Peter's Blog

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Blind Date Number Two!

I've just had my second blind date! My first, last year, was with the very delightful Anja Koenig, (chaperoned by her equally delightful husband, Stephen) (see my earlier blog) who won a competition in Germany to have dinner with me. This time it was with Sarah Hobden, who won a competition in Sussex Life magazine to have lunch with me. (Maybe someone would get a huge number of entrants by running a competion for the winner not to have to have lunch or dinner with me...!!!)

Sara Hobden and That Man again!

Sara's trusting husband allowed her to come out on her own, and we had a fun lunch at the Hotel Du Vin in Brighton - one of a handful of places in Brighton I really think has a great bar and is a nice "space" to dine in. So many restaurants serve good and sometimes great food, but very few have rooms to match. In Brighton, I also like Havana, which has a fine, spacious, stylish room, and nearby, Wingrove House in Alfriston, with its glorious outside terrace as well. And while we are on the subject, my favourite restaurant in London by far is the Wolseley - quite the most glorious room, day or night. And in fact it features in my latest Roy Grace novel, Not Dead Enough!

I asked Sarah why she entered a competition to have lunch with me, expecting her to say that I had been her favourite writer for years, yadda yadda yadda... and my ego was somewhat deflated when she confessed that she'd actually never heard of me before reading about the competition! But then she said she was now a fan... so things improved substantially after that - sad sucker for flattery that I am...

But seriously, she was a delightful companion, extremely bright and fun. If anyone ever holds a competition to have lunch with her, I will be the first to enter!

Researching 9-11

I've recently spent a few extraordinary days in New York with two police officers, Detective Inspectors Dennis Bootle and Pat Lanigan, researching for my new Roy Grace novel, which will be published next year, and which features a character who tries to benefit commercially from the attack on the World Trade Centre. Part of the novel is set back in time around the day of 9-11 and the immediately following days.

The Alternative Brighton taken on Brighton Beach on Coney Island

Pat and Dennis were among the very first officers one the scene at 9-11. They were in the NYPD in Brooklyn police station when the first plane struck the North Tower. Immediately they were despatched over the Brooklyn Bridge and arrived just as the second plane struck the South Tower. As they climbed out of the patrol car a burning jet engine bounced in Vesey Street, right in front of them. Then, as they ran across the plaza, they heard a thud, described in Pat's words as "Like as sack of potatoes hitting the ground." It was one of the first jumpers. At one point they were having to look up to dodge the falling bodies. Then when the South Tower began to collapse they had to run for their lives. Dennis went down below the Atrium and Pat ran for the river. Pat described the "crunching, roaring, rumble" of the tower coming down as the scariest sound he had ever heard in his life, as if the world was ending.

In the weeks and months following, both of them worked at Ground Zero "in the pit" or "on the pile" or "in the belly of the beast" as Dennis described it. Amid all the horror of recovering human remains - few bodies were intact - there were some extraordinary acts of humanity. One example is that people brought dogs around for the workers to stroke, to give them contact with something normal and comforting.

Pat became one of the people in charge of the Bereavement Centre on Pier 92, where relatives would bring items to help identify lost loved ones - such as a hairbrush or toothbrush from which DNA could be taken. Those suffering hardship were given instant cash handouts of between $1,500-2,500 - and, as human nature will, there were plenty of fraudsters who took advantage - and were all subsequently tracked down after the NYPD set up a "Scammers File".

Pat, PJ & Dennis at Pier 92.

One of the grimmest places Dennis and Pat took me to was the presciently named "Fresh Kills" landfill site (it is an old Indian word for inlet) on Staten Island. Every square centimeter of rubble taken from Ground Zero was brought on barges to this site and examined with the thoroughness of an archaeological dig.

Fresh Kills Entrance

Like many of the rescue workers, both Pat and Dennis suffered mental and physical health problems subsequently. Interestingly the Scientologists, boosted with a $2m donation from Tom Cruise, have now set up a free detox program for all Emergency Service workers for 9-11.

One of the most macabre places we visited is right opposite the Manhattan Medical Examiner's office. A tent filled with refrigerated trucks that contain many thousands of as yet unidentified parts. And more are still turning up, six years on - some in the sewers, and the week before I was there, some on the roof of the Deutsche Bank, at the edge of Ground Zero, which is due for demolition. One terrible aspect of the whole tragedy is that of the 2,792 people who died in the World Trade Center attacks, only half have been identified - and it is likely the majority of the others never will be.

Body Parts Tent

The art director of my publishers, whose offices were then just a few blocks away from the Twin Towers, was in her office at 8.45 and by chance happened to be looking out of her window as the North Tower was hit. She told me that in those first moments following the impact, before the reality and horror of what she was looking at clarified in her brain, that from an artist's standpoint it was a beautiful sight - the orange flame, the pure black of the smoke and the shimmering fragments of glass against the beautiful, cobalt sky.

There is a moving line at the beginning of one of the Nicci French novels: It reads: "Bad things happen on beautiful days." It is a line I've never been able to get out of my head. When Peter Benchley wrote Jaws he managed to turn the beauty of the ocean into something sinister for many people. With 9-11, terrorists turned a clear blue sky into a thing of potential dread for far, far more people.

But it is not the horror of all that happened that is the most dominant thing I take away from that terrible day. It is the image of the rescue workers patting dogs. It is the inner strengths of Pat and Dennis (more on whom in my next blog) two of the most decent human beings I ever met. It is the knowledge of the triumphs of the human spirit and of friendship. Dr Martin Luther King said it best of all: "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

Danger - Men At Work!

Well, we all have different styles of working. Me, I like to sit at my desk, slurping my vodka martini (at my evening session only!!!) opera or jazz gently pumping out of my Bose speakers. Neil Pearson is clearly the hunched forward, raring-to-go type, while William Gaminara - well, clearly a little laid back.

Neil Pearson

Just attended yesterday the recording of the audio book of Not Dead Enough which is read by Neil Pearson. He has a very different style of working to William Gaminara, who voiced the audio book of Dead Simple in a very laid-back manner... see the photographs of them both reading my books.

William Gaminara

William (whose acting credits include The Archers and 44 episodes of Silent Witness is a really nice guy - I particularly warmed to him last year in the studio when I discovered he is a serious poker player! He did a great job on the Dead Simple audio book, but unfortunately because of back and arm injury he was unable do Not Dead Enough. However we were lucky enough to get the equally charming and hugely talented Neil Pearson - a face familiar to all from The Booze Cruise, Bridget Jones's Diary, The Whistle Blower, Drop The Dead Donkey, and a gazillion other high profile productions.

I was very surprise to find a whole other side beyond the acting profession to Neil: He is an absolute authority - not just a collector but a total mine of immensely fascinating information - on rare books - and has his own book on the subject coming out this autumn. From the stories he told me in the studio yesterday it will be a great read.

And on the subject of rare books, I was amused to see copies of my first novel Dead Letter Drop fetching up to £142.00 on the rare books site www.addall.com. Funny that this and my other two early novels, Atom Bomb Angel and Billionaire, which I keep out of print at my request as I am not proud of them, fetch so much more than the bargain £12.99 of Not Dead Enough!!!

Website Problems

UPDATE 25th May: The site should be pretty much restored now. If you find any broken links or strange looking pages, do please leave a comment and I can get it fixed

Due to technical problems with my web host, Easynet, which have resulted in my website being offline for over a week, a large amount of data is missing from both my blog and the website. We are working to restore it as soon as possible. Apologies to you all in the meantime.

Silver Tongues And Silver Jets

Continuing my crazy round of world travels, I barely got back from launching Dead Simple (Levande Begravd) in Sweden - when I had to go up to Worcester, with my silver tongue polished, to give an after-dinner speech to the Association of British Investigators, and then fly on to New York, to attend the Edgar Awards and to spend several days researching for my fourth Roy Grace novel.

Had an amusing coincidence in Sweden: My publishers there, Damm Forlag, had produced some 20,000 bound first chapters of Dead Simple, which they distributed around subway stations and railway stations. I got into a taxi with my wonderful Swedish editor, Marika Hemmell, and she was engaged in conversation immediately by the cab driver, who had picked up one of these first chapters and was asking her, as she was in publishing, whether she thought this book might be any good. She replied, "Don't ask me, ask the guy sitting behind you, he wrote it!"

PJ's Swedish toy

Then continuing my world schmooze of police forces, I tried to persuade the charming Swedish police to let me have a souvenir. Just a car would have been fine, I assured them. The one in the photo, perhaps? I even genuflected for them... And now I know the Swedish for "in your dreams ...."

The Twisted Torso

I always like being in Sweden, they are great people, very good natured and good humoured. They'd have to be to create a building like this one! The Twisted Torso of Malmö is as good a 21st Century version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as you are going to find. And they say crime writers have twisted minds...

Another coincidence in Worcester - the dinner was being held in the Fownes Hotel (highly recommended, full of character) which turned out to have originally been a glove factory, owned by Fownes, of Dents Fownes fame. As my family business is in gloves - my late mother, Cornelia James, was Glovemaker to the Queen - and the family firm still makes HM's gloves, I felt very at home. Just as well - standing up in front of one hundred private eyes (or investigators as they are now called) is a daunting experience.... In fact, I was surprised that they were all in the room - I thought most of them would have been outside, listening to my speech through earphones via bugging devices and watching me from the darkness through long lenses...

One of them I wish had not been in the room - a very drunk Finn private detective who began heckling me. As he was heckling me in Finnish, neither I nor anyone else in the room knew what he was talking about. I suspect he didn't, either. I put it down to spending over half the year in frozen darkness. Not much else to do up there, I guess, except drink, bonk, read and heckle. And he didn't look like much of a bonker. More like he was into DIY.

Then on to New York (much more of which to follow), and tried out the pioneering new airline, SilverJet, whch flies a business-class only service from Luton to Newark. And what service! Quite apart from being incredible value - £879 return, with flat-bed seats, it is quite the nicest airline I have ever flown on. When you arrive at Luton here there is a friendly concierge to greet you instead of the usual horrible chaos of a departure lounge and ten miles of check-in desks, and within ninety seconds former Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor (my career role model for Roy Grace) and I were seating ourselves in the Silver lounge and having breakfast.

The only blot was that the all-smiles concierge for some unfathomable reason put us in seats in different rows. Duh! Maybe a brain transplant to this particular member of staff would help, Mr Silverjet....

Luton is a bit further for travellers in the South but as you only have to check in 30 mins (yes!) before your transatlantic flight (yes!!!) that more than compensates for the journey time. I'm told the airline is doing well and is planning to expand its routes. I really hope it get routes everywhere - and retains its culture. All the staff are delightful (including the concierge dimwit) and it is a true throwback to old, traditional values of what service should be all about. This must be what flying would have been like in the 1950s - a Life On Mars airline come true.

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