My Kind Of Book Crime writer Peter James
He’s sold 18 million books – but what does bestselling crime writer Peter James think about other authors’ work?
Igrew up in Brighton and read Brighton Rock by Graham Greene for the first time when I was 14. Its dark, criminal undertone had a real effect on me. I remember putting it down and thinking, “One day I am going to write a crime novel set in Brighton that is just a fraction as good as this book.”
I read William Peter Blatty’s TheExorcist in a Swiss hotel room at midnight and was absolutely convinced there was something in the room looking down at me! I had to read something light before I went to sleep so I turned to TheMoon’sA Balloon, the actor David Niven’s autobiography, and within half an hour I was giggling. Funnily, my first successful book was Possession, a supernatural and psychological thriller.
My go-to book is SlaughterhouseFive by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s insanely funny, incredibly moving and uplifting. The author’s point is that more people died in the bombing of Dresden than Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yet people thought the bombing of Dresden was a good thing.
Of the classics, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound ofthe Baskervilles is so cleverly written, with a great twist. I still think of Sherlock Holmes as being the greatest fictional detective. I like the fact that he was imperfect. VanityFair is another great classic. I actually played Becky Sharp in a school play once.
The greatest riches any novel can offer is examining and questioning the world and the society in which we live and I actually can’t think of any modern novel that’s done it better than Tom Wolfe’s TheBonfireofthe Vanities. It totally caught the zeitgeist of that time and period. If someone in 100 years’ time wants to read about New York, that’s the book.
Thomas Harris’s Silence oftheLambs changed the landscape of crime fiction. There’s a tradition of good versus bad, but here you actually had bad versus evil in Hannibal Lecter, a monster turned hero.
The biography I most enjoyed was DoYouSincerely WantTo BeRich? by Bernie Cornfield whose “investment” company swindled thousands of people. It was riveting just because of his sheer gall.
A book that proved an unexpected joy was TheHills IsLonely by Lilian Beckwith, about an Englishwoman running a croft on a remote island in Scotland. I loved it.