There are places and scenes in my books that can exert an emotional pull over me time and time again.  My hope is that maybe my readers will feel the same.  Fortunately both my crime series are set in places that I love, Newham in London and Istanbul, Turkey.  My latest book, Poisoned Ground a Hakim and Arnold mystery set in Newham does however have other, to me, even more important, resonance.

For many years, both before and after I became a writer, I worked in psychiatric hospitals and with mentally ill people in the community.  My longest running job was as a patients advocate in a large psychiatric institution just outside London.  My duties were to represent the views, needs, complaints, and compliments of patients both ‘formal’ (held under Section) and ‘informal’ or voluntary.  I worked on acute, chronic, and forensic wards and one of the most stressful jobs I had was to represent forensic patients (those who had committed offences) at Mental Health Tribunals where their continued incarceration would be discussed and decided.  I had to walk the often-thin line between staff and patients, patients and their illnesses and patients and everyone else.  It probably goes without saying that people with mental health problems are often disbelieved and sometimes what they say is indeed ‘their illness talking’.  But more often than not, it isn’t.  In my experience it is dangerous to make assumptions.

One of our patients was always on about his relative who was a Hollywood movie star.  It seemed very far-fetched even to me.  Until the Hollywood star turned up and embraced our patient.  However, convincing the hospital authorities that something similar (i.e. the truth) may be at play when patients talked about abuse was another matter.  That was like pushing treacle uphill.  Because, unless the case was patient-on-patient abuse, they didn’t want to know.  Some members of staff were known for their brutality and yet any accusations levelled against them were always refuted in the strongest terms.  I have been told, gently, that I’m wrong about these people and, when I persisted, I have been called a liar, aggressively, to my face.  But to this day I stand by what my patients told me.  Not only could I see their injuries, I also have enormous faith in the idea that even the most delusional person knows when he or she has been kicked.  And this lack of belief in the validity of statements made by the mentally ill is one of the central themes of Poisoned Ground.

Total institutions like psychiatric hospitals, are fertile breeding grounds for rumour, supposition and, in some cases, abuse.  All the usual things that are valuable on the outside are currency inside too.  Sex, drugs, booze, money. Except that inside the atmosphere is more pressured and febrile and victims are inclined to remain silent.  So those with ill intent can more easily exploit people supposedly under their care.  They can also terrify other members of staff, who then collude or look the other way.  It takes real guts to be a whistle blower in a total institution, which is something the much-publicised Operation Yewtree is only now making plain.

Poisoned Ground is about what happens when this abuse is systematised.  And as more

actors are dragged into a drama that everyone in the institution knows, on some level, is happening, the more complex and more dangerous the situation becomes.  This world, so familiar to me, is one into which PI Mumtaz Hakim goes in search of a truth she has serious doubts about.  Because you do.

Even with her degree in psychology, Mumtaz, in common with most people, is more likely to disbelieve than believe the stories she hears when she becomes a volunteer advocate at Ilford Psychiatric Hospital.  What’s more, she must wade through the labyrinthine administration of an institution that’s gone bad, where people not only get hurt, but sometimes die as well.  And that has happened, and probably still does.

Stigma has always been with us.  If you label a person or a group ‘wrong’ or ‘other’ and you are more powerful than they are, you can do what you like with them.  Look at the Islamic State and the poor Yazidis and the Christians in Iraq.  Some groups have always, and will always, be targets for prejudice and discrimination.  Not everyone knows that Hitler didn’t start his epic genocide with Jewish people.  First he targeted the mentally ill.  Nobody would care about them.  And he was right, they didn’t.  In psychological terms this phenomenon is known as the ‘latitude of acceptance’.  It works by normalising violence or discrimination against a group that is already largely despised and then extends to others the state, political party or institution wants to get rid of too.

Poisoned Ground is a crime novel written from the bottom of my soul.  Good people work in psychiatric units.  If I have any religion at all it is the National Health Service, which has saved my life, and the Welfare State, which has kept me off the streets.  But it only takes one bad person, particularly one in a position of power, to produce a culture of fear and violence.  However delusional or ‘insane’ we may think someone, we have to start believing them and acting on that belief.  If we don’t, then we get monsters like Jimmy Savile.  Neither celebrity nor expertise can excuse exploitation.  Even the most highly qualified professional needs to earn respect.  Even the most sainted celebrity.

The action that takes place in Poisoned Ground is the most threatening and dangerous that PIs Mumtaz Hakim and Lee Arnold have faced so far.  Not only are they up against a conspiracy of frightening proportions but they also have to confront fears, assumptions, and beliefs they didn’t even know they had.

You can find out more information about Barbara Nadel and her work on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @BarbaraNadel.  Barbara also blogs over at International Crime Writers.com.

POISONED GROUND by Barbara Nadel is published by Quercus on 11 September, hardback £19.99.