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Roy Grace Quiz and Limerick Winners!

posted by Peter James @ 4:53 PM   0 Comments

Here are the results of the Roy Grace Mastermind Quiz:

QUIZ

Winner to receive a bottle of champagne and signed copy of Not Dead Yet:
Nicky Stevens of Isle of Wight

Runner up:
Sue Wright from W Sussex

Runners up x 3:
Dave Wade of Lancashire
Susie Mackenzie-Fidlin of Suffolk
Amy Graham of Hampshire

All runners up will receive a signed book.

SEPARATE LIMERICK COMPETITION

Winner will receive book and champagne
Sue Lumsden of Cornwall.

No runners up.

Quiz winner tie-breaker limerick
by Nicky Stevens:

On Roy's birthday she vanished without trace
With just her handbag, no clothes or suitcase
She ran away from her life
Couldn't be a policeman's wife
Now she fears she should have stayed Mrs Grace.

Winner of the limerick only competition
Sue Lumsden wrote:

Sandy was married to Grace
But disappeared, Roy thought, without trace
She did change her hair
But Sandy beware
Roy knows you can't change your face!

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Peter James: how I hit back at my stalker - and Martin Amis (Sunday Telegraph)

posted by Peter James @ 6:01 PM   0 Comments

By Cole Moreton
27 May 2012

Best-selling crime novelist Peter James is seeking revenge - on his stalker and novelist Martin Amis.

The Home Secretary had better watch out. The last woman who upset Peter James is now on a mortuary slab. “She wrote something really nasty about me, so that was my revenge,” says James. “I took great pleasure in her dissection.”

Softly spoken, he looks sinister in a black T‑shirt and black slacks, his eyes blinking behind rimless glasses. We’re in his rooftop lair, an apartment with views over Notting Hill. James also has a heavily protected house in the countryside, collects classic cars and goes motor racing for thrills. Crime clearly pays when you’re able to commit murders for great reward.

There’s no punishment if you only commit them to paper. James is one of our most successful crime writers: his series of mysteries starring the Brighton-based detective Roy Grace have sold 11 million copies so far. The last went straight into the bestseller charts at number one, in hardback and paperback. So did the book before that. The next is just about to come out. Not Dead Yet is likely to sell just as well, making it a remarkable three in a row.

The critic who upset him appears as a corpse. There is another act of revenge in the book, against a very famous writer who snubbed him in real life, but like the story-teller he is, James won’t reveal the identity of his victim until the end of our chat.

Theresa May has reason to fear, because James is a fierce ally of the police, researching his books by spending a day a week on patrol with officers in Brighton.

“I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together,” he says. “They’re not highly paid. Almost every officer is going to put their life on the line at some point in their career. They might be confronted at two in the morning by some idiot with a knife, and they deal with it. They do it because it’s one of the few professions where you can make a difference.”

Some of that bravery ends up in his books, along with their faults. “They like the way I portray them: warts and all, but accurate and fair.”

His friends feel undervalued just now. “The police feel that most of the public are against them and that there is a lot of bad feeling. The only contact most people have is when they are nicked for speeding. All you need is a rude traffic cop and you’ll hate the police for the rest of your life.”

He also sees anger in the ranks, at the budget cuts being imposed on them. The Police Federation says they are criminal and thousands of officers marched in protest earlier this month. James has been campaigning against a rule that some forces have introduced, requiring all officers to retire after 30 years. “Our government has instructed every police force to lose 20 per cent of its budget by 2015, and this is the way some have chosen to do it. It is bonkers.”

He knows a CID officer whose training has cost a million pounds over the years, but who has now been forced to leave. Another highly skilled detective has had to become a chauffeur. “To throw the top coppers on the scrapheap at 50 like this is absolute madness. The blame goes to the Government for the way they have allowed it to happen and left the chief constables with no choice.”

The cuts are a theme in Not Dead Yet, as Roy Grace and his team struggle to cope with protecting a film star. She’s in danger because a stalker is going way too far. “Pretty well every book I have written has come out of something that has touched a nerve for me,” says James, who went to film school and spent decades writing, producing or financing movies. Al Pacino and Sharon Stone are in framed photos on his wall.

“I worked with a lot of A‑listers, from Peter Sellers to Charlize Theron. I’ve seen the way they crave their public. There is a desperation to have the adulation. The bodyguards are there, but you can be sure their publicist will phone the paparazzi to say where they are going to dinner.”

There is, however, another more unsettling reason why this book is personal. It’s a challenge to his own stalker.

“It started about 10 years ago when I saw this woman at a book event in Glasgow, smiling as if I knew her.” She began to appear at events all over the country, without approaching him. Then came an email, praising what he was wearing and thanking him for smiling at her.

“I did reply, at first, but then stopped. I was spooked but she seemed harmless… until she sent me a photograph of her Peter James shrine. It had all my books, but also photographs I didn’t know had been taken, of me getting into a car or coming out of a restaurant. They were flanked by candles, burning.”

The police advised him to be vigilant. “Three years ago, I was signing in Newcastle and this woman is in front of me. She has changed her hairstyle and I don’t recognise her. I say, 'What name would you like in the book?’ She says, 'Mine!’ I go blank. I say, 'How do you spell it?’ She storms off, then sends me a 10,000-word email saying, 'I’ve been your number one fan for years, I can’t believe you didn’t remember my name.’ Then I don’t hear from her again for a while. Which is a relief.”

Two years ago someone tried to break into his house on the South Downs, where his wife Helen was alone. “The dogs saw them off.” There was no way of knowing if the stalker was involved. “Then I’m doing a signing in Bristol last October when suddenly a book lands on the table. Blam! She says, 'I’ve decided to forgive you.’ ”

What did he do? “I signed the book. It has calmed down. I probably get three or four emails a week from her. It made me realise that if someone is obsessive, all it takes is for the celebrity to be accidentally rude and then…”

Won’t he provoke his stalker by writing and talking about her like this? “Graham Greene said, 'Every writer has to carry a chip of ice in their heart.’ I am more secretive about my location these days, but after moving house I felt, 'Fine, I’m actually not going to be scared by you. I’m going to write this book about an obsessive stalker. If you don’t like it, come and find me. Make my day, punk.’ So far nothing. Although perhaps a longer silence than usual, the last few weeks…” And he laughs again, aware that the story is on a cliffhanger.

His own back story is as good as a plot. His mother, Cornelia James, was a Jewish refugee who came to this country in 1938 with the clothes she stood up in and a suitcase of gloving leathers she had been using as a fashion student in Vienna. “After the war, when all the clothes were drab, she dyed her gloves in different colours. This caught the eye of the designer Norman Hartnell and Vogue called my mother 'The Colour Queen of England’.”

Princess Elizabeth began wearing Cornelia James gloves after her wedding in 1947 and still does. Will she wear them during the Jubilee celebrations? “I imagine so. We are still the only glove-maker with a royal warrant,” says James.

James started writing spy thrillers while working in the movies, but they were not a success. His life was changed by a burglary. “A young detective who came to see us gave me his card, saying that if I ever needed any help with research, I should call him.”

James subsequently became personal friends with many police officers, including a detective inspector called Dave Gaylor, who is now retired. “I said to him, 'How would you like to be my fictional detective?’ He loved it. He is my real-life Roy Grace. He doesn’t look like him and he doesn’t have a missing wife, but he and I plan the plots, he reads the pages and then we discuss how Roy Grace would act.”

James is now developing a film, also set in Brighton. “I was born there, I know every street and alleyway. I have my own police car there…”

Sorry? His own police car? “Yeah. I said to my publishers, 'We get so much off the police, we ought to offer them something back.’ It’s a pool car that goes on patrol. The words 'Peter James – Number 1 for Crime’ are on it and the livery for the books, but not the titles. It might not be good to turn up at a murder scene with Not Dead Yet on the side.” Is this ethical? “We have only had one complaint, and that was from a burglar in Lewes.”

James also writes stand-alone novels – the 12th is soon to appear in paperback. Perfect People is about genetic selection. His prose may not always be elegant but the story is always a cracker. “I’m often sneered at by the literary establishment. They say, 'Why don’t you write real fiction?’ If Shakespeare was alive today, he would be writing novels, to communicate to the largest audience, and what would King Lear, Othello or Macbeth be? Crime novels.”

Sometimes sales figures are not comfort enough. This is where revenge comes in. James directs me to a sleazy, old-style villain in Not Dead Yet called Amis Smallbone. Can you guess who he is named after?

“I was at Charterhouse School with Martin Amis, many years ago. I didn’t see him again until an awards ceremony in 2010. I went up and said, 'You might not remember me, but we were at school together.’ He said, 'No, I don’t remember you – and you only remember me because I’m famous.’”

James says this with a drawl meant to mimic the writer.

“I stormed off and wrote on Twitter that I had just met the rudest writer on the planet. Ian Rankin [his fellow crime writer] asked who it was. I told him and said I was going to get my revenge by writing Amis into the next book and giving him a very small penis. Rankin bet me a hundred quid I wouldn’t. He’s going to have to pay up.”

Amis Smallbone is ridiculed by a prostitute, who compares his manhood to a stubby pencil. The gangster he is staying with says, “You’ve always traded on being your dad’s son, but you was never half the man he was.”

James grins like a boy who has tripped up a bully. “I was rather pleased with that.” He’s not sinister at all, of course. And law-abiding at all times. But still, I make very sure to shake his hand nicely. Don’t want to end up on a slab…

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Research takes crime writer to scary situations (Fairfax NZ News)

posted by Peter James @ 10:12 AM   3 Comments

Police raids, psychopaths and stalkers

HANNAH FLEMING

Best selling crime author Peter James talks to Hannah Fleming about how he got the idea for his new book and what it is like to meet killers.

Peter James has been on risky police raids, spoken with some of Britain's most dangerous psychopaths, and put up with his own stalker for 10 years.

These experiences have inspired the books which helped him become an international best-selling crime writer, most notably for his series involving detective superintendent character, Roy Grace.

While his books are filled with crime, which is sometimes quite horrific, James said one of his earlier novels Prophecy contained the most alarming scene he had ever written.

"Someone was put to death by a red hot poker up their backside, which was how King Edward II died. I was wincing while I was writing that," he said.

Giving talks in prisons had also been an eye-opener. One woman in particular, who had poisoned her mother-in-law and husband, stood out to James.

"She was complaining to me about the amount of time she was given. That woman gave me the chills, it was as if she was complaining about a parking ticket."

Spending time with the Los Angeles Police Department's celebrity stalking team, and dealing with his own stalker for the past 10 years, provided James with the inspiration behind his latest novel Not Dead Yet.

"That really spooked me," he said of his middle-aged, female stalker.

"If I left a talk and walked down a dark street I would look up and down and immediately think Kathy Bates in Misery."

Also a film producer, James has worked with the likes of Sharon Stone, Charlize Theron and Al Pacino, who starred in his film, The Merchant of Venice.

That film was the work he was most proud of, said James, among a number of others which didn't exactly receive rave reviews.

"I have made a few decent things, but not intentionally," he laughed.

In his top five novels, James acknowledges Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, and Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, however he also admits to reading the odd piece of chick-lit. "I read anything that's on the bestseller list so I can find out what has made that book so successful."

There are three things that make a successful novel, he said - characters that people will be engrossed with, an intriguing plot, and adequate research.

The keen motor racer said the most rewarding thing was receiving emails from people who had been inspired to read more after finishing one of his books.

"That is the best thing. I think if everybody read more, the world would be a better place."

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Smiling stalker who made my life a misery: A thriller writer, a chillingly obsessed fan and a true story even more terrifying than Hollywood fiction... (The Daily Mail)

posted by Peter James @ 11:01 AM   7 Comments

PUBLISHED: 22:21, 25 April 2012

By Peter James

At first, I didn’t really notice her. I was doing a book signing in Edinburgh and there was nothing remarkable about the woman who quietly approached my desk carrying a copy to be signed.

Somewhere in her mid-30s, she was nondescript — medium height and with fair rather than blonde hair.

But she was smiling and had bought a book, so I was grateful. I signed the fly-leaf, thanked her for coming and thought no more about it.

Until a week later, when I was doing a library event in Norwich and I was in the middle of my usual speech. I saw a woman in the audience smiling at me as if she knew me. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I was flattered to have such an attentive member of the audience and didn’t give her another thought.

Until one more week later, when I arrived in Cardiff for another signing session and there she was again. There was no getting away from it: I officially had my own stalker. Before I became a writer of thrillers, I’d been a film producer and worked with some big names — Al Pacino, Sharon Stone, Robert De Niro — so I knew about celebrity stalkers. In Beverly Hills, the Los Angeles Police Department has the specialist Threat Management Unit to deal with the problem.

This explains why Hollywood stars live behind high gates and have specialist security firms on speed dial. But it didn’t explain why I, a 63-year-writer — well preserved, but by no means an obvious heart-throb — suddenly had my own stalker, too. For a while, I just pretended it wasn’t happening. She wasn’t doing anything alarming, indeed, she barely said anything at all , so if I just smiled and carried on as normal, I thought, perhaps she’d go away. And then the emails started.

At first, she told me how much she liked my books, always flattering for any writer. Then she moved on to my appearance: how much she’d liked a black T-shirt I’d worn to one signing. It wasn’t so much the content of the emails that was worrying — at least not initially — as the length and the frequency with which they arrived. Soon, emails were arriving several times a day, sometimes 3,000 words long. And it quickly became clear that she expected them to be answered.

What had seemed a bit of a joke — the question my male friends asked about her was ‘is she good-looking?’ — now didn’t seem funny at all. I found myself checking the street outside, especially when I left an event after dark. And I took far more care to see who was in my audience or signing queue. Now, I’m certainly not the first writer or performer to discover how much of a double-edged sword are the new relationships that email, Facebook and Twitter have given us with those who admire and buy our work.

I’ve always put my email address in my books and use Facebook and Twitter. For the most part it’s worked tremendously well and helped enormously with research, but, like many, I tend to forget just how much information we unwittingly share with millions online. Time and again, this woman would appear at an event, and time and again, I’d think: ‘How does she know about this one?’ And then I’d realise it was because I’d mentioned it on Facebook or in a blog, or unthinkingly tweeted.

Most people understand that while social media gives you contact with someone on the internet, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly bosom pals. My stalker, however, clearly felt otherwise. It’s here, I suspect, that I made a mistake. I did reply to her first email — just simple ‘thank you for your interest’ kind of stuff. And within five minutes came a reply.

When I didn’t answer this, there was a two-hour delay before my new email icon flashed up. ‘Are you OK?’ I told her I was, but when I didn’t reply to a subsequent email for five days, she went frantic: ‘Peter, I’m so worried about you. I keep imagining you’re lying there unconscious,’ she wrote. I wasn’t unconscious, of course, I was just trying to get on with my work and normal life; I didn’t have the time or the inclination to keep up with her apparently insatiable appetite for emails.

And, besides, the awful memory of Stephen King’s Misery and particularly the film version, in which Kathy Bates plays an obsessed fan who breaks a novelist’s legs with a sledgehammer (the book is even nastier) just wouldn’t go away. My own stalker grew bolder, buying every book from my backlist, and for seven or eight years she was at just about every event I went to. On the rare occasions she missed one, she would email to apologise: ‘I do hope you’ll be OK without me in the audience.’

Of course, I’d be OK; in fact, I was relieved. Then came the photographs. This was the pivotal point at which my stalker stopped feeling like a irritant and more like a serious worry. She sent me photographs of her ‘Peter James collection’. A whole wall, filled with my books — even publications I’d contributed to years ago — flanked by candlesticks like a shrine, and framed photographs of me, from various public appearances. But even more worryingly were photographs of me in the street, climbing into a taxi, or simply going about my private life.

I scanned them, looking for clues as to where they could have been taken, and was more than slightly relieved to note they weren’t near my house. But she had been watching me, obviously. It was only a matter of time, I thought, before she turned up on my doorstep, like bunny-boiling Glenn Close in the film Fatal Attraction. Only there was — and never had been — anything going on between us. It was all in her mind. It was at this point I decided to share my concerns with Helen, my partner of 14 years. I’d never hidden anything from her, and she knew I had a following of female fans, which she was more than comfortable with. But this . . . well, this was something different. She told me to get some advice and so, three years after the campaign began, I talked to a friend and contact at Sussex police. I knew there was little they could do, as this woman had never actually threatened to harm me, and the police told me that, apart from some mild mental illness, she was probably harmless.

Only it didn’t feel like it. The psychological profilers I know told me she either had low self-esteem, perhaps after being bullied at school, and was looking for someone she could hero-worship, or she was a fantasist who genuinely believed we were having a relationship. Either way, the emails grew longer and more frequent again; their tone more obsessive and possessive. One day, to Helen’s consternation, an anonymous, scented love letter arrived. It was full of declarations of undying love and rather terrifying assumptions that this love was reciprocated by me. And it didn’t take detective powers to work out who it was from. I stepped up the security at home, employing a security guard and investing more than £20,000 in a monitoring and alarm system. Even then, it wasn’t enough, with Helen feeling increasingly vulnerable when she was at home alone in what had always been a very lonely and isolated house, half a mile from our nearest neighbour, surrounded by empty fields and patches of woodland where anyone could have hidden.

An attempted break-in one night, when I was in New York, proved the last straw. Unfortunately, the point of attempted entry wasn’t covered by the security cameras, so we never found out whether it was her. It didn’t matter: Helen simply refused to spend another night in that house. As soon as we could, we moved. Then came the first real flash-point: a book-signing session in Leicester two-and-a-half years ago. There’d been a queue up to 100 people long and I was tired, so I really didn’t notice the now blonde-haired woman who had reached the front. ‘What name would you like in it?’ I asked, automatically. ‘Mine!’ she snapped, before storming off. The next day, a 10,000-word email arrived, complaining bitterly about my failure to recognise someone who, in her own words, had been ‘my number one fan for the past ten years’. And that, suddenly, was that — no more emails, no more sudden appearances and definitely no more scented love letters. It was bliss.

As I slowly came to terms with the fact that she really had gone away, I realised that my experience had given me a real insight into the creepy world of celebrity stalkers. Write what you know, they say, and that is still good advice. The result is my new Roy Grace thriller, Not Dead Yet, the story of an obsessed fan who finally gets to meet the celebrity she loves but who goes murderously to pieces when she’s rebuffed. It’s out in June and I’m really looking forward to all the book-signings and public appearances that go with it. Or rather I was until a few months ago, when at a library event in Bristol for my last book, a novel was suddenly slammed down in front of me. Looking up, I saw an all-too-familiar face break into a sinister-looking smile. ‘I’ve decided to forgive you . . . ’

Not Dead Yet by Peter James will be published on June 7 by Macmillan, at £18.99.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2135153/Smiling-stalker-life-misery-A-thriller-writer-chillingly-obsessed-fan-true-story-terrifying-Hollywood-fiction-.html

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