Simon Spurrier's Posts - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T15:51:42ZSimon Spurrierhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/sispurrierhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/60986770?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=sispurrier&xn_auth=noThank $&£% for Lemonjuice -- A Word on Crime Writers and Researchtag:crimespace.ning.com,2008-01-10:537324:BlogPost:1132482008-01-10T14:35:58.000ZSimon Spurrierhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/sispurrier
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">A column I recently wrote for the "Crimescene" website:</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Crime, to a writer, presents a fascinatingly…</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">A column I recently wrote for the "Crimescene" website:</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Crime, to a writer, presents a fascinatingly sleazy little paradox. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">The problem is, no matter how much we’re all supposed to fear and loathe crime: it’s just so bloody entertaining. The problem is, frankly, the way you feel about crime – if you’re a writer – has all to do with context. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Crime outside your house: Bad.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Crime all over your hard-drive, notebooks, fevered imaginings and daydreams: Good.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">The spooky note here is that the distinction isn’t always as clear-cut as it seems. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">For instance, halfway through writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Contract</i> – in the course of which I was obliged to spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking like a real, plausible, not-like-in-the-movies hitman – I began to catch myself sizing-up the people around me as targets. No, really. I’d walk down the street clocking entry points and exit routes round my neighbours’ homes. I’d find myself looking for viable ammo-stashes in my office; scanning the Lonely Hearts pages for coded messages; peering down from high places and wondering – say – at the relative effects of wind-shear on a .30 hollowpoint travelling a fraction above Mach 1 towards <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">him</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">her</i> or… </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">You get the idea.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">And <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">yes</i>, of course, all that predatory analysis stuff is always a little tongue-in-cheek. It’s always idle musing; gone as soon as it’s noticed. But it’ll freak you out, even so, when it shows-up uninvited. You can’t dunk your enquiring senses into the sweaty armpits of Unpleasant Illegality and not go home smelling a little ripe. You can’t spend all day every day writing about criminals without – just occasionally, just dreamily – wondering if you’d be any good at… well… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Being</i> one.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">One way of looking at a crime writer is, at least some of the time, they’re essentially Hypothetical Criminals.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Listen. Out there, right now, crime novels are enjoying a larger share of the fiction market than ever before. Cue all the usual dangers of overabundance: cliché, homogeny, stagnation… So in order to keep audiences on the edge of seats and protagonist-supersleuths suitably challenged, crime writers find themselves obliged to nudge that shady Hypothetical Criminal inside to ever-higher levels of realism, of originality, and of creatively-breaking-the-law...</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">For <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Contract</i>, that meant busting a few preconceptions. That meant letting people know – don’t shoot the messenger – that, sorry: Hollywood lied. Silencers don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">really</i> make that asthmatic little <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">ffft</i>. People don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">really</i> get up and keep running when they’re shot through the leg. Organised crime isn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">really</i> that organised, E-Fit pictures aren’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">really</i> that worthwhile, and that expensive sniper-rifle with a scope like something off the Hubble satellite, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">really</i>: it can’t bullseye-a-baddie from a mile away after all. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">For <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Contract</i>, it also meant winkling-out a few curious little truths. It meant discovering that – say – the micro-creases in those black leather gloves sported by the Hollywood Assassin <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">du jour</i> are every bit as unique, every bit as identifiable, every bit as give-you-away, as human fingerprints. It meant knowing all the best ways to dispose of a body according to where it is, how long you’ve got, and the strength of your stomach. It meant knowing how to buy an illegal gun, how to launder cash, how to avoid being recognised, and how… well… To get away with murder. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Hypothetically speaking.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Of course, for the writer, so long as you’re not actually intending to put any of your underworld revelations to the test, it’s tricky to confirm their veracity. But there’s a danger here, because while it’d be all-too-easy to assume none of the readers are going to know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">either</i> – or at least aren’t going to admit it – the truth is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">there’s always someone who knows</i>.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">My nemesis was a nurse.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">See, there were several little hypothetical criminal tricks I came up with for the benefit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Contract</i> that I was really rather proud of. One had to do with bullets. Conventional mercenary-killer-wisdom – such as it is – suggests you should fill your hollowpoint rounds with poison, then seal them with wax. This means that even if something goes wrong and your shady antihero’s killshot doesn’t quite do its job, there’s still a solid gram of liquid lethality glomming-about in his victim’s circulatory system. Clever, right? Except “poison” is a tricky thing to define at the best of times, and – obsessive research or not – it doesn’t take long to start discounting possibilities. The truth is that pretty much every deadly substance out there is either too expensive, too tricky to get hold of, or takes too damn long to work.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">But, hang on… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Cheap</i>… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Easy to get</i>… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Immediate effects</i>…</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">A gram of pure heroin’ll O.D. a sumo-wrestler. Hell, it’ll O.D. a hardened junkie if it’s followed by grams 2, 3 and 4. With this realisation my Hypothetical Criminal, I thought, had excelled himself.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Enter The Nurse.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">The nurse who’s seen the effects of overdose more times than she can remember. The nurse who knows – only too well – that smack won’t stay in a liquid suspension unless it’s hot. The nurse who gently suggests that a hitman who keeps all his bullets at high temperatures is destined to have no fingers, and the nurse who – in one fell swoop – wipes the big stupid grin off my Hypothetical Criminal’s face. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">There’s always someone who knows.</i></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Crime works best, in fiction, when it bears all the hallmarks of reality. The trick is to check all your facts, to verify all your cliché-busting creativity, to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">make sure it really works</i>, without ever having to test it yourself. This is a lot harder than it sounds.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Just for the record, a little dribble of lemonjuice will keep a gram of highgrade rendered diamorphine in a liquid suspension for as long as you want. Don’t ask how I know this, though to the best of my knowledge I didn’t break any laws finding out. Either way, it saved my bacon.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">So thank %$£# for lemonjuice, and thank %$&# for nurses; because as long as that shady criminal lurking inside remains purely hypothetical, it’s a lot more fun killing clichés than killing anything else. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Listen: it’ll startle you something rotten, halfway through all this research malarkey, when you begin seeing the world in terms of criminals and victims. This is because, sooner or later, stopping yourself from sizing-up all those Potential Targets in the street, it begins to dawn on you that – maybe – some of them are sizing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i> up too. </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 6pt 0cm; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">And they can’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">all</i> be over-immersed writers.</font></span></p>"Disposal" - an excerpt from <i>Contract</i>tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-04-15:537324:BlogPost:247732007-04-15T12:49:41.000ZSimon Spurrierhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/sispurrier
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Disposal of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Corpus Delicti</i>, if you want to know, is not as easy as you’d think.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">The stink of decomposing meat is the biggest problem. Time, forensic traces, bone-digging dogs, dental…</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Disposal of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Corpus Delicti</i>, if you want to know, is not as easy as you’d think. </font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">The stink of decomposing meat is the biggest problem. Time, forensic traces, bone-digging dogs, dental records, hair fragments, oh my.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Listen: throw a body in a lake and the decomposition of its cells will fill its stomach and lungs with gas, bringing it to the surface. You have to stab it once over each pec and twice in the guts. Like letting air out of a tyre.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman"><em>Psssssst.</em></font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Same goes for burial. Most shallow-graves don’t work for shit because the body swells like a mini hillock. Like midget subduction. Bonsai volcanoes.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Throw a body in the sea and piece-by-piece its bits will come loose. You’ve got to make sure it’s weighted all over, bound head-to-foot, or there’ll fingers toes lips tongues eyelids foreskins washed up on the beach.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">Cue fingerprints, DNA testing, undernail skin-fragment analysis.</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman">If you have enough time, and no visitors, doing it piece-by-piece down the plughole is best. For this you’ll need:</font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">A standard hacksaw, with two or three replacement blades.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">A mallet, for ball joints and thick bone..</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">Two dozen large freezer bags, sealable.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">A large freezer.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">Five or six 2 litre bottles of industrial-strength bleach, to cleanse your pipes after every discharge.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">A powerful food processor, with replacement blades. </font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><font face="Times New Roman"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">A</i> lot <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">of replacement blades.</i></font></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">A lot of patience.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">Rubber or plastic sheets, to prevent drips and sprays.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">More replacement blades.</font></i></p>
<p class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="MARGIN: 0cm 46.6pt 0pt 45pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><font face="Times New Roman">Approximately two weeks.</font></i></p>In at the deep end, surrounded by sharks, wearing raw-meat trousers.tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-04-14:537324:BlogPost:243572007-04-14T14:40:09.000ZSimon Spurrierhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/sispurrier
<p><font size="2">People keep acting like I'm mad when I mention how Green I am. Why deny it? I'm a newbie, a n00b, a wannabe, a tryhard. My first novel is published next month - by a decent-sized and perfectly respectable publisher, no less – so I'm permitted, I think, a little quiet smuggery. Fine. But I try to temper that, always, by inserting a thick vein of cynicism into conversations, and people just Don't Like It.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">"Yes," I'll say, nodding politely. "I…</font></p>
<p><font size="2">People keep acting like I'm mad when I mention how Green I am. Why deny it? I'm a newbie, a n00b, a wannabe, a tryhard. My first novel is published next month - by a decent-sized and perfectly respectable publisher, no less – so I'm permitted, I think, a little quiet smuggery. Fine. But I try to temper that, always, by inserting a thick vein of cynicism into conversations, and people just Don't Like It.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">"Yes," I'll say, nodding politely. "I <em>know</em> it's exciting... but, look: there's really no guarantee the book will sell well... In fact, statistically, it'll <em>bomb</em>..."</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Cue looks of utter disappointment and mild disgust. It's like there's some unspoken agreement amongst people of a publishing ilk – and indeed friends, family and other excited acquaintances – that One Does Not Mention the bitter reality. You simply aren't supposed to acknowledge that the odds are stacked against you, that the retailers appear to be actively discouraging new authors from bothering, and that the chances of vast financial success are slightly lower than those of Elvis showing-up in Loch Ness.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">No: instead it's champagne and "oh, of COURSE it'll do well!" and “oh, you’re so humble” and “well done for keeping your feet on the ground” and rich food and blah blah blah. Naturally, secretly, everyone <em>knows</em> the risks; the gloomy probablities. Why, then, is it so frowned-upon to remark upon them?</font></p>
<p><font size="2">The same applies to Greenness. When chatting to those same ubiquitous Industry Types I invariably find myself inserting the caveat: "Well, I'm pretty new to all this..." I find a certain comfort in it, if I'm honest, as if it's okay for me to be drunk on free champagne, breaking wine glasses, smoking in the wrong places at publishing parties and generally Not Schmoozing Right, because: "Well, I'm pretty new to all this..."</font></p>
<p><font size="2">But even so, there's a look of horror. Not because of the newness itself, I think, but because of the sense of <em>confession</em>. I get the impression that Correct Publishing Etiquette requires everyone - everyone - to maintain the facade that they've been involved in the novel trade for centuries, have won countless literary prizes, lunched with Shakespeare, drank with Cervantes and enjoyed a brief fling with Wilde. Fessing-up to being utterly in the dark about anything and everything will, apparently, bring the whole thing crashing down.</font></p>
<p><font size="2">Well not me. I'm new, and proud – to publishing, to writing crime novels, and to this here Crimespace thing. I'm probably making all sorts of ridiculous mistakes, but I'm enjoying myself immensely, am under absolutely no illusions that I'm on the verge of fame and fortune, and all I'm interested in doing is introducing you to my curious alter-ego, Michael. He's not green, he's not pessimisstic about the future, he doesn't get drunk on champagne and he doesn't smoke in the wrong places. He kills people for a living, but don't let that put you off. You can find him, or at least the links to his favourite places, here:</font></p>
<p><a href="http://www.itsallaboutthemoney.co.uk">It's All About The Money.</a></p>