0:00:00 > 0:00:01almost zero. OK. We will have to leave it there.
0:00:01 > 0:00:07Professor Heald, many thanks. Thank you.
0:00:07 > 0:00:11Now its time for Meet the Author.
0:00:11 > 0:00:17A car bomb in Paris. A widow returns, joined by a detective and
0:00:17 > 0:00:22with two women trying to work out what happened and why. And their
0:00:22 > 0:00:30lives are intertwined. A thriller by Peter May called I'll Keep You Safe.
0:00:30 > 0:00:37A puzzle where they cling to the old ways. A puzzle and a story that
0:00:37 > 0:00:40twists and turns and for him, another international bestseller.
0:00:40 > 0:00:50Welcome.
0:00:56 > 0:01:00A rather obvious question: What makes a good thriller, Peter?A good
0:01:00 > 0:01:05question! I have no idea!You know it when you see it?I think that's
0:01:05 > 0:01:11exactly right. There is no formula. If you knew what the formula was,
0:01:11 > 0:01:16you would have a bestseller with every book you wrote. I think
0:01:16 > 0:01:20engaging the reader more than anything else. It is not just about
0:01:20 > 0:01:22thrillers but any story you are telling.
0:01:22 > 0:01:27You set yourself a problem, as over a couple of pages of the book you
0:01:27 > 0:01:32have to give us a Scottish Gaelic glossary, otherwise no-one
0:01:32 > 0:01:37understands the names. A large part is set in the Western Isles. It is
0:01:37 > 0:01:41needed the guide. It is quite a thing to do, suspect it?It is. In
0:01:41 > 0:01:45my dares working in television, I have filmed in the Western Isles for
0:01:45 > 0:01:49five months a year for five years and got familiar with the sound of
0:01:49 > 0:01:54Gaelic. I still don't speak it. But I can generally know how to
0:01:54 > 0:02:01pronounce names and words. But most don't as I think that the Gaelic
0:02:01 > 0:02:05alphabet is 18 letters. So it is strange combinations of letters to
0:02:05 > 0:02:10make a single sound. Two of the main characters, with the
0:02:10 > 0:02:15Gaelic spelling of Rory and Naeve but you have to get #350e78 into the
0:02:15 > 0:02:21sound world?You do, yes. Otherwise they are repeating in their heads a
0:02:21 > 0:02:25mispronounciation from the start. That bowled be unfortunate. What you
0:02:25 > 0:02:35want to do in evoking the place, its strange largely flat contours, it's
0:02:35 > 0:02:43bleakness but its beauty that can hold you in a trance on a fine day,
0:02:43 > 0:02:50which, there are not that many of on the west coast of Lewis. But it's a
0:02:50 > 0:02:55very haunting place, isn't it?It is. I filmed up there at a daily
0:02:55 > 0:02:59schedule, you were at the mercy of the elements the whole time. They
0:02:59 > 0:03:05were rarely in your favour. So it was hard, hard work. It makes
0:03:05 > 0:03:08such an impression on you. The minute you step off the plane there,
0:03:08 > 0:03:13you are struck by the wind. The wind never stops. It is there the entire
0:03:13 > 0:03:16time. Very few trees! Let's talk about the
0:03:16 > 0:03:20plot. As I said at the beginning, there is an explosion. A car
0:03:20 > 0:03:27explosion. A bomb. That's in Paris. We can say that much. Then we are
0:03:27 > 0:03:34off. What we have is a contrast between a contemporary world, with
0:03:34 > 0:03:39which we are familiar, strange, violent events interrunting the
0:03:39 > 0:03:43modern pattern of life, then we go back to a old way of life where
0:03:43 > 0:03:47people are clinging to making cloth in the old way, talking with a
0:03:47 > 0:03:52language that is shrinking in its usage, quite fast. There is a
0:03:52 > 0:03:54wonderful contrast between the two worlds.
0:03:54 > 0:03:59It was of great interest to me. I went there 30 years ago. It is like
0:03:59 > 0:04:03going back to the way I knew the islands when I first went and the
0:04:03 > 0:04:08way that they were. They had not really changed in almost centuries.
0:04:08 > 0:04:14It's sad to say that in a way it has changed a bit over the last 30
0:04:14 > 0:04:19years. When I first went there were no flights on a Sunday, no ferries
0:04:19 > 0:04:23on a Sunday. Nothing was open. You could not eat or get petrol.
0:04:23 > 0:04:29Everything was shut. Now that's all changed. In a way it's a shame, the
0:04:29 > 0:04:33loss of the Lewis Sabbath. It was a special day.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38They held on to that in a way that nowhere else had. The contrast in
0:04:38 > 0:04:45the book is very much a part of it. What we have is the picture of two
0:04:45 > 0:04:51women, one, Naeve, who has lost her man in this explosion, who has gone
0:04:51 > 0:04:55back and of course is grieve-stricken. And the detective,
0:04:55 > 0:05:00also a woman, who follows her. And of course has her in her sights. So
0:05:00 > 0:05:05they are opposing women but they find themselves at the end of the
0:05:05 > 0:05:10day drawn on to the same path. It's a sort of classic plot device.
0:05:10 > 0:05:15I don't mean it is fake but one of the fundamental plot devices, isn't
0:05:15 > 0:05:22it?Yes, two women from very, very different back grounds and
0:05:22 > 0:05:25experiences, arriving, ultimately, in the same landscape in the same
0:05:25 > 0:05:28culture. And having to function?Yes, well,
0:05:28 > 0:05:36absolutely. Naeve is suffering from grief, obviously a deeply-felt
0:05:36 > 0:05:41grief, and re-examining everything. As a writer of this kind of novel,
0:05:41 > 0:05:48you know, a good page-Turner, one where people are involved in
0:05:48 > 0:05:52inexplicable events that they have to work very hard to unravel,
0:05:52 > 0:05:56frankly, how do you keep the tension going?It's about what makes you
0:05:56 > 0:06:02tense as a writer. It's a journey. When you are writing a book, it's a
0:06:02 > 0:06:07journey you go on yourself. If it is a boring or a dull journey, it will
0:06:07 > 0:06:12not work for the reader, will it? That's right, you have to feel some
0:06:12 > 0:06:19of that excitement?Exactly. I was doing an interview with BBC Radio
0:06:19 > 0:06:24Scotland, doing a location radio interview on the Isle of Lewis,
0:06:24 > 0:06:28talking about the blackouts, the first book that I had set up there.
0:06:28 > 0:06:33We went to a slipway in a tiny harbour in the north-east coast, I
0:06:33 > 0:06:38had set a scene there in the book. It was a scene that I had never
0:06:38 > 0:06:43originally planned to do. It was a bridging scene between two scenes
0:06:43 > 0:06:48that I had worked out that I was going to write about.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51It turned into an extraordinarily emotional ebbing Pyrenees for me
0:06:51 > 0:06:57writing it. -- emotional experience for me
0:06:57 > 0:07:04writing it. I was sitting there, with tears running down my face. My
0:07:04 > 0:07:10wife shouted dinner was ready, and asked what was wrong, I was like...
0:07:10 > 0:07:15And yet when we back to the location interview, it was built around a
0:07:15 > 0:07:22couple of boats, and there were the same boats that were there ten years
0:07:22 > 0:07:27earlier. I choked up talking about it. The emotion was so real.
0:07:27 > 0:07:34What you are saying, it is fundamental, in writing this kind of
0:07:34 > 0:07:39book, in this one place, it is so important, the atmospherics, you
0:07:39 > 0:07:42can't fake it, and if you try you will fail.
0:07:42 > 0:07:47I think that is absolutely right. And because I'm not from the
0:07:47 > 0:07:53islands, there was always a risk, I suppose, that I was doing, what I
0:07:53 > 0:07:58was doing what some kind of parody of what I saw, what I experienced. I
0:07:58 > 0:08:02remember clearly when the Black House came out, worrying how it
0:08:02 > 0:08:08would be received on the islands. How would the islanders going to
0:08:08 > 0:08:13receive it, never mind the critics. There is a sequence that happens,
0:08:13 > 0:08:23involving ten men from the northern part of the island that go out to a
0:08:23 > 0:08:28rock in the Atlantic and fish and I had done research with them and
0:08:28 > 0:08:32written of the experience and literally after the book came out I
0:08:32 > 0:08:41got an e-mail from the head of that group, I saw it was from him, Dodds,
0:08:41 > 0:08:47McFarlane, and I opened it up. He said that he and the boys had read
0:08:47 > 0:08:51the book and that they loved it. It was a big sigh of relief.
0:08:51 > 0:08:57And when people begin this book, they should make an effort with the
0:08:57 > 0:09:01Gaelic glossary at the beginning as it will make all the difference.
0:09:01 > 0:09:03Indeed.