Critical Mass Books: Murder, He Wrote

Sitting gingerly in an armchair in the Westbury Hotel, bestselling British crime author Peter James is the picture-perfect image of a writer. Soft spoken and polite, the 64-year-old’s grey hair, glasses and quick smile give him the air of your favourite English teacher.

But as it turns out, the author isn’t the delicate creature he appears. Far from it. He explains that his slow movements are the result of an accident last month. He flipped a car he was racing in a decidedly dare-devil manner.
“I rolled the car about four times at 85 miles per hour,” James explains gleefully, showing me a shocking photograph of a car hurtling through the air, upside down. “I got a couple of cracked ribs. It was that guy behind me, he tried to overtake me and knocked me sideways. He’s going to be in my next book now.”
James cackles. “But horribly dismembered!”
Ah, the joys of writing! Revenge is sweet – especially when millions of people will read all about it.
James, former head of UK film company Movision Entertainment and a film producer whose credits include the Al Pacino version of The Merchant of Venice, always had a talent for telling stories. But it was in 2005 that he struck gold by creating a character called Roy Grace. The Brighton-based Detective Inspector has since become the focus of ten books and counting. The series has sold over three million copies worldwide. James has proven prolific, releasing a book a year, with the subjects of his meticulously researched plots ranging from child trafficking, to 9/11, to American gangsters. Art thieves feature in his latest instalment, Dead Man’s Time. He is fascinated with police work and frequently accompanies officers on raids and patrols.
“I just find that world fascinating from a human perspective,” he says, “because I soon realized that nobody sees more of human life in a 30-year career than a police officer. Nobody. The police officer sees everything. I sometimes do a 12-hour shift with the Duty Inspector in Brighton, where you start at seven o’clock in the morning. Onone occasion, the first call he took was a three-month-old baby who died during the night. Now the parents are distraught, they have to be given pastoral care – but they might have murdered the baby. So the police have to mind them, but are also treating that place as a crime scene. It’s extremely delicate, and that’s on top of just facing that horrible situation. The psychological resources needed to handle such incredible circumstances are unbelievable – as are their stories.”
Having braved Hollywood for so many years, James has a few stories of his own, and admits that over-entitled and egotistic celebrities are always good material.
“The worst are people who become overnight successes. I remember working with Peter Sellers on a Benson and Hedges cigarette commercial being shot in Cyprus. It was Peter, Spike Milligan and James Villiers. Peter was being paid £100,000 – a fortune in 1974, the most any actor had ever been paid for a day’s work. He was supposed to walk out of a bonded warehouse smoking a cigarette. But suddenly, during filming, he declared he was anti-smoking and refused to do it – and then Spike Milligan joined him, in solidarity. You just realise the impact that being constantly indulged has on people’s egos.”
Hollywood is also creeping its way into James’ next Roy Grace novel, which addresses the simultaneously terrifying and pathetic world of celebrity stalking. James has been observing the work of the LA police, who specialise in protecting A-list celebrities from crazed fans.
“They said they have three kinds of stalking,” James explains. “There’s the new star whose career is on the way down. So they call up and invent a stalker to get newspaper coverage. Then they get the second type of celebrity – and this is quite a few – who will say, ‘We are being stalked and want police protection. We want to go shopping in Rodeo Drive tomorrow night but we don’t want any attention, so will you close that area off?’ You find out they’re tweeting about it. And the third kind are fans of people like Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. Selena Gomez had this guy, I think he was Romanian, who became completely nuts and obsessive. They found him in the grounds of the house with an AK-47 and some knives. This guy was insane. He said: ‘It’s written in the scriptures that Selena and I will be together and the plan is that we will meet and she will come away with me and for four years we won’t touch each other.’ That’s an interpretation of scripture I hadn’t heard before!”
James’ novels have been previously adapted for television. He was less than impressed with the results. He’s thus staying firmly in control of the upcoming film adaptation of Dead Simple, which has already attracted the attention of directors such as Roman Polanski. The author admits that he’s hoping his Hollywood connections will help him get his dream cast of Emily Blunt and Michael Fassbender, and that if successful, the film will be the beginning of a long-running franchise.
“As long as the audience connects with the message of the film, I’m happy, so you could always change the actors. Hey, James Bond did it. Let’s set our sights that high!”