Peter's Blog
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On Sunday I was a guest on the BBC Sunday Politics show, talking about the current and future proposed Police budget cuts in Sussex (and throughout the UK). You can view this, about 35 mins in, on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b4h6z/Sunday_Politics_South_East_29_01_2012/
Whilst I understand that there have to be cuts across all areas of life in these tough times, the method the Government has handed to the Police, of forcing all officers below Assistant Chief Constable, to retire after 30 years service, is folly. This is a letter I wrote last week to Police Minister Nick Herbert:
"Dear Nick
You may remember we had coffee at Mitre House two years ago, after Jeremy Hunt introduced us.
I've spent a great deal of time with Sussex Police over the past fifteen years, both in my capacity as Patron of Sussex Crimestoppers, and when undertaking research for my crime novels. As a result I have a very privileged insider understanding of how the Police Force operates at many levels.
Whilst all of us understand the need for budget cuts in all areas, including the UK Police Forces, the introduction of A19 last year has had a far more devastating effect than I believe anyone outside of the Police realises. Chief Constables are being forced into A19 as the only expedient way to meet the budget reductions. Because it is such a blunt instrument, the A19 approach is not targeting the non-frontline staff, as was hoped, but targets the really experienced officers in frontline policing, performing critical roles. A19 was originally introduced in order to enable Chief Constables to have a means of compelling staff, who they considered deadwood, to retire, but it is now being used to force all officers, below ACC rank, to retire after 30 years service. Whilst this may sound sensible in principle, in practice it is in many cases, utterly crazy, and ultimately counter-productive to the need for savings. I've been invited on the BBC 1 Politics show, which I am recording this afternoon and which airs at midday on this coming Sunday, to talk about it.
You have been quoted in today's papers as saying that frontline policing will not be affected, but A19 most certainly is and will will continue to affect this. In brief summary, many police officers join up in their late teens, and as a result their 30 year retirement falls due in their late 40s, or very early 50s - a time when they are at their peak of experience, and in most other organisations would have close to two decades of active and useful working life ahead of them. Instead they are being tossed out into a very uncertain job market, for most of them their careers over. Examples of people being affected by this include Sussex's Head of CID, the current Divisional Commander of Brighton and Hove, a brilliant man by all accounts and much respected, aged 48 and being forced to retire next year: Sussex's most experienced Senior Investigating Officer, aged 49 who has seen 17 murder suspects convicted, and is also a senior hostage negotiator and firearms commander; one of the top Public Order Intelligence officers; the senior Schools Liaison Officer; a highly experienced Child Protection Detective Inspector; a specialist Public Order and Firearms Chief Inspector; a District Commander; a highly experienced Drugs Intelligence Officer; the Head of Intelligence; the Head of the Criminal Justice Department. These are just some examples of very fine men and women, in this age bracket, all forced or being forced shortly to retire by A19. But it is not just about senior police officers - it is about highly valued and committed officers at all levels. An example of this is PC Christina Wilson-Law, who joined Sussex Police in 1980 at the age of 18, who in March 2011 received the Queen's Police Medal for services to the community have served 30 years on Response - when the average length of service on Reponse is only 3 years. She has now gone as result of A19. A dedicated officer almost impossible to replaced who would have happily continued her career for several more years.
The impact this will have on frontline policing is, in my view and in the view of all police officers I have spoken to, whether affected or not, going to be very severe indeed. I strongly urge you to rethink before, on February 16th, the Sussex Police Authority has to decide whether to sanction the extension of A19 for a further year. There must be a way in which the Chief Constable can be allowed to be selective rather than having to lose such talented and enthusiastic people wholesale."
Labels: blog
Ten of the world’s best crime writers are competing to have a state-of-the-art morgue named after them – and you can vote for me!
The morgue is going to be a centre for scientific research and training, helping the next generation of scientists, doctors and dentists to become better at saving lives and at developing cures for a huge range of illnesses. The morgue will also be instrumental for Prof Sue Black's work with the police in the UK; in smashing paedophile networks, in understanding how crimes were committed, as well as her endeavours overseas - she's travelled the world, helping identify bodies that are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognisable, including the victims of natural disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami. Sue's highest profile project was identifying the bodies of Slobodan Milosevic's victims in mass graves in the Balkans - both for public record, and for burial. The new morgue will help Sue and her team be at the forefront of new technology as well as being the training ground for a new generation, people who can carry on Sue's work across the globe.
To vote online go to http://www.millionforamorgue.com/the-authors/Peter-James
To vote by text, use the code PETJ10
All codes should be sent to 70070 along with the amount in pounds. So, if you wanted to donate £10 for me, you would type:
PETJ10
and send it to 70070.
Labels: blog
Here is a list of all the questions and answers…
Roy Grace Christmas Quiz Answers & Notes
Labels: blog
I'm delighted to announce the winners of the Roy Grace Xmas Quiz, compiled by Mastermind contestant Ken Owen, as well as the winner of the separate limerick competition.
5 entrants tied on 49 points, so we used the limerick tie-breaker. This was won by James Fitt who gets a magnum of Champagne and a signed hardback of Perfect People.
His tie breaking limerick is:
There is an Inspector called Roy,
Who is about to have a little boy,
But is this his first,
Or could it be worse,
Who's the boy with the middle name Roy?
The quiz runners-up, each of whom win a signed hardback of Perfect People are:
Frances Bisbey
Sue Lumsden
Nicky Stevens
Sue Wright
The separate limerick competition has been won by Jacqueline Blake, who receives a magnum of Champagne for:
Detective Roy Grace was a Leo
His girlfriend a mortician called Cleo
His wife Sandy, presumed dead
Her appearance they'd dread
As the pair were becoming a trio
Thank you so much all of you who entered! There will be another quiz to coincide with the screening of the Mastermind episode in which Ken Owen appears with the Roy Grace novels as his chosen Specialist Subject.
Labels: blog
I'm delighted to announce the results of the 2011 Hall Of Fame competition! Firstly, thank all of you who participated, the standard this past year has been incredibly high, given me a lot to smile about, and made the judging really hard!
Our judging panel was headed by my "real life" Roy Grace, Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, and it was hard choice to whittle the entries down to a shortlist of five. Selecting the winner was even harder, but I hope you all agree that the winning entry is extremely clever.
The winners are listed below. Please each of you email your address to my assistant, Linda Buckley, pjamespa@gmail.com
1. Jenny Skinner who wins a magnum of Champagne and a signed hardback of Perfect People
2. Valerie Avison and the other runners up each win a signed hardback of Perfect People
3. David Wade
4. John "Chunkie" Taylor
5. John Horner
Labels: blog
Author of two bestsellers has come a long way since Polka Dot Door
By Jamie Portman, For Postmedia News January 4, 2012
LONDON - Back in the days when he was working in a lowly position at the Toronto-based children's TV show, Polka Dot Door, Britain's Peter James knew he wanted to be a writer.
But he never envisaged a time when he would become one of the world's most successful suspense novelists. And would his career ever have happened without those Canadian years and an unexpected opportunity to try his hand at writing a script for kids?
His current double whammy - two new books dominating British bestseller lists and now cramming the shelves of Canadian shops - is unusual. So is James' skill at straddling more than one genre in the world of popular fiction, while also posting credentials as a successful film producer.
But his fame rests in his books. And whether he ventures into the paranormal - and hey, this is a guy who has happily lived in two haunted houses - or simply spins a cunning mystery yarn, the material always seems reality-based.
``I'm fascinated by the world in which we live; I like to explore aspects of it and discover why people do the things they do,'' he says.
His two current books - Dead Man's Grip, a classic police-procedural novel that HarperCollins brought to Canada in the autumn, and the just-published Perfect People, an eerie thriller about two parents who decide to have a designer baby - testify to his versatility. They also reveal his knack for rooting his fiction in fact.
Consider Dead Man's Grip, the seventh crime novel to feature Det. Supt. Roy Grace of the Sussex police force. It begins with a two-vehicle collision that leads to the death of a young American student attending Brighton University. Later, two other people involved in the accident are found tortured and murdered - and Grace becomes convinced that sinister forces from the New York underworld are exacting retribution for the student's death.
James wondered whether his plot was too improbable, until he sat down with two friends from the New York Police Department.
``I took them out for dinner and said, 'What I really want to know is whether the Mafia still exists today, or whether it's just a sort of fiction like The Sopranos.' I told them my story in the book about the accident: Three characters and this 20-year-old boy from New York and the mother comes over and wants everybody involved in that accident tortured and killed. And they just looked at me and said, 'You know this did happen, don't you?' I felt a chill.''
It was then that James learned the story of notorious mobster John Gotti, whose son was killed when knocked off his bicycle by a drunk driver. ``Gotti's wife, understandably, went mental and said, 'I want that bastard tortured and killed.' And two weeks later, he disappeared and was never seen again. Was that life imitating art, or what?''
James' previous Roy Grace book, Dead Like You, was about a serial rapist, and was drawn from the true story of a predator in England who raped 126 women and took their shoes as trophies.
``So, quite a few of my books have been triggered by something true,'' the 63-year-old novelist says.
The just-published Perfect People occupies its own special territory. Although James wants his fans to have a good read, he also wants them to think hard about the issues it raises.
Talking to Postmedia News from his Brighton home, James says the seeds for this novel were planted a decade ago during another visit to America.
``I met the head of brain genetics at Cal Tech, and he gave me a morning of his time. He was telling me about the stuff he was working on there, and one of the things he'd identified was the cluster of genes responsible for empathy.''
James immediately saw rich potential for a novel. But he also recognized the disturbing implications of such a discovery.
``Parents in the not-too-distant future would be able to decide: We want to have a boy and this is the level of empathy we want that boy to have. So do they want a sweet, gentle child who's going to get trodden on, or do they want a tough little boy who could end up being a sociopath? There are all kinds of decisions like that. Do you want to enhance kids' hand-eye co-ordinations to make them better at ball games? If you say no, you'll be bringing your kids into a genetic underclass, because other parents will be advancing theirs. I wanted to raise questions like this.''
James believes it's only a matter of time before such procedures become a reality. In Perfect People, the parents aren't prepared for the consequences of choosing the genetic makeup of their child. Their action produces fearsomely intelligent, but distinctly eerie, offspring - and the prospect of annihilation by a fanatical religious cult outraged at their crime against nature.
James' own creative life has followed a fascinating arc. After graduating from a British film school in 1970, he ended up in Canada, where he managed to get a poorly paid job as a ``gopher'' on Polka Dot Door, ``making tea and running errands.'' Within three months, a panicky producer was asking him if he could deliver a script on short notice. ``I ended up writing one, three times a week for a year, and for me, it was a phenomenal break.''
Polka Dot Door introduced James to the pleasures of writing, but it also hooked him on producing. By 1972, he and business partner David Perlmutter had managed to set up the Canadian company, Quadrant Films, which specialized in low-budget horror movies (The Corpse Grinders, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, David Cronenberg's Shivers) with occasional forays into the respectable (the film version of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood). But by 1979, James was ready to sell his share in Quadrant so he could return to England and concentrate on writing.
Now, the pleasures of the pen reign paramount. Still, success has its negative side.
``The process of writing isn't difficult. I've always been able to sit down and just get on with it. The hardest problem - it's a high-class problem, I guess - is that the better my books are doing, the more my time is taken up travelling. I'm in 34 languages now, so I'm constantly travelling, because every publisher wants me to do something. So my window for writing is getting smaller.''
Labels: interview
Ten of the world’s best crime writers are competing to have a state-of-the-art morgue named after them – and you can vote for me!
The morgue is going to be a centre for scientific research and training, helping the next generation of scientists, doctors and dentists to become better at saving lives and at developing cures for a huge range of illnesses. The morgue will also be instrumental for Prof Sue Black's work with the police in the UK; in smashing paedophile networks, in understanding how crimes were committed, as well as her endeavours overseas - she's travelled the world, helping identify bodies that are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognisable, including the victims of natural disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami. Sue's highest profile project was identifying the bodies of Slobodan Milosevic's victims in mass graves in the Balkans - both for public record, and for burial. The new morgue will help Sue and her team be at the forefront of new technology as well as being the training ground for a new generation, people who can carry on Sue's work across the globe.
To vote online go to http://www.millionforamorgue.com/the-authors/Peter-James
To vote by text, use the code PETJ10
All codes should be sent to 70070 along with the amount in pounds. So, if you wanted to donate £10 for me, you would type:
PETJ10
and send it to 70070.
Labels: blog
Every couple of months I send a Newsletter out to my subscribers (it is free just click where it tells you!)
You can read the latest one here.
Labels: blog
