Fallen Idols
Fallen Idols was my debut novel, and so I have a lot of affection for it, even though it is perhaps the least polished of my books. Writing, like any job or profession, is something you learn to get better at.
The book introduces the two characters that run throughout my books, Jack Garrett and Laura McGanity. Jack Garrett is a reporter from a small Lancashire town who has moved to London and works freelance, covering crime stories. When a Premiership footballer is shot and killed in London, he realises that there might be a connection with a murder from his home town, Turners Fold, ten years earlier. DC Laura McGanity is a detective working on the case, and is someone Jack uses as an inside source occasioally.
As the story develops, Jack returns north, and delves into the ten year old mystery, and puts himself, and those around him in danger.
In writing Fallen Idols, I set out simply to write a book I would like, with plenty of pace and twists and turns. The story itself was really about celebrity, and although it involves Premiership footballer, it is not about football. There is not one single scene in or around a football match. At one point, I considered rewriting it and making Z-list celebrities the nub of the book, as there is nothing more needy, it would seem, than a minor celebrity trying to get into the limelight. I stook with footballers in the end though, just because they are the ultimate version of celebrity now.
The main problem I had in writing the book was deciding where to set it, as the old cotton towns of Lancashire didn't seem pretty glamorous at first. However, that made me look around a lot more, and I started to see beauty in the landscape and old towns that I hadn't previously-noticed, where even the old abandoned wharf and mill buildings had a real melancholy charm, because they told the story of the people around me.
The more precise setting for the book, Turners Fold, is meant to represent an archetypal small Lancashire cotton town, a bit down on its luck, all green hills and faded glory. I scouted the area, and the town that fitted the bill best was Great Harwood, a small town just outside of Blackburn. The old brick aviary and park that appears in Fallen Idols were lifted straight from Great Harwood.
The other dilemma I had was the occupation of the lead male character, Jack Garrett. I am a lawyer by profession, currently a prosecutor, and so it was tempting to make the lead character a lawyer too. In the end though, I backed away from that idea, as I realised that I would become obsessed with making the book legally-accurate rather than making it interesting. A crime fiction book should not be inaccurate on the law, but the book should be about the story, not the law. I made Jack a reporter as it would get him involved in crime but not be bogged down with the technicalities of the courtroom, and I like the conflict he has because of his involvement with Laura McGanity, as he wants to know things that she is not allowed to tell.
I was pleased with the response to Fallen Idols. To see my book on a bookshelf seemed enough, but then to be nominated for the Books to Talk About Award, held in conjunction with World Book Day, was pretty special, and then to see it reviewed in newspapers as far away as India was something else entirely.
Fallen Idols was published by Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in July 2007.