Falco: The Official Companion (A Marcus Didius Falco Mystery) Read online

  You will be pleased to know that my mother and the dog were both unhurt by their respective ordeals. The book fared worse, but retains some dignity, more than a little battered and slightly grass-stained, in pride of place on the bookshelf.

  (Iola Robinson)

  Lindsey and Mary, giggling

  Radio

  The Falco novels are being produced as BBC radio drama productions. They are adapted for radio by Mary Cutler, one of my oldest friends, who was in my class at school, the senior scriptwriter of The Archers. They are produced in Birmingham by Peter Leslie Wild.

  Anton Lesser is Falco and Anna Madeley now plays Helena. I usually try to attend on at least one day when the recordings are being made, preferably the full ‘read through’. I am always amazed how much extra real actors can add to words I wrote and thought I fully understood. It’s quite an emotional experience. There is an increasing bond between the team too.

  I feel that Mary does the best possible job. A great deal has to be lost from the books and, sadly, it will usually be Falco’s musings – which, to me, are the main attraction. Some people complain the voices are not what they hear in their heads when they read. That’s why I think nothing can beat books!

  Film rights

  A film called The Age of Treason was made, ostensibly of The Silver Pigs, though who would know it? It abandoned everything that makes the books special. Readers were very disappointed and I shall try to prevent that happening again. The BBC optioned the entire Falco series on what seemed decent terms (though I had doubts about their scripts). They bought Rome instead.

  Film rights for all my books reside with me and I will consider options.

  I never speculate on who would play Falco or Helena.

  The Writing Process

  What about writers of history? Do all their labours

  Bring them bigger returns or merely consume

  More midnight oil? With unrestricted licence

  They pile up their thousand pages – and an enormous

  Stationery bill.

  JUVENAL

  Creating a subject

  There is a Creative Writing mantra: write what you know. Let’s think about that for a satirical moment. I have never been a man or an ancient Roman; when I started to write I had not visited Italy; I was brought up a pacifist, have no connection with the police, to this day have never seen a dead body …

  The Falco series shows what you can do with curiosity, hard work and imagination. Such qualities can earn enough for you to avoid ever having to get a job as a creative writing teacher.

  Even so, some writing is more enjoyable for me. I hit upon my liking for passionate but dry historical writing with The Course of Honour, then with Falco I found the best idea in the world for me.

  You keep to the dress of everyday speech, but you’re clever at the pointed

  Juxtaposition; you’ve a fairly well-rounded diction; you’re adept

  At scraping unhealthy habits and nailing vice with a stroke of wit. Draw your material from there.

  That may be Persius saying write what you know, however.

  Creating a hero

  It is important for writer and readers to have sympathy with the lead character, or some character who is appealing, with whom you can identify. Where is the pleasure otherwise? Reading a novel is not a duty; nor is writing one. Both should be a joy.

  Is Falco based on a real person? No. That’s intrusive and a cop-out. Falco was specially created to do a special job. Yet he has qualities that I have known in a man, and liked, and loved. I hoped I would write about him for some time, though never dared imagine it would be twenty years. I built him to last.

  I made him plebeian because it seemed more suitable, and was more to my own taste. He had to be hard. I made him an ex-soldier for that. I put him in Britain for a joke, during the Boudiccan Rebellion because he needed to be bitter about the past. He served in the Second Augustan legion, first because it was Vespasian’s legion but mostly because this legion failed to turn up for the battle against Boudicca; this makes Falco and Petronius angry with the establishment, determined to leave the army, and sometimes inconvenienced by the past that was not their fault.

  Down these mean streets a man must go, who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be this sort of man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor – by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in the world and a good enough man for any world.

  CHANDLER

  I gave him his best friend Petronius because it is traditional. A private investigator needs a police crony to leak official information, provide superior back-up, and occasionally arrest him just to give us a twinge.

  He has a large family to overturn a stereotype. Philip Marlow has nobody. Falco is Italian. Being hampered by relatives’ presence and family duties would help provide humour. Inventing a ridiculous family tree was a good game.

  I was particular about choosing Falco’s age. He has his thirtieth birthday in The Silver Pigs. Many people in the real Roman world would never reach this age, due to poor conditions and diet; large numbers of children died at birth or in their first few years, though the wealthy would live to seventy or older. I wanted Falco old enough to have knocked about the world; experienced, mature, able to impress people. He had to remain athletic and nimble, always capable in a fight. I did want him to have scope to change, so even by A Dying Light in Corduba he is: older, mature, responsible, a seasoned state official: still stupid enough to take on any task, still put upon, still losing more than I ever gained. He will move on still further in later books; for one thing, he will not always lose. However, I never expected to make him a rich man.

  Leaving something unplanned keeps a series fresh.

  Are you in love with him?

  Oh get away! I was, and always will be, in love with someone else.

  Creating a heroine

  Curiously, Helena Justina was devised as a villain. Finally unmasked, she would have left Falco traumatised, carrying forward his bitterness about the woman who had so duped him … But I wrote their love affair too well and couldn’t part them.

  I thought it a cliché to give my plebeian hero an aristocratic girlfriend. However, this allowed me to sustain a troubled love affair through several books. People still worry that I might break them up … a good marketing plan.

  Villainous characteristics worked: I made Helena clever, witty and scathing. Bad experiences with men let her match Falco’s own slightly sour knowledge of women. A heroine needs a past to draw on just as much as a hero, though not too often, or readers feel left out. Helena is brave – essential for adventures. Mystery heroines must be feisty enough to ask questions, particularly awkward questions. Like Falco, she must be shrewd enough to evaluate answers and spot lies. She will be prepared – she will be eager – to take the lead in investigations. If Helena simply sat at home waiting to bandage Falco’s wounds and listen devotedly to the story of his day, she would not be a heroine, merely a female character. But she is not a harridan; she has compassion and warmth.

  This is important. I have written about Helena for twenty years. If I did not like her just as much as Falco, it would have been dire.

  She is not perfect. She is above her ideal weight, cannot keep her hair up and would rather have her nose in a book than look after small children.

  Practical point: I gave her children. I wanted to show that the Romans had contraception, but that it could fail for normal human reasons – in the heat of passion, people just don’t use the stuff. But whenever Helena is pregnant, it gets in the way. Now every scene requires me to think, Who is looking after the cute kids? Falco is a novus vir, but half the time Helena has to do it. And I am not keen on cute kids; I prefer the dog.

  Concerning sex: Helena likes it jus
t as much as Falco. Every reader knows that – yet by modern clinical standards I have never described it. But a woman needs her mystery. I want people to like and admire her – but leave them curious for more.

  Is she you?

  No more than he is.

  Creating a style

  There are no fixed rules of style. They are governed by the usage of society and usage never stands still for any length of time. Many speakers hark back to earlier centuries for their vocabulary … Others in seeking to confine themselves to familiar, everyday expressions, slip into an undistinguished manner. Both these practices, in their different ways, are a debased style (quite as much as the rejection of any expression that is not high-sounding, florid and poetical, avoiding the indispensable expressions in everyday use).

  SENECA

  I began with the ‘gumshoe’ authors’ tone of voice. Chandler said, I doubt that Hammett had any deliberate artistic aims whatever; he was trying to make a living by writing something he had firsthand information about. He made some of it up; all writers do; but it had a basis in fact; it was made up out of real things. That said, Hammett and Chandler created a recognisable style, using short, terse sentences, a wry wit, startling imagery. Chandler learned the art of metaphor at Dulwich College rather than from the streets. So a classical education is responsible – the English literary style that goes back to Greek and Latin, appropriately for me.

  My series is written in the first person because that seemed natural for a detective story. It makes for an informal conversational tone. This is visceral and vivid, which certainly helps when a shy, home-loving Englishwoman with hay fever writes as a macho, athletic man of the Mediterranean streets.

  Then I think it’s important to write of everything, especially things strange to us such as slaves or gladiators, as if to Falco they are perfectly ordinary aspects of life. Occasionally he can explain ‘for any barbarians’, but there must not be too much of that. Ginny Lindzey discussed imagery with me recently, mentioning the scene where Falco first arrives in Britain and describes it from the Roman point of view. How the heck did you think that one up? asked Ginny. It’s a memory of a ghastly old Vaseline pot that lived in my bathroom cupboard for about thirty years … How the memory raised itself I have no idea. It works well because it’s both visual and tactile; while Falco is portraying a backward Britain where people live in smoky round huts, he alludes to his own more sophisticated world, and also links to something we may recognise from ours.

  Civilisation simply topped the province like a film of wax on an apothecary’s ointment pot – easy enough to press your finger through. [SP]

  Other techniques that matter are to have more knowledge – not just in the historical sense but about characters, for instance – than one uses; it’s a cliché to say you must not insert great gobs of research, though the cliché is true. I try never to forget I am telling a story; I’m not there to show off or teach.

  I developed a taste for upsetting stock situations – take the kiss between antagonists, where they traditionally melt into lust. My couple are just overwhelmed and embarrassed. I had kissed her. Yet I still did not know what it was really like. I have known men who will tell you rough handling is what such women really want. They are fools. She was distraught. To be perfectly honest, I was distraught myself … [SP] Later, it’s better, truer, much more moving, when they do it honestly.

  I also like to overturn clichés of the crime genre. There is a whole chapter in Two for the Lions where Falco’s case has run into the ground; he explains that sometimes an investigator has to give up. Life is not a fable, where stock characters seethe with implausible emotions, stock scenes are described in bland language, and every puzzling death is succeeded in regular progression by four clues (one false), three men with crackable alibis, two women with ulterior motives, and a confession which neatly explains every kink in events and which indicts the supposedly least obvious person – a miscreant any alert enquirer could unmask. He rants on about coincidences, lies, implausible happenings and the fact that many murderers do get away with it – but of course, however many times he says this is a dead end, in a novel that cannot be allowed to happen. That’s a bit of irony; I specialise in irony.

  Timescale – The Silver Pigs takes place over eight or nine months. If I was allowed to write a long series, this would not work; Falco would die of old age. Besides, we want speed. Now most stories take place over a few weeks or months; in One Virgin Too Many, it is only ten days – because the missing child, trapped down a well, must be rescued alive.

  I don’t have space to dissect my style any further – nor is it in my interests commercially!

  Influences

  Manlius and Varga came swinging back home in the dead of night, arguing at the top of their voices with a gang of other artistic delinquents … [PG]

  People always want to know ‘What are your influences?’ Falco’s tiny hand is frozen as he waits for the free-spirited fresco painters; I wonder how many readers have spotted the seepage from the opera La Bohème? I never noticed. I don’t enjoy opera. I won’t go to opera. I like music for its own sake. I want words you can hear and understand. I find most musicals watery. I only care about Gilbert and Sullivan and the repertoire of English satirical song. And Tom Lehrer. So do Manlius and Varga reveal an authentic influence? Of course not.

  I am always very cautious about influences.

  I suspect people want to believe I have based my writing on someone else’s (perhaps because that is what they would do – or because some twerp of a tutor says to ask the question). For me, writing must be original. I deliberately chose the Roman period to be different. If the Falco novels are influenced by Sutcliff, or Chandler, or Tristram Shandy, or Giles cartoons, or Round the Horne, or Shakespeare, or The Mikado, or Liquidated Damages (building contracts), or Byron’s Don Juan, or my mum … it is only a starting point. People who know me say, in astonishment, ‘It sounds just like you!’ Exactly.

  You could just as well say my influences are ‘Dido’s Lament’, Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia, Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique and all the other music Richard and I loved, especially with Julian Bream or Alicia De Larrocha … Or they are sausages, boeuf bourguignon, lemon meringue pie, bacon sandwiches (with HP sauce), macadamia nuts, pesto pasta, Stilton and Cheddar …

  Or loathing pretension. Or needing to pay the mortgage.

  Everything I have ever seen, heard, read; everyone I ever met; every place I remember lurks in the subconscious ready to give me ideas. Ideas are just an unopened packet of plasticine. It takes particular thumbs to mould them.

  Enough of influences.

  A Sharp Discourse on ‘Errors’

  And another thing!

  I wonder at the vehemence of some people who have written to me about perceived mistakes. Often they are wrong. Sometimes they attack my publisher, as if I was their enemy, not a shared party in a contract. Complainents’ fury is alarming. What is it supposed to achieve, to tick off a grown author like a naughty child? Are these ravers in the pay of jealous rivals, who hope I’ll groan, Why do I bother? and retire? Grr.

  I have thumped out novels steadily for twenty years. It would be a marvel if there were no mistakes. The books would be bland and safe, sterile pedantry, not full of creativity and cheery ideas.

  My books are pored over in the production stages. They are edited, copy-edited, proof-read. After publishing, I collect mistakes diligently and they are corrected in new editions. When I am close to a text, I don’t see spelling mistakes, homophones, omissions or repetitions. Some people in my family have dyslexia. My Oxford tutor said, generously, my problem is twofold: my brain works too fast for my hand and I am too interested in the ideas to see the words properly.

  People who write to complain won’t help by blind rage. I worry about their anger, and one day I myself will snap.

  The boys with their feet on the desk know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cut
e with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off …

  CHANDLER

  Research

  How do you do your research? is the question I am asked most often.

  Research sources and tools

  The object of this history is to console the reader. History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.

  SELLAR AND YEATMAN

  Tired researcher in shop doorway

  I had a good classical education (Latin and some Greek), when this was mainly linguistic, with history and philosophy, but little social history. I was introduced to archaeology, a fascination I kept. But this is crucial: I read English at university. So: I use primary sources. I read academic works but if I think their authors are barmy, or just copying previous textbooks, I reject them. I will access the Internet for a ‘quick fix’, but I treat it as fundamentally flawed. Whenever possible, I go and have a look. For my Roman novels I generally visit Rome once a year, plus any country where that story is set.

  I have been researching the Romans for twenty years. I really enjoy it. To me, that enjoyment is essential. I study in the way I was taught by rigorous women at Oxford: I soak myself in background material, then evaluate my findings using experience and common sense. I have a large library; I visit museums and sites. Finally, I let ideas bubble up and mould them into a plot. Ideas may be mulled for years – or never used at all.

  When I am fifty three or so, I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting of course. For the next thirty years or so, I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, ‘Collecting material’. No one can object to that. Besides, so I shall be.