Aye Write and Ian Rankin and Orkney Library

I haven't updated in a while, mostly because I've been busy writing the fifth Carter Blake book (Five? How did that happen?), but also because I've been busy on lots of other fronts.

For starters, last month I had the pleasure of chairing Ian Rankin at Glasgow's Aye Write festival. Ian is such a natural storyteller that he made my job very easy, and the hour flew by. We covered a lot of ground, from Rebus's recent healthy(ish) lifestyle change, to a French translator deciding that a Wizard of Oz reference meant that Rebus must be a fan of AOR giants Toto and Kansas. Glasgow Royal Concert Hall holds a slightly bigger audience than I'm used to...

But it was a brilliant crowd, and they had some great questions. It was nice to catch up with Steph Broadribb (aka Crime Thriller Girl) and Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books afterwards.

After that, I got to visit a radio station for the first time and Cat Gibson interviewed me about the books live on Camglen Radio - you can listen again here. She even let me pick a record to play halfway through, I went with Dead Flowers by the Stones. I think Rebus would have approved of that over Toto's Africa.

Audio-wise, I also appeared on my favourite podcast - Two Crime Writers and a Microphone. It was great to chat to my fellow authors Steve Cavanagh and Luca Veste, and we discovered Luca's darkest secret -

he's never seen Die Hard.

I know. That's what we said. Don't worry, it's now rectified.

The following week, I was able to sign the northernmost copies of my books so far when I visited the famous Orkney Library to talk to their crime fiction group.

It was a hastily-organised event since I was going to be in Orkney anyway, so I was really impressed with how quickly they were able to pull everything together. I had a great evening chatting to readers, and even had time to sign some copies in the Orcadian Bookshop, and do some sightseeing.

Other stuff...

There's a nice American review of The Samaritan here:

I love that the detective in this story was a woman. It’s so much easier for me to relate to stories where there are strong female leads. Introducing the mysterious Carter Blake was a great touch because I kept trying to figure out whether or not he really was the serial killer. Once I started the book, I honestly could not put it down. When the ending came, it completely shocked me because it wasn’t what I expected at all.

And I'm published in Sweden, in a gorgeous hardback edition from Modernista

The big thing on the horizon is, of course, the publication of Don't Look For Me on 20 April. The official launch is going to be on publication day at Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow at 7pm. Ace tartan noir author Neil Broadfoot is going to be chatting to me about the new book, and there will be wine and all the usual launch festivities. If that sounds good and you're going to be in Glasgow on that day, you can register for free tickets here.

If you can't make it to the launch, keep an eye on my events page to see where else I'm going to be in the near future. More to be added soon, but I'll be at East Kilbride Library on 12 April, Cambuslang Library on 25 April, and Crimefest from Friday 19 - Sunday 21 May.

If you can't make it to an event, you can still buy a copy from your chosen outlet right here:

UK pre-order:

Trade paperback (large format)

Waterstones
Amazon
WHSmith

Hive

ebook

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Audio

Audible

Don’t look for me.

It was a simple instruction. And for six long years Carter Blake kept his word and didn’t search for the woman he once loved. But now someone else is looking for her.

He’ll come for you.

Trenton Gage is a hitman with a talent for finding people – dead or alive. His next job is to track down a woman who’s on the run, who is harbouring a secret many will kill for.

Both men are hunting the same person. The question is, who will find her first?

"Mason Cross is a thriller writer for the future who produces the kind of fast-paced, high octane thrillers that I love to read." - Simon Kernick

Why America?

The other day I was delighted to be part of an author panel at Aye Write - Glasgow's biggest literary festival, which takes place every spring in the fabulous Mitchell Library.

I was in good company, with fellow crime writers Douglas Lindsay and Mark Leggatt, and the theme was an interesting and unusual one:  it was titled Beyond These Shores, because the three of us are from Scotland, but have chosen to set our books further afield. My books as you probably know take place in the US, Douglas's latest, Song of the Dead, is set in Estonia, while Mark's Names of the Dead takes in Zurich, Paris, Morocco and Tehran.

It was a really enjoyable panel, expertly chaired by Shari Low, and I particularly liked that it took a question I get asked all the time and made it the central focus of the evening. It reminded me of a piece I wrote in 2014, in the run-up to the publication of Killing Season, that attempted to address this question. I can't remember who I wrote it for, or if it ever saw print, but I thought I'd revisit it.

So here it is: Why My Books Are Set in America


Although I'm still fairly new to the professional writing experience, I'm already becoming accustomed to being asked certain questions. Number one on the list is, "How do you find time to do that with three kids?" To which the answer is, I have absolutely no idea, and unfortunately I’m not blessed with a Victorian-style ‘seen and not heard’ environment. In second place is, "Why did you choose to set the book in the United States rather than somewhere closer to home?"

I have a better handle on this question, because there are actually a few different reasons. 

Firstly, I write what I like to read. While the novels I love aren't exclusively American (or even exclusively in the crime genre) a lot of my absolute favourite authors from Chandler and Hammett through MacDonald and Leonard right up to Child, Crais and Connelly set their thrillers in America. When I started to write my own stories, all of those influences and many more were bubbling away under the surface.

There are practical reasons, too. In some ways, you have more freedom when you take the US as your location. The story comes first of course, and you could probably set most novels just about anywhere, but America is the land of the free for a writer. There’s a massive geographical area to play with, dwarfing the UK and Western Europe. You can visit bustling metropolises or barren wildernesses and everything in between. You have freedom of movement across four million square miles, crossing fifty boundaries with no need for a passport. There is huge variation in local culture, but everyone speaks English. That’s before you get to the bonuses specific to crime writers: the ubiquity of guns. The tradition of frontier justice. The fact that dozens of real-life serial killers are thought to be operating in America at any given time. 

Lastly – and this is hardly ever a good excuse – I decided to do it because other people were doing it.

John Connolly from Dublin, RJ Ellory from Birmingham, Matt Hilton from Cumbria. And of course one of the biggest names in the business, Lee Child, who began writing his all-American thrillers at his dining room table in Birmingham.  I decided if those guys could do it and find success, it seemed like a viable career option.

Once you look beyond the literary world, you realise that there’s a long and honourable tradition of Brits working in quintessentially American art forms, from Hitchcock’s Hollywood thrillers to the rock n’ roll of the Rolling Stones to Grant Morrison’s superhero comics.

Perhaps that’s because we absorb American popular culture in almost equal measure with our own here in the UK. Most Brits will count American movies and TV shows and bands among their favourites. And we have one big advantage – we can be familiar with American culture and society, we can even blend in to an extent, but we are always outsiders. For a writer, that's a must. It’s also the reason I've made my protagonist Carter Blake an outsider. He's a man of the world, but not necessarily a native of any city or state.

When it came to researching my American-set novel, The Killing Season, I drew on my own trips across the pond – to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. I spoke to my American friends to get ideas and check details and ask about the things only a local would know. I backed that up with a lot of research using all the tools that a writer has at his disposal in the twenty-first century: books, travel guides, newspaper articles, websites, satellite maps, discussion forums. When I had a working draft, I recruited my American friends as early readers, asking them to be on the lookout for mistakes and inaccuracies and rogue Britishisms. They caught me out a few times, but the consensus was I’d done a serviceable job of sounding authentic.

If I was surprised by anything, it was by the fact it was less difficult to write about another country than I might have expected. Perhaps that’s because a lot of the local detail is about set dressing – important and necessary, even vital – but ultimately of secondary importance. Because the most important things to get right are the things that are universal: a compelling story, a thrilling atmosphere, believable characters. If you work hard at those things, then the research and the local colour ends up doing what it’s supposed to: serving the story.

Fitting in the writing around three delightful but demanding children, though? That’s a challenge.

Reviews and upcoming events

I've updated the events page at the website with some new dates:

• Blantyre Library - 15 February, 2:00pm
• Waterstones Kirkcaldy - 26 February, 7:30pm
• Aye Write festival - 12 March, 7:30pm

I'm really looking forward to all of these, especially Aye Write, where I'm on the bill with Mark Leggatt and Douglas Lindsay chatting about setting our thrillers internationally. Go here for more details on all of these - the Aye Write event is ticketed but the other two are completely free.

Elsewhere, Darren Brooks has posted a wide-ranging interview with me together with a really excellent, insightful dissection of the first two books over at his blog, titled 'A Ghost to Catch Ghosts'. I particularly enjoyed his likening of the series to anthology television shows - I hadn't really considered this, but it's a good point, and will hold true for Winterlong:


The anthology approach to the series works well, too. Like that practised by TV shows such as True Detective and Fargo – whose subsequent series tell new stories with new characters whilst retaining the parent title – it is an ideal device by which to gradually chip away at the hidden biography of Blake. Dropping the character into new cases with different investigatory teams is perfect for a man with secrets to maintain, in that he does not develop ongoing professional relationships and so avoids the familiarity common to conventional serial fiction, particularly the team ethic inherent to the police procedural. In adopting this anthologised style, it is ensured that Carter Blake – both the character and the history his chosen name is designed to disguise – lives on. For now.


I was really pleased to get a double-page spread in the Glasgow Evening Times about the Richard and Judy selection (apologies for my crappy camerawork - the full story is online here).

And hot on the heels of the US publication of The Samaritan, a great American notice from Raven's Reviews:


“Carter Blake” manages to remain mysterious. Precious and few are the clues that Blake drops, and little is told about the man at all. This doesn’t stop him from being a combination of James Bond and Jason Bourne, with maybe a pinch of the Punisher thrown in for seasoning.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, I love all of those characters, but it's the first time the Punisher has been mentioned. Makes sense, as I was reading Garth Ennis's superlative Punisher MAX around the time I was writing Killing Season. Funnily enough, that was basically a crime anthology series that revolved around one character.

Finally, I've just sent out my first update to the mailing list to mark the UK paperback and US hardcover publication of The Samaritan. If you want to be kept in the loop with occasional updates on when each new book is coming out, all you have to do is sign up right here - I promise not to spam you:

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That's it for now - I'll be posting about a new Goodreads giveaway next week, so watch this space!

Inside Job: Aye Write panel

Just a quick reminder to say I'll be moderating the Inside Job panel at Glasgow's Aye Write Book Festival, in the wonderfully grand surroundings of the Mitchell Library.

The panel features two ex-police officers and one ex-parole officer talking about how their real-life experience has influence their crime writing. It's my first time in the questioner's chair, and I'm excited about it - you can get tickets on the Aye Write website or at the door - check out the events page for more details.

The event kicks off at 6pm - hope to see you there!

Aye Write

Just updated events to announce the panel I'm chairing at Aye Write - Glasgow's annual book festival. Details as follows:

Denzil Meyrick, Mari Hannah & RJ Mitchell: Inside Job – Police and Probation Officers turn to Crime

22nd Apr 2015  •  6:00PM - 7:00PM  •  Mitchell Library

Three authors who had experience working in the British Justice system before turning their hands to crime fiction discuss their work

They do say when setting out to write a book you should "Write what you know’". The three authors on this crime panel all had experience working in the British Justice system before turning their hands to crime fiction.

Denzil Meyrick, author of 'Whisky From Small Glasses' and RJ Mitchell, 'Parallel Lines', were both police officers while Mari Hannah, author of the DCI Kate Daniels series ('Killing for Keeps' the most recent) worked for many years as a probation officer before she was injured on duty and took up writing.

Chaired by Mason Cross.

***
Tickets are £9 plus booking fee, available from the festival website. Looking forward to this one a lot, as it will be my first time chairing one as opposed to being one of the panellists.

I'm also excited to be at Aye Write as an author for the first time and taking part in a great festival in the beautiful Edwardian surroundings of Glasgow's Mitchell Library (where I've actually done quite a lot of writing in the past).