Author of the DI Wilkins mysteries Simon Mason talks to us about his latest novel Lost and Never Found and gives us a sneak peek at his upcoming thriller, A Voice in the Night.
Simon Mason has pursued parallel careers as a publisher and an author, whose YA crime novels Running Girl, Kid Got Shot and Hey, Sherlock! feature the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith. A former Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, he has also taught at Oxford Brookes University and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
At first he wrote books for adults, then books for children, which grew up at roughly the same rate his own children grew up, and now he is back writing books for adults again. His latest series for adults is the DI Wilkins mysteries. His novels have been shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Branford Boase Prize for Best First Children’s Novel, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Costa Prize for Best Children’s Book, and have won the Betty Trask for Best First Novel and the Crimefest Prize for Best YA Crime Novel.
You can find Simon's latest book, Lost and Never Found, which is published by riverrun on 19th January, and his other titles on our catalogue.
My standout early reading featured the Brer Rabbit stories, which I read without the slightest inkling that they were set in America and written in an American dialect – I just loved that badly behaved pipe-smoking rabbit. Later, I remember being vividly horrified by the shaving of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Also badly wanting to be ranger ‘Strider’ in The Lord of the Rings – though with no interest whatsoever in king-in-hiding Aragorn, whom Strider turns into.
My mother took me every week to our local library in Sheffield, Ecclesall library, where I discovered these and many other stories and listened to story readings, and where, in general, I was blessed with access to such riches.
Like perhaps many writers, I first wanted to write poetry, which I began to do
When I was about fifteen, and for nearly ten years wrote nothing else. Intense if unsuccessful days: I miss them. I can’t remember why I started to write fiction. Idle stupidity, I expect. But I was working in publishing and I knew the routes to publication. I duly wrote a novel and sent part of it to an agent, who offered to represent me – a wild leap of faith (and he’s still my agent after 35 years) – and he sent it to publishers, one of whom – another equally mysterious leap of faith – offered to publish it. I’m aware that all this was fluky.
Well, the Quigleys and Moon Pie received lovely reviews and – as you say – were noticed by (adult) prize-winning committees, but they didn’t seem to reach many (young) readers, so I thought I’d try to write something as popular as possible, and therefore the first thing to do was to write in a popular genre, like crime. Very mercenary of me. But in fact I’ve always loved the way crime writers can tell a gripping story so I wanted to have a go. Anyway, I wrote three crime novels for young adults starring sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith, beginning with Running Girl.
Daydreaming. The commonest comment from teachers in my school reports was ‘Simon has problems concentrating’, aka ‘Simon spends his time staring out of the window in an absolute trance’. So, I turned my weakness into the way I make my living. I live near a trailer park and one day as I went by Ryan strolled out of it into my imagination. Ray naturally followed immediately, as the most different character imaginable.
Celebrity socialite Zara Fanshawe’s Rolls Royce Phantom is found crashed and abandoned at 3.10 am in dingy Becket Street in Oxford. Why has she been touring the homeless camps looking for ‘Waitrose’, the violent old homeless guy always pushing a shopping trolley? Tough-talking Glaswegian Superintendent, Dave ‘Barko’ Wallace passes over smooth-talking DI Ray Wilkins to make gobby DI Ryan Wilkins lead in the new investigation.
The plot thickens, not least because of their private lives. Why is Chester Lynch, legendary uber-macho black female Deputy Chief Constable, showing such an interest in Ray? And what of Carol, mother of two and self-made business woman, who has a slightly unintelligible erotic interest in Ryan? Ray is resentful of Ryan. Ryan is suffering his usual cognitive conflict with rules, codes of conduct, press conference protocols and manners in general. Will they solve the case before one of them kills the other?
I haven’t read Morse. Or seen any of the television adaptations. I’m sorry, but I just haven’t.
I’m just finishing the fourth ‘Ryan’ book, A Voice in the Night. At least I hope I am. In the middle of the night Greta Emmett, asleep in her house in Iffley Village, is telephoned by a caller at an emergency centre linked to a bracelet alarm worn by her elderly husband, a man with walking difficulties. The caller asks her where her husband is. As she begins to tell them that he’s with her in bed, she realises he isn’t any more. The caller recommends she get up and look round the house in case he’s got up in the night and fallen. She does but he is not to be found. Two hours later the police receive a call from the night manager at a hotel in Sandford three miles away. There is an old man in his pyjamas lying spread-eagle in the middle of their lawn.
I’ve been on a Joan Didion jag. She’s perhaps best-known as a writer of ‘New Journalism’ in 1970s and 80s California, but I’ve been admiring her novels of American imperialism, Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted.
When I read The Quigleys at my daughter’s school, she felt she needed to show her classmates that I was her father so she came forward halfway through the reading and sat on my lap. I carried on reading. Then another girl felt she needed to show everyone that she was my daughter’s best friend, so she came forward and also sat on my lap. I carried on reading. Then her best friend... etc., etc. When I had twenty children on top of me, and was in quite a lot of pain, a boy unknown to me or my daughter or apparently to anyone else in the class, was the only person not on top of me. He crawled forward commando-style and lay on my feet, the only bit of me not covered by the others. At last I finished reading.
The teacher came back into the room, the children climbed off me, I got up to leave, took two steps forward and fell on my face. The little boy had carefully tied together my shoe laces. Not quite what you asked for. But it’s something funny involving my readers. And, who knows, perhaps it was a critical comment.
I don’t like cats. I realise this is another unpopular position. But I could happily live in a world without cats.
