Chris Peers

I have received a message from Bob Adey, doyen of locked room experts, telling me that Chris Peers, a second hand book dealer specialising in crime fiction has just died. I don't know any more than that, but I'd like to take this opportunity to express my shock and dismay at the news, and offer condolences to his family. Chris, who I believe was in his mid-fifties, was a familiar figure at second hand book fairs up and down the country, and he will be much missed.

I've bought quite a few books from Chris over the years - his prices were always reasonable. These included Nightmare by Lynn Brock, a book I've never seen anywhere else before or since, and which I'd never even heard of prior to having a chat with Chris at Ilkley Book Fair a couple of years ago. It proved to be a fascinating and extraordinary novel, a genuine one-off that deserves to be better known.

Chris also gave me some help in my researches about the Golden Age. The last time we met was at a book fair in Haydock last autumn, and he was in excellent form. Chris, like me, was a Manchester City fan who had supported the team through many dark days and who, like me, and most long-suffering City fans of similar vintage, could not quite bring himself to believe that City are currently the most successful team in Britain. We had a long chat about soccer at Haydock, as well as about Golden Age fiction,and of course I never imagined it would be the last time we'd speak.

There is a small community of second hand book dealers in Britain who specialise in crime fiction, and very friendly people they are too. Part of the pleasure for me of visiting a book fair is the chance to catch up with them,and also pick their brains about the Golden Age - as well as about the life of a second hand book dealer, research that comes in very handy when I'm writing about Marc Amos in the Lake District Mysteries. Many of the Forgotten Books that I feature are bought from this group of dealers - The Young Vanish, featured yesterday, for instance, came from the always reliable Jamie Sturgeon. This small community has lost a good man, and it's a sad day.

You Couldn't Make It Up

The first full-length novel I ever wrote was a thriller about football and it rejoiced in the title Dead Shot. I wrote it over two years after leaving university; I couldn’t afford to get it all typed, and I never sent it to a publisher. Probably just as well, as I soon realised it wasn’t good enough to be published. But I learned a lot from the experience, not least that, whatever literary talent I might lack, I did at least have the stamina and persistence to put together a novel of around 70,000 words. And that knowledge kept me going until I found a publisher for All the Lonely People  a decade later.

Why a football novel? Well, I grew up in a football-mad household ; my late father was obsessed about the game, and spent the last ten years of his life, at times in great pain when suffering from cancer, writing a book, A Team for All Seasons, about the club he loved – which finally got published, just before he died. I’m prouder of his achievement, as a man who left school at 14 and had no real formal education, than I am of any of my own books. 

Over the years, I’ve written a few short stories which feature football, including one called “Penalty” which was a sort of tribute to my father’s team. But I’ve never written another football novel. I keep thinking someone else will write a really good football thriller one day, but I have to say that the soccer-based novels I have read over the years have been more Unibond League standard than in the Dick Francis league.

But sometimes fact goes far beyond what is credible in fiction. And yesterday has to be one of those days, when Manchester City – a team I started supporting out of sympathy when they were bottom of the league, an experience they have repeated several times since – won the Premier League in the most dramatic and extraordinary circumstances. I’ve never been so enthralled by any sporting occasion  As I think all the pundits have agreed, you really couldn’t make it up.