Interview: Chris Simms
Chris Simms is a crime novelist whose work I have blogged about before. He is one of the rising stars of the genre and kindly agreed to be grilled by me for this site.
SP: The first book of yours I read was Pecking Order
CS: I worked on one as a teenager – for all of three hours before walking out. The experience obviously haunted me. I was also interested in the tendency of people to willingly commit atrocities if they believe authority is behind them. (Think recent events in Abu Ghraib.) The battery farm employed plenty of people who killed chickens for amusement – so in Pecking Order I had one of them duped into believing he had been enrolled as an agent on a very secret, very sinister, Government project.
SP: There is a strong sense of place and location in your novels and notably the plots shifted to Manchester in recent books. Does that reflect your own movements or was there another reason for this?
CS: To be honest, when I moved publishers to Orion they expressed a strong desire to see me write a few books set very firmly in Manchester. I am influenced by my surroundings and, though I’ve now lived here over 10 years, I still find the city fascinating.
SP: Also, you have opted for a recurring central character, DI Jon Spicer, in the last three novels. Was that a deliberate attempt to cultivate a series feel for your books? CS: Yes – I wanted to establish a lead character a few years younger than me so I could, over the course of a few books, have him go through all the life stages I’ve been through. (Marriage, kids, career hassles, grudgingly accepting you’re too old to play competitive sport, losing the ability to party for more than one night in a row etc.) A great by-product of this is how he’s grown with each novel to become his own person.
SP: What, for you as a reader, makes for a great crime novel?
CS: I think tension – the must-turn-the-page stuff you can weave into plots that involve life and death. Plus glimpses into truly cracked minds.
SP: And how do you try to address those areas as a writer?
CS: Tension is as simple as cutting between viewpoints – but doing so at precisely the right moment. I picture it like spinning plates, running back and forth giving a quick tweak here, a quick tweak there…
As for glimpses into cracked minds, I don’t know…it seems to come naturally somehow!
SP: A question about the mechanics of writing for you. How do you do it? Desk or laptop? Silence or music? Disciplined or lazy? What is your routine?
CS: I’m very monastic – a small, silent room with a desk, pad and pencil. No phone, internet or music. I have to be very disciplined because my opportunity to write occurs only on Wednesdays and Fridays between 9.15 in the morning and lunch. (After I’ve dropped the older kids off at school and before the toddler-terror-twins get back from nursery.) The other days I’m in an advertising agency doing freelance work.
SP: What are you working on next?
CS: I’m currently a good way into the 5th DI Spicer novel. His wayward younger brother, Dave, has been chopped into bits and left in bin bags on top of a Peak District hill. DI Spicer’s violent temper is set to really go off in this one.
SP: Who would play DI Spicer if you could pick any actor for a screen version?
CS: He’s 6’4” and 15 ½ stone. If you’re familiar with England’s rugby team, a player called Joe Worsley really fits the bill.
SP: And finally, I always ask guests at the blog to recommend a favourite book. What would you pick?
CS: He hasn’t fared too well at your hands, but I’ll go for Cormac McCarthy and his novel, Blood Meridian
So there you have it, some interesting insights into the commercial decisions behind writing novels. It is also remarkable that he is able to write with so small a window of opportunity. I have greatly enjoyed Chris' books and do recommend them if you like a bit of crime. He was recently selected as one of the Waterstone's 25 authors for the future so it isn't just me saying that.
His latest novel is Savage Moon
Very well done, Scott, it's a quite stirring and vivid interview. Though i don't agree so much with 'tension' as the most important ingredient for a good crime novel. Much more since the particular genre has upgraded itself to the high quality shelves of literature with writers like Camilleri, Ignatio Taibo, Tierry Jonquet, Yasmina Khadra pointing more to a mixture of fine intelligence and excellent literature. Though i do reckon that there are a few different genres into the largest area of crime novel with quite distinguished lines between them. For example Montalban's or Simenon's way had nothing to do with Ruth Rendell or even Ian Rankin.
Also a quite remarkable case for me, is Alexandra Marinina, with her books translated in 25 languages.
I agree totally though about Blood Meridian, it had blown me away too!
Posted by: poppy | December 11, 2007 at 11:01 AM
As a teen, I worked in a battery farm a gazillion years ago. Seems things haven't changed much. Chickens are the dumbest creatures on earth and quite vicious when you're trying to collect their eggs. I wore leather gloves, yet they still managed to skewer me.
Posted by: Thimble | December 11, 2007 at 07:45 PM
'Savage Moon' didn't appeal but I want to read 'Pecking order', must pop over to The Friday Project and see if you've got it for sale.
Posted by: DJ Kirkby | December 12, 2007 at 10:43 AM
Scott - Read 'Between the Lines' after your earlier Chris Simms post. Really enjoyed it - depsite the ridiculous coincidence that brings the book to a climax - so will be getting more Chris Simms books. Chris's portrayals of the two 'weirdos' in the book were worryingly well done, so I was releived to see in this interview that he some over as quite normal.
Like you I am a sucker for books in a series so will look forward to the DI Spicer novels.
Posted by: Matthew | December 12, 2007 at 11:22 AM