crimeculture

Sean Cregan interviews Steve Mosby

Steve Mosby lives and works in Leeds. He is the author of five books: Still Bleeding (2009); Cry for Help (2008); The 50/50 Killer (2007); The Cutting Crew (2005); and The Third Person (2003).  His website is The Left Room.

For Crimeculture's review of Still Bleeding, see The “subterranean night beneath the world”: a review of Sean Cregan’s The Levels and Steve Mosby’s Still Bleeding in our 21st-Century Crime section.

Sean Cregan:
I've not read your last book, but as far as I'm aware it, like your earlier work, is a cooking mystery set in Whitstable. What drew you to this kind of thing?

Steve Mosby:
Actually, I'm always interested by cooking mysteries and cat mysteries, and all those kinds of books, because I often hear authors riffing on them - taking the piss - but I've never actually seen one in the wild. In a bookshop, I mean. So I'm afraid I'm not even sure they exist. I think they've just been invented as a comedy routine for crime writers.

However, if STILL BLEEDING was going to be a cooking mystery, it would be a pretty foul one. There is a cooking element to it, as it happens, in that it has a character - a serial killer - who drinks people's blood. He does it to absorb them: to make them physically a part of him. That’s one small part of it. And there's another character who does even more horrific things with them. So - on that level - cooking does play a part. But it's more about murderabilia. And it's not set in Whitstable, which I don't believe in either.

Sean Cregan:
"Even more horrific"? I mean, blood drinking for Looney Tunes reasons is pretty bad. How horrific are we talking about...? Incidentally, "muderabilia" is a marvelous term.

Steve Mosby:
I do like the term - I wish I could claim it as my own. But it's a well-known word, a well-established industry. Online auctions sites sell the stuff to collectors: locks of Manson's hair, that kind of thing, Gacy's paintings. And one of the bad guys in STILL BLEEDING does paintings with blood. That's before we get to the actual bodies, and what happens to them … I should stress, by the way, that the book is a love story at heart.

Sean Cregan:
O... K... Actually, your stuff does tend to be (he said, fumbling for a term) kind of relationshippy-serial killer fiction. The main character once dumped a girl after they had one terrible date when she threw up all over him in the back of a supermarket car park, and now he feels guilty, but she's been murdered. That sort of thing. Not always "relationships" in that sort of way, mind. But always John/Jane Q Fairly Normal - whether a cop or not - who gets a phone call from their brother/sister to say, "Help! I've been murdered!" Is this that in stalkerish reverse? Or a love story between two serial killers?

Steve Mosby:
Ha ha! That's a fair description of my stuff, actually. For years, I'd wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and think: "All you write is 'dead girlfriend' fiction". But I've kind of got used to it now. It's all about the past and relationships in general, my stuff: regret; nostalgia; things we didn't do that we should. And it just always seems more interesting to filter those things through a crime narrative: to use a monstrous serial killer (or whatever) to bring out and empthasise the underlying themes. With STILL BLEEDING, I was interested in memories – whether we analyse the bad things that happen to us – and it was interesting to contrast that with certain horrible types of online video footage. Do we look or don’t we? And what happens when we do?

Sean Cregan:
We talk, in your interview with me, about breaking with our earlier work, changing the kind of story we write. Didn't you do something similar? I might be completely off-base, but you started with two rather more off-the-wall books (it's been years - since the hardback release, in fact - since I read THE THIRD PERSON but didn't end with a question as to whether or not the whole thing was a fictional reality?) with a fair SF element, but switched to more mainstream thrillers after that. How did that come about?

Steve Mosby:
Well, yeah, I think so. The thing was, when I wrote THE THIRD PERSON, I wasn't published and had no real aim to be part of a particular genre. So the resulting book was all over the shop: SF, horror, crime, slipstream. And an agent, who I'd been in contact with for the previous five failed books, liked it enough to shop it round Orion. It could have come out as anything, but just fell into a crime promotion that was happening at the time, and that was that.

The original ending was even more wild, and that was changed for publication, but it's still a fairly 'challenging' read. I wince a little when people say they're going to read it, because it's nothing at all like the later books.

Sean Cregan:
Five? I had no idea. You must have started writing them when you were about 12.

Steve Mosby:
Pretty much, yeah. Finished my first one when I was 17. It was 180k words, and it was awful.

Sean Cregan:
Fucking hell. At 17 I couldn't have written 180 words, let alone 180k.

Steve Mosby:
The second book, THE CUTTING CREW was slightly more 'standard': it had more of a grounding in reality, although it was still weird. And THE 50/50 KILLER is straightforward crime, more or less. It happened because I pitched the idea to the editor and he liked it. It would have been the next book I wrote, regardless of the lack of weird elements – it was just the story I wanted to do – but, of course, once the weirder elements are gone (the less commercial elements, you could say), it's hard to get them back in. Not that I've ever massively wanted to.

Sean Cregan:
You have kept a kind of quasi-transatlantic thing going on with them (or at least with 50/50). Is that a deliberate "it could be set anywhere" thing to capture foolish American readers, or a hangover from the older books?

Steve Mosby:
It's a very deliberate thing for a couple of reasons. To begin with, I made up places to suit the themes of the story. So, in THE THIRD PERSON, you have 'Downtown', which is a forgotten area underneath a built-over city. And the main character has to go below the surface to discover the truth. It’s a very obvious psychological metaphor: painfully so. And then in 50/50, there are fairytale style woods, like something out of a kid's nightmare. They could never exist in the UK, probably not in the US either, but it worked for me because it's about confronting fairytale notions of love, so that's where the characters go to do that. These days, a bit of that still goes on, but I also just invent things for plot purposes: to make things easier. STILL BLEEDING is set in a scrambled jigsaw of a fictionalised Yorkshire...

But for me, that's actually all I care about place for. I’m not a ‘social issues’ crime writer. I don't see the point in trying to capture a real place. You never will. It's all fiction, all fantasy. You can't do it. Ian Rankin's Edinburgh isn't Edinburgh, and anyone who writes in saying 'a street is in the wrong place' is missing the point. It's all words on a page.

Sean Cregan:
A-fucking-men.

Steve Mosby:
Ha ha!

Sean Cregan:
On a related subject, since you've skirted other patches from the off, ever thought about hopping genres or settings, even just for a one-off? An American horror book, some straight SF, something like that?

Steve Mosby:
Yeah, I do think about tackling different genres. I started out doing horror shorts. Not many, but I think there were five or six published, here or there. I'm not very good at them, to be honest, but it was very much promoted as the 'way to go' – building an audience through short work before doing a novel. There's something to say for that in terms of learning your craft, but maybe not in terms of building a career.

Looking at the genres now, horror doesn't hold as much appeal as it once did, just because I can do anything I'd want to within the crime genre - even supernatural stuff. Some of the best horror I've read is basically crime fiction at heart; some of the best crime has a toe dipped into the horror genre. And science fiction never interested me so much in terms of subject matter. But I do like the approach of it: the attitude. There's a writer called Christopher Priest whom I revere. Not just for his prose, which is great, but he takes science fiction concepts - time travel; virtual reality; teleportation; invisibility - and writes literary fiction with them.

That's all that makes me envious towards SF. Crime is a wide field to work in, in terms of how anything can be worked into a sub-genre of some kind, but SF seems somehow even more unconstrained. I like the acceptability of 'going off on a weird tangent', whereas crime is more about following a basically linear path to a basically predictable conclusion. Often, anyway.

Sean Cregan:
Yeah, there's a lot less acceptance of playing around with stranger ideas in straight crime. Everyone talks about it as being social fiction, but very few writers seem to get away with exploring social ideas beyond those you can see out of your window, or read in the pages of the Mail. Robert... uh, whatever his surname is, did it with PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN, Michael Marshall, who I know we're both fans of, has played merrily around with the format, but they're rarities.

On a completely unrelated note, you and I both know you're a healthy well-adjusted guy who'd never hurt anyone unless you'd run out of meds and someone left the lock off the knife drawer, but do you see anything - in general, not (obviously) so much in your own - in the whole misogyny/torture porn/gorno thing that gets levelled at crime/thriller writers some times? That kerfuffle over Stieg Larsson on your website is what brought it to mind, not whatever personal suspicions I have about you in that private journal I gave to the police yesterday.

Steve Mosby:
Ha ha! To a degree, yeah, I think I do, although whether I'd go as far as some commentators, I don’t know. There are so many facets to that subject … it’s tricky. But there’s no getting round the fact that the traditional serial killer narrative generally involves women being horribly killed - and often a man saving the latest victim. I think there are good - if ultimately sexist - narrative reasons for that. Basically, that female victims create more dramatic tension

I'd say a large number of these novels are fairly traditional 'old' narratives, in that the serial killer is an equivalent to a monster, and the main character learns the rules, faces up to them, challenges them, has their own safety threatened, and then finally vanquishes the beast and order is restored. Which is ultimately quite a traditional and comforting narrative, and quite conservative.

There's no real defence of realism, since most of these novels are a fair distance from the real world. Serial killers in real life (separate from their crimes) tend to be dull. A bit stupid. Cunning, maybe, but not smart. Unlikely to turn things round and start stalking the investigator.

I find some writers a little disingenuous on the point. Most crime authors aren't writing serious social commentary. Most crime novels are about murder, rather than, say, domestic violence or child abuse, which, if you were interested in being socially relevant, would be the main topics. As it is, you often get called out if you do tackle those subjects. People don’t want to read about them.

But anyway – yes, I think there is something to the misogyny accusation, but that it’s not as simple as The F Word made out, certainly when it comes to Larsson. I was never massively impressed by Salander though.

Sean Cregan:
Turning to familial matters, you're about to become a father - do you have a banked reserve of work or ideas to tide you over, or are you planning on getting back to the grindstone as soon as everything normalises... in about eighteen years?

Steve Mosby:
Ha ha! Unfortunately not. I'm towards the end of Book Six, which'll be out next May, but beyond that I'm dependent on the good will of foreign publishers. I'm lucky to have been well received overseas, and that keeps future-baby-Mosby in nappies for a short time. Beyond that, the future is open, and I'll see what happens after this book is finished. It's going to be a slight departure for me in some ways, so I'll have to see how it's received.

In general, I don't have more than one idea on the go at the time. I'm pretty concentrated. So while I might file vague ideas away as and when I come across them, I never have any real notion of what the next book will be. I have no real safety net when it comes to this sort of thing. So once this book is finished, I'll just have to see what happens, and how any ideas I have fit into the overall plans of the publishers I'm associated with. I'm envious of writers who have a career plan. I really don't. It's very much hand-to-mouth in terms of what comes next.

Sean Cregan:
So what's the sixth book if it's a departure? Knitting, needlework, Knights Templar?

Steve Mosby:
Book Six … well, having said that, it's not ending up as a massive departure, but it's maybe more of a mystery than a straightforward thriller. STILL BLEEDING touches on the repercussions of violence in fiction, and Book Six extends that. It's about how real life can influence fiction, and then fiction can influence real life, and how, given the fallibility of memory, life can become stories and stories can become … life. And it's set over three different time periods. But, if that sounds too heavy, it's also about people being buried alive! So there's always that to cling to.

Sean Cregan:
Haha! Has "Buried Alive" been snagged as a title yet? I'd have thought so. I hate finding a pluggable title that no other fucker's come up with yet.

Steve Mosby:
Some fucker’s taken everything. I think Mark Billingham's had 'Buried' already.

Sean Cregan:
OK, so to come to it, since we've meandered onto other British thriller writers... how do you see the current state of the British Thriller - under threat at all? Maybe in need of rescue from sub-par American imports?

Steve Mosby:
This is so going to be edited, isn't it?

Sean Cregan:
I can just asterisk out whole words. Whatever you actually say, it'll look like it was something horrible.

Steve Mosby:
Well, okay. The British thriller is, as far as I can see it, in pretty good health. And that's really all there is to say on the subject, without getting into lots of bullshit about the subjectivity of the value of literature. I mean, some of the bestselling crime writers - I can't say I love all those books. But they sell and people like them, so there must be something there. It’s what people are looking for. I’ve got nothing against Dan Brown. But even aside from easy targets, I think the bestselling UK crime fiction is bestselling for a reason...

Sean Cregan:
*muttering* ... Dan Brown, 120 pages in and still not escaped from the Louvre toilets, rollercoaster thrill ride my hairy arse...

Steve Mosby:
... and, as a writer, you have to write what interests you, and, as a reader, you read what interests you. And the world keeps turning. No real point complaining that X is popular and you aren't, or that someone popular in the UK isn’t from the UK. Or whatever. Just get on and do it. Write what means stuff to you and hope someone wants to read it.

I remember some famous writer saying, "No writer doesn't want to be read - it's like talking to yourself”, and that’s true. But there's a difference between saying stuff people want to hear, and saying stuff that's important to you then hoping people will want to listen. If you do the latter, I honestly don't give a fuck whether you're from the Britain or from Outer Space.

Sean Cregan:
Yeah, quite. For a given value of "what's important to you", of course. A lot of people who spend time talking about things that are important to them are people I'd wish would just shut up, or at least be confined to an appropriate facility where they can be treated. Most of those people don't write fiction, of course. Or at least, not what they think is fiction.

Steve Mosby:
Ha ha! But you don't have to read them of course...

Sean Cregan:
I don't, in the same way as I don't have to listen to JLS. But JLS' existence, and the continued pushing of such obvious balls in all media does offend me on some level.

"People read what they like" is fine in a completely open marketplace, but we don't have that. We have a crocked distribution system that constantly pushes things to the fore because that's what people are told they want, and where many of the alternatives aren't offered to them. So they - in some cases I know, at least - settle for what's there because they want to read *something*, but they're not actually fans of the stuff on offer. (This, incidentally, is a cultural/systemic thing; I'm not trying to blame publishers - it's a bastard hard industry to make money in at the best of times.)

Like saying, "If people who came to this Harvester wanted to eat lobster or Thai spiced prunes, they would." But they don't because the option isn't given to them - it's burger, steak or the salad cart, and tough titty prune lovers.

And unlike Harvester, there's nowhere else to go. Practically/realistically speaking, anyway.

Steve Mosby:
But then ... well, first, there's obviously nothing wrong with the books themselves: it's just the fact that they're heavily marketed above certain others. A fair point. It's a weird model, in publishing, where the books that will sell the most are usually the most consistently publicised and discounted, for sale in the most places at the cheapest prices. It makes sense, when you think about it, but it's counter-intuitive on the surface, because it’s the people who don’t sell who are needing the push. But, like you say, it’s a hard industry and the publishers need to be sure of a return.

Sean Cregan:
Absolutely. Actually, in Dan Brown's case, I think there is something wrong with the books themselves. 120 largely incoherent pages, still in the fucking Louvre bogs. There's no way that's a good thing.

'"A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils." A silhouette with white hair and pink irises stood chillingly close but 15 feet away. What's wrong with this picture?' (To quote the Telegraph)

'"Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes." It's not clear what Brown thinks 'precarious' means here.'

... I'll stop now.

Steve Mosby:
Hmmm. But while I might agree with you, especially if I ever read the fucking thing, we’re entering the ghostly field of literary criticism there. There's no obvious reason why Dan Brown’s stuff is of inherently less value than real literature. It might not be deep. And yeah, it's fairly shit prose. But that's like shit javelin throwing in a field without objective markings. A tricky one, I think. And one that many literary snobs would turn around and use against fine (enough) crime writing. Better prose doesn’t directly equate to better writing.

Sean Cregan:
I don't think the lack of markings in the javelin field stops people being able to make broad judgements, though. If someone comes up, throws the javelin and manages to stab himself in the eye with it, we can mostly agree that he's wank at throwing the javelin.

Especially if his chosen javelin is made from hammered dog shit.

Steve Mosby:
I think you're stacking your argument here, bringing in the frozen dog shite. But you might well be right.

Sean Cregan:
Trying to compare two largely OK javelin throwers who differ only in the direction they throw and the type of thing - height, distance, spin, injury to the judges - they aim for is, I agree, pointless. I like nonsensical "airport thriller" type stuff as much as the next man, so long as it doesn't make me actively want to claw out my eyes and swallow them. So - for example - Bill Napier's REVELATION was, I thought, brilliant. Silly, especially in terms of the cult and the Glaswegian translator of Armenian (and the main character being an adventurer-meteorologist), but great fun. Icebergs, atom bombs, quantum physics... functional command of the English language...

Steve Mosby:
You can’t deny those are bonuses.