Secrets of Death, out tomorrow from Sphere, means today its all things Cooper and Fry. Earlier today Stephen talked about A Beautiful Place to Die and for the second part of the day I was lucky enough to get to ask him a few questions about the series of which I am the BIGGEST fan, I do love atmospheric crime with a genuinely authentic setting – and here is what he had to tell me. And huge thanks to him as he’s written an article and answered two sets of questions for me all in record time. Look out for the First Monday Crime lead in later this month…
So, Cooper and Fry have been through the wringer since the series began, lots of changes and ups and downs, for new readers coming in could you give us some character personality background and how you’ve built the relationship up over time?
Ben Cooper is from a farming family and grew up in the Peak District, so he has a love for the area and knows everyone. But he’s also the son of a police sergeant who died on duty, so he has a lot to live up to. On the other hand, Diane Fry is a city girl who transferred to Derbyshire from West Midlands Police in Birmingham. She’s very much out of environment and doesn’t understand the peculiar ways of country folk. When they met for the first time in ‘Black Dog’, Ben was still rather immature but he’d assumed he was a natural candidate to be promoted. When the capable, and ambitious Fry arrived, Ben tried to befriend her. But she got the promotion instead of him, and it really threw the cat among the pigeons. Their relationship has been a complex one – quite fractious at times, but when the chips are down they support each other. I think they actually make a pretty good team despite their conflicts. I’ve tried to keep the dynamics of the relationship changing over time, with promotion for Ben and a new job for Diane, and other characters often coming in between them to prevent what might seem to some readers the inevitable outcome!
The Peak District creates the backdrop to all the murder and mayhem – a place you obviously know well. Tell us a bit about the experience of being there.
I think of the Peak District as beautiful, but dangerous. It can certainly be a frightening place, particularly for people unfamiliar with the hills or the unpredictable weather. It has been responsible for a lot of deaths. For me, one of its great attractions is its enormous range of atmospheric locations, where I can often sense a darkness lurking beneath that attractive surface. This may be to do with its thousands of years of history, from the ancient stone circles to abandoned lead mines, much of it visible right there in the landscape for my characters to see and touch. It’s said to be the second most visited national park in the world, because it isn’t really remote. It has several large cities on the doorstep, and those millions of visitors create a lot of conflict with the people who live and work there. I do know the area well, but the amazing thing is that I can still stumble across something I didn’t know about, which will give me an idea for a story.
Could you talk a little about the ups and downs of writing a long running series? How far ahead do you plan, for example do you have any idea what might be happening to our guys two or three books down the line? Do you remember intimately everything that has gone before even from book one?
Plan? I’ve never been able to plan the series, because I’ve never known how many books there were going to be. I wrote just one originally, and was immediately asked for a second. I had no idea there would be sixteen! The characters of Ben Cooper and Diane Fry have been the main driver of the series. What I tend to do is leave something unresolved in the life of, say, Ben Cooper at the end of a book. I want to what will happen to him next, as much as anyone else does – and the only way I’m going to find out is by writing another book. So I don’t see ahead at all. Also, I don’t remember details of the early books very well. In fact, a reader who has just read ‘Black Dog’ will know it much better than me! But I do have a strong sense of the characters. They’re like old friends to me now after seventeen years. I know what sort of people they were back then, and I’m conscious of how they’ve changed over time. So their personal story arc remains clear in my mind.
What originally inspired the characters? Taken from anyone you know in real life? Or some of your own personality in there at all?
Both Ben Cooper and Diane Fry have a bit of me in them, certainly. But that’s probably true of all the characters (including the murderers!). For a writer, the best source of material is to look inside yourself for some small part of your own personality, which you might not even be aware of. But we’re observers too, so characters tend to be a mixture of real people and bits of ourselves. When I wrote the first book, ‘Black Dog’ I decided to make Ben and Diane young and junior police officers, simply as a reaction to all the middle-aged alcoholic loners I was reading about at the time. I wanted one of them to be local (that’s Ben Cooper), and the other an outsider – in this case, Diane Fry. The rest developed as I was writing about them. I’ve known a lot of police officers, and sometimes they say they can recognise their colleagues in the books. I couldn’t possibly comment on that!
Name one thing you love about writing and one thing that drives you nuts about it.
Contact with readers is wonderful. There’s a magic that happens in a reader’s imagination when they’re reading a novel and are able to enter completely into a fictional world. I love to hear readers talk about that. One thing that drives me nuts – and it’s not really about writing, but part of being a writer – is the very public obsession with how many ‘five-star’ reviews a book has received, or its hour-by-hour sales ranking on Amazon. It makes writers seem like a bunch of self-obsessed narcissists, which we’re not really, honest!
Tell us a little about you in 5 easy soundbites
* Tea, Coffee or other?
Fruit juice. Buy me a J2O!
* Real life person (living or dead) you would most like to meet and why?
This might sound strange, but Donald Trump. His psychology fascinates me, and I’d like the chance to form my own impression of what he’s really like in person. But remember that I’m a crime writer and I’m interested in sociopaths!
* One author who writes books that you SIMPLY MUST HAVE.
Ruth Rendell was this person, but sadly we lost her a while ago.
* Favourite way to spend a lazy Sunday.
In our garden watching the wildlife (we have quite a lot).
* Night owl or sun worshipper?
Definitely a night owl. I’m writing this at nearly 2am!
Thanks so much!
Secrets of Death by Stephen Booth is published 16th June by Sphere, price £18.99 in hardback
A beautiful place to die . . .
Residents of the Peak District are used to tourists descending on its soaring hills and brooding valleys. However, this summer brings a different kind of visitor to the idyllic landscape, leaving behind bodies and secrets.
A series of suicides throughout the Peaks throws Detective Inspector Ben Cooper and his team in Derbyshire’s E Division into a race against time to find a connection to these seemingly random acts – with no way of predicting where the next body will turn up. Meanwhile, in Nottingham Detective Sergeant Diane Fry finds a key witness has vanished…
But what are the mysterious Secrets of Death?
And is there one victim whose fate wasn’t suicide at all?
Find out more HERE
Follow Stephen on Twitter HERE
To Purchase Secrets of Death clickety click right HERE
Happy Reading!
