'Dead' writer talking

Published on January 27, 2008

Manote Tripathi

The Nation

Sherlock Holmes would be gobsmacked: Cops smarter than private detectives? But yes, you can stay home now, Holmes, because Brighton Police detective superintendent Roy Grace is on the case.

Grace is the creation of British author Peter James, who was in Bangkok last week promoting his latest crime thriller, "Not Dead Enough", and insisting that the days of private eyes outsmarting police are long gone. Modern forensics has made sure of that.

"The police today are better equipped technologically and scientifically," says James, whose Roy Grace makes effective use of the hitech crime unit at Sussex House in Hollingbury.

In "Not Dead Enough", wealthy businessman Brian Bishop is accused of murdering his socialite wife Katie. He was supposedly far away at a golf tournament, but the evidence is piled up against him.

Grace is called in, and soon determines that Katie was having an affair - and that someone might have stolen Bishop's identity and framed him for the slaying.  

For "Dead Simple", James concocted a wedding prank that went badly wrong, with the groom being buried alive in a coffin. The basis for his last novel, "Looking Good Dead", was even more intriguing.

"I was phoned up by a police sergeant to come and look at a videotape obtained in a raid. He showed me this tape of a beautiful girl, about 14, being stabbed to death.

"'Is this made up, or real?' he asked me. We found out that there are very sick people who pay money to have movies made of somebody being killed. There's a big market for it.

"So I wanted to write about it."

"Not Dead Enough" stems from James' fascination with the colossal scale of Internet crime and the fragility of online security.

"It would be very easy for someone with access to change your history," he says. "If I have access to police files, I could give you a criminal record and change your whole background. I could make it look like you killed your best friend when you were 12. Everybody is open to identity theft."

The setting for James' novels is invariably Brighton, the city of his birth. It's a beautiful seaside resort to visitors, but it has a sinister underbelly. In the 1930s it was the crime capital of England, he points out.

"Brighton has edginess to it. That's what gives it vibrancy. When the railways arrived they brought stuff like cockfighting, racecourses and illegal gambling. It's a Premier League place for criminals because it offers an exit - the harbour or Gatwick Airport - and London is only 50 minutes away by train.

"Brighton also has more antiques shops than anywhere else in England, so it's a terrific place to get rid of stolen jewellery, pictures and other items."

Add to that a large population of illicit drug users, and James has a source of continual inspiration.

A keen student of the criminal mindset, he finds the dark side of people fascinating. What shocks people most about crime stories is the ordinariness of the perpetrators.

Giving a lecture to FBI detectives in the US recently, James learned of the serial killer who called himself "BTK", for "by torture kill". He'd murdered 11 women in 20 years, targeting only those who buy Barbie dolls and first stalking them for a year.

"His identity came to light after he sent a letter to a local newspaper detailing how he killed each victim," James says. "He felt the need to do so because the newspaper had erroneously described what had happened.

"His letter explained how the police had got it all wrong and said he could prove it was him who did it. Eventually the police got him from the DNA traces he left on the stamps."

The killer turned out to be in his 50s, with a beautiful wife and two teenage daughters, and working as a church official.

"The real fascination lies in what makes people do dark thinks," says James. "There's really no one common denominator.

"This guy got sexual pleasure out of doing this, but I think everyone is capable of killing. We all have the ability to do it. What most people don't have is the ability to live with their conscience afterward. Only a small percentage of the population can commit a crime and live with it."

Members of this minority are visible to an observant eye, James believes, and police officers are adept at spotting them because they share a specific worldview with criminals that's different from everyone else's.

"If you watch a cop come into a bar, he'll look at every single face. Criminals look at the world this way, too. They have the same skewed morality, and at some point their eyes meet."

James recalls riding with a plainclothes police detective in an unmarked car. Neither of them was wearing a seatbelt in case they needed to get out quickly. While stopped at an intersection, the detective was on his mobile phone as a pair of men walked past and gave them the thumbsup sign.

"I said to the detective, 'Are they friends?'

"He said, 'No, they've been in jail for drug dealing and they just want to let us know they've spotted us - two men with no seatbelts, one guy on a mobile phone - the cops!'"

Having earned the trust of the police, James likes to see himself as their ambassador. There have been misconceptions and unfair stereotyping for too long, he says, and too often they seem like they just don't care.

"But I know they're doing their job because they think they can make a difference in this world," James says. "If you're a policeman, you're never actually off duty. You always have to be there. They're not just people who like banging you up or stopping your car. They're the glue that holds society together."

Published by Pan Books, "Not Dead Enough", is available in Thailand at Asia Books.