Why Soho? By Jessie Keane

Well if I am going to talk about Soho, then first I am going to have to give you a little background. I ran away from home when I was sixteen (maybe even fifteen, now I think about it). I walked out of school (I’d hardly ever attended, anyway), walked away from the ruins of my family (the family firm had collapsed, we’d been evicted by the banks, my father had just died of lung cancer) and went to London to stay with my friend Joanna, who had a dirty little flat in Soho near Berwick Street Market. 

I never saw the dirt, of course. A Romany child used to open country, I took one look at the teeming city of London and in particular the steamy streets – Old Compton Street, Frith Street - of Soho and fell utterly, hopelessly in love with surroundings that were so very different to the ones I’d grown up in.

Then I fell in love all over again, with a man we met one night. We came out of Raymond’s Revue Bar and went into the Windmill Theatre and there he was. Sadly, his attention was focused on Joanna, but my attention was focused on him. I’d been scratching away in notebooks ever since I could crawl, writing playlets, westerns, sci-fi fantasies, anything. But the sight of this man knocked me sideways and convinced me that I would have to set him down on paper. The black curling hair. The sapphire-blue eyes. His flashiness, his Savile Row suits, his vicuna coats, his shoes from Lobbs, his latent aura of power. Gorgeous!

Of course, I was a minnow among sharks in 60’s Soho, but my extreme innocence was a sort of protection. I sailed through every obstacle and filled notebooks full of details I noticed as I passed through. That black-haired man with the gangster look about him became, inevitably, set in my mind. He never left it, not even when I came back to my boring existence at home. He stayed with me all through relationships, marriages, moves, everything, until one bleak day I was sitting under a quilt watching a crime DVD. I couldn’t afford to heat the flat, I was too poor for that. I had no education, no money. I’d had a succession of boring low-paid job. Wrapping chips in the local chip shop. Sweeping up in a hairdressers. Slicing bacon in the Co-op. Now I was really on my uppers, but I was still making notes and dreaming of being an actual, proper writer.

Then Annie Bailey – who would later become Annie Carter – strolled into my head and I thought, what fun. A strong Alpha woman and I would place her in among the gangsters and see what she would get up to. 

I sold my wedding dress, bought a typewriter, and set to. Before three months was up, I had finished writing the very first of the Annie Carter novels, Dirty Game. Of course, that gorgeous man I’d met in the Windmill in Soho was in there too, clashing with Annie at every turn. It was the most fun I’d had, ever, writing, that book. People talk about writers ‘finding their voice’ and I had always laughed at that, not understanding what they meant. Suddenly, I did. I’d found my voice with a vengeance.

So off I trotted to the Post Office, clutching six carefully wrapped packages. Each one contained a synopsis and a copy of the book, bound for a variety of agents. At this point, my partner took pity on me.

‘You’re bright,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s time to stop all this dreaming. Get a proper job.’

Which made me dig my heels in all the more. I posted the manuscripts off, and waited. Rejection slips soon poured through the door. Four of them. But two out of the six were interested, and one said she might have someone who would like this book, but not to get my hopes up, and why hadn’t I numbered the pages? I was that inexperienced, that much of a numpty!

That agent invited me to London, talked me through a few alterations. I was so happy to get back to the Smoke, I was ecstatic. Even if nothing ever came of this, at least I’d got to the first fence.

I went home, rewrote. Sent the thing back to her. It was August Bank Holiday, nothing was happening, publishing was empty of workers, she told me. Just hold on. Don’t get your hopes up.

I didn’t.

Then two days later she phoned me again.

‘I’ve got you a three book deal,’ she said. ‘For a six figure sum.’

I couldn’t help but think I had Soho, my time there as a wet-behind-the-ears, my meeting that beautiful black-haired stranger, to thank for this miracle. So don’t ask me why Soho. Ask me why not Soho. It may be changed these days – a little tamer, a little more polished – but anytime I go back there now the magic, for me, remains. 

This is the place where I found my inspiration and became a professional writer, this is the place that inspired Dirty Game, the very first of the Annie Carter novels and now I am launching the seventh novel about her and her dangerous, glamorous life and her love/hate relationship with Max. She had come a long way, baby! And so have I. Dirty Game shot straight into the Heatseekers chart at number one, and all my books have been in the Sunday Times Top Twenty chart. So I have a lot to thank Annie for. And Soho, bless it!

Never Go Back by Jessie Keane is published 2^nd February 2023 in Hardback by Hodder, priced £16.99

The Carter women don't follow the rules: They make them.Gangster Max Carter and his ex-wife Annie Carter are leading separate lives in separate countries: past hurts and broken promises cannot be resolved. But then a summons to Majorca and a tragic death makes Max question all that has happened to him over many years. He had two brothers - both are now dead. His closest friend has been found hanging from a London bridge. As the police wrestle with a seemingly unsolvable case, Max is forced to revisit his painful past to find answers to a mystery that seems to make no sense at all. Who is targeting his family and why? Annie Carter is at a crossroads in life. She has a luxurious lifestyle but no one to share it with, and Max clearly thinks she is in danger too. Her daughter, Layla, has left her mafia lover Alberto Barolli and is back in London, stumbling into the police investigation and making waves. You should never go back, so the old saying goes. But then, the Carter women don't follow the rules, they make them. And when the truth of what's been happening is finally revealed, will the Carter family stand together - or will it finish them for good?

More information about Jessie Keane can be found on her Facebook page. You can also follow her on Twitter @realjessiekeane

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 Only Way is Essex

Today’s guest blog is by debut author Susan Wilkins.  After a degree in law and a stint as a journalist she embarked on a career in television drama.  She has written scripts for a number of well known television dramas such as Heartbeat, Casualty, Eastenders and Coronation Street. She also wrote and created the London based detective drams South of the Border of which two series was made by the BBC.  The Informant is her first novel.  The sequel The Mourner is due out in 2015.

I’m an Essex girl born and bred, proud of my origins but more than a little hacked off with the clichés.  White sling backs, fake tan, stupidity and that abrasive ‘Estuary English’, screaming-harpy dialect – Essex has become a stereotype.  And television shows like ‘The Only Way is Essex’, made by Lime Pictures – who make Hollyoaks and are incidentally based in Liverpool – don’t help.

Trashy and Essex have become synonymous.  And typecast Essex villains are part of that image.

However, there is the opposite side of the coin.  If you work in the City or Canary Wharf making a telephone number salary in banking and you want to live within a short commute of your desk in glorious countryside, where do you choose?  The only way is definitely Essex.

Since the deregulation of the financial markets, or Big Bang as it’s known, in 1986, Essex has become home to swathes of seriously rich individuals as well as a class of affluent commuters who work ‘up in town’ to use the local parlance.

As a result the divide between the haves and the have not’s is probably more pronounced in Essex than in any other part of the country, with the exception of London.  The county is a microcosm of what modern Britain is fast becoming.  And this is one reason why it’s such an interesting setting to write about.

I was born in Southend-on-Sea, the blowsy Cockney playground of the immediate pre and post-war years.  Southend has faded from fashion.  But it set up a relationship between London and Essex, which endures.  Escaping the slums of the East End to the green fields of Essex began in the 30’s.  It continued in the 60’s to ‘new towns’ like Harlow and Basildon.

The main character in The Informant is Kaz Phelps.  Her father is a small time London gangster, who realises that robbing banks or ‘pavement work’ is a thing of the past and sees a future for himself and his family in Essex.

In the 90’s the Essex club scene was awash with drugs like Ecstasy and kids with money determined to party.  For drug dealers, like my fictional character Terry Phelps, it was a bonanza.

Kaz Phelps grows up in Basildon and then, as family fortunes improve, the prosperous villages north of the A127 around Billericay.

This was also my childhood home and I saw it morph from small and sleepy commuter town to an enclave oozing serious money.

As a writer one of the things that has fascinated me is the impact of social inequality.  If you live cheek by jowl with wealth but you’re not sharing it, how do you feel?  Are your neighbours so much more worthy than you because they’re on the gravy train and you’re not?

Crime born of poverty has long been a staple of crime fiction.  But it seems to me that crime born of envy reflects our consumer, celebrity-obsessed society far more accurately.  If you can’t win the X Factor or make it as a footballer must you settle for less?  Why be a shelf stacker or a call centre drone, when you can deal drugs and be rich too?  And if you need a justification consult the nearest billboard: Because you’re worth it.  Why should they have it all and not you?

You can follow Susan Wilkins on Twitter - @SusanWilkins32 and you can also find her on Facebook.

The Informant by Susan Wilkins is out now £7.99 (Pan Macmillan)

Criminal splatterings!!! Film news from the Sundance Film Festival and more!!

Sundance Film News -
According to Deadline News, it looks as if David Fincher is thinking about being involved with the filming of the bestselling novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  The novel was acquired in a seven figure deal by 20th Century Fox and is to be produced by Pacific Standard’s Reese Witherspoon.  The first draft of the screenplay has been written by the author.  Not surprisingly, two of Flynn’s other books are in the works as movie projects.  Dark Places which has Amy Adams attached to it and Sharp Objects. Fincher is still on board to continue with the Stieg Larsson series.

James Franco has announced that he is to direct and star in the adaptation of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid.  According to Deadline News the adaptation is still in the early stages.  American Tabloid follows five years in the lives of three ex-law enforcement officers embroiled in shady interconnected Washington dealings that lead to President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.  It is not the first time attempts have been made to adapt American Tabloid. Blood’s A Rover the third book in the trilogy is currently been developed with Ellroy as the executive producer.

Kill Your Darlings, which features Daniel Radcliffe and is the untold story of a murder that brought together a young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs is according to Deadline News close to having a deal done by Sony Pictures Classics covering multiple territories. 

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If you haven’t yet seen the poster  for Danny Boyle’s new film Trance see below –

Trance, is a psychological thriller starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel and centres on "a fine art auctioneer, mixed up with a criminal gang, who join forces with a hypnotherapist to recover a lost painting.". Trance is due in the cinema in the UK on March 27.

It looks as if Joaquin Phoenix is in talks to star in the adaptation of Inherent Vice.  Inherent Vice is a noir tale, set in 1969 Los Angeles, and is based on Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel about a weed-smoking private detective on a kidnapping case.

With British crime dramas on a high another film to look out for is All Things To All Men, staring Gabriel Byrne, Rufus Sewell and Toby Stephens.  Stephens plays Riley, a professional thief, who's hired to pull off "the ultimate sting"  only to find himself caught between maverick cop Parker (Sewell) and crime lord Corso (Byrne). With Parker determined to bring down Corso, the sting going wrong and the stakes get higher and higer.  All Things To Men is out in the UK on 8 March.

Another film to look out for is The Liability,  a British gangster film featuring Tim Roth who plays a ruthless hit-man.  The Liability follows the tale of a teenager who is taken under Roth’s wing as he tries to earn some money to pay back his father. The Liability is out in the UK on 22 February 2013.  The trailer can be seen below.

According to Firstshowing.net Denzel Washington and Mark Whalberg are staring in the action thriller 2 Guns which is an adaptation based on Steven Grant's graphic novel of the same name.  2 Guns is a pulp story a man named Trench who has targeted a local bank to rob and asked another thief named Steadman in on the job.  Trench figures it's a great way to score – considering it's a cover for mob money.  They'll be thieves ripping off thieves.  But what Steadman doesn't know is that Trench is a DEA agent.  And what Trench doesn't know is that Steadman's got his own secret and isn't who he appears to be...  2 Guns is due out in August 2013.