Yesterday's Papers Once More

This week sees the publication of Yesterday's Papers, my fourth Harry Devlin novel, as an Arcturus Crime Classic, not quite twenty years after its first appearance. Unusually, the book has been published by three different publishers as a mass market paperback over the years (there is also an ebook version with a wonderful intro by Peter Lovesey, as well as a paperback print on demand version.) Originally the publisher was Bantam. Later, when I moved publishers to Hodder, they reprinted the earlier titles including this one. It's also, in a way, a "cold case" story that anticipates elements of my Lake District Mysteries.

I'm especially gratified because this is a book for which I've always had a soft spot. If pushed, I'd say it's probably my personal favourite among the Devlin titles. I'm not one of those authors who disowns his earlier books, or feels unduly embarrassed about them - even though I'm the first to admit that I'd write them differently (in some respects) if I were writing them today. I must say that it's rare for me to re-read my earlier work, though I do have to do so occasionally (for instance, when checking proofs of new versions or checking facts for an article.) But the early books provide, in some ways, a snapshot of ideas and issues that were interesting me or concerning me at the time I wrote them. That's true of most novels, of course, and it's one of the reasons I find it so fascinating to investigate books of the past. They cast a light on the times when they were written, even if the author didn't intend to do so.

The story of my career as a writer is illustrated (or so I might think in darker moments0 by the story of Yesterday's Papers. I felt it was the most successful book I'd written to date, with lots of twists and quite a bit of humour, as well as a glance at the era of the Mersey Sound in Liverpool during the Sixties. Bantam had tried to promote me by pricing the books very competitively. But it didn't result in mega-sales, and a complication was that I had a separate hardback publisher, Piatkus. Yesterday's Papers, however, earned numerous glowing reviews in Britain and elsewhere, and was even one of only a couple or so of crime novels featured in The Sunday Times Paperbacks of the Year. I dreamed that this would boost sales - only to be told that Bantam had already decided not to publish me any more. A shame, because they are a top publisher, and I had a really nice editor, Francesca Liversidge. But these things happen in a writer's career, and one of the most corrosive emotions is self-pity. Frustrating as the writing life can be, it's also a great life. You have to get on and make the most of it. And before long, as I say, another good publisher, Hodder, and an excellent editor, Kate Lyall Grant, came along..

Against this background, the revival of Yesterday's Papers is really rather a Christmas treat for me. I still think the plot-lines are among the best I've managed to come up with. And I'm hoping that a new group of readers will enjoy discovering Harry Devlin, and will be entertained by a story that reaches back to a time when the songs of Liverpool were being sung the world over.

Yesterday's Papers

Is it  reasonable for writers to have favourites among their own books, or should one love them all equally? Well, my view is that books are not like children, and I certainly do have favourites. They include, for instance, my relatively little-known novel about Dr Crippen, Dancing for the Hangman. As for the Harry Devlin series, I've always had a very soft spot for Yesteday's Papers.

I've been very pleased to see this book, which dates back to the mid-90s, give a  fresh lease of life by digital publishing.The ebook version has a very nice intro from the great Peter Lovesey. And, as is the case with the other Devlin ebooks published by Andrews UK, print versions are also available. But I must admit that I'm still thrilled that a new mass market paperback edition is to be published later this year.

The book is going to feature in the Arcturus Crime Classic series, which already includes All the Lonely People, as well as some wonderful books that date back much further, written by the likes of Francis Durbridge, Erle Stanley Gardner, Anthony Berkeley and many more. It's gratifying to be in such company, especially as few other living writers are on the Arcturus list.

The first paperback edition of Yesterday's Papers was published by Bantam, and subsequently Hodder produced an edition. So the Arcturus book will be the third mass market paperback, not counting the Andrews UK edition. I'm very glad about this, because the story was great fun to write. It dwells heavily on Liverpool's Beatles era, and there are some plot twists I really enjoyed concocting. In some ways, it might just be my most complex mystery from a plot perspective, with three different strands to the storyline. The Lake District Mysteries are, deliberately, less heavily plotted, and one of the benefits of having different series is the chance to tackle the crime novel in various different ways. So much more satisfying than constantly repeating oneself. 

Saturday Selection - Tom Bradby, Barry Eisler

Tom Bradby is the political editor of ITV, which must be a very demanding job (influential, too, as he is said to have been instrumental, through his reporting, in David Cameron’s elevation to leadership of the Conservative party – blimey!) Somehow, he also finds the time to write thrillers which evidently sell very well indeed. I confess that I haven’t yet read any, but they look interesting.

Now I have received a review copy of his latest, Blood Money (Bantam). The press release says: ‘A banker lies dead on Wall Street and rookie cop Joe Quinn is assigned to find out how he got there’. Yes, you guessed it – the setting is 1929, and amidst economic turmoil, bankers are not the most popular people around. So – a historical crime novel, but perhaps with relevance to the present day. I must get round to reading this one.

Another writer on my shamefully long list of those I haven’t read at all is the American Barry Eisler. Like Bradby, he has an intimidatingly impressive CV- he worked for the CIA’s director of operations before moving to Japan and earning a black belt in judo. So even if I didn’t enjoy his work (perish the thought) I’d be inclined to keep very quiet about it.

Eisler’s latest is Requiem for an Assassin (Penguin), the fifth book in a series featuring an assassin called John Rain. It looks like a thriller crammed with authentic background detail.

Are book launches a good idea?

An obituary notice I was sorry to read today reminded me of a lunch in London fifteen years or so back, and a discussion about whether book launches are worthwhile. The obituary was of Tony Mott, a publisher once of Penguin Books; he later moved to Transworld, where he was involved with publishing Bantam paperbacks prior to his retirement more than a decade ago.

My first four books were published in paperback in the UK by Bantam (the deals were done by the hardback publisher Piatkus, which didn’t have a paperback imprint at the time.) I had a female editor and she invited me down to London for lunch one day. At the last minute, however, she couldn’t make it, and I was greeted at the restaurant by an affable chap who introduced himself as Tony Mott. I’d never heard of Tony, but I think that in fact he was my editor’s boss, so I was quite honoured.

Certainly, it was a most agreeable lunch. It was immediately clear that Tony knew a lot about publishing. He was obviously a good person from whom to seek advice. What I remember most of all is when I asked Tony for his number one tip for authors. His response was immediate: ‘Don’t get excited about book launches. They don’t help to sell books.’

This had never even occurred to me, not least because at that time neither Piatkus nor Bantam had ever proposed a launch. Since moving to pastures new, though, I’ve had a number of launches. I mentioned one or two in my post about London bookshops yesterday, and 2008 was a bumper year, with no fewer than three launches, for Waterloo Sunset, Dancing for the Hangman, and the CWA anthology, M.O..

I think Tony was right that launches don’t make a major impact on sales, unless you are already a best-seller, and I suspect he’d grown weary of authors who have unrealistic expectations of them. But I’ve enjoyed both my own launches and those of a number of writer friends. Launching a book is a good excuse for a party. They might not be commercially beneficial, to any measurable extent, but they certainly can be great fun.