BEST OF CRIME with Paul Finch

Welcome to my latest BEST OF CRIME feature, looking at crime writers' top picks, from their favourite author and fictional detective to their best writing tip. 

Today I'm delighted to welcome 

PAUL FINCH

to share his BEST OF CRIME ... 

... AUTHORS

Ted Lewis, creator of Jack Carter, the racketeer-turned-avenger, who appeared in three novels, Jack’s Return Home, Jack Carter’s Law and Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon. The first one is the most memorable, not least because it was filmed in 1970 as the seminal crime thriller, Get Carter. It was probably the first adult crime novel I read, and it had a massive impact on me, primarily because it captured my home, the industrial north, so well. Ted Lewis had limited output; he sadly died at the age of 42, but he did more than most to create that stark, gritty school of British noir. 

... FILMS/MOVIES
Ironically, given my previous answer, my favourite crime thriller is not Get Carter, but probably The French Connection (1971), directed by William Friedkin, and of course, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Even now, it breaks all the rules, eschewing plot and traditional narrative structure for documentary-style uber-realism. It’s quite simply an eye-popper (no pun intended), portraying a seedier, grimier New York than we’d ever seen before, and depicting inner city cops, not so much as heroes, but as the ruthless, hard-bitten individuals they are in real life. I was a cop myself, and this is still one of the most authentic cop movies I’ve ever seen.

... TV DRAMAS

Without doubt, it’s The Sweeney (1975-78). I think you can see where this interview is going by now.  All of my preferences, thus far at least, date from a harder, tougher era, when we weren’t afraid to show what cops were really like. I think The Sweeney has dated badly now, if I’m honest, but at the time – when I was at my most impressionable age, I suppose – after slower-paced shows like Dixon of Dock Green – it was such a refreshing change to see a no-holds-barred action series that had pace, rawness and irreverence, with John Thaw as Regan, the last word in roughneck DIs. It didn’t just make me want to write about the cops, it made me want to join them. 

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

For me, Donovan ‘Red’ Grant is one of the scariest killers in thriller fiction. He appeared in Ian Fleming’s fifth James Bond novel, From Russia With Love (1957), as the quintessential professional assassin. A muscular blond psychopath, he deserted the British Army in Berlin, and joined the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, SMERSH, becoming their chief executioner. Despite his looks, he is totally asexual, has the eyes ‘of a drowned man’ and prefers to kill at the time of the full moon. Most folk will remember Robert Shaw’s mesmerising performance in the 1963 movie version. Anyone who can go toe-to-toe with 007 has got to be a serious opponent. 

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES

After reflection, I think it has to be Art Keller, the DEA man in Don Winslow’s epic duo of ‘dope war’ novels, Power of the Dog (2005) and The Cartel (2015). Keller is the archetypical good guy, because, though flawed – as all our law-enforcement heroes must be these days – he’s up against an edifice of evil in the form of the Mexican cartels, a bunch of crime syndicates who will stop at nothing – including torture and mass murder – to advance their schemes. Keller is clever rather than tough, and though by the end, he’s a pale, wearied shadow of the guy he was, you can’t help but love him for taking on such a monstrous opponent … and winning (of a fashion). 

... MURDER WEAPONS

For me, it’s the actual hound of the Baskervilles. I’ve always been a horror fan as well as a thriller fan, and the more gothic and traditional, the better. Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) was the first horror movie I was allowed to watch as a child, and it terrified me. I soon found myself reading the novel, which also wove a magical spell. The image of the vast, desolate moor and this monstrous beast of legend, which it wasn’t actually difficult for a clever madman to recreate using perfectly non-supernatural means, all make for one of the greatest crime thrillers ever written. The Hound of Hell – can you think of a more hideous means by which to kill someone?

    

... DEATH SCENES
One of the most horrific ever occurs in the second half of Don Winslow’s second dope war saga, The Cartel (2015), when the Zetas, a special forces group who have taken to drugs-dealing themselves, are enraged by a busload of itinerant workers accidentally straying onto their patch when business is in progress. What follows is the most harrowing massacre of the innocent you’re ever likely to read. Everyone on that bus, both men and women, are killed, but only after being used as playthings for hours, and when they die, it isn’t quick – they are garroted, burned, beheaded, etc. It completely underlines the depths of evil in that astonishing novel.

  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

Sorry to be boring, but for me it’s always Wikipedia. I know it’s not necessarily the most reliable source, but I tend to do most of my real research with people rather than websites; I have a list of various experts I can call on. If I ever need to look something up quickly, I find Wikipedia pretty useful for that. 

... WRITING TIPS

Make your rejections work for you. First of all, accept that rejection slips are an occupational hazard – we all get them (most of us could wallpaper our offices with them). Secondly, learn from them. If an editor or publisher has gone to the trouble of telling you why he’s knocking you back, you don’t have to agree with it, but at least take note of what he/she is saying, and if that criticism comes up again and again, consider that the fault may lie with you. Which is not the end of the world, because if it’s something you can fix, do it – that could be the difference between getting rejected again next time, or making a sale. 

... WRITING SNACKS
It sounds a bit self-indulgent, but today it’s cakes and ale. It isn’t exactly a tradition of ours, but today is publication day – as I write, ASHES TO ASHES has just been published – and someone has treated my wife (and business partner) Cathy, and I, to some cakes and a couple of light ales. We are currently enjoying them as a form of minor celebration.

About PAUL FINCH

Paul Finch is a screenwriter, novelist, short story writer and journalist, whose published and broadcast work covers a wide spectrum of genres, including horror, fantasy, science fiction, thrillers and crime.

Find out more about Paul Finch on his website and also on Twitter - @paulfinchauthor

About ASHES TO ASHES

Publisher's description

John Sagan is a forgettable man. You could pass him in the street and not realise he’s there. But then, that’s why he’s so dangerous.

A torturer for hire, Sagan has terrorised – and mutilated – countless victims. And now he’s on the move. DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg must chase the trail, even when it leads him to his hometown of Bradburn – a place he never thought he’d set foot in again.

But Sagan isn’t the only problem. Bradburn is being terrorised by a lone killer who burns his victims to death. And with the victims chosen at random, no-one knows who will be next. Least of all Heck…

Ashes to Ashes was published by Avon on 6 April 2017.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

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Writing Action Scenes by Paul Finch - Strangers Blog Tour

I am delighted to welcome Paul Finch to my blog today, for his Strangers Blog Tour. Paul has some top tips on writing action sequences, followed by my review of his latest book. Strangers was published by Avon on 22 September 2016.

Top tips on writing action sequences

By Paul Finch

I’m honoured that my crime novels have won praise from reviewers for their action sequences. Flattering terms like ‘vivid’, ‘gut-thumping’ and ‘bone-crunching’ have all been used in recent times, so I can only assume that I’m doing something reasonably right.

It may surprise people to hear this, but one of the tricks to writing good action is to be subtle.

For real?, I hear you ask. ‘Gut-thumping’? ‘Bone-crunching’? What’s subtle about that?

What I mean is that action is most effective when used sparingly. Otherwise you risk your novel turning into a cartoon. Now, that may be what some authors are looking to achieve. But personally, I like to keep things just this side of believable. So I don’t include a fist fight or a car chase on every other page. Likewise, I try to do those other things that are important in novel-writing: evoke some mood, some atmosphere, develop plot and character, examine relationships, etc. And that’s not some attempt to be literary, it’s an attempt to create a more rounded and satisfying experience for the readers, and to prevent them becoming bored, because you can just as easily get bored with too much action as you can with too much kissing, too much chatter, etc.

Another problem with overusing action is that you consistently have to raise the stakes, always needing to produce a bigger, louder sequence than the one before. You won’t need me to tell you that it isn’t long before this gets preposterous. You could finish up with the situation you had in the Bond movie, DIE ANOTHER DAY, which included an invisible car, a giant beam of concentrated solar energy fired from a satellite and destroying Earth’s armies, and Bond wind-surfing a tidal wave.

Even trying to keep things grounded sometimes isn’t enough. 

You only need to look back at some of the 1980s action extravaganzas, the Schwarzenegger and Stallone movie, which were often blizzards of gunfire from beginning to end, with soaring body-counts and heroes who were completely invincible. And that’s another thing. Unless you’re setting out to write about superheroes, remember that the more vulnerable your lead character is going to be, the more effective he/she is. To have weaknesses is human – it’s a recognisable and even likeable trait in fiction. So if you portray them walking through storms of bullets without getting hurt, or despatching every opponent with ridiculous ease … why would anything else your reader sees them encounter be deemed a threat? How will he/she empathise with them? All tension and suspense is lost.

These are the most important tips I can offer with regard to action sequences. Don’t overuse them and don’t overcook them. Less is always more, and remember that in the real world violence has consequences. Even if your heroes emerge from the battle unscathed, they are not going to be unshaken. There may also be legal ramifications, especially if your hero is a cop. Okay, it’s a built-in given with police thriller fiction that the central character tends to be on the side of right and therefore, almost whatever he/she does will end up being approved. But I once read a very interesting quote from a senior San Francisco police officer, who, after it was draw to his attention that in the five Dirty Harry movies, Callahan’s kill-count was somewhere in the 40s or 50s, commented that no serving officer with such a record could expect to keep his job or even his liberty.

Obviously, we’re often dealing with ‘do or die’ situations in our novels, but the legal structure of the free world is important, so we at least have to pay a degree of lip-service towards that.

All that said, if you use them judiciously, your action sequences can still be among the highlights of your book. For this reason, I myself find them the most demanding scenes to write, because they need to be bang-on.

One case in point was a car-chase across South London in my fifth Heckenburg novel, HUNTED. It was described by one reviewer as ‘the mother of all car-chases’, which made me happy, because though it only occupied two pages of the novel, it had taken me two whole weeks to construct it. First of all, I’d wanted to get it correct geographically. This involved plotting it on a map and taking advice from London traffic officers. I also drove the route to see if such a chase was technically possible. And while the actual writing might have been done in a day, it then needed to be very tightly edited. It isn’t a rule of law, but I always find it gives you a quicker read if you use shorter, punchier sentences. So whatever you do, don’t meander – get to the point of each sentence immediately. This will energise the entire passage.

Also, remember that the quality of an action sequence is not just a piece of narrative. It works much better when it’s an assault on the senses. Any kind of pursuit or combat situation can be overwhelming for those involved. You’ve got to think how it looks to be in the midst of this terrible danger, how it sounds, how it smells: a chaos of flickering ‘jumping jack’ images, the mingled stenches of sweat, blood, oil, the crump of splintering metal, the explosion of shattering glass, the deafening bangs as speeding cars rebound from one another, etc.

All of this can make it a vivid experience for your audience, who I try to involve as much as I possibly can. If you can make your reader feel that he/she is the one being put through the mangle, not your hero, then that is one sure way to make them flip through those pages in a blur of speed. 

About Paul Finch

Paul Finch is a screenwriter, novelist, short story writer and journalist, whose published and broadcast work covers a wide spectrum of genres, including horror, fantasy, science fiction, thrillers and crime.

Find out more about Paul Finch on his website and also on Twitter - @paulfinchauthor

Strangers

By Paul Finch

Published by Avon (22 September 2016)

ISBN: 978-0007551316

Publisher's description

Unknown, alone, and fearing for your life.

As PC Lucy Clayburn is about to find out, going undercover is the most dangerous work there is.

But, on the trail of a prolific female serial killer, there's no other option – and these murders are as brutal as they come.

Lucy must step into the line of fire – a stranger in a criminal underworld that butchers anyone who crosses the line.

And, unknown to Lucy, she's already treading it…

My verdict

Strangers is original, fast-paced and terrifying at times, as PC Lucy Clayburn goes undercover to investigate a series of brutal murders. Unusually, the book features a female serial killer - not often found in crime fiction.

I have enjoyed Paul Finch's Heck series so far (although I still have another book to read) and found Strangers to be equally as enjoyable and compelling, with a new female police officer in the primary role, rather than a detective. The book is dark and brutal at times, delving into the criminal underworld and prostitution. It's also highly descriptive, mixing police investigation with page-turning action and entertaining storytelling.

I really liked PC Lucy Clayburn's character - and she certainly felt very real by the end of the book. I'm hoping she will feature in more Paul Finch books in the future.

I received an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

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