Crime writers and Coppers – Simon Booker and Lisa Cutts talk on their new books
Lisa Cutts talked about her novel ‘Mercy Killing’ at a London library event and she is a bona fide police officer too. She has to take care that she doesn’t breach protocol with her work and on police stations, says that ‘New Tricks’ isn’t far from depicting real ones. Investigating officers will always have time for people who come in with new evidence and there are dedicated teams working on cases such as at her HQ in Kent. It’s nearly all team work, hard work and long hours – interviewing suspects can take a pair of officers three days to complete. Detectives who are tenacious are the more fun to work with although the murder rate has gone down in the past ten years. The ripping middle class murder sagas so rated on television are less common than violent murders. Lisa Cutts has sometimes had to wear a uniform to do a ‘Death Knock’. That is when a person is informed of a known member of their circle who has been unfortunately murdered. That is a difficult one to do.
Lisa finds Jasper Carrott’s ‘The Detectives’ quite interesting. For her own work she gets special clearance to write crime fiction with a short check out to see that what she’s written is alright. Lisa writes best when she is angry with the justice system. She followed her father into detective work. She can cover some very sensitive areas with her novels such as sexual abuse cases and how victims show no violence or intent against the perpetrators in many cases. Her books are written bit by bit “making it up” as she goes along. ‘Mercy Killing’ is now available to buy and read so look out for it. Lisa finished by saying her favourite books include Jane Austen’s Emma and that she also adores Agatha Christie.
Simon Booker – “Without Trace” has written both murder mysteries and romantic comedies and screenwritten for ‘Holby City’, BBC and US stations. He wrote a famous flop – that’s according to him – called ‘Double Bill’ – named because it was about a bigamist known as Bill by both his wives – filmed and broadcast in the USA.
Simon’s mother worked in Showbusiness and he says she told people “The only glamorous part of working in Showbiz is saying you work in it”! Simon is a formulaic enthusiast regarding screenwriting. All writers do know about the 3 parts of a screenplay and that dialogue should be kept down in comparison, say to plays and novels. As regards disclaimers, if you use any names at all you need a disclaimer to announce that the names of characters chosen are for fictitious people and any semblance to living people must be treated as coincidence only.
Simon Says his favourite reading matter is thrillers which is the main reason why he likes writing them. “The Girl on a Train” is a firm favourite which is a novel that is now a film so watch out for it!
Look out for Simon Booker and Lisa Cutt and their crime novels in a bookshop near you!
Enjoy!