Mick Herron Meet the Author

Now it's time for Meet the Author.

If you read any of the four Mick

Herron novels you will know what to

expect in the fifth, London Rules.

Skulduggery and streets alive with

terror, a political class that is

self-centred and often corrupt, time

is pressing and the threat real and

the ramshackle outfit, never fleeing

by the rules, has to try and save

the day, welcome.

Jackson Lamb and his many men and

women at a pretty rough lot?

Sort

of. They are quite ordinary people

in many ways and I'm quite keen on

these spies having daily lives in

contemporary London.

That's right,

they don't lead gilded lives, they

are not pampered and they are under

enormous pressure with a terrorist

threat in this book and they will go

into that in some detail but not too

much. They are pretty rough in the

way they deal with each other in the

office stop what strikes me is that

very seldom are they really nice to

each other.

Very seldom. That

certain bonds between different

characters, not as a group very

much, but there are pairings that

happens the series.

Indeed.

I like

to think in the group seems

particularly, I always have at least

one scene where everybody is their

are all at once, and on those

occasions they reach some kind of

harmony, usually working on the

problem.

It may be harmonious in

that sense and they do care about

each other and their situations but

you never get them saying, what are

you really like? They seem to be

driven by a desire not to show too

much of themselves. Do you think it

is a characteristic of people who

find themselves in that world?

It

may be a characteristic of people

who work in offices and I focus on

the order in this of these people.

-- ordinariness. And they are spies

but to an extent they could be

anything and the relationships are

determined by the fact they are all

frustrated in their ambitions and

clearers and all having to work

together and don't want to.

And the

point is that if we met any of them

in the street from would have no

idea what they do by the way they

behave, which is the point.

I was

looking in the tube on the way in

this morning trying to spot

characters.

One of the things, and I

am trying not to give too much away

because it is a tense plot, but

there's a blackmail threats made

against someone and it is made

directly by someone who is quite

high up in the establishment. Do you

think that in that form could happen

is that it clear is that?

Almost

certainly.

A real threat. We have

got this photograph, and we talked

about this beforehand, but we can

see it involves somebody who is

involved in cross dressing and

therefore is going to produce an

embarrassing series of stories in

the papers and the questioners, will

he brazen it out and say, this is

me, or will he fold at the threat of

blackmail?

Part of the reason for

introducing that blackmail was

because I was interested in allowing

this character who is mostly not

pleasant to have some integrity and

bravery so he is facing a challenge

and will he toughed it out Cave, and

so the decision he partly makes to

tough it out indicates that as a

court of integrity.

When you're a

character like that in circumstances

like that, do you try however hard

it might be to put yourself in that

position?

Always, I try to write

characters from the Inside Out. The

only character they don't do that

with is Jackson Lamb himself. You

see what he does and says but never

what he thinks feels.

To somebody

who hasn't read the four preceding

books and might perhaps pick up this

one and go back, how would you

describe Jackson Lamb?

The best way

of describing him would be to meet

him. To enter his department of the

Secret Service were all the failure

is get assigned. You have to go

round the back of the building

through the door that jams and all

the way up to the top attic and when

you open the door you would find a

very dark room was no natural light

because yoghurt as the blind down,

and you would see a very large man

with his feet up on the desk, the

aid would be noxious because he

smokes and is aggressively

flatulent.

That's a Marxist

territory. -- how he marks his

territory.

Do you know Jackson Lamb

well are you still discovering him?

Still discovering him although in

the book I am working on at the

moment that is more revealed about

him.

Are you going inside him for

the first time?

He is seeing things

he has not said before.

What will we

learn about him that we don't know

without giving away the plot.

A bit

more about his past. That is really

the core to the character.

There's a

sense in which we had always meant

to ask the question, how did he end

up your? We might know a bit of the

story but we don't know the whole

story.

That is partly because I

don't know what either yet.

So it

wasn't deliberate to conceal his

background, just that as you began

to tease out the character you

discovered as well that there was a

mystery about him which is a

mystification use year with the

reader.

The character was never

meant to take the central role he

has come to do but as soon as I

started writing I realised there

were opportunities in a way I had

never done before, in order to bring

humour into the books and also that

larger than life character who has a

past cloaked in mystery.

The other

fascinating thing about this story

and it is quite unusual is that you

set it not just in the contemporary

world, in a London principally where

the threat of a terrorist act is

ever present, but you have been very

specific. There has been a

referendum on Brexit, the political

figures who they are not a

resemblance in an imitator of way

but a broad resemblance to

characters we might recognise only

political spectrum, but as

individuals but as people with

points of view. Quite a risky thing

to do, quite bold?

It didn't seem to

me at the time that was the case, I

was simply writing about the world I

find myself in. The novel had been

in preparation before the referendum

and they didn't start writing to

afterwords and it changed a lot of

things. I hadn't foreseen the result

of the referendum, few people had,

but as soon as it happened a lot of

things became clear, clear from the

terrorised reactions from a lot of

the Cabinet ministers who had

organised that, from the cowardice

of the Prime Minister as he realised

what he had done, and the Cabinet of

backstabbing in the leadership

election afterwards, we it was clear

we were in for a long period of

farce and chaos. London Rules is a

thriller and dramatic events happen

but the political backdrop is one we

have all been living through.

The

other thing finally about this book

is that you resist very deliberately

the idea that on the last page

everything can be neatly tied up, it

is all over. Maybe something has

happened that avoids a cataclysm but

the idea that calm has been restored

is not really what you comfortable

with?

We live in a state of ongoing

tension and it can't be solved the

eye final chapter.

So you say,

prepare to be disturbed and don't

think you can relax when it is over?

Yes.