Interview with Simon Marlowe, author of The Heart is a Cruel Hunter (Mason Made, Book 3)
Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview Simon Marlowe, author of The Heart is a Cruel Hunter (Mason Made, Book 3) which has its debut on 26th November 2024.
Welcome back to the Indie Crime Scene. We’re here to discuss your new crime thriller The Heart is a Cruel Hunter, the third part of your Mason Made trilogy. For readers new to your work, can The Heart is a Cruel Hunter be read as a standalone?
Definitely. But this is the last adventure before he is ‘made’, so as any half decent historian would say: the past helps explain the present. So if your first taste of Steven Mason is the ‘Cruel Hunter’, I would encourage any new readers to the series to delve into the past i.e. The Dead Hand of Dominique – Book One - and Medusa And The Devil - Book two.
What can you tell us about Steve Mason, the protagonist of all three books? It seems he’s in a dark place at the start of the novel.
Steven was brought up on a run-down housing estate, one of many that populate the area known as the Thames Gateway, that runs from London through Essex, following the Thames into estuaries and out to sea. It is quintessentially Essex, a contradictory environment full of the urban, industrial decay, container ports, wildlife and pockets of British defensive history. This is where the reader first encounters Steven, as he dreams of a way out of his professional criminal career, a young man who has had a brutal upbringing that hasn’t completely distorted his sense of right and wrong. He does what he does because that’s his job. However, as anyone who has to do unpalatable things, it all eventually catches up with him, and as you suggest, by Book Three, he has certainly fallen in on himself, fuelled now by the desire to get wasted as much as possible, 24/7.
Politics in the broadest possible sense is important to your writing. What can you tell us about that?
Well, as Aristotle once said, ‘we are all political animals’ – although I think he was probably referring to how much people like to gossip! In my case, I have a radical political background, although I have calmed down a little - there’s only so many times you can walk down the street decrying the inequities of the world before you feel you need to get bed early. Sad, but true, I’m afraid. But the fires still burn inside me, and as some one who is lucky enough to have a little bit of talent as an author, I kind of feel it is my duty to continue to reflect my younger passionate self, and thematically underpin my work with contemporary social and political issues. It’s not an easy balancing act, because I believe the first principle of fiction is the quality of the story, but as long as I do not stray into the didactic, it’s a driver that permeates my storytelling. And if it get’s up people’s noses, then I’m probably doing something right.
How does the darkening situation in the world affect the tenor of your writing?
Well, I think it was pretty dark even before things got clearly a lot worse following a global pandemic and nasty fractious wars springing up like uncontrollable weeds. Plus, I had always sketched what was going to happen in all three Mason Made books – although my Nostradamus type insight gives me little satisfaction. I suppose, I like to think that my writing has a certain zeitgeist about it - and I would be burying my head in the sand if I didn’t reflect the spirit and mood of the times we live in.
Before it all sounds too gloomy, can you remind readers about the humour in your novels?
Oh yes, easy to forget, but there is a ‘gallows humour’ throughout all of these books. As one reader said, they didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream – which is effectively what I like to achieve. As horrid and absurd as life can be, I have a very dry (arid some would say!) dark sense of humour, a sardonic first person narrative that hopefully provides a juxtaposition to the appalling crimes unfolding. And, having seen and experienced a few things in my time, what always struck me about some of the most hideous and deplorable things I have seen, is how humour plays a part. Perhaps it’s just our way of coping - however appalling things can be, that somewhere, there’s a joke in it!
How much is Steve Mason based on your own life experience?
What can I say? It depends on who’s listening! Well, fortunately I have tended to observe criminality as opposed to being integrated, looking from the outside in, by association rather than adopting such a lifestyle. After my first novel (Zombie Park) I had to dig deep and work out who I was an author, and how I could move from the personal into the literary – i.e. to construct worlds that are not based on experience and can transport the reader to places they’ve never been. But I would say that The Dead Hand Of Dominique was the start of that process – I drew on quite a lot of life experience and then dramatised it within a crime and gangster genre. But the second and third novels in Mason Made are very much works of fiction – the personal is removed and I am purely the author.
The East End of London is an iconic place in crime fiction, but in The Heart is a Cruel Hunter you move into the underworld of Amsterdam. Why did you use that setting, and how did you research it?
Opps! Having said that I made up everything, there is the beginning of ‘Cruel Hunter’ that I set in Amsterdam, and I’ll confess that was me drawing on some rather hedonistic times as a little cherub. All I will say: is that what happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam! Unless of course you use it as material to open the story of a debauched professional criminal who is on an uncontrollable bender. However, I did perform some due diligence, and there is a fair chunk of research based on articles I had read. So a combination of primary and secondary research is the best answer I can give.
NB. Amsterdam is full of a rich cultural tapestry and IS NOT JUST A VENUE TO GET WASTED. Courtesy of the Amsterdam Tourist Authority. Possibly…
Some crime writers glamourise the criminal underworld, but is it fair to say that you don’t?
The reality of crime is that there is absolutely nothing glamorous about it. The truth, as best I know it, is that a life of crime is one full of paranoia, duplicity, ugliness, brutality, psychopathy and heartlessness. But that is not to say I am accurate about criminality. I have created a pseudo-realism because the nature of fiction requires some artifice. In other words, as soon as you start to translate reality it is not the experience. The best way to explain what I mean is if you think of how we describe everyday events to other people. As soon as we start explaining why we had a terrible journey into work, we have made assumptions about the receiver of that information, left out things that are boring and uninteresting, embellished, exaggerated and yet feel we had accurately told the truth. The ‘lived’ experience is impossible to capture because it just wouldn’t be fiction. The skill is to make the fiction sound and look like reality – if you are not seeking to glamorise it!
Steve’s life is following a grim trajectory. He’s involved with the Far Right, war criminals and a terrifying gang of drug dealers, the Bloodaxe Gang. What can you tell us about them and how Steven falls in with them?
The Bloodaxe Gang are not your bog-standard OCG because they have a certain USP that sets then apart, such as their axe wielding solution to those who need exterminating, a set of Nordic mythological initiation rites in order to become a member, and a rather strict semi-religious lifestyle with links to dubious Far Right movements and conspiratorial groups. Steven, in his drug addled state, takes it upon himself to gatecrash a Bloodaxe drug dealer’s house in Amsterdam, driven by a desperate need to fulfil his insatiable need for more narcotic substances. As you can imagine, this doesn’t endear him to the residents, resulting in Steven waking up in a stable to be given a Hobson’s choice: dry out or die. Steven elects for the former and is recruited into a low level smuggling operation in the port of Rotterdam. And it is from here that Steven progresses through the Bloodaxe ranks and becomes a part of a European network of organised drug distribution, money laundering, funding of Far Right political organisations and secretive support for war criminals who are on the run. And I should also add, this is narrative set against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic and so the reader can draw the analogy as to what type of virus is rampant!
This year, you were invited to participate in the prestigious Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. What can you tell us about that experience?
Yes, I have my publisher (Cranthorpe Millner) to thank for that opportunity, and I have also been submitted for next years festival (i.e. 2025) so hopefully will get the chance to do more things – so don’t forget to follow my social media for news on that one! I’ll admit it was a bit daunting at first, a bit of ‘impostor syndrome’, because there was ‘little old me’ participating in the world’s largest international crime writing festival full of bestselling authors who straddle the publishing world. However, once I had overcome my ‘Billy no-mates’ trauma, it was an enlightening experience, good exposure, and I gained insights into other authors’ journeys, which I’ve found invaluable in understanding how all this mysterious publishing system works. But overall, there was a friendliness, a sense of community, and an openness that I hadn’t expected. So for anyone thinking of going and wondering if they will be able to cope on their own – that’s a yes! Don’t be shy and you’ll get more out of it than you think.
In 2022 and 2023, we interviewed you about your novels in the Mason Made series, The Dead Hand of Dominique and Medusa and the Devil. How has the experience of writing and publishing two books affected how you write?
Confidence, confidence, confidence. And just in case I haven’t got the message across, it’s all about confidence! The simple recipe (although it isn’t ever that simple) is the more you write the better you should get at writing. With ‘Cruel Hunter’, which is my fourth published novel, I pretty much know my strengths, and it has helped iron out a number of niggling doubts. Without sounding too self-satisfied, I know what I am doing now and how to do it. But it’s taken fifteen years of trial and error, with about 50% of the novels I’ve written published and a couple of million words.
How much does The Heart is a Cruel Hunter weave together the crime and spy genres?
Quite a lot actually. The whole series has been heavily influenced by authors such as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and for the ‘Cruel Hunter’ I drew on Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (look out for the refences in the narrative because this one is explicit!). However, I must confess I am not a big consumer of crime fiction, as I tend to indulge in the crime thriller film genre far more than crime literature. Perhaps that’s why people who read my books say they can visualise the text!
Your bio describes the books as “Like reading a Guy Ritchie movie with a Ken Loach conscience”. What does that mean to you, and are there parallels with film directors such as Danny Boyle, whose work includes Trainspotting (based on the novel of that name by Irvine Welsh)?
Well, the book series certainly has that Guy Ritchie flavour: the Essex gangster, the dry wit, the absurd layered over the criminal. The Ken Loach thing just refers to the political and social conscience that underpins the stories, something that I wouldn’t labour but is a key component. As for parallels with Trainspotting that really is only to do with the ‘Cruel Hunter’ opening, which is a bit hardcore, so ‘sensitive’ readers be warned! In fact, the whole drug addiction thing and style of writing owes more to my interest in American Dirty Realism, like Burrough’s Junky or Bukowski, or Selby Jr.
What are you planning to write next and is there anything in the pipeline?
Oh, there’s plenty in the pipeline. Readers will see some tweaks to my writing, but the distinctive ‘Marlowe’ style is retained. I have just completed a ‘state of the nation’ criminally comic road trip, about a bunch of nefarious characters on a journey from south to north who have purloined an NHS Community Trust vehicle as they seek out the elusive Mavis Grind to pay off a lethal drug debt. This should be winging its way to the publisher in the new year. I’m now writing a rather sober wartime crime thriller which was inspired by a family skeleton. Following that there will be another comic sojourn, exploring many an Essex urban myth against a backdrop of all things existential. And, if I keep to schedule, there’s a fourth novel set in the Middle East – although by then I might have changed my mind! But plenty for my mischievous mind to have some fun with and hopefully keep you readers out there entertained. All I ask is you tell your friends, family and neighbours, that there’s this author out there who you should read because there’s nothing else like it!
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About Simon Marlowe:
Simon Marlowe is an up-and-coming British crime thriller author, and a selected author at the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival 2024 (Harrogate International Festivals). A consummate wordsmith, he has excelled as a darkly comic crime author, with his fast paced and action-packed Mason Made trilogy. Like reading a Guy Ritchie movie with a Ken Loach conscience, Simon skilfully blends social and political issues to create a compellingly relevant narrative, on a par with the best in modern crime fiction today. Simon spent his formative years living in South London, indulging in political activism and music, graduating from a number of universities in politics, education and management. He eventually moved back to his home city in Essex, and after studying for a creative writing MA, settled down to developing as a writer. Since 2017, he has been successfully publishing, making people laugh, cry and scream!
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