02/05/2013 Meet the Author

On BBC News, it is time for Meet the Author with Nick Higham.

Robin Bucas' works is a departure. It is about a time travelling

serial killer and it is set in Chicago between 1931 and 1993. We

came here to London's Forbidden I suppose if you are known for

anything, it is science fiction set in South Africa, but this book is

set in Chicago, why? I had the idea about a time travelling serial

killer and I knew it would be set in the 20th century and I was

interested in how the 20th century shaped us. If I set it in South

Africa it would have become an apartheid story. I wanted to

explore big issues. I wanted to explore how the world has changed.

How highways reshaped cities. How women's rights have changed. How

some things keep coming up and again and again. It is about time

time travel. It is about the loops of history.

This is about the social history of America, particularly women? That

ascends to much of the history about the western world. South

Africa has a lot in common with South Africa. A lot of the of the

world has problems with segregation and all kinds of things

Your book moves between 1932 and 1993. He is difficult to catch

because nobodies sees the links between crime which are separated

in crime. Why did you pick 1993 as the final date? I stopped at 1993

because I wanted to avoid the internet and cellphones. The person

who survives the serial attack has got to piece together the mystery.

He leaves clues on the bodies. So for example, there is a 1993

baseball card taken from a young woman that he killed and left on a

woman in 1943 and if that was to emerge, a 1993 baseball card on a

1943 corpse and the internet would be over that. We have just seen

that with the Boston bombings. The internet would have gone crazy.

They would have solved the case in two days. Between that and CCTV

cameras, I wouldn't have had a novel. This is about a violent man

who did violent things. You don't spare us the details. Why go full

throttle? I don't go full throttle. It might feel that way. I was

interested in how crime fiction and the news, depict dead women as just

bodies. That's all we know about her. She becomes a statistic and, a

catalogue of wounds and I was interested in who they were they

were beyond that. The violence is written in a very real way. I want

you you to know what real violence is. Real violence is shocking and I

wanted to write it that way in the book, but it hangs on one or two

details. The whole chapter will be about the woman's life and why she

was remarkable and what a tragic loss it is that this horrible,

hideous man has come and cut that life short. It is not that typical

thing where it is almost sexy because we are complicit. I try to

avoid that. It is shocking and if you are sensitive, you maybe

shouldn't read it. It is because I wanted to reflect the real world.

So what extent do you feel like a South African writer, but South

Africa is a limiting place and you need to be able to work on a larger

canvass? You probably do need to work on a larger canvass. A lot of

people reacted to my novel because it was set in South Africa. Because

it felt like an alien place while still having resonances with other

cities. I didn't choose to write in America because it would be more

commercial. I did it because I didn't want to write about

apartheid for this book. But it did work out to be a much more

commercial bookment I would like to be able to write about anywhere I

want and I think international artists do that.

Your publishers commissioned a cinema-style trailer for it.

He gave it to me when I was a little girl. He said it was to

remember him by. He didn't mean me, obviously. The dead don't remember

The script is taken from the book. They send me the photographs. They

were just amazing to work with. I was very much involved with it. But

yes, it is also entirely theirs and they have done the most beautiful

job and it really does feel like a film trailer. I have had people say,

"Is it a movie?" Not yet, but hopefully.

This book has an element of the Superman trail about it. Why not

write about realism? Setting it in the near future, it allows you to

play with ideas in a way that gets over people's issues fatigue. We

see so many horrendous things on the news every day and it is easy

to change the channel on that. And fiction and in particular, high

concept, where it is engaging and interesting and it is just

distanced enough from the real world. There is just enough of a

twist on the real world that it feels fresh and feels different and

it doesn't feel like the horrors we endure every day. It allows you to

explore that and also, allows you a way into the horror and to try and

find some empathy. I think stories really get you into someone's head

and it is a wonderful medium to explore that. What are you doing?

He says putting brightness in his voice. Really, he has never seen a

child with such crazy hair. Like she got spun around in her own

personal dust devil. You are here for a book signing and to meet the

public. Who are your readers? a range of people. I seem to have

equal male and female people. I think they are people like me. I

write with myself in mind. I write books for me and I hope there are

enough other people like me who will find them interesting.

What do you want them to take away from your books? I want people to

come along for an amazing ride. To be captured by an amazing story,