Changing horses in midstream is generally a course of action that’s advised against. I can certainly appreciate it’s a maneuver with a high degree of difficulty – requiring that the individual doing the changing is both a skilled equestrian and (should the procedure go wrong) a strong swimmer – but is it really something we should be afraid of?
Yes, I’m well aware that a change of direction for those engaged in creative pursuits can be a tricky business (check out Dolly Parton’s thrash metal album*) but the risk involved is almost always one worth taking. No, it doesn’t always work out exactly as one hoped and can occasionally upset your loyal fans (see Marilyn Manson’s folk musical about squirrels**) but sometimes that creative urge is just too powerful to resist.
In the case of writers, when the voice inside your head tells you it’s time to do something different, it’s almost always a voice that you ignore at your peril. Admittedly, in my case, it’s the same voice that tells me I haven’t got enough guitars or that I must eat all the biscuits, but my point stands. That voice told me loud and clear that it was time to write a different sort of book, but then it got cocky and carried away, insisting that I create a brand new detective (leaving my regular detective Tom Thorne behind for a while) and begin a whole new series. My first new series in over twenty years.
I know, right? But it was quite insistent, so I didn’t want to argue.
To be serious, there were reasons over and above the nagging voice that lay behind the creation of Declan Miller and the writing of The Last Dance. Miller was a character I had originally created for a commissioned television project, so was someone I’d been living with for almost two years. When that TV project began to stall (don’t they always?) the obvious step was to bring him to life on the page instead. It also seemed like the right time, because the most recent Thorne novel – The Murder Book – ended in such a way that it felt like a good place to hit pause and give the poor bugger a break, on top of which, I’d also been keen to write something that was very different in tone to the Thorne novels. Having worked as a stand-up comedian for twenty years, I’ve been fighting the impulse to put jokes into the books for a long time, so the idea of writing something for which that impulse could be happily given into was too tempting to resist.
That said, I should point out that, broadly speaking, my subject matter has not changed. Declan Miller is a detective. I’m still writing about death and pain and loss, but looked at through a more…humorous prism. I don’t see this as remotely incongruous, because I firmly believe that humour and seriousness are not and never should be mutually exclusive. I would go further and suggest that this blend is one that reflects the realities of life far more accurately than a book that is unremittingly bleak or one that is unashamedly a gagfest. We need light and dark, simple as that, because that’s what life is like.
A comical remark at a funeral.
A heart attack at a wedding.
So yes, this new book is certainly lighter in tone than the Thorne novels I’ve been writing for almost twenty-five years, but don’t even try to suggest that it’s…cosy. No really, please don’t, because I’ll get quite annoyed. Cosy is a word that’s bandied about far too readily these days and applied to books that are, most of the time, anything but. There are no vicarages in The Last Dance, there are no tea parties or gratuitous gatherings of suspects so that the clever detective can unmask the killer. Admittedly, neither is there much violence on the page, but that (I’d like to believe) is a reflection of my own maturity as a writer and not down to any new-found squeamishness. I’ve simply come to believe that less is more and that some things are more powerful and ultimately more disturbing when left to the reader’s imagination.
So, if it’s not cosy, what is it?
That’s an excellent question, thanks for asking. Well, I suppose I’m aiming for something that’s tragi-comic. A book and a central character that can arouse laughter through tears, or vice versa, as with the work of Chekhov (he suggested somewhat pretentiously). It’s probably worth pointing out at this juncture that I’m referring to the Russian playwright as opposed to the character from Star Trek. Though he’s obviously a major influence too…
Declan Miller is a man defined by the violent death of his wife. Grief has no template and no two people afflicted by it suffer in the same way. Miller’s response to its ravages are, to say the least, idiosyncratic and while he has enormous empathy for those left to cope with the murder of loved ones – for those who are suffering what he has so recently suffered – he does not care very much at all about anyone or anything else. He doesn’t care about the way he solves a case or what others think about him and he certainly doesn’t care about anyone he upsets along the way.
He is free to upset anyone he wants to.
Oh, and he dances. Did I mention that?
If I may return briefly to the whole horses and streams business, I’m well aware that twenty-three novels in, I’m not really in mid-anything. I’m almost certainly nearing the far side of the bloody stream, but it’s never too late. I should also make it clear that, at some point soon, I will be getting back onto my original horse (if it hasn’t bolted or drowned) and writing about Tom Thorne again.
For now though, it’s all about detective Sergeant Declan Miller and his debut in The Last Dance. It’s about ballroom dancing and pet rats and…jokes. And I’m sure we can all agree that, things being as they are, we need them more than ever.
*Actually, well worth a listen.
**I remain particularly fond of the song “Tufty’s Lost His Nuts.”
MARK BILLINGHAM has twice won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and also won the Sherlock Award for Best Detective Created by a British Author. His books, which include the critically acclaimed Tom Thorne series, have been translated into twenty-five languages and have sold over six million copies. He lives in London.
