Author interview - Chris Brookmyre talks about his latest Jack Parlabane novel Want You Gone. Me, I just want more!

Our latest author interview on The Crime Warp is with Chris Brookmyre, who has published a total of 22 books and ebooks since his first book, Quite Ugly One Morning in 1996.  His latest novel Want You Gone is the final book in a Jack Parlabane trilogy that started with Dead Girl Walking in 2015, followed a year later by Black Widow, which won the McIlvanney Prize. 

R – Hello Chris, welcome to The Crime Warp.  I’ve seen some reviews of Want You Gone, which have described your latest book as a technothriller.  Is that something you set out to write? 

CB – No, I’d definitely shy away from calling it a technothriller, that would be to really misunderstand what the book is about.  There’s a perception that hacking or anything to do with hacking is ultra-modern, but if you look at the books you’ve just referenced – Dead Girl Walking and Black Widow, hacking is actually an old crime – if you look at hacking – it’s not about computers and code it’s actually about psychology, so I wouldn’t call it a technothriller

R – So, is Want You Gone a novel about technology, people, or the way they come together?  Buzzkill’s real persona and circumstances are completely masked by her on line anonymity – she’s essentially another person.

CB - One thing I found out is that hacking goes back to pre computer days.  There were proto hackers at Harvard back in the 60’s, who were essentially pranksters.  So there’s always a prank element to it, so Buzzkill and her group they’re not really interested in doing anything particularly destructive, it’s more mischievous, and its partly about the intellectual challenge of being able to get in there.  But I was interested in this sort of dichotomy between people’s online persona and who they really are.  The great benefit of the internet and social media is that anonymity – the Oscar Wilde principle, of “give a man a mask and he will act himself” Anonymity allows people to behave quite appallingly! I read a lot about Anonymous and LulzSec in particular and what struck me about that in particular, is that people were quite shy and often in difficult circumstances, so the personae that they were able to create online were like a great escape, which is why Buzkill describes herself as a supervillain online

R – One of the best written scenes in the novel is the one in the benefit office – I really experienced that awful feeling of helplessness – the deck stacked against you and however well you’d psyche yourself up, you know you’re on a loser.  Is this based on experience, and is there a message that you’re trying to get out with this?

CB - It wasn’t based on personal experience, but as a writer I suppose you’re always trying to do is to imagine what the world looks like for someone else’s point of view.  Just I suppose reading a lot about the realities of the benefit cuts and the bureaucracy that’s been wrapped up in order to make it increasingly difficult for people.  I just wanted to convey that this would be hard enough for anyone, but when there’s someone who’s had a lot more responsibility thrust on their shoulders.  I suppose I also wanted to convey that she’s someone that’s not good at confrontation, but is very very good at empathy and reading other people, and I think that’s actually two sides of the same coin – she’s so empathetic, that it’s hard to be confrontational.  It’s like that old joke that a liberal is someone whose too broad minded to take their own side in an argument!  Whereas in her case she’s so good at imagining what the world looks like from someone else’s point of view, it’s difficult for her to stand up for herself. 

R - In the novel, one of the characters talks about confidence tricksters – in Dead Girl Walking, you used the idea of the Spanish Prisoner and in Want You Gone there’s another con trick within the novel.  Are these start points for plot development, your kind of lightbulb moment?

CB - I think in the case of Dead Girl Walking I did kind of start with that.  I had this notions that I wanted to write about a rock band on the road, and if you’re writing crime fiction you have to have a strong plot that runs all the way through it and it’s good to know what the con is – it’s like when you have a joke and know what the punchline is, you can put a lot of thought into how  you build up to it and how you misdirect the reader, so the big reveal has the maximum impact, so in the case of Dead Girl Walking, I did come up with what the con was first and the book was predicated on a deception – you’re trying to deceive the reader, so you’re always looking to misdirect them, to manipulate them, so you have to start with the ending or at least know what that ending will reveal.  But I don’t have it all mapped out in detail – the story has to tell itself, otherwise the danger is that that the characters seem like they’re on a kind of rail.

R – Want You Gone reflects a huge amount of change that’s going on – you see this in Parlabane trying to get a job with Broadwave, which feels almost alien to him.  Do you think lots of people are being left behind by this kind of change?

CB – I think in Parlabane’s case specifically, he’s in his 40’s and seen an industry completely change around him.  So at that point you’ve got two options – you can either go off in a huff about it all, and be left behind, or embrace it, and he’s kind of embraced it – and actually he’s seen that there were a lot of  things that were detestable about the way the media was run, so he’s concerned about being left behind, but if you’ve got the right attitude, you can embrace change and one of the things that  inspired that was when I was working in newspapers, 20 - 25 years ago and the advent of desktop publishing that were being introduced, there were people  who had been working there since the 50’s and 60’s, getting to the end of their working lives, but they were the ones who embraced the new technology the most, so I thought if that’s your attitude to the industry you’re in, you’ll stay young.  I wanted to show that the media is changing, but just because it is changing, it doesn’t mean that it’s for better or worse, so I just wanted to reflect that someone like Parlabane represents a kind of old school journalism, but the principles that have served him well, will continue to serve him well in the new environment – the ability  to cultivate contacts and find a good story, that’s crucial – so he realises early on that whilst Broadwave has lots of bells and whistles in reporting the news, they’re lacking the ability to get and break stories. So, I suppose it’s a way of saying that the technology might change but the principles stay the same.  And the importance of those principles has been bought to the fore now with the illustration of  where people are not particular about the sources of the news you’re getting, what we’ve seen over the past year with the proliferation of fake news and unsourced stories, so actually, the more access people have to new media, the more important it is that we stand by the principles of the old media, which is about being able to stand up a story with good sources

R – Buzkill said “Friends don’t keep score” in previous novels.  When did you decide that there was going to be some kind of reckoning?

CB – Kind of always – actually, that’s why I had that phrase come back, because I thought that deep down Parlabane must know that someone who keeps telling you that friends don’t keep score, is actually keeping score.  After I’d written Dead Girl Walking, I wrote the outlines for Black Widow and Want You Gone, so I knew that the third book in this series was going to be all about Buzzkill, which is why Buzzkill does turn up in Black Widow, and the ebook/novella The Last Day of Christmas, which is what introduces Buzzkill, so I could see the  whole cycle starting with The Last Day of Christmas and concluding with Want You Gone, so I did always know there was going to be a Faustian price to pay – the more Parlabane goes to the “bank of Buzzkill”, the more he knows he’s going to end up with a heavy price exacted!  It’s also experience of thinking a couple of books ahead – in the past I’d never think beyond the book I was writing, maybe the experience of the Jasmine Sharp trilogy, which was conceived as one big story spread over three books – that helped me think of what I could do with this as an ongoing story.  At the end of Dead Girl Walking there was an idea that Parlabane might be offered a job with the security services and other ideas that I might develop, but they were overtaken by the hacking idea, which is why I didn't pursue that.

R – I’ve seen on Amazon that there’s an international version of Want You Gone called The Last Hack.  Do international sales influence the way you write?

CB – I don’t think beyond telling the story – the story is what works for me – if I have a theoretical reader, it’s just me.  I think you’d go insane trying to develop a different story for different markets and the implications of how it would play for different markets.  In the case of the American edition, that was interesting because titles are a big issue these days, publishing is far more micromanaging when to comes to titles, covers and things like that.  There’s a perception in the UK that you don’t want to advertise that a book is all about computers and hacking, where people might be put off by it and get the wrong impression about what the book is, whereas American publishers thought that the hacking side of it was the biggest sales angle, because hacking is suddenly very big news again in the US, so where Want You Gone is right for a domestic noir thriller title in the UK, the Americans didn’t like it because they thought it didn’t tell you anything about the story and they wanted it to say that this is about hacking!  It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out and whether they’re right about it.  I was on TV recently in Scotland and that was because of the hacking side of it, so the hacking element is going to be quite timely, but in terms of attracting readers, I wanted an emotionally gripping story, because at its heart, that’s what it’s about.  It’s about a vulnerable young woman that’s discovering her true strength and that journey - I also didn’t want it to be just Parlabane helping because he’s a hero – it’s because he’s trapped and angry, but realises that she’s not just a manipulative criminal, but someone who desperately needs his help.  

R – My closing question is always about what’s next – more Parlabane?  More Buzzkill? Or something completely different?

CB – I’ve actually finished the next book – It’ll be out in December and it’ll be a science fiction crime novel.  So, it’s a crime novel set in space – a kind of female buddy cop thriller set in space called Places in the Darkness.  It’s about a space station, a massive facility researching, testing and building an interstellar vehicle.  It’s like a giant building site, so at one level it’s supposed to be aspiring for the best of humanity and taking humanity forward, it’s also a place full of people that have gone there to work, so it’s quite isolated and a lot of bootlegging, prostitution and gangs running all these things.  So, it’s a very noirish thriller – although it’s set in space there’s no aliens and laser guns – it’s down to earth in term of its science – I had a blast with it because it was such a change of genre – a chance to create my own world.  It’s all done and will be out in December this year.  I’m hoping it will be the first in a series, perhaps alternating between science fiction and Parlabane novels – I’ve got the beginnings of the next Parlabane novel, but probably won’t start writing that until August, but at this stage it’s way too early to say what that’ll be.

R – Thank you Chris.  I have ot say that I’m already looking forward to December and I’ll keep Crime Warp readers posted with any news on Places in the Darkness as soon as I know about it!

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