{"id":2903,"date":"2012-02-01T20:43:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T20:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?p=2903"},"modified":"2016-06-22T17:10:07","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T17:10:07","slug":"mark-billingham-and-paul-johnston-in-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?p=2903","title":{"rendered":"Mark Billingham and Paul Johnston in conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

About Mark Billingham<\/span><\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Mark Billingham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a\u00a0TV writer<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0stand-up<\/a>\u00a0comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001.\u00a0Sleepyhead<\/a>\u00a0was an instant bestseller in the UK. It has been sold widely throughout the world and was published in the USA in the summer of 2002. \u00a0The series of crime novels featuring London-based detective\u00a0Tom Thorne<\/a>\u00a0continued with\u00a0Scaredy Cat<\/a>\u00a0and was followed by\u00a0Lazybones<\/a>,\u00a0The Burning Girl<\/a>,\u00a0Lifeless<\/a>,\u00a0Buried<\/a>,\u00a0Death Message<\/a>,\u00a0Bloodline<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0From The Dead<\/a>. The latest in the series \u2013\u00a0Good As Dead<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is published in August 2011. Mark is also the author of the standalone novel\u00a0In The Dark<\/a>\u00a0as well as a series of children\u2019s thrillers \u2013\u00a0Triskellion<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 written under the pseudonym Will Peterson.\u00a0An acclaimed television series based on the Thorne novels was screened on Sky One in Autumn 2010, starring David Morrissey as Tom Thorne. The second series is now in production.\u00a0Mark lives in London with his wife and two children. He is currently writing his next novel.<\/p>\n

Visit his website:<\/span><\/strong> http:\/\/www.markbillingham.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

About Paul Johnston<\/span><\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Paul Johnston<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paul Johnston was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1957. His father Ronald was a successful thriller writer. Paul attended state primary school in Berwickshire and private\u00a0schools in Edinburgh. He subsequently studied ancient and modern Greek at the University of Oxford, then added an M.Phil in comparative literature to his M.A.. After leaving\u00a0Oxford in 1982, Paul worked for shipping companies in London and Belgium. He moved to Greece in 1987, working on a newspaper, in shipping and then teaching English. His\u00a0daughter Silje was born in 1988. He started writing seriously in 1989 when he went to live on the small Aegean island of Antiparos. Paul returned to Edinburgh to do another\u00a0master’s degree in 1995 and then started studying for a doctorate. Paul remarried in 2005. His wife Roula is a Greek civil servant. Their daughter Maggie was born in Athens in\u00a0January 2006 and their son Alexander in January 2008. Paul has come through (touch wood) two unconnected bouts of cancer in the last five years and underwent chemotherapy\u00a0until November 2008. That hasn’t stopped him from writing or from studying for a PhD in creative writing.He still divides his time between Scotland and Greece \u2013 having left\u00a0Athens, he and his family now live in the beautiful seaside town of Nafplio in the Peloponnese. His next project is The Green Lady<\/em>, the fifth Alex Mavros novel.<\/p>\n

Visit his website:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0http:\/\/www.paul-johnston.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

PJ -You worked\u00a0in children\u2019s TV\u00a0and stand up before becoming a crime novelist? What nudge\u00a0you\u00a0towards the\u00a0genre?<\/p>\n

\"Good<\/a><\/p>\n

MB – I was really not\u00a0enjoying the work I was doing\u00a0for TV where scripts tend to be developed by committee. I\u2019d taken my\u00a0name off\u00a0several projects before I finally decided I\u2019d had enough, but even\u00a0though I\u2019d written all sorts of stuff before\u00a0that (terrible poetry, bad plays, my own stand-up material) I was wary about trying my hand at a novel. Once I took\u00a0the plunge,\u00a0however, it was always\u00a0going to be crime. Put\u00a0simply,\u00a0crime fiction had been my passion from\u00a0a\u00a0very\u00a0early age. Once I\u2019d\u00a0discovered\u00a0Sherlock Holmes, aged eleven (me, not him) I was\u00a0hooked. I\u2019ve talked in many\u00a0interviews\u00a0about how the work I\u2019d done\u00a0up to that point influenced and helped me. From TV writing I learned\u00a0the\u00a0discipline of deadlines and delivery and the importance of dialogue, which, as a TV writer is pretty much all you\u00a0have to work with. Stand-up taught me about engaging with your audience quickly and keeping them engaged. A\u00a0crime novel contains many similar elements to a stand-up routine. It is full of punchlines (though usually very dark ones) and, of course, timing is everything. I firmly believe that a novel is a performance…<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u00a0about you? Your background is rather more academic than mine. How does a classicist\u00a0come to murder so\u00a0many people on the page? Was it all that Greek tragedy?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

PJ – No, I think it was Homer’s Odyssey<\/em>, which I read in English when I was about seven (precocious, moi?) – plenty of crimes in there. Although I read classics for a couple of years at Oxford, I then changed to Modern Greek and did a Masters in comparative \u00a0literature, much of which involved analysing that well known crime writer DH Lawrence. I’m really an academic manque, whence my studying for a PhD in creative writing at this advanced \u00a0age. You mention Greek tragedy, which I read a lot of – no shortage of crime, murder etc in that either, but the biggest classical influence on my early writing was Plato. My Quint Dalrymple series, set in an independent Edinburgh in the 2020s, had more to do with the Republic than science fiction, though Orwell and Huxley are also presiding deities and there’s a hefty Blade Runner homage in the last book. I think I’d describe my approach to crime writing as intellectual rather than academic, actually, even though I know that will lead to endless mockery. I start a book with ideas – I don’t mean plot or character ideas, though they’re there too, but political or even philosophical concepts. Body Politic<\/a><\/em> and its successors raise all sorts of issues about totalitarianism, education, the environment (especially the energy and water supplies), censorship, cloning and so on. I like a crime novel that asks the reader to think…..Read more<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About Mark Billingham Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor<\/p>\n

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