Novelist Peter James has sold more than 15 million books around the world. His best-selling crime series features fictional Sussex detective Roy Grace.

The next instalment, You Are Dead, is out on May 21. He spoke to Rachel Millard about his career

 

Q Your new book involves a serial killer. What was your research like?

A I had kept away from the theme of the serial killer because there are so few in this country – serial killers tend to thrive in big landscape countries like Russia or Australia or the States, where they can move from state to state. In England it is much harder but we have had them; we had Harold Shipman.

I think they fascinate us because with most other killers we understand the motive – whereas with serial killers it is the sheer pleasure of the act and at the same time they tend to be very smart people; that is how they get away with it.

I meet a lot of prisoners around the country. I get a chance to meet everyone from the guy who killed his fiancée in a fit of rage on finding her in bed with another guy, to the really cold killers.

One of the most fascinating was when I was doing a talk in a women’s prison: I met one of the most chilling people.

There was one woman who was clearly more intelligent than average and much better read than average. My guess was that she was in there for drink-driving.

Afterwards we got to mingle. I managed to get to speak to her and I never say directly: “What did you do?”

I sort of break the ice by saying: “How long have you got?”

And she said: “I have got nine-and-a half years, it is not fair.”

Adding: “I poisoned my mother-in-law, the old bag.” She said: ‘The thing was, (she) went into hospital and I emptied her bank account and then I realised she was not going to die and would find out, so I had to kill her.

“Then I realised my husband found out, so I had to kill him.”

She poisoned him and he now has permanent brain damage.

This woman killed her mother-in-law; there was no remorse, just annoyance at the sentence.

I also met one of Brighton’s biggest serial killers. In 1985 he bludgeoned to death his father, step-brother and step-mother, with the idea of making it look like a burglary gone wrong so he would inherit the money.

It was very interesting talking to him. There is often a lack of empathy with people who have killed.

I said to him: “Do you regret what you did?”

But you got the sense he regretted it more because he got caught than the morality of it.

He said that he had found God and what happened was between God and the victims.

I think that to take a human life is to cross a Rubicon and once you have crossed it and you can live with your conscience, then you have always got the possibility of doing it again.

When I went to visit Broadmoor, I was taken around by the chaplain and he said every single person here fits into one of two categories: They are either schizophrenic or psychopathic.

Schizophrenics have a chemical imbalance and can be treated with medication. The other people are those who are born without empathy.

A person born without empathy can present as young as four.

How that person then grows up into later life very much depends on the kind of parenting they get.

If you get the psychopath in a nurturing, loving family they can go on and become hugely successful business people or successful politicians. They tend to be people of charm who will tread on anybody to get to the top.

Then the other kind is the person who perhaps has a bullying father, or maybe there is sexual abuse.

A bullying father could even be the reason Hitler was so warped. But if you look at most serial killers, something happened in their childhood.

I spent quite a lot of time in the States and I spoke to a lot of detectives over there who have worked with a number of serial killer cases.

Q There are interesting personal developments for Detective Roy Grace in the book; what’s next for him?

A He has got to the point where he really happily moved forward and suddenly the spectre of Sandy [his wife, who disappeared] looms large. It is going to be interesting developing that, which I am writing right now.

The vast majority of readers really love that interjection about Sandy.

QBrighton’s real-life divisional police commander, Nev Kemp, appears in the book under his own name – was he happy with that?

AI discussed it with him and some are very happy for me to use their real name. It depends what the role is.

Nev is just referred to rather than somebody who appears.

I tend to make a judgement as to whether somebody would be happy or not. Most police officers want their own name in it.

Q Do you still go out regularly with the police [shadowing]?

A Yes, I go out with the Met quite a bit. It is interesting because it is very different policing to Brighton.

They have got far more than us with all the budget cuts here.

About three or four weeks ago I did a Saturday night with the Met and almost three or four cars turn up to every incident, whereas in Brighton very often only one car is available.

I also think that the current crop, the under-50s generation of beat officers, are massively different to what they were when I first started going out with them.

I think they are much more empathetic, more human.

So for example dealing very sensibly with a family situation: not wanting a little boy to see his dad arrested. I see this a lot in Sussex – they have become much better at psychology and dealing with people.

I think it is for a whole range of reasons. I think the police are no longer institutionally homophobic and racist.

In Sussex now half the officers are women and we are getting that way in Brighton.

We have had a series, certainly in Sussex, of extremely good chief constables who I think are very good human beings. They have a massive influence in the way that Sussex polices itself.

Q How is it working with David Gaylor [the real life inspiration for Roy Grace]?

He is in his mid-fifties and we work very closely together. He reads every hundred pages and tells me how Roy Grace would think. He still knows a huge amount of serving officers. He loves being Roy Grace.

Q Do you still write in the evening with a vodka-martini?

A Yes, it is still my best writing time. I have a vodka martini and I get in the zone. I do that five nights a week certainly, if I am not going out or have not got something to do.

That’s really my kind of treat. I do love writing, so that is the time of day that I look forward to.

In the morning, I will read what I have written the night before and plan what I will write that day.

As I get further into the book I will need to write all through the day and into the evening.

If I have two martinis, then I will think what I have written is pretty good, but it usually does not turn out too well. I will have a couple of glasses of wine afterwards.

Q Do you plan the whole book in advance?

Every writer has a different way of doing it.

For me, I always want to know the ending, so I have this vanishing point on the horizon that I want to get to.

Then I plot the key points of the story and the first 20 per cent in quite a lot of detail. Then it starts to take on a life of its own.

I have a notebook for each new book and then I write graphs and key things and when I start writing I make a chapter list.

Q Why do you think people like to read crime novels?

A I have a number of theories. My first book was published in 1987 and I got burgled and this young detective came to my house to take fingerprints and he saw the book and said, ‘If you want any research on police matters, give me a call’.

So I did one day. And my then wife and I became friends with him and almost all of their friends were police officers, crime scene investigators, divers etc.

I just found these people fascinating. I thought, nobody in the course of a 30-year career sees more of human life than a cop.

So that is what triggered my interest.

If you look back in literature, I think a lot of our greatest literature is not necessarily labelled as crime, but would be today.

And if you want to read about the world we live in, a good crime novel tells you so much.

People enjoy doing puzzles and a major crime is a big puzzle, so at another level readers who are enjoying a book are also trying to solve a puzzle before a detective.

And on a much deeper level, we are all genetically programmed to survive and by reading about a horrendous murder or rape, people take away subconsciously how to avoid getting into the victim’s position.

Q Are you working on a book with Graham Bartlett [retired Brighton and Hove police chief]?

A Yes; it won’t be out until September. It is going to be looking at the crimes he dealt with and relating them to all the crimes in the Roy Grace novels.

Q Your book mentions the difference in drugs policy between here and Germany – is this something you are still looking at?

A I did chair the Brighton Drugs Commission and I still believe the Government is very weak on this.

Graham Bartlett believes that you should have drug consumption rooms, and so did his predecessor.

It’s not the people who take the drugs who are the problem – it’s the people who import the drugs.

I don’t think they [the Government] are looking into it.

Andrew Lansley [former health secretary] dismissed it out of hand. I listened to his reasons and he clearly had not read any report that had been done.

If you can sit people down and say: “If your daughter was a drug addict, would you rather she was doing it in a stairwell using a needle picked up off the ground, or would you rather she did it in front of a nurse in a clean place with clean needles?”

We had a wonderful woman in the commission whose daughter was an injecting drug addict. We had a really good panel of people.

What became very clear was that most injecting drug users, heroin addicts, are outside the margins of society, so they are in a spiral.

I don’t think anybody wakes up and thinks, ‘I am going to become a drug addict,’ but an awful lot of people wake up and say, ‘I am going to become a drug dealer and make a lot of money’.

Your crime novels are probably the only thing many people around the world know about Brighton. What have you done for Brighton’s reputation?

A I think the tourist board love it. Last year they put a Roy Grace novel in every hotel room in Brighton.

I think that if you look around the world the most vibrant cities are the ones that do have a criminal culture. It kind of goes with the turf.

Where do you most want to go in America – New York, Chicago. Compare Brighton to any other city, would you want to be anywhere else?

I think what we are lucky with in Brighton is we don't have gun and knife crime.

But we always had this criminal heritage, going back to our days as a smugglers’ village.

It has always had this risky reputation and I think that just gives it an ambience – I don't think it puts people off coming. I think it fascinates them to come.”

Book-signing events

Peter James will be signing copies of You are Dead at the following dates and locations: 

Thursday, May 21 
10am -11.30am: Tesco, Brooks Road, Lewes
12.30am-2pm: Tesco, Church Road, Hove
3pm-5pm: Tesco, Holmbush Centre, Upper Shoreham Road, Shoreham

Friday, May 22
10am-12pm: Sainsbury’s, A293, West Hove
1pm-2:30pm: WHSmiths, Churchill Square, Brighton
5.30pm – 6.30pm: Waterstones, North Street, Brighton  

Saturday, May 23
11.30am-1.30pm: Morrisons, Dane Road, Seaford
3pm-5pm: Asda, Crowhurst Road, Hollingbury