Interview with Simon Marlowe, author of Medusa and the Devil (Mason Made, Book 2)
Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Simon Marlowe, whose novel Medusa and the Devil (Mason Made, Book 2) has its debut on 23 May 2023.
Welcome back. We interviewed you last year about The Dead Hand of Dominique, Book 1 of the Mason Made trilogy. Now we’re here to talk about the sequel, Medusa and the Devil, Book 2, which is due to come out on 23rd May. First off, can you remind your readers about Book 1 and where it left off (without too many spoilers!)
Sure. In book one, the reader follows the story of Steven Mason, a young career villain living on a run-down housing estate east of London, a kind of no-man’s land between the urban and suburban close to the river Thames. He works for a local gangland boss nicknamed Grandad, who sends him off to find his missing girlfriend, Dominique. However, when Steven stumbles upon a dead hand frozen in Mickey Finn’s old freezer, he knows that past and present tensions will be realised in people who need to tell him where Dominique might be, or what has happened to her. After cajoling and interrogating those who knew Dominique and navigating his way through the murky underbelly of London, Steven returns to the estate, understanding that the real motivations of his friends and enemies have more to do with a ring that Dominique wore on her finger. After a parrot is employed by Grandad to pass judgement on those who should know better, a desperate chase to one of the many small islands off the coast of Essex leads to a dramatic climax. Finally, Steven escapes abroad, fulfilling some of his dreams of a better life, but with the past still hanging in the air.
Your protagonist is Steven Mason, a small-time East End villain who finds himself in deep water - and worse. Who is Steven Mason and where does he come from in your psyche?
Steven is a product of the real and the imagined. In other words, I knew a young man like Steven, who was a criminal, and who had far more ability than he would ever have been allowed to develop in the environment he was brought up in. If you are working class and have something about you, and the opportunities are not there, you tend to segue into what is in front of you, taking advantage of that little bit extra you know you have over everyone else. But he is also a product of what I would call the creative process—the constant writing that stirs up characters that you try to give a voice to. And crudely, I am afraid to say, he is a perfect vehicle for some of my seeping didacticism. He is the character that I hide behind who speaks for me, and who portrays my own social and political interests in what I hope is a funny, serious and entertaining way.
The press release targets the novel at fans of Guy Ritchie - a British auteur - and Fargo. What does that mean to you and are we talking about Fargo the movie, or the TV drama?
OK, I’ll leave out the bit about Guy Ritchie for now as I have talked about that in another answer below and just say a few things about Fargo. So, the original movie by the Coen Brothers is great, and I am a big fan of almost all their films (in fact, I can’t think of any of them I don’t like). I didn’t think the TV series would be any good, but was happy to be proved wrong, and I love the first three series (that also means I really didn’t like series four). Also, there are too many things I like to list them all, but it has a wicked sense of humour, blended perfectly with crime and murder; it doesn’t take itself too seriously, is self-effacing and self-knowing and touches on the surreal for just long enough to make you wonder if there are forces at play greater than the human hand. If I can get close to something like Fargo in my own fiction, I will leave this mortal coil a happy indie author.
That’s a terrific front cover. Who is the Devil and how much can you tell us?
Well, firstly, many thanks for the compliment on the book cover—the credit for that goes to Cranthorpe’s marketing department and myself!
What I can tell you is that Steven needs to track down the artefact and it soon becomes apparent that the character Max Schmidt, who has failed to deliver the statue, has far more about him—and not in a good way. His girlfriend/boyfriend provides the first real insight into Max, when she warns Steven of the Diablo that is Schmidt. Steven also has his own demons to deal with, as the events that occurred in Book one begin to haunt him. Schmidt seems to excel at taunting Steven, much like a devil. He is almost omnipresent and takes pleasure in a form of hide and seek that pushes Steven further and further into a hellish world. I will leave it up to the reader to decide how human or superhuman Schmidt is, whether pure evil has a face or whether Schmidt is just someone who should be heavily sedated!
Steven Mason was last in Metropolitan Essex. Now we find him in the Mediterranean, living a quiet life. What draws him back to the old game?
Steven hasn’t quite left his old life behind him, and part of the deal that enabled Steven to resolve a few things in The Dead Hand means that he is helping his old boss Grandad to launder money through property deals on the island. When Steven receives the dreaded phone call from Grandad, and a visit from one of Grandad’s little helpers, Tony, who played a minor role in searching for Dominique, Steven knows he is probably going to be back on a mission, and that nothing is going to be as simple as it looks. What appears to be a straightforward job of collecting an artefact from a Russian captain soon spirals out of control, as Steven finds himself mixed up with a family of illegal immigrants fleeing war, a conspiratorial plot and a brooding sense of menace personified by Max Schmidt, who has jumped ship with the statue, which Grandad paid for.
The blurb contains the lines: “Steven Mason is six feet under. The only problem? He’s not dead.” This does not sound good. What more can you tell us?
Sorry, I can’t tell you anything! Well, just to say that being buried six feet under has quite a lot to do with things that happened in book one. And I would just like to caution the reader that, if you think there are spoilers in book two that would put you off reading book one, all I can say is nothing is certain, and you will have to wait until the very end of book three to know the answers.
You mentioned Guy Ritchie when we talked before. He’s a significant British Film Director - why is he important to you and what is it about his films that strikes a chord?
Well, I wouldn’t say that Guy Ritchie’s films are that important to me, not in a creative sense, but mentioning him is my attempt to communicate to a potential reader the type of storytelling in the trilogy. I hope there are the same kind of sardonic wit and plot twists that make Ritchie’s gangster films such enjoyable romps. However, if you could blend Ken Loach with Guy Ritchie, then you would have the ideal cinematic representation for a Simon Marlowe film based on his stories.
Steven Mason is an anti-hero. Would you say he’s a decent guy in a bad business? What does it mean to be a small-time crook in today’s sinister world?
Yes, I like to think of Steven as someone who has a moral compass but, as you say, it must be applied within the business model of organised crime. In today’s world, for someone like Steven the difference between legal and illegal business (or, in economic terms, the formal and informal economy) has become increasingly paper-thin. It is not too great an exaggeration to see a person like Donald Trump as a classic example of the businessman gangster and, likewise, the traditional gangster as someone whose life is organised along business-management principles. But the life of a small-time crook carries far greater risk because they can be arrested, sentenced and imprisoned, and then everyone thinks the world is a safer and better place. But I think the real problem is that mafia-type gangsters are becoming nationalistic political leaders, and we need to rebuild what was lost to create an effective opposition, otherwise there is going to be a terrible price to pay (hint—these are the thematic concerns of book three).
The name Medusa and the Devil refers to a small, ivory statue currently in the possession of a Russian Captain. What can you tell us about the statue and its significance?
The statue is an artefact that is being traded on the illegal markets, one of many artefacts that have been extracted from war-torn areas in the Middle East and used as commodities. Steven is tasked with receiving it from a cargo boat, but the postman and the artefact go walkies once the boat has docked. The Russian captain offers a solution that involves a family of illegal immigrants and their ability to identify the postman, who could still be on the island. The statue plays a key role throughout the narrative and plot—think of the falcon statue in the film noir The Maltese Falcon. So, the reader will need to see beyond appearances, and to wonder if the statue has some other value that will lead to a good dose of death and destruction.
You describe the story as “darkly comic”. What does that mean to you and why is it important?
Well, some of these terms are probably just marketing phrases, but the expression “darkly comic” also has meaning for me and my life experiences. It probably reaches back into my early life and my struggle to find any kind of meaning and purpose to it all—both practically and philosophically. I discovered existentialism and it was a psychological and intellectual comfort because it said unequivocally that our lives are patently absurd, not least because once you get to a point where you have some meaning to it, there’s not long left to live. So, you must laugh, don’t you think! Plus, the scale of barbarity and cruelty that can sum up the human experience leaves you with one of two choices: resort to superstition and religion; or laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all and call out the liars!
In your bio, you mention the difficulty of starting out as a writer from a working class background. What advice would you give your 19-year-old self if he were starting out now?
The easy answer is suicide, and to request reincarnation as a middle-class kid with limited talent but who is infused with self-confidence, emotional support, resources, networks and investment. Failing that, the car crash of my old self could never have been stopped, refuelled and cuddled. There is nothing to say to a working-class kid, other than “Don’t let the bastards grind you down!” Just to add, perhaps helpfully this time, that my experience is a story that I intend to retell once I’ve finished being angry about it.
How has the process of writing the sequel to your first book been and how are things going with the third instalment?
Other authors may find what I am going to say rather annoying but writing the sequel and now working on the final book has been virtually seamless. I did wander off for a while and produce another novel in-between but it failed miserably. So, the trilogy saved me from having to do three Hail Marys and to recite the Lord’s Prayer every night for the last couple of years.
How does a writer deal with the dramatic and fluctuating events of the world in which we live? Do you focus on a time and place or ignore things like the war in Ukraine (for example?)
I like to think of myself as politically conscious and that my novels are thematically contemporary and reflect current events. If you can identify what the main drivers behind those events are it can free yourself from trying to comment on or document things as they are happening. For instance, is a deadly virus like COVID just a medical emergency, or is there something analogous to the drivers that have prompted war in Ukraine?
This is an insight into how I have approached the final book in the trilogy. Indeed, war is not something new, so if you want to write about the inequities of war, write about another one in history—it should be obvious to the reader where you are coming from. Arthur Miller wrote a play about the Salem witch trials, but everyone knew he was writing about McCarthyism. My rule of thumb is to use the art of drama, to let it act as a mirror, so the reader hears a story but without being beaten around the head for not listening—although it is tempting.
What thoughts have you got about the difference between writing a trilogy or series, and a stand-alone novel? To what extent can the books of this trilogy be read by themselves?
It’s a bit of a double-edged sword and loaded with risk! Committing to a trilogy or series of stories that are chronological also means you are asking the reader to commit to going with you on a journey. The flip side of that is, why would a potential reader want to join halfway through the journey? Hopefully, there is sufficient balance between maintaining the narrative and ensuring that, if you joined by reading book two, you will find it so compelling that you must know how it all started.
I think a stand-alone novel is a fresh start, a creative reset, and it’s something that I’m quite looking forward to once I’ve written book three. So, baking a stand-alone cake represents freedom from the sustained concentration required to write a trilogy, but it has just as many pitfalls as all creative endeavours—you never know how it’s going to turn out until you’ve mixed the ingredients and taken the cake out of the oven. And there is nothing worse than a flat soufflé.
But it’s always difficult as an author to let go of characters, especially when they keep knocking on the door of my internal head, all demanding to have their stories told.
Ultimately, there is an artistic vision, and that means seeing things through to the end, for better or for worse.
Amazon | Cranthorpe Millner | Waterstone's
About Simon Marlowe:
Simon Marlowe says: “I was still at school when I realised that I wanted to be an author. There was a teacher who said I had talent, and that was enough for me. However, I grew up in an era when ambition for working class kids was defined by the lowest common denominator. For instance, if you were interested in music you could get a job in a record store, and if you wanted to be an author then you were thinking above your station. I was up against class barriers before I’d even started, and parents who drove a stake through the heart of my ambition.
“In a story worth telling one day, I had written my first novel by the age of nineteen. I sent it off to a publisher, who thoughtfully rejected it. I abandoned all hope in a maelstrom of defeat and despair. It took me a long time to learn all kinds of life lessons before I was able to come full circle and put pen to paper again, or text into a Word file. Now I see myself as a satirical realist, who happens to specialise in the murky world of crime and mystery thrillers. But I did not choose the genre, it chose me. And it is where I belong, being dark, witty and gritty.”
Comments
Post a Comment