There are many blogs and web sites out there that cover crime fiction much better than this one, and for the past couple of years they have been raving about the work of Ray Banks. Problem is, Banks is from the UK, and up until this spring, his work has largely been unavailable to those of us in the U.S. who don't have the means to buy a lot of expensive import books.

Lucky for us, Harcourt has come to the rescue, picking up Banks and adding him to a growing and impressive list of crime fiction writers from that neck of the woods, including Allan Guthrie and Declan Burke. Who's to say what will happen to these lads now that their editor, Stacia Decker, has been laid off in a downsizing move, but for now, we have books like Banks' bracing Saturday's Child.

The book is Banks' first featuring PI Callum Innes, an ex-con entangled with crime boss Morris Tiernan. It's his second book after the stand-alone The Big Blind, and the first of three with Innes. After breezing through this, I'm not sure I can wait for the next two (with a third on the way), and may need to pony up for the imports after all.

As for this book, it follows Innes as he gets sucked into a dangerous game thanks to a request from Tiernan. It seems like an easily met request on first blush: track down a dealer at one of Tiernan's illegal clubs who fled with some cash. But complications quickly escalate, and Innes finds himself ill-suited for the task. I'll admit that Banks' style, particularly the chapters based on Tiernan's misfit wannabe thug son, Mo, are a bit of a challenge. But a couple of chapters under my belt were all the acclimatization I needed and the rest was a race to the finish that kept me wired for days.

TIRBD: You wrote a lot of Cal Innes short stories that were published in web magazines and elsewhere. Was this an important part of developing that character and giving yourself a back story to play with?

RB: The short stories were a quick way of writing for publication, and most of the places I subbed to actually edited the stories, so that was useful. It just so happened that the first paid and edited story I did was an Innes one. And in the beginning, he wasn't a PI at all -- just some random ex-con helping out a friend -- but he evolved into a PI because I needed to hang the series on a recurring character. As a result, I had to dig up a back story which sorta kinda made it into the books.

Are there things in those stories that you have since jettisoned because they don't work with the direction you want to take him, or have you remained pretty faithful (I ask this having only had the chance to read Saturday's Child)?

I tried with the third book (No More Heroes) to bring all that stuff in, tie it all off, give the events some kind of chronology with the shorts in mind. In the end, it just didn't take. I would say that the Cal Innes of the shorts isn't the same as the Cal Innes of the books, though. In the books, the character's significantly darker, and certainly less competent.

Those short stories are all titled after (almost all great) songs. Do you chose those after the fact, or do you write based on an image or idea suggested by a song and/or its title?

The short answer: I'm terrible at titles and song titles have a way of catching the eye. Plus, there are some song titles ("Walking After Midnight" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart") that are just gagging to have PI stories written about them.

As a U.S. reader of many UK authors, I'm constantly frustrated by not being able to immediately pop into the bookstore to get a new book from a favorite author. Do these differing publication schedules have any affect on your writing, or is it something that manifests itself mostly as a promotional hitch?

There's no real hitch when it comes to writing -- I mean, I have a tendency to write regardless of contracts or schedules -- but it can be a little confusing when it comes to promotion. For instance, I'm doing the rounds for the first and the third in the series right now, while writing the fourth. Which is fine, as long as nobody asks me about specific plot points.

But I feel your pain, John. It's hell trying to find books by authors who aren't mainstream, or who're published by smaller presses, which is why I spend far too much money online.

Are your U.S. and UK audiences different in the way they receive your books? In the way they interact with you?

In the UK, I've attracted the non-readers and the hardcore crime buffs, which is cool. Otherwise, though, not a peep. Understandable, considering the Innes books are something of an anomaly in the UK crime scene, which is dominated by the police procedural. The US audience, on the other hand, has been vocally supportive since my debut (which happened to be in the U.S.). This could be because my influences are primarily American and they recognize that, or it could just be that I'm playing to a larger crowd, so the niche is naturally larger than it is here in the UK.

There seem to be several young crime fiction writers who have bonded together as friends and colleagues for their mutual entertainment and benefit. What is the advantage of being a part of this group?

There are. We're like the Famous Five. Or Secret Seven. Or one of those other Enid Blyton groups, except bloody and vulgar. It's worked as a kind of support network so far, but it's not like we're around each other's houses or anything. Actually, no, they might be -- I'm among the least sociable of my peers, so I don't do it myself. The chief advantage for me is that, as a fan, I get to know about (and sometimes read) my favourite authors' new books way in advance. Which is secretly why I signed up for this caper in the first place.

You write about some pretty hard characters going through some pretty rough things, and I'm sure some of your readers conflate author with character. Convince them they're wrong.

Ah, but which character? God help them if they conflate me with Mo. In fact, any reader expecting an amalgamation of both narrators in Saturday's Child is going to get a horrible shock if they ever meet me. There is a tendency to view hardboiled authors as looking and acting like Marv, when they're usually more like Frank Miller -- a slightly doughy, scruffy-looking geek who's mostly polite in mixed company, but can resort to foul language if cornered. Actually, in that respect, I'm a little like Mo. But I hasten to add that's the only thing we have in common.

Labels: crime fiction, Monday Interview