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A great plot - with a twist (The Independent)

Peter explains why he loves his house to the Independent newspaper

What Does A Writer Do When He's Not Writing?

One of the questions I often get asked is 'what does a writer do all day when he is not actually writing?' So having effectively finished the second draft of my latest novel, (Dead Man's Footsteps) I thought I would share my Monday with you:

This morning, and through lunchtime, I spent with a young undercover police officer friend, who is currently working on both drugs surveillance and car crime in Sussex. We went to a number of cafes, which provide good observation points for well-known drug-dealing locations, part of which information I am using in my new book. A drug addict in this city - or indeed any UK city, will have a habit that costs him or her from £20 - £200+ per day - and some can be spending as much as £500 per day. There are few drug users wealthy enough to pay this kind of money from legitimate earnings, so many turn to crime - the reason that 80% of all urban crimes in the UK are drug related. And most of these crimes tend to be daytime burglaries on homes, muggings, thefts from cars, bag snatches, shoplifting.

A drug addict thief, in need of fast cash, will receive approximately 10% of the value of anything he or she steals. So with a £50 a day habit (not at all rare) they will need to steal £500 per day of goods, or a staggering £182,000 worth or goods each year. With 2,500 injecting drug users in the city of Brighton and Hove that is an awful lot of criminal activity. The police fight a never-ending war with both the users and suppliers. Which segways me nicely on to my afternoon:

For afternoon tea I visit the place that has nearly become my second home, the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary - although I do my best to be a daytime visitor, not an overnight guest....

The Mortuary is run on a day-to-day basis by three wonderful characters, Elsie (who revels in being Cleo!) Victor and Sean. Considering the tough and constantly gruesome nature of their work, they are truly delightful and caring people, with a great sense of humour. Mentioning how I had spent my morning, they told me about a large African man who had recently been brought in, who had died of mysterious causes shortly after an international flight to Gatwick. When they opened him up, they found his intestines packed with plastic vials of cocaine, with a street value of a staggering £300,000! One had leaked, causing a massive overdose, which had ruptured his stomach.

And segwaying nicely into stomachs... one of their recent overnight guests was a man, in his early thirties, who weighed forty-four stone - six hundred and sixteen pounds! He had lived, immobile, in a second floor bedroom, constantly fed by his mother. It took nine people, including several fire brigade members, to remove him from his bedroom to the mortuary, where he had to be placed in an enlarged fridge. His grave took up three plots and a JCB bulldozer lowered him in!

As a sign of the times, the mortuary is now reequipping with extra-large fridges. As they are receiving so many obese people who don't fit into a standard fridge, they are left with no option.

Not the best place to Chill Out!

And now I have arrived back home, and I'm looking forward to tucking into some supper. I think I fancy something cold from the fridge. And a nice Chianti....

BEWARE OF DOCTORS

I've just had real eye-opener into how little some medics know. Let me start by saying that I have met many doctors over the years and I have great respect for some, but certainly not for all of them. I admire especially all those who have an open mind, the ones who freely admit that "medicine is not an exact science", and are willing to accept that there may be other remedies and cures beyond those they know about, for the ailments their patients have.

Peter and 'Friend.'

But this will shock all of you, I am sure: In my new novel, Dead Man's Footsteps, (I am currently working on my editor's notes) I have a scene in which a skeleton is discovered in a disused underground storm drain in Brighton. A forensic archaeologist is brought in by Roy Grace to help establish whether the body is male or female. I was introduced to an eminent real life forensic archaeologist, Lucy Sibun, who works regularly for Sussex CID, who gave me a great deal of help.

Lucy explained (as you will read in the book) that there are certain specific differences between a male and a female skeleton. Here is a unique sneak preview of this scene: (!!)

She was peering at the skull. 'The slope of the forehead is quite upright - men tend to have a much more sloped forehead,' she said. Then, holding the torch in her left hand and pointing at the rear of the skull with a gloved right hand forefinger she said, 'the nuchal crest is very rounded.' Then she tapped it. 'If you feel the back of your skull, Roy, it’ll be much more pronounced - it normally is in males.' Then she looked at the left ear cavity. 'Again the mastoid process would indicate female - it's more pronounced in the male.' Next, she traced the air in front of the eyes. 'See the skull brow ridges - I'd expect them to be more prominent if this was a male.'
'So you're reasonably sure she's female?' Grace asked.
'Yes, I am. When we expose the pelvis I will be able so say one hundred percent, but I'm pretty sure. I'll also take some measurements - the male skeleton is generally more robust, the proportions are different.'

As I think many of you know, I am a stickler for research and try to double check everything I write, and I have a small network of police, medics and other knowledgeable people I use to help me. One of my "fact-checkers" emailed me that he had sent the above passage to an eminent heart surgeon he knew, to see if I had the details correct. The surgeon asked him why on earth I needed to go through all the stuff above, as everyone knew that males had an extra rib (Adam's rib) - so all that anyone at the scene needed to do was to count the ribs and they would know. Simple as that!

I emailed this information to Lucy Sibun, and this was her reply: "It is amazing how many people believe in this but, unfortunately, the extra rib is just a myth. So no, it can't be as simple as that."

So how scary is that? A surgeon who doesn’t even know the rudiments of a human skeleton??? So my warning to all of you, next time you meet an arrogant doctor who tells you he knows best - beware! Perhaps even try the 'ribs' test on him!!!

Novelist finds way to beat airport security (Publishing News)

Publishing News reports on Peter's novel way of getting liquids on a plane in Moscow airport.

Labels: article

The answer.....

.....to all of you who ask me how I relax when I have finished my latest novel; Just gently, quietly contemplative of a murder or two.....

Picture courtesy of Maxim Aryukov

Win A Bottle Of Champagne on Peter James!

Here's a little test for all the geographers and linguists among you! A bottle of champagne to the first person to correctly name in a comment here the English titles of these two books, and to guess the railway station where the billboard is displayed!

station poster

Moscow Policing

Knowing my interest in meeting police in every country that I can, my publishers in Moscow arranged for me to meet the Chief of Police for central Moscow, Alexandr Havkin -- whose bailliwick includes the Kremlin and all the surrounding area. I had been briefed to bring a gift of a UK police hat and any other memorabilia I could, so, courtesy of Sussex Police, I dutifully turned up with a whole box full of badges and shields as well as a Sussex Police cap. He was so delighted he presented me with an Afghan Russian soldier's helmet (weighing some 25 pounds! -- see pictures below) as well as an assortment of Russian police badges, and a beautifully packaged bottle of rare vodka which he asked me to present to his equivalent in Sussex as a goodwill gesture between Russian and British police.

I think the helmet is quite cool -- I might wear it with the visor down when I don't want to be recognized!!! Anyhow, Alexandr was concerned that I might have a problem at customs, leaving Moscow with this helmet, as it is military equipment. So he gave me his card to show to any customs official who was difficult, with instructions for him to call Alexandr! I packed the helmet in my suitcase, thinking that way it would be the least visible, but then realized my luggage was going to be way oveweight. So I decided to carry the vodka bottle in my hand luggage, unaware that Russia now has the same regulations as everywhere else about taking fluids on flights. As I went through the security scanner, a security official removed the bottle and told me they would have to confiscate it. I then pulled the Chief of Police's business card from my wallet, showed it to him and informed him this bottle represented important goodwill between our two countries. All the security guards went into a huddle, then they raised the fingers to their lips, gave me a conspiratoral smile and ushered me through with the booty intact! I later presented it to a very happy Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore, Head of Crime for Sussex.

Moscow Central police station is not unlike many of the older police stations in the UK. It looks like it was built in about 1920 and has not seen a lick of paint or a fresh floorboard or carpet tile or strip of linoleum since! Alexandr's own office is large, and lined with the stuffed heads of animals -- he is a keen hunter and invited me to join him on a future trip. Too good an invite to turn down!!! After a tour of the police station and the cells (Russian prisoners look much like British ones -- and they all started taunting me about football -- a subject I know little enough about in English, let alone in Russian...) Then I went out to dinner with him and fifteen of his senior colleagues, who were determined to get me drunk!

There is an etiquette in Russia that if you toast or are toasted, you have to drain your glass. All sixteen Moscow police officers duly toasted me in turn! I was told the trick was to eat something each time you drained the glass. I tried, but that wasn't doing me any good. So I then tried being clever and poured half the content into my water glass. But I forgot I was with sharp-eyed police officers, who immediately spotted the ruse and made me drink the water glass contents too! I was eventually rescued by my publishers who helped me out into the night. And if anyone ever tells you that neat vodka is great because it doesn't give you a hangover - well they lied!!!

One thing that did amaze me was the salaries of the police. One of them asked, before I was too drunk, me how much a newly qualified policeman in the UK gets. I told him it was about £20,000 - £22,000 as starting salary. They said in Russia it is £2,000. And the Chief of Police gets £16,000. Hardly a fortune -- the cost of food is not much cheaper than the UK, cars are about 35% more. Living can be cheaper as there is a lot of free accomodation from the government, but still... But even so I found those figures mind-boggling. Then I was asked by Alexandr how much a judge in the UK gets. I replied the range was from about £95,000 -- over £200,000. He told me a judge in Moscow earns £22,000. But then he said that with "perks" that could rise to well over £125,000. What kind of "perks" does a judge get, I wondered, that could give that kind of salary boost ????

One very interesting comment from Alexandr was on the subject of crime in Russia. He told me that in the year 2000 the situation was so bad the Moscow police actually thought they had lost the battle against organized crime and that it was the Mafia who were taking over control of the city. Now, he was relieved to tell me, the police were back in charge, but it had been a worrying time.

When I was last in Russia, in 1985, staying in a hotel on Gorky Prospekt (now renamed) there was literally nothing to buy in the shops and stores. Above is a photograph of the interior of the grandest department store in Moscow, GUM, as it is now. You would not believe it in 1985: There was literally nothing in any of the windows, and all the lighting in the entire building seemed to come from one solitary 40 watt bulb! Yet, across the road from my hotel window in 1985 I saw a small shop, where an endless procession of smart cars pulled up (when there were virtually no other vehicles on the street) and people in fine clothing went into the shop and came out laden. I learned it was part of the then two-tier Soviet society -- a "Berioska shop". You could only go in if you had foreign currency, and it was laden with every luxury you could want, from Beluga caviare and Havana Cigars to Western luxury electrical goods.

It is good to see that has now all gone. Anyone can buy anything and the shops and store windows are filled with the same goods as everywhere in the western world. But although there is now an increasingly prosperous middle class there is still clearly a big divide between the rich and everyone else. One of the constant sights on Moscow streets is people under the bonnets of cars and vans and trucks, tinkering with them, carrying out repairs. You see someone doing this on almost every street corner. That is a rare sight in our disposable goods Western society today. People don't mend things in our modern world. We throw them away and replace them.

Another factor separating Russia from the west is women's rights. At a dinner one night I sat next to the wife of one of the Russian oligarchs who had better remain nameless! She told me that women have absolutely no status in law in Russia. Although her husband is a billionaire several times over and she lives as lavish a lifestyle as is imaginable, if he chose to divorce her she could be left with literally nothing.

Something else that has changed is the quality of food and service. Last time I was in Russia, staying at my Intourist Hotel (no options) the evening meal was served at 6.30pm, and all at once. So your starter, main course (usually shoe leather in some kind of sour gravy) and desert, served by one of the world's ugliest and least pleasant waiters and waitresses, were all laid out on the table, getting nicely cold for you. But on this trip I ate some of the most brilliant food. One restaurant in particular, Turandot, is an absolute must if you go to Moscow -- it is the most beautiful restaurant I've ever eaten in, anywhere in the world, and served by delightful staff all dressed in frock coats and knee-breeches -- with real elan! See the New York Times and Passport Magazine reviews.

One of my biggest surprises back in 1985 and even more true today is how strikingly beautiful many of Moscow's buildings are (even more so in St Petersburg) The Moscow State University (pictured above) is both imperialistic and striking in its design and scale, and the Kremlin, despite the forboding atmosphere of Red Square, is a truly stunningly beautiful palace. And I couldn't resist this picture of the wonderful memorial to Yuri Gagarin (pictured below), the first astronaut, who went into space in 1961. Ironically he was killed piloting a conventional plane in 1968.

Have fun if you go -- just don't toast anyone in a bar!

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