Quentin Bates talks to Shots Magazine

 

We were delighted to recently bump into the Renaissance Man of Mystery Quentin Bates at both Crimefest Bristol as well as Capital Crime.

Quentin is a prolific author, a Publisher, Translator, Fisherman, and generally an all-round interesting bloke, with an interesting life. He recently founded a publishing company called Corylus Books.

Their first acquisition ‘Broken’ by Jón Atli Jónasson caught our eye.

From the publisher -

Two broken cops.

One irretrievably damaged and the other an outcast.

Dóra struggles to cope with life after taking a bullet to the head. Rado is the child of refugees, his career shunted off the tracks due to his family connections to an organised crime gang. But they’re the only ones available when a troubled teenager vanishes from a school trip, and the trail gets darker the further they pursue it.

Broken takes place in a side of Reykjavík no visitor would ever want to see, as the mismatched pair tread on all the wrong toes in the search for the missing youngster. This takes place against the backdrop of a vicious vendetta and price on Dóra’s head. A brutal turf war embroils Rado’s family as he and Dóra follow the threads of corruption higher and higher, to the top of the exclusive apartment block on the outskirts of the city.

The first novel by award-winning screenwriter Jón Atli Jónasson to appear in English, Broken is the first of a razor-edged crime trilogy shot through with black humour and characters who leap off the page.

We reviewed Broken on its Hardcover release earlier this month, writing at the time -

This extraordinary crime novel debuted 2022 in the authors’ native Iceland, but is now finally available in an English Language translation.  Broken is a deeply thought-provoking narrative, written in an urgent present-tense style making the reader pause to collate and evaluate the proceedings as well as to take a breath. Written from multiple viewpoints, terse dialogue with deftly placed social commentary - its narrative pace is measured, but zings along with the velocity of the bullet that impacts Dora’s head in Broken’s opening chapter.

Dora works for the police in Reykjavík, shielded from ‘real’ police work by her boss Ellioi, instead she’s left to manage administration / office work, though she longs to return to working on the street. Ellioi hides his guilt [from the assignment they shared and which left fragments of a bullet lodged in Dora’s skull], by keeping her in the office, deskbound on minor cases - and away from further danger. The cranial injury still causes Dora physical pain, constant operations, and strict regime of medication - affecting her cognition and distorting her personality.

Read the Full Review HERE

So on the eve of Broken’s Paperback release in August, we decided to have a chat with Quentin for our readers.

A Karim: Could you tell us a little about yourself and where the fascination for Iceland and Icelandic culture / literature stemmed [and stems] from?

Q Bates: It’s a long story… I had the opportunity for a gap year, and a friend of my Dad’s said I could come and work in his net loft in Iceland for a few months. The 17-year-old me couldn’t shake off English suburbia fast enough. It didn’t quite work out as planned, as my A level results were pretty poor. So I just stayed in Iceland and the gap year became a gap decade. During that time I did several different jobs, went to college and started a family, so some very deep roots were put down there. We relocated to England after a while, for a variety of reasons. These days my wife and I try to split our time between the south of England and the north of Iceland, as we have children and grandchildren on each side of the ocean.

It was while I was at college that I started reading Icelandic properly, and the book scene was very different back then. There was practically no crime fiction other than translated mostly from English, and Icelandic literature was mostly very literary, plus there were loads of worthy biographies of captains of industry, political figures and whatnot, as well as nautical stuff – I’ll come back to that further on.

AK: And reading, did you come from a bookish family or was it your schooling?

QB: There were always books at home and my parents didn’t push us in particular directions, at least, we were never discouraged from reading anything. We were just encouraged to read whatever we wanted. Dad gave me two Asterix books for my (I think) eighth birthday, and that was probably a pivotal moment. I just fell in love with the village of Indomitable Gauls. One of those two books was Asterix in Britain, and I still think it’s the best one, gently and affectionately skewering the foibles of the Rosbifs across the Channel with their warm beer and terrible weather. It was much, much later that I figured out that the translator was the brilliant Anthea Bell.

Of course I pillaged the parental book shelves. Dad liked weighty 19th century literature (heavy going!) but that left me with an appreciation of Hardy and others. He also loved Norse mythology, the ancient sagas and Tolkien, and I inherited that. Although I read the Lord of the Rings pretty much every year for a long time, it must be 20 years since I last read it and I’m not sure I dare pick it up now. No, I haven’t seen the movies and don’t want to… Mum’s tastes were broader, and ranged from Ruth Rendell and Ed McBain at one end to Trollope and Maugham at the other. My first brush with Nordic crime fiction was picking Sjöwall & Wahlöö from Mum’s shelf, intrigued by the weird name, and I must have been 13 or 14 then. But there was no more! There was no other Nordic crime fiction in English for another couple of decades! By late teens I was reading George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Douglas Adams (loved HHGTTG!), Solzhenitsyn, Anthony Burgess, Evelyn Waugh, Robert Graves. After S&W came Maigret, and fortunately there was no shortage of Simenon in English.

I’ve always been the oddball who scours the shelves of a library or bookshop for odd foreign names. So as a teen I was reading writers such as Jerome Weidman and Hans Helmut Kirst, who seem to be pretty much forgotten today. I still have this habit, and given the choice of a safe pair of familiar hands, or the first in a series featuring a crime-busting retired Olympic lady hammer-thrower by an unknown Bulgarian author, I know which way I’ll jump.

AK: And pivotal books that influenced your desire to write your own work?

QB: Maybe it’s more about the breadth than any particular author…? But, while I was living in Iceland, English books weren’t always easy to get hold of. I think I was at sea one time and had a few books with me, including a major bestseller by an author whose name I’ll keep to myself. It was terrible, a truly dreadful book. That brought home to me then than if that’s the kind of stuff that could get published, then I might be in with a chance after all.

Much later on… it was the books of the brilliant French author Dominique Manotti that showed me just how sharp, incisive, smart and politically aware crime fiction can be at its best. I don’t think she’s writing now, as she must be quite elderly. I got to meet her and shared a panel with her at a festival, and I was like a star-struck schoolboy.

AK: I read your first published book was a nonfiction work about fishing in the North Sea?

QB: That was fun! I was working as a journalist, writing about maritime stuff, and mainly to do with fishing – as that’s my professional background. I did trips on five different boats and that book contains those accounts. One was supposed to be four days on a Scottish mackerel boat that turned into twelve, another was a four-day trip from Newlyn and the others were easier, just one-day trips to sea. It was great fun, but the small publisher went out of business about half an hour after the book appeared. So it was never going to be a bestseller! I also wrote a book with the skipper of the Gaul – a trawler that disappeared off the Norwegian coast in 1974. He had been on a trip off when the ship sank – and I got to know him well. There had been all kinds of rumours of the Gaul having been a spy ship, none of which held water. That was a labour of love… The book took ten years, during which the wreck of the Gaul was located, surveyed and an inquiry was held, so all that had to be built into the narrative. That was quite an adventure. That book is now virtually impossible to find and second-hand copies go for 100+ quid!

AK: And what made you write fiction? And why Crime thrillers?

QB: It had always been at the back of my mind, along with the thought that fiction was a mug’s game, the chances of being published so slim that it was hardly worth trying. So I had to give it a go. That first book came out of a creative writing course I took as a way of getting a weekly afternoon off work… I later on found out that the deputy editor and the advertising manager were also working on novels of their own, but that’s another story. I expected to come out of the course working on non-fiction. But one of the tutors was a serious Noir aficionado, and so Sam North was very encouraging, and bears much responsibility for the decision to give crime fiction a try – and it was obvious that it would be nuts to not make use of all that knowledge of Iceland. Gunnhildur grew out of that – seven novels and two novellas.

AK: And how did you start working in translating Icelandic work into English?

QB: I had translated a book while I was at college in Iceland – one of the set texts. That was a seafaring tale, and the author (Guðlaugur Arason) became a very dear friend. Working on a nautical trade magazine, I worked a lot with material from other languages in one way or another, so I found myself translating a lot of technical and news material. It was at one of the first Iceland Noir festivals that Karen Sullivan of the then-brand-new Orenda Books was considering the unknown Ragnar Jónasson and asked if I could translate Snowblind. So I did… And then others came along looking for translation, so I’ve been pretty busy with that over the last few years.

AK: Please tell us about how you discovered Jon Atli Jonasson and deciding to not only translate his debut novel BROKEN, but also to venture into publishing?

QB: Corylus is me, translator Marina Sofia and Romanian publisher and author Bogdan Hrib. We wanted to publish some new voices, authors we could see who weren’t getting translation and publishing deals. It has been quite a learning curve! Some of our authors – Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Óskar Guðmundsson and Stella Blómkvist – have done well, while others have unfortunately done less well. We have published a couple of absolute crackers, fantastic books that have sold just a few dozen copies… All the same, I’m intensely proud of publishing Jérôme Leroy and Elsa Drucaroff in English. Their books are amazing, even if we may have caught a bit of a financial cold there!

I knew about Jón Atli’s book, and had translated an excerpt for the Icelandic publisher, and I think that was even before it had appeared in Icelandic. It was a real surprise when Jón Atli’s agent David Headley offered us the book – as Corylus is a publishing midget. So I got to work. I have to say, David is very shrewd and his faith in Corylus to do well for his author feels like a seal of approval that we’re doing the right things.

AK: Did Jon Atli Jonasson’s screenplay for THE DEEP and your own background in North Sea fishing resonate?

QB: I haven’t seen The Deep. I was working as a fisherman in 1984 in Iceland when Hellisey was lost and Guðlaugur Friðthórsson performed that astonishing feat of endurance to swim to land. When a boat is lost, especially when there’s a loss of life, the whole fleet (and the whole country) feels it, takes it personally, as it could have been any one of us in the water. I think every fisherman has a brown-trouser moment or two – I know I do…  At that time we all hung on the radio. It was the first question when you came on watch – ‘any news?’ So I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch it.

I’ll tell you something that does resonate – Among the books I picked up when I was starting to read Icelandic were seafaring tales by Ásgeir Jakobsson and by Jónas Guðmundsson. Today Ásgeir Jak’s son Jakob publishes my books in Icelandic – and Jónas Guðmundsson’s son is Jón Atli. So I had read practically everything by Jón Atli’s Dad, and didn’t realise the connection until we first met, by which time I had finished the first draft of the Broken translation. His father’s books were so pivotal for me 40 or so years ago that it genuinely made me shiver when I realised who he was.

AK: And what’s next for [a] Quentin Bates and [b] Jon Atli Jonasson [c] Corylus Books

QB: Well to answer sequentially -

[a] Translation has tailed off a bit. There are a few more translators at work now, and it seems that larger publishers are becoming more reluctant to commission translations, especially for new authors. Then there’s the whole AI thing, but let’s not go into that here… The upshot is that I’ve had some much-needed elbow room to get back to my own stuff, and I have a new lead character and a cast of supporting characters in something new that’s now coming to completion, plus draft outlines for what could become a series. I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much, except that the setting is Nordic and the lead character was once a cop...

[b] There’s a sequel to Broken, Venom, which I’m reading at the moment, and it’s every bit as meaty as Broken. From what Jón Atli has told me, this is a trilogy and he’s at work on the third novel now – although I’ve a feeling this could turn into a trilogy in four, five or more parts. This is powerful stuff with such strong characters, so I hope it does. We have UK & Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Broken, so it’s sadly not available to readers in North America. We’ve tried to find a partner publisher on the other side of the Atlantic, but none of the ones we’ve approached has bitten. So if there’s an interested publisher in the US or Canada, please step this way…!

[c] We have a third novel (Murder Tide) by the mysterious Stella Blómkvist coming out this summer, and the translation of the fourth (title not yet finalised) is complete, so that’ll be out next year. And we need to have a chat with David Headley about Venom for next year! Sólveig Pálsdóttir is hard at work, so her next one could be for next year. We also have a second novel by Catalan author Teresa Solana for next year. We’re weighing up options for authors from other countries… We see so many proposals for what look to be fabulous books from around the world and it genuinely hurts to have to turn them away. But Corylus is a tiny, tiny publisher and there’s only so much we can do.

BTW, Corylus believes very firmly in artisanal translation by human translators with passion for language, nuance and idiom. We’ll shut the shop before we resort to AI translation.

AK Good for you - let’s keep literature human not AI Technology - and thank you for your time.

More information about Quentin’s publishing venture – Click HERE and about his writing Click HERE

The Picture of Deon Meyer

 

We hadn’t seen Deon Meyer in the UK for a few years, much of the interruption being the COVID-19 global pandemic – which was eerily echoed in his extraordinary novel FEVER released in the summer of 2017.

FEVER was met with huge acclaim – here’s the Shots Magazine review HERE – it also enjoyed a second burst of interest in 2020-2021 during the global pandemic years due to its apocalyptic themes that had migrated from fiction into fact.

I enjoyed spending an afternoon with him back in 2017 discussing our mutual interest in post-apocalyptic fiction both literary and film.

Deon highlighted his favourite Post-Apocalyptic works HERE and when we compared notes naturally Stephen King’s The Stand as well as Robert McCammon’s Swansong and Richard Matheson’s I am Legend came up.  We were also both readers of John Christopher [though he was actually Sam Youd and deployed an array of pennames over the years of which the John Christopher is the one he was most associated with]. From the pen of Christopher would come many science fiction novels that featured apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. It was his 1956 novel The Death of Grass that allowed him to write full-time [filmed as No Blade of Grass] which he wrote while working in South Africa.

We had both read work such as Neville Shute’s On the Beach, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, PD James’ Children of Men, and then we discussed the films that evoke that Mad Max world, as well as the myriad disaster movies of this sub-genre.

The article that came from that afternoon in 2017 is archived HERE

But back to 2024, post pandemic…..

Hodder and Stoughton had organised a small gathering of London Book Reviewers at the renowned Vivat Bacchus restaurant in the Farringdon district of London.  We were treated to fine South African wine and exotic delicacies, while we chatted to Deon and his charming wife Marianne and our host Naimh Anderson from Hodder and Stoughton publishing.

Joining the Shots Teams of Mike Stotter and Ayo Onatade were the ubiquitous [and knowledgeable] Barry Forshaw from the Financial Times [among others], Jon Coates, editorial from The Express and other journalists.

Of great interest was the extraordinary Netflix action thriller Heart of the Hunter written by Deon Meyer and Willem Grobler based on Deon’s novel of the same name.

Deon’s book HEART OF THE HUNTER was first published in Afrikaans in 2002 (as PROTEUS) and has since been translated into 14 different languages worldwide. It is published in South Africa in Afrikaans by Human & Rousseau and translated into English by K.L. Seegers: in the UK it is published by Hodder & Stoughton, and in the US and Canada by Grove Atlantic. It was selected as one of Chicago Tribune’s 10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004, longlisted for the IMPAC Literary Award 2005 (now the Dublin Literary Award) and won the Deutsche Krimi Preis, International Category, 2006.

In the Netflix Original film adaptation, Zuko Khumalo is an unassuming family man with a deadly past – but his tranquil world is abruptly turned upside down when an old colleague calls on him to honour an oath he made and save the country from venal political interests. Though he resists being pulled back into his previous life, it becomes clear that events already pose a deadly threat to his domestic ambitions and the peaceful family life he holds so dear. HEART OF THE HUNTER is a tale of one man’s struggle for survival against a corrupt government, a group of bloodthirsty killers and, most of all, against his past.

Read More from Blake Freidman Agency HERE

Though the main talking point was Deon’s upcoming novel LEO which I just read –

It has been a little while since we’ve been riding shotgun with Detective Benny Griessel in South Africa but the wait is finally over with the release of this explosive and violent thriller.

While preparing for his upcoming wedding, Griessel with partner Vince Cupido get involved investigating the death of a female student cyclist on a desolate mountain pass, as well as the principal suspect Basie Small found dead with all the trappings of a professional assassination. Their superiors seem keen to dismiss Basie Small’s murder as a robbery gone tragically wrong. What Basie Small was ‘doing’ may lead Benny and Vince into dangerous intrigue and a conspiracy of sorts that lies at the heart of the country – or does it?

Read the full Shots Magazine review HERE

We present a few photos of the evening as well as Deon’s previous UK visits – I remarked to Deon Meyer that he must have a special painting in his attic, as he has not aged at all over the years we’ve known him – Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray comes to mind I said - which produced a roar of laughter. 

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Niamh Anderson of Hodder and Stoughton for managing a wonderful launch for Deon - and thanks to his wife Marianne for a wonderful chat.

Foot Note: In memory of Saul Reichlin (1943-2023) from Ali Karim

I would encourage our readers to seek out Deon’s audiobooks narrated by the late Saul Reichlin. His narration / readings are excellent, bringing Deon Meyers’ [and other authors] work to vibrant life.

I was fortunate to have been seated next to him during Crimefest 2009’s Gala Dinner – we had a memorable evening and he is without doubt one of the most interesting people I have met. To cap the evening in style, Saul Reichlin was presented with the best audiobook of the year as voted by Crimefest delegates for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. We kept in contact for a number of years, and I so miss his laughter.

Saul Reichlin worked for six decades as an actor, writer, producer and director, but was most in demand for his rich, warm vocal tones, which he lent to many video games and audiobooks. He narrated more than 245 books including work by Deon Meyer.

He was a tremendous man of the arts, and great raconteur.

Read More HERE

Thriller Novel to Thriller Film

With all the excitement in London with the World Premiere of David Fincher’s US version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO held at the Leicester Square Odeon on Monday [with world-wide release on 26 December 2012] – I discussed the “old chesnut” of Film Adaptations of thrillers with Elaine Hirsch. She provided an interesting insight, selecting her top 5 thriller adaptations. Elaine’s list will provide controversy, so feel free to comment [below] on your own favourites, as an Ian Fleming advocate I was surprised to see that ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE did not make the list.

Nothing stops the cinematic heart like a well-constructed thriller. Even the best thrill-makers, however—from Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg—have faltered without the right source material. Developing a great movie based on a book requires a bit of luck, good casting, and an intriguing story, which is a much different task than say, completing a master’s degree program. A great novel-to-film thriller adaptation, thanks to the often difficult-to-distill layers of plotting, makes for one tense night at the movies. Let’s take a moment to look back at some literary adaptations that have stood the test of time. Classics beyond repute—and often adapted from long-forgotten novels—these five films are heart-stoppers to cherish.

The Bourne Identity – The first film of the last decade’s action masterpiece trilogy may or may not stand out as your favorite in the trilogy. However, it stands as the cornerstone of a trilogy of literary adaptations that’s left action fans salivating since 2002. Like most of the films on this list, The Bourne Identity runs buck wild from—even ignoring—its source material. The result, however, is a throwback espionage film for the ages. Matt Damon’s underplayed, sometimes robotic performance may be the best in a suspense film since Gary Cooper rocked High Noon.

The Silence of the Lambs – The finest horror film in the American canon, The Silence of the Lambs gets under your skin within minutes. One of the few films to take home the “Big Five” Oscars—for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Adapted Screenplay, Silence used its literary roots to heady advantage. The horror lies less on disgusting violence (though there’s plenty of than) than airtight close-ups of leads Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins as they play a massively complex game of psychological chess. Hopkins, as Hannibal Lecter, has the most terrifying eyes in the canon of world cinema.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Crime novels have made for stellar adaptation material over the years, but The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo stands out as a worldwide cultural phenomenon. On paper, the twist and turns of Steig Larsson’s novel read simply and clearly. On film, those plot mechanics become a grandiose, entrancing mystery, and an indictment of Sweden’s structure.

The Manchurian Candidate – Action master John Frankenheimer boiled Richard Condon’s satirical novel down to its trippiest, weirdest essentials and turned the pulp story into a suspense classic. Frank Sinatra’s perfect performance, the greatest fistfight ever put on film, Angela Lansbury’s Oedipal nightmare of a villainess, and the gut-churning climax make for an unforgettable viewing experience.

The French Connection – Gene Hackman embodied the most hard-boiled detective in film history—forget Humphrey Bogart—in William Friedkin’s adaptation of the true crime novel. The differences between the book and film are profound—there’s no one in the novel called “Popeye Doyle,” and the heart-in-throat elevated railway chase never happened—but the film still stands as a benchmark for action filmmaking.A great thriller often has fine source material. These five thrillers—all suspense classics—are in most cases better remembered than the source material. Not only will these five book-to-movie thrillers provide for ample nostalgic material, they all bring additional layers to their respective stories which will please any thriller fan.

Elaine Hirsch is a freelance journalist with interests in education, history, medicine and videogames. She can be contacted at elainehi86@gmail.com

Top Photo © 2011 Ali Karim “Publisher Christopher MacLehose and Ali Karim attend the world premiere of David Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in London Monday 12th December 2011”

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Worldwide Premier

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Worldwide Premier took place yesterday evening at the Odeon Leicester Square, London and I was lucky enough to have been invited to attend alongside my fellow Shots members Ali Karim, Mike Stotter and Chris Simmons of Crime Squad. One must give thanks to Lucy Ramsay of Quercus Books (his UK publishers) for inviting us.

There are of course remakes that work well and remakes that do not. One also sometimes wonders why they bother to make remakes. In the case of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it is clear that some people will like it and some will not. I am going to say from the start that I enjoyed it. Nevertheless, I did have problems with it.

From the start, one can see that no expense has been spared, from the opening credits and scenes, which I admit reminded me of a sci-fi film was dark, metallic and full of flourishes. The score at the start was also just as powerful. The cinematography was wonderful. The excellent sharp visuals, the faultless design, the instinctive ability for melding sound and music, the chill and menace is what one has come to expect from a Fincher film. If you have seen the original films then you will be able to follow the film quite easily. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is stylishly filmed and the photography is outstanding, it is at times especially at the start quite bleak. The film does not however hold back. Compared to the original the blood and gore is not as graphic. The violent sex scenes are still there but they are in my opinion done a lot more subtly. They are still there but unlike in the Swedish version I did not feel the need to want to cover my eyes as some of it took place. Rooney Mara is good as Elisabeth Salander. Hollywood seemed to have used Noomi Rapace as a template. My only gripe is that the hairstyle that they gave her was awful. It did not suit her at all and in fact detracted from the rather good acting. She may not have replaced the original actor as well as she could have but she did a very good job. In my opinion, she came across as a lot harder than Noomi Rapace. But this is her film. Daniel Craig on the other hand was for me a disappointment. He was not Mikael Blomkvist. The original actor who played the character in the Swedish version was much better. Rather sadly, I kept on seeing Bond in his actions and his demeanour all the way through the film. Whilst he was not brash, arrogant or over the top as he sometimes comes across in the Bond films this time around he is diffident, understated, even back pedaling. Nevertheless, one could not dismiss that Bondish attitude especially at a critical moment in the film towards the end. There was a seediness about the original actor that was missing from Craig. He doesn't divulge much that's going on inside him beyond what's already called for on the outside. Christopher Plummer who plays Henrick was good. Unpretentious but well played. There are various bits of the film that have been changed but they certainly do not detract from what is the essence of the film from the book and the original Swedish version. One big change is the ending. No, I am not going to say what it is. Go and see it instead.

My opinion is if you have seen the Swedish version and enjoyed them then please do go and see the Hollywood remake. I was (and still am) a big fan of the original films as it was thus with a slight sense of trepidation and anticipation that I attended the premier. Would I go and see the other two remakes if they are done? Yes, I would if only to compare them to the original Swedish version. Would I get them on DVD? No but I would get the original Swedish versions instead notwithstanding the subtitles.