So I’d read a lot of stuff about Michael Winterbottom’s new film before it opened, namely Rachel Cooke’s article in The Observer where she interviewed the director after she’d seen The Killer Inside Me, read here, arriving at the lunch table with personal objections. Strange then that he was not the easiest dining partner?! She seemed to think it was odd he was awkward; personally if someone starts a meeting with me with “I object to your book”, I too might be uneasy. Anyway, this week, I watched the film – one particular scene, admittedly, through the cracks in my fingers. (Or rather, the cracks between my fingers). But I forced myself not to look away because I didn’t want to judge something by having not actually seen it. Then I read Barbara Ellen’s piece in The Observer – here. Then I thought a lot about it, and about the woman who stood up at the Sundance Film Festival where it was first screened and apparently cried “Shame on you.” Cooke herself said she had to go and stand outside the cinema because she felt faint. Hmmm. Those scenes aren’t at all enjoyable, but the film’s hardly SAW 3.

In her article, Ellen accuses actresses Jessica Alba & Kate Hudson of being complicit because they’d let themselves be filmed being beaten up- and this apparently is bad for feminism. OK, so here’s the thing. It’s acting and it’s to do with the plot. The film, taken from the book by Jim Thompson, is about a seemingly normal guy Lou Ford who becomes sheriff, gets involved with a prostitute despite being engaged to another woman and because of his deeply troubled childhood, and building events in the town, becomes psychotic. The sheer fact that you are not expecting him to do what he does (and with his own fists) – largely because he’s involved in a very sexual and apparently quite loving relationship with the prostitute – is the EXACT POINT! Would the audience rather he attacked her with a feather duster? Or off-screen and it was reported? If so, you’d lose the drama and the driving force behind the plot.

I don’t think Winterbottom depicted the violence because he’s suggesting it’s a turn on, which Ellen seems to suggest. She complains that none of the male victims are shown to be beaten in the same manner – but then they die in different ways. I don’t think it’s about glorifying violence to women, or about being gratuitous for the sake of it. Instead it’s about the nature of the relationship Lou Ford has with these two women, and how very messed up he is. Here is a man who kills someone and then sits down to read the newspaper in the same room they lie dying. It’s not normal to try and beat someone to death with your own fists, or to read the paper after and that is the point and that’s why Winterbottom is right to keep the fairly brief violent scenes in. He destroys what he loves. They are absolutely intrinsic to the story. Personally, I’ve been more upset by scenes in films that have been less graphic (Clint Eastwood’s Changeling for instance); it just depends on the story and content. If Lou Ford had neatly shot the prostitute in the head or beaten her off-screen, it wouldn’t tell the audience the same story about his character, who is in every single scene of the film. It’s about him, not the violence. It’s about why he perpetrates the violence in that manner. And that’s the point, I feel. It is a hard film, not a romantic comedy or a laugh, but it’s true to itself. Hadley Freeman got it I feel – see here. Having been punched in the face by an ex-boyfriend, I’d agree absolutely, domestic violence is never pretty – but if you want to underline that, you show it how it is. So climb down off your high horses, ladies and gents, and make your own minds up without all the ‘immoral’ hysteria…Remember that every time the bleeding hero jumps up again in Batman/ Snatch/ Lethal Weapon/ Die Hard or the Bourne films, well, actually, they’d probably really be dead.

ps Given all the ‘feminist’ arguments, I feel it’s only right to admit I also watched the film because I heart Casey Affleck (just a little bit). Presumably this is a very bad thing for the sisterhood because I am objectifying him as a sexual object. Or something…

So I’m preparing to talk tomorrow about PUNISHMENTS MEETING THE CRIME: Morality, Society & Justice in crime novels. Obviously am a great expert on this and am spending much time planning what to say to our moderator Steve Mosby and not worrying about what serious crime writers should wear on such serious occasions: twinset and pearls? Two piece suit? Anyway, since my last book NEVER TELL is all about a rather debauched secret society at Oxford University, the kind of society some of our great leaders used to belong too (yep I’m talking about new PM Cameron – & how the hell did that happen, can I just say; + Chancellor Osborne, Boris Johnson et al), I’m completely all over the morality thing. Even though writing some of the more shocking scenes occasionally made me blush. You might think it’s a moot point whether I really write crime; as a lovely (and the only male) member of the New Eltham Library Reading Group said to me last week, having just read my first book LULLABY, “This isn’t really crime, this is just the story of a young mum whose baby is stolen”…the aghast female members quickly turned on him, poor man! “Isn’t it a crime having a stolen baby” one said crossly. I kept quiet in the corner and let them fight it out!

Anyway, if you’re at Crimefest, please do come and say hello; I’ll be the one propping up the bar in the Mariott really sensible and totally sober one (I’m always amazed by how much my fellow Crime Writers drink. Really.)

A few quick things: I went to the BBC yesterday to do some radio interviews. Actually I did more than I realised I was lined up for; luckily I was early, because I was shoved on air with literally a minute to spare – frankly it was a relief I even remembered my name during the 1st interview, for Radio Jersey. Afterwards I popped out and as the nice receptionist offered me a drink, a rather imposing man rocked up and then stood looking down at her as if she should know who he was. She obviously didn’t, though I recognised him as the reporter John Simpson (isn’t he the guy that ‘took Baghdad’ before even the US army did?!) Anyway, the poor man seemed quite put out that she had no clue who he was. I skipped back into my tiny cubby-hole of a studio before war broke out and he could declare ‘he’d taken Western House’.

I did a funny interview about NEVER TELL for the celebrity gossip website Female First; I say funny, but it wasn’t really meant to be! You can read here – though it seems to have been transcribed absolutely verbatim with alll my dithering and pausing and lots of laughing apparently…if you do read it, please excuse my dizziness!

Never Tell is apparently doing OK in the British bookshops, so if you’re one of the lovely people who’ve bought it, thank you. It’s climbed up the Heatseeker chart a bit, so fingers crossed!!

Finally for now, I’m going to be at Crime Fest in Bristol from May 20-22 so it’d be great to see you if you fancy it…details here. There’ll be lots of exciting writers milling around discussing important crime stuff (OK, they’ll probably be mainly propping up the bar). Come and say hello!

The good news is, I managed to find something to wear to the launch. The bad news is, I got a bit carried away with the free wine so it’s taken me this long to get back to work. It was so lovely to see everyone who came that I got slightly overwhelmed and felt the need to stay out til 4am. Whoops. When I’ve recovered even more and I get a bit more savvy I might even manage to post a photo or 2 on my site.

Apparently NEVER TELL has been doing quite well so far; last week’s exciting news was that it even got into The Bookseller’s Heatseeker chart which would have been even more exciting if I’d actually known what that meant! I spent some time ringing important people like my agent Teresa to then be chastised for not reading The Bookseller often enough. My first official review, from writer Cath Staincliffe, is here: I’m v. relieved she liked it! It’s so strange when something that has existed only in my head and then at the end of my fingertips is now out there to be judged by all…fingers crossed etc….

So NEVER TELL is being unleashed on an unsuspecting public…the first person to spot one in a shop wins a Creme Egg. Actually I’ve already been sent a mobile picture from London’s Euston station, so the Creme Egg’s ear-marked for my good mate Steph. Yesterday I did a radio interview on Talk Radio Europe on Hannah Murray’s book show, where we discussed secret societies being rather like cults. I think, if you’re very clever, (cleverer than me, which isn’t hard), you can listen again to it here . I should probably draw a veil over the moment when I said ‘I hope that people want to keep turning the pages’. ‘Yes, well’ said Hannah, kindly, ‘isn’t that the point of books?’.

A few other links I’d forgotten to download (OK, actually, that I’ve been too stupid to download. I’m doing my best with this computer lark)…In USA – is Page 69 representative of the rest of your book – the Page 69 test for the just-published LULLABY – click here.

And if you’re interested in SECRET SOCIETIES IN LITERATURE, Enid Blyton’s Secret 7, Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History amongst others, have a look here at the article I wrote for BookArmy. And the nice people at Book Army are running a competition to win a copy of NEVER TELL so you could even enter that if you fancied.

Now I must get on with the pressing business of finding something to wear to the NEVER TELL launch writing my next book.

And if you do lay your hands on a copy of NEVER TELL, I’d love to know what you think. As long as you like it, obviously.

So it’s publication day tomorrow apparently and the phone’s been ringing off the hook with calls from the publisher, agents, Hollywood and …oh, OK. My agent did ring; the 5-year-old answered and a fair bit of confusion followed as he thought she was ringing to say Happy Birthday. Because actually he’s 6 today and not 5 anymore. An auspicious week in my household, you see.

Anyway, am very excited about NEVER TELL hitting the shelves; it’ll be triply exciting if readers like it. It’s definitely the most ambitious of my books and I have a huge soft spot for Rose Miller, the journalist struggling to reconcile her addiction to adrenalin-filled news gathering with raising her young family. It’s also set in early ’90s Oxford where Rose got involved with the decadent Society X – pretty topical at the moment with the Election looming, Laura Wade’s play POSH about the Bullingdon drinking club -also mentioned in NEVER TELL , and boasting members such as Cameron and Boris Johnson. A jolly good excuse to raise a (large) glass myself tomorrow, I think!

2010 is ticking on and the publication of my 3rd novel NEVER TELL is looming – April 15th apparently!  Book’s gone to print, cover approved, quotes are in place, I just need to sort out the launch party now…the priority obviously…

Talking about venues to a male friend, he admitted sheepishly that he hadn’t actually read my books: “Well, they’re for women aren’t they?” he mumbled as I fixed him with a stare. (I didn’t really, of course my friends don’t have to read my books. They really don’t. I just don’t talk to them anymore when I find out.) Another male friend once admitted that he felt a bit odd reading LULLABY on the tube, even though it didn’t have a particularly feminine cover. Well, there was a cot and a teddy bear…but it’s all quite dark and scary-looking. Although this probably says more about that friend than those supposedly judging him for reading a ‘girl’s book’, it did make me think about who reads what and how much gender influences us… Women traditionally buy more books than men; and there are lots of books that I would class as ‘male’ books and wouldn’t choose to read, sci-fi etc amongst them, but also the novels of a certain type of middle-aged middle-class novelist dealing with specifically male angst springs to mind…whilst men aren’t ever going to read chick lit, certainly not in public (and nor for that matter, am I – in public or at home, but I’m still the target audience).  And personally, I was never keen on the cover of my 2nd novel BAD FRIENDS: my agent and I fought a battle with my publisher and lost.  One of my main concerns was that it was so specifically female; that no man would ever pick up a book with toothily smiling girls on it.

Recently Martin Amis and news-reader Anna Ford had a rather public spat in the papers about his friendship with her late husband Mark Boxer. During this argument Ford called Amis’s books ‘misogynist’: “As a feminist I don’t enjoy reading him; he may be one of our most distinguished writers, but I think his attitude to women is highly questionable” Ford said (see full article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/anna-ford-martin-amis-letter). It’s a fascinating subject – and I’m sincerely hoping that the neutral cover of NEVER TELL means that all my male friends and even some male readers whom I don’t know might actually pick up the book in a shop or a library and read it without prejudice!!

And just quickly, you can catch me tomorrow – March 12th – in conversation with my crime-writing mate, Dreda Say Mitchell, at the Wisewords Festival (http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/whats-on/events/special-events/wisewords.cfm) in London’s Women’s Library in the East end, at 5pm . It’d be fabulous to see you there….you can tell me what you think men & women should be reading, and how we cross the divide…

Very exciting – am now officially published in America!!  Does that mean I’ve finally arrived? Will Scorsese or Bigelow be ringing me next week to take an option on LULLABY?!  You have to live in hope…

So my first novel LULLABY was published last week in USA by St Martin’s Press.  The reviews have been flooding in (ahem).  I was delighted to read the start of The Washington Post one here - “the opening pages couldn’t be much better” & the favourable comparasions to du Maurier’s Rebecca, a book I still remember devouring deep into the night as a teenager.  Reviews are a funny old thing; as an author hiding away in my garrett living in a dream world I don’t think of the reality of the book hitting shops and reviewers’ desks, and the fact that, as an old friend once sternly reminded me, I’m putting myself in the public arena…so therefore I’m inviting criticism…I’m not sure I agree.  It begs the question why we write, I guess.  I write because I love it and I am privileged enough to be paid to do it; I write because I have stories spooling through my head that I need to get out of me and because sometimes I prefer living in a fictitious world than a real one (Okay, I admit that sounds a bit scary).  But some might say being in print means everyone can take a shot… What do you reckon?  Should critics, either paid or ‘amateur’, ever mince their words?

Anyway, although Maureen Corrigan of Book World only celebrated parts of LULLABY,  luckily some other US readers liked the whole darn book (phew – thanks Becky!)…here..

So I’m now planning to ship the children and myself over the pond to NYC asap to meet my editors at Thomas Dunne and hang out for a bit in the world’s most iconic city.  Thinking of the US reminds me of my dinner in the summer at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival with the brilliant David Simon, creator of iconic The Wire, and his charming wife Laura Lipmann whom I share a British publisher with.  I’ve never been so envied by my friends, really.  More of that dinner soon when I can actually get technical enough to upload a photo…

Happy New Year…it’s murky out there but in here it’s warm…

This blogging lark’s taken me a while to get my head round but I’m getting there slowly, I hope…if I’lm not, bear with me, it can only get better – ahem. Apparently. Last week I caught Radio 4’s Front Row’s Special on (young) Female Playwrights and girls, I have to say, by & large, you don’t know you’ve got it so good! Polly Stenham, Lucky Kirkwood, Lucy Prebble, Alia Bano et al…you are undoubtedly extremely talented, but you are also undoubtedly heading up a zeitgeist – and  I hate to say it, call me Devil’s Advocate if you like, but I definitely see a new and recent trend for female writers – only let’s pray it stays, let’s pray it lasts and isn’t just a ‘zeitgeist’ that burns out.   Largely from the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme (and yes, spare a thought for the older writer, older by – well, over 25, yep over the hill who does not deserve, apparently, a leg-up – whilst personally I’m impressed these very young writers have so much to say: I didn’t feel I had anything much worth saying until I was 33 and wrote my first book…whether it was worth saying, well, that’s your call not mine.) Anyway, the writers on Front Row had much to say but some were outraged when asked if they thought their sex had anything to do with their success.  Not that I think it should, of course it shouldn’t: writers are writers, male or female, the talent’s there or it’s not and if it isn’t, well hopefully you’ll keep the dream alive.

Of course there’s absolutely no doubt that in any genre of writing, literary, crime, poetry, film & TV screenwriting, plays, the whole damn shebang, that men have outnumbered women since time immemorial and it’s dull and wrong, heinously wrong and of course it must must must be redressed asap.  But that’s how it’s been.  Meanwhile, incremental changes occur eg our first female poet laurete, Carol Ann Duffy – and thank God she’s such a bloody good poet, frankly such a much better one than…well you get my drift.  But the female writers on Front Row seemed disingenous to me and to be slightly missing the point.   “I don’t even want to answer the question about sex” was the general cry – but why then was there a programme about ‘female’ playwrights in the first place???  Hey, ladies?  Because there are so blooming few – and because suddenly it is getting easier, as it should, to be a woman writer and succeed.  Because a lot of the fusty famous old male farts in theatre don’t necessarily have that much to say anymore.  Because women shouldn’t just write about emotions – but then, hey, maybe we sometimes, oh dare I say it, maybe our emotional responses are sometimes more instinctive.   And because, sorry, it’s suddenly fashionable to use female playwrights.  Long may it last.

Anyway.  Some of the writers didn’t strike a discordant note: not the lovely Chloe Moss whom I know and whose work is so strong, or Ella Hickson or Enron writer Prebble, these women seemed grounded and realistic – but a couple of the writers, well, their tone was kind of annoying.  Sorry, girls, but the world does not owe you a hearing just because you can write.  Yes, it’s more than outrageous that Royal National Theatre’s first play written by a woman only went on in 2008 (Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin – ironically about suffragettes).  But however talented you are, you’re also incredibly lucky to be having your voices heard so widely, not that they should be decrying gratitude – but let’s not kid ourselves that there is a huge amount of luck involved with any art form: writing, acting, singing, whatever…Call it what you like, serendipity etc – but let’s get real.  You can be bolshy and arrogant as you like, but a little humility goes a long way – and you are also lucky to be coming around in a time when the artistic directors and the TV commissioners are finally wising up a little and opening up your options. It’s been a long fight, but I think it’d pay to realise that there have been hundreds of  female writers before you who have not had the chance to be heard, whose work was undoubtedly every bit as worthy and talented as yours – and there’s undoubtedly another few thousand sat at home penning stuff which one day, for the Grace of God, may also get heard.

Firstly, can I just say – re: the last chocolate in the box that I always manage to eat, as per my last post…Conveniently The Guardian just conducted its own survey – out of 6 boxes of quality favourites like Black Magic and Milk Tray, the one skulking at the bottom in 4 of the 6 were orange -themed.  A win-win situation for me.

I’ve been thinking about Perugia and the Kercher trial.  I spent a few months living in that small red city on a hill as a teenager in 1989, studying at the Universita dei Stranieri where my parents met in the ‘60s.  (Both Kercher and Knox attended it too).  When I was in Perugia I didn’t learn much Italian, largely because I rarely got out of bed to go to lessons, though I did get out of bed to attend numerous small discotheques, usually decorated in leopard-skin, to dance the night away to Madonna with other students: the majority of whom came from Seattle University, like Amanda Knox.  The Seattle kids were confident and frankly quite brash; they were large in number and so ran as a pack.  We English meekly slotted in where we were allowed.

Much has been written these past few weeks about poor Meredith Kercher not getting much press attention; it’s all been directed at Knox (far more so than co-defendant and sometime boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito).  But there are obvious reasons for this, no?  The first, and most obvious and tragic, is that Kercher died two years ago.  Knox, for all her being banged up for 20-odd years (though who knows what her future holds if Hillary Clinton does get involved), is vibrantly alive, an ultimately fascinating plaintiff – mainly because she is a/ very young, attractive & middle-class and b/ female – and that’s without the unknown quantity of true motive.

Meredith Kercher, doubtless a lovely girl both in nature and looks, became a memory the day she died, and hard as that must be for her family and loved ones, it is incontrovertibly intrinsic to being the ‘victim’.   As crime writers know, it’s generally the perpetrators who are the focus in stories, rather than the late victims.  Kercher died, so her voice cannot be heard.  Meanwhile, the world’s media keep interest in Knox alive by wondering about the sentence, the lack of DNA and the rather outlandish motive…

Perugia was an unthreatening place when I was there, except during large football games when the male population would literally go crazy; the one scary incident for me was the night friends and I got lost down a small alley, looking for – yep, you guessed it – a new discotheque.  There we were confronted by a couple of angry young Italians who shouted at us about the Heysel tragedy, when 37 Juventus fans died.  We didn’t know what they were talking about, I’d probably never even heard of Juventus – but this was just after Hillsborough and internationally, people still didn’t understand that that tragedy hadn’t happened because of rioting.  The English weren’t very popular in Italy that year…Still, Perguia is beautiful, surrounded by some of the world’s most historic sites, like Assissi.  I hope it can shake off its tarnished reputation; evil can happen anywhere, I guess.

RIP, Meredith.