Val
McDermid lives near Manchester and has had, over the years, a
professional interest in Coronation Street, which makes her an
expert on the northern soap star and explains the extremely convincing
portrayal of Gloria Kendal in Starstruck.
1997 saw the publication of The Wire in the Blood, the chilling
sequel to the Gold Dagger award winning The Mermaids Singing.
With these two novels, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan took their places
alongside Kate Brannigan and Lindsay Gordon, as the latest of
Val's distinctive sleuths. Here, however, the spotlight's firmly
on Kate Brannigan, and Val joins us to talk about her return in
Starstruck.
This is your fourth novel featuring Kate Brannigan. Are there aspects of yourself in Kate?
Are there qualities you admire in her, and are there any qualities you feel she could work on?
'She shares my sense of humour. It's the one thing a writer can't invent. To some extent, she shares my politics, though I`m probably to the left of her.
I admire her tenacity, her logical processes, her ability to function on minimal sleep and the way she always
manages to come up with the smart retort and the courage to deliver it. I think she could loosen up a bit - being a Virgo,
she's got those pernickety anal-retentive qualities that drive an untidy, disorganised slut like me crazy.
Kate Brannigan is exactly like Norman Bates in Psycho - if she'd murdered somebody, her first instinct would be to mop up the
mess in the bathroom.'
As a character, has she developed as you expected,
or do you find that your characters seem to want to head off in completely new directions?
''I
never really thought about what would happen to Kate in the
long term - it's generally been a book-by-book progression,
so she has developed in a more or less organic way rather than
having my preconceptions foisted on her. It's been more in relation
to subsidiary characters that things have failed to work out
as I'd imagined, and characters have demanded a different destiny.
For example, when she started out, she was the junior partner
in an agency, reflecting the reality for most women who start
out in the private eye business. But by the third book, it had
become clear to me that her partner Bill was less useful and
a lot less interesting as a character than I had expected so
I had to lay plans to remove him altogether because he bored
me! '
Other characters have become much more important than I ever
intended. Gizmo, for example, I introduced purely as a plot
device to get some information Kate couldn't acquire herself.
Now he's a member of the firm. Linda Shaw was only ever intended
to be the nasty cop's sidekick, but she seems to be finding
a life of her own. And because time does pass in the series,
office manager Shelley's teenage kids are growing up and now
her student son is working for Kate part-time. The fact that
characters do leap off the page and seize my imagination is
one of the things that helps keep the series fresh, I suspect.'
What gave you the idea for Starstruck
and, particularly, for Dorothea Dawson 'Seer to the Stars'. Is
astrology something that interests you?
'I've always been fascinated by popular culture, so writing about soap was always somewhere on my agenda. I suppose it was the launch of the National Lottery and the sudden prominence of Mystic Meg that gave my imagination a kick-start, though I would emphasise that Dorothea is absolutely not based on Mystic Meg. It was more that suddenly astrology was high-profile again, as it had been with Russell Grant in the early 80s and so it was in the front of my mind. I am interested in astrology and over the years I've picked up quite a lot of information about it. I'm not talking here about the daft predictions in newspapers and magazines, but rather the individually tailored horoscope.
'There's no logical reason why the position of indifferent planets at our birth should have an impact on personality, but I've been impressed by how often detailed personal horoscopes are remarkably accurate. I'm a Gemini with Cancer rising, and for those who know about this sort of thing, it does say something about me! There do seem to be trends in my life that are not explicable by mere coincidence. For example, almost all my close friends are Librans (air signs, like Gemini) or Capricorns and Virgoans (earth signs). My relationships with fire signs have almost always followed the same pattern of: great closeness, then an explosion, then an embarrassing fizzling out. I could go on, but you're already falling off your chair ...'
Do you find - particularly when you have an established character like Kate - that she will suggest plot situations and storylines to you, or do you have an idea for a plot and then see how Kate deals with it? Which way round does it work?
'What
usually comes first for me is an idea for a story that I want
to tell. I know very early on in the story-telling process whether
it's a Kate Brannigan, a Tony Hill & Carol Jordan, a Lindsay
Gordon or something quite different. It's something that has
become more finely honed with experience. For example, the central
plot idea for Dead
Beat had been rolling around in my head for years,
but the only character I knew how to write was my first detective,
Lindsay Gordon. I knew instinctively this wasn't a story she
could tell. But as soon as I started thinking about Kate, I
just knew she was the missing piece in the jigsaw of that particular
story. I had to invent Tony & Carol when I had the idea for
The Mermaids Singing because it clearly couldn't be a Kate Brannigan
story.'
If you mention crime novels to anyone, I'm sure the first thing that leaps into their minds is, 'Oh, Sherlock Holmes', 'Oh, Hercule Poirot', 'Oh, Dalziel and Pascoe', 'Oh, Kate Brannigan' ... Why do we, as readers, fix on the central characters in detective fiction and demand them back, time and time again? What is the cause of this addiction?
'Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of crime fiction. Because in our hearts we 'know' that murders don't happen like this and crimes are not solved by detectives like these, we have to engage in a substantial suspension of disbelief for the duration of the novel, more so than with any other fictional form. And this works best when there is a central character we can identify with or become attached to. So by the end of the book, we feel like we've travelled with that character on a journey that can sometimes be emotionally and intellectually exhausting; we've made a connection. And if we like them, we want to go out with them again. Sometimes we even fall in love with them...'
Do you think it at all odd that the power of characterisation should be so essential in a genre where you would imagine that PLOT would be key?
'It's not so surprising; there are only so many plots available! F. Tennyson Jesse, the writer, journalist and critic, propounded the theory that there are only six motives for murder, which doesn't give enormous scope for variation. It's characterisation that makes novels individual and interesting, whether they're crime novels or not. If you gave the same plot to me, Reg Hill, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Mike Phillips, you'd end up with four novels so disparate that the readers probably wouldn't notice the story was the same! Agatha Christie is often criticised for being all plot and no character, but mostly, I think, by people who haven't read her best work. The Murder at the Vicarage, for example, is full of sly characterisation that pricks pomposity, snobbery and bullying. You need a strong plot for a crime novel to function at its most effective, but it's far from the sole requirement.'
Is it possible to look at your characters from the point of view of 'good' and 'bad' and, if so, what are the qualities that separate them? Are there qualities, for example, that you would unconditionally praise or condemn - in real life as well as fiction?
'I suppose, in most respects, I'm a moral relativist. I'm uncomfortable with moral absolutes; most of us inhabit the grey areas anyway. While I don`t subscribe to the end justifying the means, (because from time to time the effects of the means can outweigh any possible good outcome) I think it's sometimes necessary, for example, for Kate to break the law if it is the only way of bringing someone to book who is guilty of greater crimes. I suppose what divides the good guys and the bad guys, in my books, is exploitation. The bad guys are the ones who exploit the weak and the dispossessed and the good guys are the ones who try to redress the balance. It's hard for me to answer questions like this, because like most of us, I operate on an instinctual level when I'm writing as much as when I'm out there doing the living thing. In general, I stand in praise of honesty. I like myself least when I'm being dishonest (which comes easy to a Gemini!) and it's the quality I value in those around me. I loathe the abuse of power, whether by politicians or by adults who have children in their care or by anyone else who uses their advantage to impose their will. And I have an abiding mistrust of people who change their names...'
And finally, as a writer of crime and psychological fiction - do you believe in the existence of evil?
'No. I believe that people do terrible, incomprehensible things to each other, but I don't believe there's some independent entity out there like a virus that you can catch if you don't wrap yourself up warmly enough in the robe of sanctimony. I always think it's such a cop-out when people talk about murderers or child rapists as evil monsters or madmen. It lets the rest of us right off the hook, which is not what we mostly deserve.'
© HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2000. |
