BEST OF CRIME with Merle Nygate

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 

MERLE NYGATE

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

John le Carré – he can’t be beaten. Graham Greene and Len Deighton.  Can I have all three?

I’m not at all sure I can choose between them. They span the Cold War which fascinates me even though my novel, The Righteous Spy is contemporary. I suppose my fascination with the Cold War goes back to school.  When I was 15 we learnt about the Berlin Wall; the idea that there was a wall in the middle of a city and that half the city was associated with a different country was so ridiculous that I thought I must have misunderstood what the teacher was saying.

... FILMS/MOVIES

At the moment my favourite film is Imperium.  I watched it recently and thought Daniel Radcliffe as FBI undercover agent, Nat Foster was remarkable. Radcliffe plays both an American nerdy FBI agent and a convincing supremacist when his character infiltrates far right groups.  It’s a very human piece showing the different sides’ vulnerabilities.  Based on an account written by an FBI agent it has the literary ring of truth.  On reflection, the film would probably have worked better as TV.

... TV DRAMAS

The Wire is the best TV show I’ve ever seen. I watch it every few years and each time I notice something new.  Again, this is a well-researched piece. David Simon wrote a book called Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets.  David Simon knows this world as a former journalist and it is a brilliant series full of psychological insight and nuance, not to mention terrific drama; think Shakespeare. It’s best to watch it with subtitles because the slang is difficult to understand until you get into it. 

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

Dix in Dorothy M Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.  Although Dix is pretty creepy, this book and the author were a discovery for me when I did my MA in Crime Fiction at UEA. The title was on the reading list and before then I’d never heard of Hughes.  Dix is a psychopath who stalks women in Los Angeles. He’s not unlike Ripley in Highsmith’s books but Dix stalking the swirling mists of post war Los Angeles is brilliantly realised. 

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

My abiding fondness for Sherlock Holmes is because he was the first detective I ever read and the stories still work.  I love Holme’s analytical and deductive skills and there’s some of that in Petra; one of the characters in The Righteous Spy.  What’s more, when it came out, the TV adaptation with Jeremy Brett was the highlight of the viewing week and it was the best TV ever. 

... FICTIONAL SPIES

Bernard Samson is a great spy.  He’s in the nine-book series by Len Deighton that starts with Berlin Game. Like The Wire, it’s a series I re-read every few years. Samson is an outsider in MI6 and he is wonderfully irreverent.  He has a great sense of humour which I think is an important attribute for a spy and he’s his own man. 

    

... MURDER WEAPONS 

Opiates would be my favourite weapon because I am a wimp when it comes to pain and opiates are said to be about as painless a murder weapon as possible. 

  

... DEATH SCENES
Alex Leamus and Liz Gold at The Berlin Wall in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.  I like it because the entire way through the book I was expecting them to survive, to get over the wall – and then they don’t. It’s such a vivid scene and so tragic but it is the only possible ending.

BLOGS/WEBSITES

The CIA website is packed with ideas for spy writers.  I came across the website when I was researching The Righteous Spy and desperately looking for a potential story. By that stage, I’d written about nine outlines for various ideas and none of them were convincing and they seemed derivative which they were, being based on other spy stories. On the CIA website I came across a review for a non-fiction book called Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas.  It was described as the inside story of Mossad and included interviews with former directors and intelligence officers. This book was the turning point for me. I close read, marked it up, made detailed notes and extrapolated the information I needed for a second document.  From that document I brainstormed and identified the various different types of true espionage stories.  For example, there seem to be different types of assassinations; revenge assassinations in the aftermath of terrorist attacks; strategic assassinations to kill enemy nuclear scientists; liaison assassinations where Mossad may kill on behalf of another intelligence service; warning assassinations when an arms dealer is wounded or killed as a warning to other arms dealers.  There were also disinformation and recruitment operations that had rich fictional possibilities and, of course, the ubiquitous, ‘find the mole’ story. 

From the list of documented operations, I brainstormed 13 different one-sentence scenarios before narrowing them down to the ideas that eventually became The Righteous Spy.

My other favourite website is The National Archives. It’s another treasure trove of stories and the bookshop is a great source of non-fiction spy books.

... WRITING TIPS

Decide your theme and develop your characters before you hit the page.  That’s my process which I wouldn’t want to impose on anyone else, but it works for me. Although I didn’t have a story until I did the research, I knew that I wanted to write about good people doing bad things.  For me knowing the theme of a story is like a compass, or maybe a torch in the dark; it gives me something to get back to and shows me the way ahead if I get lost. So, I always start a piece of work asking myself the ‘What’s it about?’ question.  The second stage is understanding the characters, who they are and what they want. 

... WRITING SNACKS

Apples, nuts and a lot of water.  Chocolate and coffee for short bursts.  From time to time the chocolate and coffee habit can get somewhat out of control!

About MERLE NYGATE

Merle Nygate is a screenwriter, script editor, screenwriting lecturer and novelist; she’s worked on BAFTA winning TV, New York Festival audio drama and written original sitcoms; previously she worked for BBC Comedy Commissioning as well as writing and script editing across multiple genres. Most recently, Merle completed her first espionage novel which won the Little Brown/UEA Crime Fiction Award. It was described by the judge as 'outstanding’. If you are intrigued about her background check out her website www.merlenygate.com.

Find Merle Negate on her website and on Twitter - @MerleNygate

About THE RIGHTEOUS SPY

Publisher's description

Eli Amiran is Mossad’s star spy runner and the man responsible for bringing unparalleled intelligence to the Israeli agency. Now, he’s leading an audacious operation in the UK that feeds his ambition but threatens his conscience. 

The British and the Americans have intel Mossad desperately need. To force MI6 and the CIA into sharing their priceless information, Eli and his maverick colleague Rafi undertake a risky mission to trick their allies: faking a terrorist plot on British soil. 

But in the world of espionage, the game is treacherous, opaque and deadly... 

The Righteous Spy was published by Verve Books on 18 October 2018.

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