Ann Cleves Meet the Author

If you have a ticket, it looks like

you are in for a treat. That ends

this edition of Outside Source, we

will see you in the New Year.

Now it's time for Meet the Author.

Vera Stanhope rides again.

The Seagulll is the eighth book

by Ann Cleeves featuring

her slightly scruffy,

determined but very warm

detective inspector,

who's drawn into a mystery touching

rather uncomfortably on the story

of her own father and his dodgy

friends on Tyneside.

It's been an immensely successful

series from a writer who's been high

in the league table of British crime

writers for many years.

Her other detective inspector,

Jimmy Perez, for example,

having become a favourite TV

cop in Shetland.

Welcome.

When you get a character -

invent a character -

that you really like,

like Vera Stanhope, you like to

stick with them, don't you?

I do, and I think that's one of

the joys of writing crime fiction.

There are very few other genres

where you can follow a character

through a number of books.

There's some literary fiction,

but crime, it's expected that we're

going to write a series,

and it's great to be able to develop

a character that grows.

That's an interesting

phrase - "it's expected".

You know that you're writing,

not for a specific audience,

but for a general audience that

likes this kind of story.

You must feel that you now

know them quite well?

Yes, because I go out and meet them.

I love doing library events and book

shop events and meeting readers.

And I'm a reader, I'm a fan as well.

I read crime fiction,

so I love that sense of getting

to know a character very well,

and watching him grow or her grow.

I think crime writers as a breed

are like that, aren't they?

I mean, they all read

each other's work...

Yeah.

..even though maybe

they don't like to admit it?

Yeah, I think we're

a very jolly bunch.

We're so used to people looking

down their noses at us,

because we're genre fiction,

that we come together

and we fight back.

Those days have gone, haven't they?

I mean...

I think there's still

a little bit of that.

You think there's a wee bit

of snobbishness about?

Yeah, still a bit of that.

But you all enjoy paddling around

in gore, and all these dark deeds,

and actually you're like sort of,

I don't know, anybody who works

in a kind of profession or trade,

where they're facing death

all the time, they're actually quite

full of fun and stories.

Yeah, I think so.

I'm not really into the gore.

I'm more into using that

as a framework to develop characters

and to look at the things that

really interest me, so...

Well, we don't want to talk

about the plot in great detail,

because obviously that would spoil

it for people who haven't

read the book yet.

But we can say that Vera Stanhope,

your detective inspector in this

series, the eighth book

in the series, is taken, by chance -

she doesn't really expect it -

into her own past, and this rather

dodgy ne'er-do-well father of hers,

who had been sort of slightly grand,

but then shall we say,

fell into bad company?

Yeah.

It's classic fictional

material, isn't it?

I think it is, and I love that idea

of looking at the relationship

between the daughter and the father,

and that theme, I think,

goes through the book -

there are other daughters

and other fathers.

And she is a character who is,

you know, a bit scruffy and very

determined and sometimes quite

rough with people.

But the essential thing,

it strikes me about her,

is her fundamental warmth.

I mean, she's a good person?

Oh, she is a good person -

in the tradition of

classic crime, I think.

That the detectives are flawed,

they appear brusque,

but they are good,

because at the end, I think that's

why, especially now in times

of trouble and uncertainty,

people are going back to classic

crime, because there is at the end

a sense of order restored,

of good triumphing -

and we need that sense

at a time of confusion,

that things will be well.

Well, that's good that you define,

or interesting, that

you define classic crime

as order being restored.

Somehow, you know, people

may not all be happy,

but at least the fundamentals have

been revealed to be still there.

Yeah.

So, there's a reassurance involved.

I think so, and I think that's why

it's so popular at the minute, why

The British Library Crime Classics

are doing amazingly,

the between-the-wars books,

that are selling fanta...

Yes.

Because people like that sense of,

as I say, in a time of confusion,

that in the end, justice prevails.

And we know where we are.

We know where we are,

and we know the difference

between good and evil,

and even if there are ambiguities

in all the characters,

and confusions, which there have

to be, otherwise it's

a pretty boring story,

we find at the end with a sigh,

that it's OK - somebody may have

come to a sticky end,

a good person may have been brought

down, but something remains.

Yes, and the end of The Seagull

is quite ambiguous, and you're not

quite sure that the killer has been

unmasked, but there is that sense

of justice prevailing, I think.

It's quite good, at the same time,

isn't it, to have people wondering

about the alternative explanations

to an ending - to say, "OK,

order has been restored,

but I wonder how it happened?"

Yeah.

No, I think that's...

Because you want the book to live

on after the reader's finished it.

That's interesting, yes.

Because everybody sees

the book in a different way,

that's why book clubs

are so interesting, as you know.

Yes.

People have different ideas,

they see different pictures

in their heads when they read.

You have a way of creating

an atmosphere, and I'm thinking,

for example, of the Shetland books,

which, of course, made

it to the small screen

very, very successfully.

And what was it about that

atmosphere, there, the bleakness

and bareness of Shetland -

which is very beautiful as well -

that gave you the spark?

I suppose I first went there 40...

More than 40 years ago,

because I dropped out of university

and just by chance I got the job

working in the bird

observatory in Fair Isle.

And since then, I've been

going back, but I hadn't really

been there in midwinter.

I went in midwinter and there

was snow, and it is very bare,

because there are no trees,

really, in Shetland.

No trees.

And so it's that contrast,

I think, between the...

You can see for miles,

but then the contrast between that

and any possible secrets.

And the warmth of the domestic

scenes within the croft houses,

that attracted me first.

Yes, the fact that even on a bare

landscape, all kinds

of things can be concealed.

Yes.

You've also got the feeling

in Shetland of stepping away

from the world, haven't you?

I'm not saying that pejoratively

about what goes on in Shetland.

But it is distant.

It is.

It is the edge of our known

universe in the UK.

It's 14 hours by boat from Aberdeen,

so it's a long way.

And it does feel separate,

and it feels...

And they're very self-reliant,

Shetlanders, so they do

things their own way.

Do you write, you know,

in a continuous stream, really,

or are their big gaps?

I alternate between...

I wouldn't just want

to write Vera, because...

No.

At the end, I've had enough

and I want to go off

and try something new.

You want a break.

Yes, so I've been

alternating with Shetland.

So, I've just finished the very last

Shetland book, just now, so...

The very last,

the end of the series.

The end of the series.

Did you come to the end just because

you thought, well, that's it,

time to close the covers on this,

it's done, I am not

going to keep it, give it

artificial resuscitation?

I'd said all that I can

about the place, and about

the characters that

I've created, I think.

Yes.

And I don't want to be bored by them

- and I certainly don't want

the readers to be bored by them.

So, better end while I'm

still enjoying it.

Do you find writing,

which you've been doing for a long

time, very successfully,

and with great dedication,

do you find it a kind

of therapy as well?

Oh, it's an escape, isn't it?

We lose ourselves in a different

world when we're writing,

just as when we're reading.

So, certainly it's an escape.

But you need to be there living,

as well, otherwise you run out

of things to write about,

so it's a good balance.

But when you're in full flow

in a story, and it's working,

the rest of the world doesn't exist?

No, there's nothing like it.

It's an amazing feeling.

Ann Cleeves, author of The Seagulll,

thank you very much.

Thank you.