Peter's Blog

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Murder, mystery and mistaken identity (Bangkok Post)

Peter describes his early career in film and how it led to Roy Grace

Far East Face Off

Back to reality with a bump from the Far East -- but fortunately not such a big a bump as the BA 777 from Beijing that touched down at Heathrow just after us.... A salutory reminder for any nervous flier that air travel has plenty of dangers.

I'm always intrigued by travel statistics: on Boeing's website they tell you that travelling by plane is 22 times safer than by car -- but I am not sure whether that is for time spent in the plane or miles covered. What I do know is that the statistic for numbers of people killed in commercial airline crashes throughout the world each year is about 1,300 and the number of people killed in car accidents is a staggering 1,250,000 annually. Here are some interesting annual statisics, which I found on a website, for the USA:

Killed in car accidents: 42,116
Killed by the common flu: 20,000
Killed by murders: 15,517
Killed in airline crashes (of 477m passenger trips): 120 (1 accident)
Killed by lightning strikes: 90

But if the above make you decide you had better stay at home, be warned! Statistically the most dangerous place in the world -- ie the place where you are most likely to die - is your own kitchen!!!

PJ in Hong Kong

Now, how did I get onto such a morbid start to 2008??? Ah yes, of course, I've just unpacked by brain from my travels and reminded myself that morbid is what I do for a living... And on my last day in Hong Kong I went to a venerable old-fashioned panelled restaurant, the Luk Yu Tea House, (24-26 Stanley St., Central (tel. 852/2523 5464) with my publishers and the ex-pat journalist Nick Walker, who gleefully pointed out the table at which a prominent HK businessman had been shot dead by a Triad gang a couple of years earlier. This restaurant is famed for both the quality of its Dim Sum (the best I have ever eaten) and the rudeness of its waiters! Yet interestingly, however rude they might be, and however unhelpful about letting you sit where you want, rather than where they want, they would behave much better to you than any Western waiter if your credit cards was maxed out and rejected when you tried to pay the bill. The reason? "Face".

"Face" is all important throughout Asia. A taxi driver cowered in almost tearful silence when a friend caught him out cheating us on a journey in Koh Samui. And whereas in the West if your card is rejected the waiter will come to your table and tell you in front of all your guests. (To my amusement this once happened to Richard Branson in Australia, using his own Virgin card!) But if it happened in a restaurant in Hong Kong, to a customer known to the staff, they would quietly hand the card back and say nothing. Later in the afternoon they would phone him in his office or at home and explain the problem.

Night view of Hong Kong from Kowloon

I've been in Thailand and Hong Kong, on a combination of finishing the last research and rewrites on Dead Man's Footsteps, and promoting the paperback of Not Dead Enough. I find Thai people absolutely delightful and I love their food -- although one has to be carefully as they eat it with a lot more chillies in Thailand than we get in Thai restaurants in the UK.

It was my first time back in Hong Kong since 1979 and I noticed a lot of changes. In many ways I liked it even more, although it has become much more "westernized" and a lot of it looks more like New York than an Oriental city. What struck me most of all was how very polite the people were -- despite the crowds and that everyone seemed in a rush (and ignoring the occasional bit of spitting....) there was a general air of courtesy that many Western cities could learn a lot from. And in common with many cities around the world, Hong Kong now widespread non-smoking regulations, but, as I believe all civlized places should, it still has certain bars where it is permitted -- one of which was the Dickens bar in the basement of the Excelsior Hotel where I stayed.

Lousy view from my Ban Taling Ngam office!

The hotels I enjoyed most were the Ban Taling Ngam in Koh Samui (formerly Le Meridien), I would unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone and the Four Seasons in Bangkok. - where we had the best Thai meal of our whole trip in its Spice Market restaurant -- and I actually met, for the first time ever in the twelve years he has been running my website, Chris Mitchell (and his delightful lady Lindy). And I cannot believe I forgot to take a photograph!!!!

Hope you all have a brilliant 2008 -- and please keep your fingers crossed for me on Feb 5th -- I am one of three finalist for the French crime writing prize the SNCF Prix Polar Europee'n for Looking Good Dead (La Mort Leur Va Sie Bien) up against Scotland's Craig Russell and Italy's Gilda Piersanti. I remember a year and a half ago when I won Le Prix Polar Noir in Cognac, asking my fellow contestants (all French) how French crime writers got on with each other. They replied that they all got on extremely well, unless one of them won an award -- then they hated that person! So I guess that makes Feb 5th a no-win situation!!!

Murder, He Wrote (Evening Standard)

Peter discusses his neighbourhood of Notting Hill.

Labels: article

Prolfic author proves 'crime days' pay

By Jay Scott Kanes

British crime novelist Peter James, like many of his fictional characters, often encounters the police. But unlike the shady individuals emerging from his imagination, Peter enjoys the experience.

Peter often tags along with the police on his home turf in Brighton, Sussex. “I spend about a day each fortnight out with the police -- sitting in cop cars, going to crime scenes, being in offices and attending meetings” said the best-selling author when interviewed this week during a visit to Hong Kong. “In a day with the police, you see a most incredible slice of life.”

Having befriended the law-enforcers, talked to them in depth and watched them for hours, even days, at a time, 59-year-old Peter can write about crime, criminals and investigations more realistically and accurately.

“I’m a great believer in research,” he said. “I love books when the writer understands the world. Then the readers get something extra. From the best stories, you learn something about the world and why people behave as they do.”

Grey-haired, charming and quick-to-smile, Peter doesn’t look like someone whose brain overflows with tales of murder and mayhem. But don’t be deceived.

When a protagonist needed to hoist a severed human head from a bathtub, Peter searched for a policeman with relevant experience. Soon he found one who’d located a “lost head” in the bushes after a rail-line suicide.

“It was late at night. They’d found the body, but not the head,” Peter said. “Walking down the line with a torch, the constable saw eyes peering out from a bush.

“He told me, ‘I walked to the back so the eyes couldn’t look at me. Then I didn’t know how to pick it up, so I lifted it by the hair. It was much heavier than I’d expected. Out of respect, I took off my jacket and wrapped the head in it. I put it in the boot of my car and drove it to the mortuary, but every time I braked or turned a corner, I heard it rolling around.’ ”

Sometimes Peter wears a lapel pin shaped like handcuffs. The police in Munich, Germany, gave him the pin when he consulted them for his 2007 novel, Not Dead Enough. The book’s hero, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, is based upon a retired Sussex Police investigator named Dave Gaylor. Grace also stars in two earlier books, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead. Another such novel, Dead Man’s Footsteps, will appear soon.

“Years ago when I first met Dave, I noticed 20 blue boxes piled on his office floor,” Peter said. “He told me, ‘Those are my dead friends.’ They were cold cases. As he said, ‘I’m the last chance those victims have for justice, and I’m their families’ last chance for closure.’ Dave was an active, modern homicide investigator, but he had all those ghosts in his office.”

According to Peter, “Police officers have the greatest overview of society. They have a common denominator and look at the world differently. If I see two guys peering into a shop window, I wonder what they plan to buy. If a policeman sees them, he wonders why they’re standing there – are they going to rob the shop, are they doing a drug deal, what’re they talking about? There’s a culture of suspicion.”

Last month, Peter spent an extra-long day with two shifts of the Brighton police. “At 7 a.m., we had a cot death with distraught parents and a terrible situation. At 11 a.m., a bus hit a Turkish student, who luckily survived. Then at 1 p.m., a car got stopped by chance, and the boot was full of drugs. At 4 p.m., an old lady drove off a road and got her car caught on a concrete bollard. At 11 p.m., we chased a stolen car and arrested a 15-year-old kid.

“Things happen that I could never make up,” Peter said. “About six months ago, I went along as the police arrested an armed robber holed up in a flat. They told me, ‘Keep clear of the door in case he shoots.’ I said, ‘Thanks, I’ll be well clear.’

“We arrived at an old, low-rise block of flats. The police rang all the doorbells, except for the suspect’s, until someone opened the front door. We went up to the second floor. When there was no answer, we smashed the suspect’s door off its hinges.

“A big, ugly guy inside bit a policeman on the nose and stabbed his fingers into another’s eyes. They wrestled him to the floor and handcuffed him. The guy said, ‘Bastards, you’d bloody well better fix my door. The last time you did this I got burgled.’

“Then the door of another flat opened. An old lady in a dressing gown came out. She had a thick Irish accent. ‘What the heck’s this noise?’

“They told her, ‘We’re the police. Would you mind stepping back inside?’

“She scolded, ‘I won’t get back. I rang you last week when I wanted something, and no one came.’ ”

One of Peter’s regular characters works at a mortuary. So he often visits such places. He recalls first witnessing a post-mortem.

“I saw three people on a Monday morning who’d been alive on Friday night,” he said. “I won’t go into the details, but it reduces humans to the status of meat on a butcher’s slab. I went home, looked at my wife and thought, ‘I know what’s inside you.’ I had to get drunk that night. For a long time, I had nightmares. But it was a good thing. It taught me. Now I’m more hardened to such things.”

Several times, Peter became an “honorary member” of the Sussex Police to attend overseas police conferences. When traveling, he ponders a theory. “The best and most exciting cities have strong criminal undertows,” he said. “In the US, I like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Strong criminal elements give those places an edge. They’re not calm or bland.”

Years ago, Peter lived in Toronto. But Canada may have lacked enough evil-doers to keep this crime-writer in material. Meanwhile, Brighton, with its quarter-million people, isn’t huge, but it’s “edgy” and crime-infested, home to “first-division criminals”.

Peter always enjoyed crime stories. As a child, “the stories about Sherlock Holmes riveted me. I read everything that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about him. Grace, the detective in my books, owes more than a nod to Holmes.”

Peter’s novels appear in 26 languages and also reflect his interests in medicine, science and the paranormal. His other titles include Prophecy, Alchemist, The Truth, Denial and Faith.

But is Peter doing the right job? Maybe he should have joined the police. “I wouldn’t be a good officer,” he said. “I’m not brave in that sense. I don’t want to confront 10 guys with knives down a dark alley. Instead, I’m doing what I love, telling stories and writing about the world and its people.”

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