The Tangled Web E View: Michelle Spring

Michelle Spring's Cambridge set series of novels featuring the PI Laura Principal has, over three titles, gained a solid fan base within the crime reading community. With the recently released fourth title in the series Nights in White Satin Michelle Spring looks set for that all important break into the mainstream. Tangled Web sent Michelle a short questionnaire and she was good enough to reply. The results follow.

Firstly and most obviously why did you choose to write crime fiction as opposed to any other genre and following from that why choose to write a series character?

I didn’t choose crime fiction ; crime fiction chose me. I had planned to write an autobiographical novel, but surprised myself instead by writing the first in my current series, Every Breath You Take. Looking back, with four books behind me, I can see that dwelling on the chilling matter of crime fiction is a way of dealing with things that might otherwise haunt me. I’ve been involved in nasty events, as a witness or worse, more than once in my life. The good news is that I’ve not come to harm. The bad news is the nightmares. Writing crime fiction is an effective way of dispelling nasty memories from the past.

Laura Principal, my series character, chose me too. I had no plans to write a crime novel, and none to write a series. When I bounced out of a period of writer’s block, and began drafting Every Breath You Take, Laura Principal simply floated to the surface. She was just there, like an old friend. And once we’d worked together, I didn’t want to let her go. A series character has to be someone who intrigues or refreshes you--someone you can happily spend time with, locked in your study. Laura fits the bill. On the surface, she is smooth and assured--. thoughtful and tolerant to a fault, athletic, sexy, deeply committed to her friends. But underneath, she is a more complicated character and all too apt to gloss over the problems in her life --some of which are just beginning to make themselves felt.
 

Do you have any major influences within the genre - any book that convinced you that you wanted to write crime?

My favourite crime novel (suspense novel or psychological thriller, really) is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I read it when I was a teenager in Canada. Even in the stifling format of a Readers' Digest Condensed Book, it packed a punch. It can still grab me today. Forget about the 1999 film adaptation, which bears hardly any resemblance to the novel. The novel of The Haunting has suspense, the kind that makes your hair stand on end; atmosphere, that immerses you in the eerie world created by the writer; characters, who are believable and intriguing and full-blooded; and it's got plot. Everything falls into place at the end. All the elements of a good read.

How do you see the crime fiction scene at the moment? Is it healthy or not? Is too much fiction being published? Do you have any particular gripes about the way publishing and bookselling is going?

I worry about the pressures facing independent booksellers. The crime and mystery specialists here and abroad have a crucial role in providing space for new authors to develop and grow. Without them, there’s a risk that we’ll revert to an impoverished, best-seller-only, world.

Nights in White Satin is set in Cambridge. What made you choose Cambridge? Why do you think Cambridge, Oxford and academic settings generally have been and continue to be so popular with crime writers?

I chose Cambridge because I live here. It’s the part of Britain I know best. There's been an unexpected benefit, too. Writing books based in Cambridge has given me a licence to look at the city with fresh eyes; Cambridge and I have come to a new understanding.

Lots of people think Cambridge is too pretty, too genteel, for crime. I don’t agree. Cambridge has everything a crime writer could want: from prosperous agricultural estates and high-tech industry to tourism on a scale that brings its own special tensions. Don’t be misled by the fairytale image of ancient colleges and and cloistered quadrangles. Alongside the punts and the chapel spires and extravagances of May Week, Cambridge has enough of a dark side to keep a novelist hard at work for years to come. It’s a city where the squaddies from the nearby military bases converge on Saturday night to kick the stuffing out of anyone who looks like a student. Where the policeman who ran the sexual offences helpline made obscene calls to women who confided in him. Where an old man was beaten to death within sight and sound of Jesus College. Where the Cambridge rapist attacked a dozen women with numbing brutality and then returned home to watch telly with his wife. Mean streets come in many guises.

Why the popularity of Oxbridge? Well, perhaps the colleges themselves are part of the appeal. Their physical presence gives a gothic touch to any scene. And the temptation to look for the dark side beneath the beauty of the colleges and the lushness of the landscapes is too powerful to resist. Intriguingly, according to a man who makes a study of such things, two-thirds of the Oxbridge mysteries--and all of the better-known ones--have been set in Oxford*. Wouldn’t it be fun if I could give Cambridge a higher profile?

Your books seem to be wanting to highlight social issues as well as entertain - are there any ways in which you feel that crime writing is particularly well equipped for this?

Yes, looking back, I can see that each of my books has concerned itself with social issues. Sexual harassment and stalking in Every Breath You Take. The treatment of foreign domestic workers in Running for Shelter. Children who kill and society's reaction to such killings in Standing in the Shadows. And now, with Nights in White Satin, prostitution. But I’m glad you mentioned entertainment, because that's crucial. Entertainment is crucial for readers – I love it when my readers say that they couldn’t put a novel down. And crucial, too, for the process of writing; it’s the story and the characters that actually propel me to my desk each morning.

That said, I do feel that crime fiction often calls out for reflection on social issues. Its proper focus is death. And to look at death with eyes wide open, as you must, requires that the writer unpack people’s lives in ways that will often throw contemporary conditions into sharp relief.

How do you see your series developing - have you another book in the pipeline?

I’m working on a book that explores the experiences of a woman whose child disappears – and what happens twelve years later when he surfaces again. That’s as far forward as I want to cast my gaze at the moment. Except to say that I hope that the Laura Principal books will get better and better. ----------

footnote * John Kramer, author of : COLLEGE MYSTERY NOVELS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, Garland Publishing (New York and London), 1983. He mentioned the Cambridge-Oxford ratio in a paper delivered to the Popular Culture Association, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, August 4, 1999. Among the better-known Oxford-based crime novels, he mentions Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night, John Masterson’s An Oxford Tragedy and Colin Dexter’s series featuring Chief Inspector Morse-- and, as a possible exception, Michael Innes’ Death at the President’s Lodging. ----