Crime writer: I know what’s it’s like to be scared

Best-selling crime writer Mark Billingham is recalling the fear he felt when he was held hostage by three masked men who bound and gagged him in a Manchester hotel room, punched him in the face and forced him down on the carpet, a bag over his head.

It was 1997, and he and a writing partner who’d been working on a TV series had ordered room service. Billingham answered a knock at the door thinking it was a member of staff come to collect the tray, but was confronted by three attackers in balaclavas who barged in, punched him in the face and forced him to the floor.

They found his wallet, demanded the PIN numbers, and one made off with his bank cards as the others kept guard, kicking the victims if either of them moved. They were held hostage for several hours while the robber visited cashpoints either side of midnight to get the most he could. It was only when the room went quiet that Billingham realised his captors had fled. They were never caught.

“I think it was some kind of inside job,” Billingham, 63, says now. “I was spending a lot of time in hotels, and you feel safe in a hotel.”

He doesn’t know if they were armed, but says they didn’t need to be in order to instil fear.

“You just do what you’re told, don’t you? The worst thing about it was not knowing what was going to happen. I was there for about three hours on the floor with a bag over my head, not knowing if they were going to kill me. The worst thing is that couple of hours [spent] thinking, ‘Am I going to see my wife and kids again?’

“As a brush with violent crime goes, I got away with it, I didn’t get too badly hurt. But I know what it’s like to be scared.”

It happened nearly 30 years ago, before he became a novelist, but it gave him the ability to describe first-hand the fear of the victim, which has come to dominate much of his writing. He later used the event as inspiration for his novel, Scaredy Cat.

“I still have a very mild degree of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) which means I’m very bad in crowds. I jump at any kind of shock, surprise or sudden noise, reacting to it really badly.

“It did make me want to write about the victims of crime. A lot of crime novels I was reading back then were about a cop and a killer on a collision course, but I wanted to write books where the reader engages with and cares about the victim, and gets to know them.”

This year, the ex-actor and stand-up comedian is celebrating his 25th year as a crime writer, whose most famous policeman, Det Insp Tom Thorne, played by David Morrissey in the eponymous TV series, is making his return in forthcoming novel What The Night Brings in June, while Billingham’s most recent bestseller, The Wrong Hands, has just been issued in paperback.

“It feels kind of surreal, because it really doesn’t feel like five minutes since my first book was coming out,” says the amiable novelist, originally from Solihull.

Billingham’s novels have sold 6.5 million copies, two TV adaptations have been made from his books - Thorne, and In The Dark with MyAnna Buring - and two of his stand-alone thrillers, Rush Of Blood and Rabbit Hole, are currently in development.

“The idea that I’d still be writing about Tom Thorne that much later, or that 25 books would come out, is bonkers. It’s going to be a hugely exciting year.”

He is a guest at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July, talking about his latest Tom Thorne novel, his 25th book in his 25-year crime writing career. He’s also currently writing the third book in his ‘dancing detective’ Declan Miller series set in Blackpool.

He has made a good network of police contacts, forensic experts and pathologists over the years who he can tap for information.

“I’ll call up someone like Graham Bartlett, an ex-high ranking police officer who now writes thrillers of his own, and talk him through some scenario in the book I’m working on, asking, is this possible?

“If he says ‘Absolutely not’ then I’ll think of something else. It’s about plausibility.”

Billingham started his career as a jobbing actor, moving to London in the mid-1980s and making guest appearances in TV shows including Juliet Bravo and The Bill, but drifted into stand-up when he grew disenchanted with it.

“There’s a lot of luck involved in acting, as there is with all creative industries, but not so much with stand-up comedy.”

When he started, there was a thriving comedy circuit, he recalls, which enabled him to make a living for about 20 years. He came up the ranks alongside Jimmy Carr, Jo Brand, Eddie Izzard and Michael McIntyre.

He’d had half a dozen books published by the time he stopped stand-up. Travelling constantly for comedy gigs didn’t fit in with his personal life, as by that time he had a young family. He lives in Barnet, North London, with his wife, Claire, and two grown-up children.

Does he miss the comedy circuit?

“I miss those 20 or 40 minutes on stage sometimes, because it’s a heck of a buzz having a storming great gig at The Comedy Store, a feeling you can’t get anywhere else.

“But I don’t miss sitting in grotty dressing rooms at three in the morning or driving up and down the M1. I get those kind of performance jollies somewhere else now.

“Firstly I get them from writing the books, but also the stuff that goes with that, the festivals, where I get to stand up on stage and show off. I love going out on tour to promote my books.”

Humour features heavily in The Wrong Hands, the second in the DC Declan Miller series, about a detective who loves ballroom dancing.

“I couldn’t write anything that didn’t have some humour in it, in the same way that I can’t read anything that doesn’t have humour, no matter how dark the subject matter. Life can be desperately tragic and hilariously funny, often at the same time.”

He loves catching up with fellow crime-writing pals like Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly at book festivals, and is also in a band called Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, alongside Stuart Neville, Doug Johnstone, Luca Veste, Chris Brookmyre and Val McDermid, ‘murdering songs for fun in front of anyone who will listen’. Last year they played Glastonbury for the second time.

“It started as a bit of fun seven years ago, something to do late night at festivals. We do cover versions of songs about crime and murder, everything from Psycho Killer to Watching The Detectives.”

Is he moving towards ‘cosy’ crime’ in his writing?

“I think cosy crime gets a bad rap because of that word ‘cosy’. The word I prefer is ‘tragi-comic’ which sums up what life is like.”

The Wrong Hands (Sphere) is out now in paperback. What The Night Brings (Sphere) is out on June 19.