All the Lonely People (27 page)

The Making of
All the Lonely People

All the Lonely People was my first published novel, and holds a special place in my affections. So I am delighted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first hardback edition by seeing the story enjoy a new incarnation as an e-book – a format undreamed of when Harry Devlin arrived on the scene.

Many authors who are labelled as crime novelists did not intend, when they first started writing, to work within a particular genre, and some are troubled by the desire of publishers, booksellers and readers to categorise their fiction. It seems to be relatively unusual to have had a long-nourished ambition to write not just one detective novel, but a whole series of them. Yet that was always my dream.

The dream came when I fell in love with a remarkable woman , - or rather, with what she did - at the tender age of nine. The woman was Agatha Christie, and her detective stories were the first adult novels that I read. From the beginning, I was fascinated by the way Christie wove her plots, and shifted suspicion between her characters, combining subtle clues with red herrings so as to come up with one surprise solution after another. Her ingenuity took my breath away. Ever since I had learned to read, I had yearned to write the kind of stories I most enjoyed. An only child, I had plenty of time to myself, and to a large extent I lived in my imagination, making up countless stories for my own amusement. Once I discovered Agatha Christie, I became determined to write mysteries that teased and entertained others as her books teased and entertained me.

I devoured every detective novel that my heroine had written, and when I ran out of new Christies, I turned to other crime novelists, including Dorothy L Sayers, and two stalwarts of a later generation, Michael Gilbert and Julian Symons. From them, I learned that the mystery novel can offer a range of pleasures in addition to a satisfying plot – strong characterisation, evocative settings, and an insightful portrayal of society. And, in a series of detective novels, an author who cares to do so has the scope to chart not only the developing life of the detective – and the supporting cast – but also changes affecting the world in which they live.

I'd started writing mysteries at primary school, producing a series of tales, carefully handwritten in exercise books, featuring a detective duo called Melwyn Hughes and Sir Edward Gladstone; they were an updated version of the Holmes and Watson from a favourite series of films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. At grammar school, I continued to read avidly and fantasise about becoming a published crime writer, but although I wrote a few more detective stories, including one Sherlockian pastiche, I became too self-conscious to repeat the uninhibited melodrama of my pre-teen efforts.

At school, I never came across anyone else who shared my ambition to write, and never met a published author. My parents, understandably dubious about my single-minded focus on such an elusive goal, encouraged me to train for a “proper job” to fund my living costs while I tried to produce something worthy of publication. So I decided to study law at university, and when I went to Oxford, at last I found myself surrounded by would-be novelists, and with the chance to attend talks given by leading authors. I never plucked up the courage to introduce myself to them and seek practical tips, but I've never forgotten, when nowadays I meet people with an ambition to write, how much constructive encouragement can help.

As a student, I dabbled in different types of writing, publishing a little poetry, and having a radio play – a comedy about a bigamist called “The Marrying Kind” – broadcast locally. But when I moved from full-time education to a working life, as an impoverished (no minimum wage in those days) articled clerk in a firm of Leeds solicitors, I returned to crime. But only in the fictional sense. The bleak reality of life as a criminal lawyer never appealed to me.

In long hand, I wrote a breezy thriller about the disappearance of the football star, rejoicing in the title of Dead Shot. I paid someone to type it up, but ran out of cash after a few chapters. I decided I must teach myself to touch-type, and duly did so, but by that time I had come to the conclusion that Dead Shot simply wasn't good enough to deserve publication. So the book as a whole was never typed, and never sent anywhere. A good thing, too, I think....

By this time, I had qualified as a solicitor, and moved to Liverpool. My choice of firm was dictated by my judgment of where I would have the best chance of pursuing a career as a crime novelist. This ruled out the big firms, which demanded that young lawyers devote themselves body and soul to fee-earning, especially after one partner in a leading practice saw mention on my CV of my ambition to write fiction (I was an honest but naive job-seeker) and asked, with a disbelieving sneer, if I saw myself as a budding Graham Greene. The firm I joined paid much lower wages, but its two senior partners had published legal books, and one of them was a frustrated novelist. He and I later tried to collaborate on a “It Shouldn't Happen to a Solicitor” sort of story in the James Herriott mould, but the contrasting styles arising from our different perspectives meant the generation gap proved unbridgeable.

I was encouraged to write for the legal press, and after I'd ghost-written a book review for my boss, the first article under my own name appeared when I was 25. After that, there was no stopping me. I lost count long ago of the number of legal articles I've published, but it is well over one thousand. At the age of 26 I approached a publisher of legal books, and persuaded them to commission me to write a textbook on the subject of buying business computers. At the time, I'd advised on just one such transaction, but I brimmed with the confidence of youth. And I told myself that, even if my legal experience was sketchy, I could write readably on the driest topic. When Understanding Computer Contracts was published, I was intensely proud. At last I had published a book! What is more, it earned excellent reviews and gained me a reputation, however undeserved, as an expert in an emerging field of law. A year later, it was succeeded by Understanding Dismissal Law, a subject I knew a bit more about, and a string of other legal books followed.

The experience of seeing my books on the shelves was gratifying, but I remained as desperate as ever to write a crime novel of quality. The experience of Dead Shot had at least shown that I possessed the stamina and drive to produce a full-length mystery, and that in itself made writing the book which never saw the light of day an invaluable apprenticeship. Stamina and drive matter, because so many would-be writers give up too soon – there are always countless good reasons to devote the long hours spent writing to some other, more immediately fruitful, occupation.

I decided that if I were to write a book suitable as the first entry in a long-running series, I needed to have three strong components. First, a detective character who could credibly become involved in a number of mysteries. Second, a strong setting that had not been over-used. Third, a hook that would entice people to read on.

I wondered about the old adage “write what you know”. As advice, it has limitations – I wanted to write about murder, but thankfully I had never been involved in a murder case. At that time, I'd never met anyone who had committed murder, or anyone who later became a murder victim. I was strongly attracted by the escapism of fiction. But I was also keen to write a novel which conveyed an impression of realism. I didn't know any police officers or private eyes, but I did know something about the lives that lawyers lead. And this resulted in my inventing the character of a likeable but unlucky, and rather down--at-heel, solicitor whose work brought him into uncomfortably close contact with crime and criminals. Thus was Harry Devlin born.

I've lived in Cheshire or Wirral, neither of them far from Liverpool, almost all of my life, though I have never had a home in the city itself. But I have worked a stone's throw from the Liver Building and the River Mersey for more than 30 years, and the city still enthrals me. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of its people are marvellously kind and good-humoured, while its history is extraordinary. Once Liverpool was the second city of the British Empire, but it fell on hard times in the 20
th
century, and decline accelerated after the Second World War. Many people who are unfamiliar with the city associate it as much with crime and deprivation as with the Beatles, but stereotyping Liverpool and Liverpudlians is a huge mistake. Not long after I arrived in Merseyside, the area convulsed with riots, and one week-end, as I took a visiting friend from London on a bus trip through a riot-scarred housing estate near where I lived, I asked myself whether I'd made a mistake in re-locating. When I'd contemplated a move from Leeds, people had warned me against Liverpool; it's a city that arouses strong feelings among both supporters and detractors, and the detractors tend to be in the majority. But I think the detractors are profoundly mistaken, even though Liverpool occasionally seems to be its own worst enemy. After the riots, a senior politician, Michael Heseltine, guided the city along the long and winding road of regeneration. A spectacular garden festival was held, the Albert Dock and its environs were redeveloped, and, despite many mis-steps along the way, Liverpool began to fulfil its potential.

Where better to set a series of mystery novels? Liverpool's critics constantly associate the city with crime, even though statistics do not really support the prejudice. But Liverpool has plenty of mean streets, and you would think it is a more credible location for a long-running series of murder mysteries than Oxford, or Midsomer. And there is so much about the place that is intriguing and deserves to be better known. I thought that if someone like me, from leafy, Cheshire, could fall for gritty Liverpool and witty Liverpudlians, it would be an appealing challenge to write books that portrayed the place affectionately, as well as with warts and all, so as to help people unfamiliar with Liverpool to see it differently. This was always in my mind – to write the books mainly for those who, like me, were not born and bred Scousers, though I'm always glad (and relieved) when people who have lived there all their lives tell me how much they enjoy the books.

I was determined that my detective would be a local man with a dogged love for his native city. I toyed with calling him Harry Dowd, after a goalkeeper of the Sixties, but settled on the surname of Devlin, which had an Irish touch that seemed suitable. Oddly enough, there is a long list of fictional detectives called Devlin, some pre-dating Harry, some more recent, but somehow Harry's name seems absolutely right for him.

So the detective and the locale were sorted; I just needed a strong story-line. I worried too much about plotting to begin with, but eventually I came up with the right starting point. Harry's gorgeous, but estranged, wife comes back into his life; he thinks they can start again, but his hopes are destroyed when she is found murdered. Worse, Harry is prime suspect. So he has a double motivation to solve the mystery. He needs to clear his name, as well as to do justice to his beloved Liz.

The key elements of the novel, and of the series, were signposted on the very first page, in the context of a film by Woody Allen – Love and Death. But the central theme of this particular book was the fear of loneliness, and what better way to reference that than with a Beatles song? ‘Eleanor Rigby' provided the phrase that gave the book its title.

I decided on a straightforward linear narrative. Everything would be seen from Harry's perspective. In later books, I have enjoyed experimenting with viewpoint, but for a fast-moving thriller, a single viewpoint helps drive the narrative forward. I felt that a powerful motive for murder was essential, and once I came up with my killer's psychological motivation, I was on a roll.

As far as I can remember, I started work on the story in 1987. The opening chapter went through countless re-writes. I submitted an early version to a competition for first chapters of proposed novels that was run by Southport Writers' Circle. The judge was Hugh C. Rae, a prolific and accomplished writer. He didn't award my effort a prize, but years later I had the pleasure of talking crime fiction with him one evening at a Crime Writers' Association conference in Scotland.

I didn't do much research for the book, although I did look round a flat rented by a fellow lawyer in the Albert Dock which became the model for Harry's home on the fictitious Empire Dock development. This occupied a site which was a car park when I wrote the book, but is nowadays home to a gleaming conference centre. Oddly enough, I needed to consult professional colleagues about the Liverpool Bridewell and Magistrates' Court that feature in the early scenes. Harry and I might both be Liverpool lawyers, but we inhabit different professional worlds – thank goodness. And I talked to a nightclub singer who happened to be a member of Southport Writers' Circle, for background that helped me to depict the Ferry Club. But I didn't, for instance, know anyone remotely like Matt, Ruby, Peanuts, Trisha, Froggy, Coghlan or Dame, let alone Skinner or Macbeth. I simply made them up. Nor, at that time, did I have much experience of bereavement, so I had to work hard to think myself into Harry's mind after the death of Liz. The model for Pasture Moss came from a comparable scavenger-haunted waste heap in Wirral which featured in a depressing article written for The Sunday Times Magazine. That scrap heap had a potent symbolic value, especially as a crime scene, and the mood of the story was inescapably bleak, although lightened with humour. However, I was intent on ending the book on a note of hope about the future for both Harry and his home town.

I continued to work on the manuscript, and joined the CWA on the strength of a publishing a string of non-fiction articles about the genre. After I finished the first draft, one agent looked at a few sample chapters, only to reject them, but a my first CWA conference, in Scarborough, a Wirral-based writer, Eileen Dewhurst, who became a good friend, recommended me to her agency. Mandy Little saw something in the manuscript, and took me on; she has been my agent ever since, and her belief in me as a writer has been a source of strength, as well as a huge motivation to justify her faith.