0:00:01 > 0:00:03Now it's time for Meet the Author.
0:00:06 > 0:00:12If you read any of the four Mick Herron novels you will know what to
0:00:12 > 0:00:22expect in the fifth, London Rules. Skulduggery and streets alive with
0:00:22 > 0:00:26terror, a political class that is self-centred and often corrupt, time
0:00:26 > 0:00:32is pressing and the threat real and the ramshackle outfit, never fleeing
0:00:32 > 0:00:44by the rules, has to try and save the day, welcome.
0:00:56 > 0:01:02Jackson Lamb and his many men and women at a pretty rough lot?Sort
0:01:02 > 0:01:06of. They are quite ordinary people in many ways and I'm quite keen on
0:01:06 > 0:01:12these spies having daily lives in contemporary London.That's right,
0:01:12 > 0:01:19they don't lead gilded lives, they are not pampered and they are under
0:01:19 > 0:01:21enormous pressure with a terrorist threat in this book and they will go
0:01:21 > 0:01:27into that in some detail but not too much. They are pretty rough in the
0:01:27 > 0:01:35way they deal with each other in the office stop what strikes me is that
0:01:35 > 0:01:40very seldom are they really nice to each other.Very seldom. That
0:01:40 > 0:01:44certain bonds between different characters, not as a group very
0:01:44 > 0:01:50much, but there are pairings that happens the series.Indeed.I like
0:01:50 > 0:01:54to think in the group seems particularly, I always have at least
0:01:54 > 0:01:57one scene where everybody is their are all at once, and on those
0:01:57 > 0:02:00occasions they reach some kind of harmony, usually working on the
0:02:00 > 0:02:06problem.It may be harmonious in that sense and they do care about
0:02:06 > 0:02:10each other and their situations but you never get them saying, what are
0:02:10 > 0:02:17you really like? They seem to be driven by a desire not to show too
0:02:17 > 0:02:22much of themselves. Do you think it is a characteristic of people who
0:02:22 > 0:02:26find themselves in that world?It may be a characteristic of people
0:02:26 > 0:02:33who work in offices and I focus on the order in this of these people.
0:02:33 > 0:02:38-- ordinariness. And they are spies but to an extent they could be
0:02:38 > 0:02:40anything and the relationships are determined by the fact they are all
0:02:40 > 0:02:45frustrated in their ambitions and clearers and all having to work
0:02:45 > 0:02:48together and don't want to.And the point is that if we met any of them
0:02:48 > 0:02:52in the street from would have no idea what they do by the way they
0:02:52 > 0:02:58behave, which is the point.I was looking in the tube on the way in
0:02:58 > 0:03:01this morning trying to spot characters.One of the things, and I
0:03:01 > 0:03:06am trying not to give too much away because it is a tense plot, but
0:03:06 > 0:03:10there's a blackmail threats made against someone and it is made
0:03:10 > 0:03:17directly by someone who is quite high up in the establishment. Do you
0:03:17 > 0:03:20think that in that form could happen is that it clear is that?Almost
0:03:20 > 0:03:29certainly.A real threat. We have got this photograph, and we talked
0:03:29 > 0:03:32about this beforehand, but we can see it involves somebody who is
0:03:32 > 0:03:36involved in cross dressing and therefore is going to produce an
0:03:36 > 0:03:40embarrassing series of stories in the papers and the questioners, will
0:03:40 > 0:03:45he brazen it out and say, this is me, or will he fold at the threat of
0:03:45 > 0:03:49blackmail?Part of the reason for introducing that blackmail was
0:03:49 > 0:03:53because I was interested in allowing this character who is mostly not
0:03:53 > 0:03:59pleasant to have some integrity and bravery so he is facing a challenge
0:03:59 > 0:04:05and will he toughed it out Cave, and so the decision he partly makes to
0:04:05 > 0:04:09tough it out indicates that as a court of integrity.When you're a
0:04:09 > 0:04:14character like that in circumstances like that, do you try however hard
0:04:14 > 0:04:20it might be to put yourself in that position?Always, I try to write
0:04:20 > 0:04:25characters from the Inside Out. The only character they don't do that
0:04:25 > 0:04:28with is Jackson Lamb himself. You see what he does and says but never
0:04:28 > 0:04:35what he thinks feels.To somebody who hasn't read the four preceding
0:04:35 > 0:04:38books and might perhaps pick up this one and go back, how would you
0:04:38 > 0:04:43describe Jackson Lamb?The best way of describing him would be to meet
0:04:43 > 0:04:49him. To enter his department of the Secret Service were all the failure
0:04:49 > 0:04:54is get assigned. You have to go round the back of the building
0:04:54 > 0:04:58through the door that jams and all the way up to the top attic and when
0:04:58 > 0:05:03you open the door you would find a very dark room was no natural light
0:05:03 > 0:05:07because yoghurt as the blind down, and you would see a very large man
0:05:07 > 0:05:13with his feet up on the desk, the aid would be noxious because he
0:05:13 > 0:05:17smokes and is aggressively flatulent.That's a Marxist
0:05:17 > 0:05:26territory. -- how he marks his territory.Do you know Jackson Lamb
0:05:26 > 0:05:30well are you still discovering him? Still discovering him although in
0:05:30 > 0:05:33the book I am working on at the moment that is more revealed about
0:05:33 > 0:05:39him.Are you going inside him for the first time?He is seeing things
0:05:39 > 0:05:44he has not said before.What will we learn about him that we don't know
0:05:44 > 0:05:50without giving away the plot.A bit more about his past. That is really
0:05:50 > 0:05:56the core to the character.There's a sense in which we had always meant
0:05:56 > 0:06:01to ask the question, how did he end up your? We might know a bit of the
0:06:01 > 0:06:05story but we don't know the whole story.That is partly because I
0:06:05 > 0:06:11don't know what either yet.So it wasn't deliberate to conceal his
0:06:11 > 0:06:15background, just that as you began to tease out the character you
0:06:15 > 0:06:19discovered as well that there was a mystery about him which is a
0:06:19 > 0:06:23mystification use year with the reader.The character was never
0:06:23 > 0:06:27meant to take the central role he has come to do but as soon as I
0:06:27 > 0:06:32started writing I realised there were opportunities in a way I had
0:06:32 > 0:06:37never done before, in order to bring humour into the books and also that
0:06:37 > 0:06:42larger than life character who has a past cloaked in mystery.The other
0:06:42 > 0:06:46fascinating thing about this story and it is quite unusual is that you
0:06:46 > 0:06:52set it not just in the contemporary world, in a London principally where
0:06:52 > 0:06:56the threat of a terrorist act is ever present, but you have been very
0:06:56 > 0:07:02specific. There has been a referendum on Brexit, the political
0:07:02 > 0:07:08figures who they are not a resemblance in an imitator of way
0:07:08 > 0:07:10but a broad resemblance to characters we might recognise only
0:07:10 > 0:07:16political spectrum, but as individuals but as people with
0:07:16 > 0:07:22points of view. Quite a risky thing to do, quite bold?It didn't seem to
0:07:22 > 0:07:26me at the time that was the case, I was simply writing about the world I
0:07:26 > 0:07:31find myself in. The novel had been in preparation before the referendum
0:07:31 > 0:07:33and they didn't start writing to afterwords and it changed a lot of
0:07:33 > 0:07:40things. I hadn't foreseen the result of the referendum, few people had,
0:07:40 > 0:07:45but as soon as it happened a lot of things became clear, clear from the
0:07:45 > 0:07:48terrorised reactions from a lot of the Cabinet ministers who had
0:07:48 > 0:07:52organised that, from the cowardice of the Prime Minister as he realised
0:07:52 > 0:07:56what he had done, and the Cabinet of backstabbing in the leadership
0:07:56 > 0:08:02election afterwards, we it was clear we were in for a long period of
0:08:02 > 0:08:07farce and chaos. London Rules is a thriller and dramatic events happen
0:08:07 > 0:08:11but the political backdrop is one we have all been living through.The
0:08:11 > 0:08:17other thing finally about this book is that you resist very deliberately
0:08:17 > 0:08:23the idea that on the last page everything can be neatly tied up, it
0:08:23 > 0:08:29is all over. Maybe something has happened that avoids a cataclysm but
0:08:29 > 0:08:35the idea that calm has been restored is not really what you comfortable
0:08:35 > 0:08:41with?We live in a state of ongoing tension and it can't be solved the
0:08:41 > 0:08:48eye final chapter.So you say, prepare to be disturbed and don't
0:08:48 > 0:08:53think you can relax when it is over? Yes.