question / answer

The novel begins with the discovery of a gruesome murder. Where did that come from?

The first time I was anywhere near a murder was in northern Morocco. My father came home late at night and I overheard him tell my mother (I was not supposed to know) that locals in the village next door had killed a man by sawing his head off. I remember how afterwards it seemed to me that nothing changed in the village, people cracked on with their hard lives. At some point I realized the killers were still there, I probably waved at them or drank a warm Coke beside them at the local cafe.

Years later, I saw a ruin in the Tangier cemetery, a kind of desiccated chapel. When I started to write Dead in Tangier, the discovery of the body at the ruin emerged fully formed. Although I threw history into the mix, the Spanish Civil War and so on, the killing in the village kept coming back to me. I wondered, rather late in the day, what rules, code or customs allowed the village to appear so tranquil on the surface and brought that idea into the novel.

The novel has a meticulous sense of place, how important is that to you?

I'm obsessive and self-indulgent about researching and setting period details in my writing. I want readers to know what Italian laundry detergent smelled like in 1936, because when my sleuth smells it on a woman in Tangier he feels a little homesick. The mystery is wired into time and place through ordinary artefacts - cluttered some might say. I don't want the period to be all about the big picture, storm clouds of WWII coming and all that - though admittedly that helps the atmosphere.