One of the things I particularly enjoy about writing thrillers is coming up with the villains. Some are straightforwardly unpleasant. They’re violent, greedy or cruel, and they make very little effort to disguise it. Others are a bit more interesting. One of the central characters in DOPE is a doctor called Reuben Faraday. On the face of it, Reuben is a thoroughly respectable member of Portland society. He’s a successful physician who has built a thriving network of medical clinics, lives in an enormous house overlooking the Willamette River and gives generously to local charities. He’s the sort of man who gets invited to fundraising dinners and has his photograph taken with politicians. He’s also a very dangerous man. I won’t say too much about what he’s involved in because discovering that is part of the fun of the book, but he’s a good example of a particular sort of villain that I find fascinating. He’s convinced himself that he’s a businessman rather than a criminal. He sees opportunities where other people see suffering, and he’s become extremely wealthy by exploiting them. What makes him particularly unpleasant is that he doesn’t really think he’s doing anything wrong. I’ve always found that more interesting than a villain who simply enjoys being evil. Reuben has a family, friends and a public reputation to protect. He’s capable of being charming and generous, provided it suits him. And because he’s spent years getting away with things, he’s started to believe that he’s considerably cleverer than everyone around him. Which is a dangerous assumption to make when John Milton arrives in town. DOPE is out very soon: geni.us/AmazonDope

There’s something a little different about the new John Milton novel. In most of the books, Milton finds himself in a difficult situation because he can’t resist helping someone who needs him. That’s certainly true of DOPE, where his decision to intervene in the life of a desperate bank robber leads him into a much bigger problem than he anticipated. But this time there’s something else going on. While Milton is busy trying to help Daniel Broome and his daughter, someone is looking for him. And they’re not particularly friendly. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about writing this book is that there are two stories running alongside one another. Milton is investigating the criminal network that has trapped Daniel, but elsewhere in Portland, a very different sort of operation is taking shape. The people involved are professionals. They have resources, experience and a considerable amount of money behind them. They’ve been tracking Milton’s movements across America, and they know he’s in Portland. What they don’t know is quite how difficult he’s going to be to deal with. I’ve always enjoyed thrillers where the reader knows something the protagonist doesn’t. It creates a different sort of tension, because you can see danger approaching even when the character is concentrating on something else entirely. That’s what I’ve tried to do here. And the two stories are going to collide in a way that sets up the next book in the series. I’m being deliberately vague about that because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that I’m particularly pleased with how the final chapters turned out. DOPE is available to preorder now, and it’ll be out in just a few days: geni.us/AmazonDope

One of the characters I particularly enjoyed writing in DOPE is a man called Daniel Broome. Daniel isn’t a professional criminal, although when we first meet him, he’s robbing a bank. He’s a former soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the army and finding work on the docks in Portland. For a while, life was pretty good. He had a steady job, a family and enough money coming in to make ends meet. Then he was badly injured in an industrial accident, and everything started to fall apart. The painkillers he was prescribed became an addiction, and that eventually led him to heroin and fentanyl. He lost his job, his marriage collapsed and, worst of all, his daughter Jessica developed an addiction of her own. By the time Milton encounters him, Daniel is trying desperately to get clean, but he’s also in debt to a particularly unpleasant drug dealer who has started threatening his daughter. I enjoy writing characters like Daniel because they’re complicated. He’s made some terrible decisions, and there’s no getting away from the fact that he’s responsible for many of the problems he’s facing. But he’s also a father who loves his daughter and would do almost anything to protect her. And that makes him exactly the sort of person who attracts Milton’s attention. One of the things I’ve always wanted to explore in these books is the idea of redemption. Milton has done some dreadful things in his past, and he knows he can’t undo them. What he can do is try to help people who have found themselves in situations they can’t escape. Daniel is one of those people. Unfortunately, helping him is going to be rather more complicated than Milton initially expects. DOPE is available to preorder now: geni.us/AmazonDope

The new John Milton novel, DOPE, is out next week, and I thought I’d spend the next few days telling you a little about the story and introducing some of the characters. It begins in Portland, Oregon, where Milton has reached the end of a rather unusual road trip across America. Readers of the previous books will know that he’s been travelling around the country in a food truck, selling his own rather eccentric take on Yorkshire puddings. He’s enjoyed himself, made some money and, for once, managed to avoid getting involved in anything particularly dangerous. He’s decided it’s time to sell the truck and move on. He goes into a bank to open an account, and while he’s waiting in the queue, he notices something odd about the man standing a few places ahead of him. The man is sweating, even though the weather is pleasant. He’s wearing a jacket that’s far too heavy for the temperature, and he keeps glancing at the security cameras. Milton knows immediately what’s about to happen. Sure enough, the man produces a pistol and demands that the teller empty her cash drawer. Milton could stop him without much difficulty. He’s dealt with considerably more dangerous situations, and disarming an amateur bank robber would be relatively straightforward. But something makes him hesitate. The robber doesn’t seem particularly threatening. In fact, he looks absolutely terrified, and he keeps apologising to the woman behind the counter. Milton decides to let him go. Of course, being Milton, he can’t quite leave it at that. And that’s where the trouble starts. DOPE is available to preorder now: geni.us/AmazonDope

Top 10 Tuesday - Fictional Villains Who Steal the Show I’ve always thought that a thriller is only as good as its villain. You can have a terrific hero and a clever plot, but if the antagonist isn’t convincing, the whole thing can fall apart. The best villains aren’t necessarily the most violent. They’re the ones who get inside your head, and sometimes they’re considerably more entertaining than the heroes. Here are ten of my favourites. 1. Hannibal Lecter — The Silence of the Lambs Anthony Hopkins dominates the film despite having relatively little screen time. 2. Anton Chigurh — No Country for Old Men Javier Bardem’s chilling portrayal of a killer who operates according to his own incomprehensible moral code. 3. Hans Gruber — Die Hard Sophisticated, funny, ruthless and blessed with a genuinely clever plan. 4. Annie Wilkes — Misery Kathy Bates is extraordinary as Stephen King’s obsessive fan. 5. Keyser Söze — The Usual Suspects A villain whose reputation is almost more frightening than the man himself. And what an ending. 6. Nurse Ratched — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Louise Fletcher barely raises her voice, but her quiet exercise of power is absolutely chilling. 7. The Joker — The Dark Knight Heath Ledger’s Joker is frightening because he doesn’t care about money, status or even his own survival. He just wants chaos. 8. Amy Dunne — Gone Girl Brilliantly manipulative, frighteningly intelligent and brought to life perfectly by Rosamund Pike. 9. Norman Bates — Psycho Anthony Perkins makes Norman seem almost sympathetic, which makes Hitchcock’s revelations all the more disturbing. 10. Lorne Malvo — Fargo Billy Bob Thornton’s character is unpredictable, manipulative and seems to take enormous pleasure in making other people’s lives miserable. Who’s your favourite fictional villain?

How a John Milton book gets published — Part 1 DOPE, the new John Milton novel, is almost ready for publication, and I thought it might be interesting to spend the next week showing you what happens between finishing a manuscript and getting it into your hands. The first stage, obviously, is writing the thing. I usually aim for around 3,000 words a day when I’m working on a first draft, although some days are considerably more productive than others. The early stages are generally the most enjoyable, when the idea is fresh and I’m still discovering exactly where the story is going. The middle can be rather more difficult, particularly when I realise that something I thought was a brilliant idea three weeks earlier is actually going to cause me enormous problems. Eventually, though, I get to the end. There’s a tremendous sense of satisfaction in typing the final words of a novel, particularly one I’ve been thinking about for months. With DOPE, I was especially pleased with the ending. It’s one of those conclusions that I hope will make it very difficult to put the book down, and it leads directly into the next Milton adventure. But finishing the manuscript doesn’t mean the book is finished. Not even close. By the time I’ve completed my own revisions, I’ve read some chapters so many times that I can practically recite them. I know what every sentence is supposed to say, which makes me increasingly hopeless at spotting what it actually says. That’s when I hand it over to someone who can look at it with fresh eyes. Tomorrow: the copy editor. DOPE will be released this month. To preorder, please visit: geni.us/AmazonDope

TOP TEN TUESDAY - Ten of the Best Opening Scenes in Thriller Films A novel needs to grab your attention, introduce something intriguing and make you desperate to know what happens next. Films have exactly the same challenge, and some of my favourites manage to do all of that in the first few minutes. Here are ten I particularly love. 1. The Dark Knight (2008) The bank robbery is a brilliantly constructed introduction to Heath Ledger’s Joker. Clever, chaotic and increasingly sinister. 2. Inglourious Basterds (2009) Christoph Waltz interrogating a French farmer. Almost nothing happens physically, but the tension is unbearable. 3. Scream (1996) Drew Barrymore’s opening telephone call is a masterclass in manipulating audience expectations. Nobody is safe. 4. Casino Royale (2006) The black-and-white sequence introducing Daniel Craig’s Bond. Brutal, efficient and a clear signal that this 007 is different. 5. The Matrix (1999) Trinity’s extraordinary escape leaves you wondering what on earth you’ve just watched. A perfect way to introduce an unfamiliar world. 6. Jaws (1975) Spielberg makes us terrified of something we can barely see. One of the greatest examples of suspense ever filmed. 7. Drive (2011) The opening getaway tells us almost everything about Ryan Gosling’s character without needing to explain anything. Cool, controlled and brilliantly paced. 8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Clarice Starling’s FBI training sequence is deceptively simple, establishing her determination and character in just a few minutes. 9. Mission: Impossible (1996) The Prague operation goes spectacularly wrong, immediately establishing that this isn’t going to be a straightforward spy adventure. 10. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Three gunmen waiting for a train. Almost no dialogue. An extraordinary demonstration of how silence can create tension. Looking at the list, I think the common ingredient is curiosity. The best openings make you ask questions, and that’s something I try to remember whenever I start a new book. What would you add? Which film hooked you from the very first scene?

TOP TEN TUESDAY - Ten thriller films I never tire of watching. Not the ten “best” thrillers ever made. That’s an argument that could keep us here until next Tuesday. These are the ones I can stumble across halfway through and somehow find myself watching to the end again. Heat — Pacino and De Niro, obviously, but the bank robbery remains extraordinary. The Silence of the Lambs — still horribly effective. The Bourne Identity — changed the language of the modern spy thriller. Collateral — Tom Cruise against type, and a fantastic nocturnal Los Angeles. The Fugitive — almost perfect thriller construction. Man on Fire — Denzel Washington at his most formidable. Sicario — oppressive, beautiful and relentlessly tense. Ronin — spies, betrayal and some of the best car chases ever filmed. The Day of the Jackal — proof that knowing roughly what will happen doesn’t diminish suspense at all. The Departed — Scorsese doing a crime thriller at full throttle. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon on opposite sides of the same game, Jack Nicholson having enormous fun, and a plot that keeps tightening until almost nobody has room left to breathe. I’ve seen it plenty of times and it still works. I’d happily watch any of those tonight. But I’ve undoubtedly missed something. What goes on your list?

Charlie Cooper isn’t getting much of a rest. I’ve already been working on the next story, ECHO, although I haven’t had the uninterrupted stretch of time I want to really get stuck into it yet. That should change next month. I’ve got a long flight coming up, and I’ve discovered over the years that aeroplanes can be surprisingly good places to write. Once you’re in the air, the options narrow considerably. No errands, no dogs wanting a walk, no delivery driver at the door. And, if you resist the temptation to spend ten hours watching films you’ve already seen, there isn’t much excuse not to open the laptop. ECHO is particularly well suited to that kind of concentrated burst because Cooper stories are compressed by design. I want them to move quickly. Very little wasted motion, short chapters, plenty happening. They’re a useful change of pace for me, too. After working on a full-length Milton or a complicated Atticus mystery, there’s something refreshing about stripping everything back and asking a very simple question: what’s the most exciting thing that could happen next...?

One of the more painful lessons in writing is knowing when to stop trying to rescue an idea. I’ve had books where I’ve reached 20,000 or 25,000 words before finally admitting that something isn’t working. That’s a lot of words to throw away. The temptation, obviously, is to keep going. You’ve invested weeks in it. There might be characters you like, scenes that work perfectly well and an opening you’re particularly pleased with. Surely another few chapters will fix it? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they really don’t. It took me a long time to become comfortable with abandoning that much work. When I was less experienced, 25,000 words felt far too valuable to waste. Now I tend to look at it differently. The real waste would be spending another two months writing the remaining 75,000 words when I already know in my gut that the book isn’t good enough. And the abandoned material isn’t always completely lost. A character might turn up somewhere else. A location gets recycled. Sometimes the original idea comes back years later in a form that finally works. The difficult part is recognising the difference between a book that’s temporarily difficult — which nearly all of them are — and one that is fundamentally wrong. I’m better at recognising that now. Unfortunately, the only way I learned was by getting it wrong a few times first.

My reading has taken a definite turn north recently. The next Milton has given me an excuse to immerse myself in Alaska, and I’ve been alternating between fiction and non-fiction. I’ve gone back to Jack London, particularly the stories where the landscape isn’t simply scenery but something actively hostile. “To Build a Fire” is the obvious example. It’s astonishing how much tension he extracts from cold, distance and one seemingly manageable mistake. On the non-fiction side, I’ve been dipping into books including John McPhee’s COMING INTO THE COUNTRY, Richard Proenneke and Sam Keith’s ONE MAN’S WILDERNESS, and some of the accounts of wilderness survival and life in remote Alaska. This is the kind of research I enjoy most because I’m not necessarily looking for a specific fact. I’m trying to absorb a place. How cold actually feels. How far “remote” can mean. What happens when machinery stops working. How people who live there think about weather and distance differently from someone sitting comfortably in Wiltshire. Also: Jack London really knew how to make you feel cold...

Atticus Priest may be leaving Wiltshire (for a small part of the next book!) I’ve got what I think is a very strong idea for the next adventure, and if it survives contact with the actual writing, it’s going to take him a very long way outside his comfort zone. All the way to Iraq. I’ve been doing a lot of research recently into Saddam Hussein’s gold — which is exactly the sort of sentence that makes my browser history difficult to explain. I’m not going to give away the plot yet because it’s still taking shape, but there’s something particularly enjoyable about the research stage of a book. Nothing has been fixed. Every strange historical detail has the potential to become important. You follow one footnote into another, find something you weren’t looking for, and suddenly the story moves in a completely different direction. Atticus has always been strongly associated with Salisbury and Wiltshire, and I like that. Place is very important to the series. But that’s also why the idea of removing him from familiar surroundings appeals to me. What happens to Atticus when the landscape, culture and history around him are completely unfamiliar? I think I know... now we’ll just have to see if I’m right.

We now have a date and venue for the local launch of Atticus Priest's sixth adventure, THE FOREST. It will be held on Wednesday 28 October at 7:30 at the Blackledge Threatre, Chafyn Godolphin School, Milford Hill, Salisbury. Two types of tickets are available: general admission or general admission plus a copy of the book. Tickets sold out last time, so if you are in the area and would like to come and hear me talk about the book - and perhaps grab a chat afterwards - please get your ticket soon. You can get your tickets here: waterstones.com/events/mark-…

Bravo.

TOP TEN TUESDAY This week: ten great fictional detectives. Writing Atticus has given me a new appreciation for just how difficult a really good fictional detective is to create. They need to be clever enough to surprise us without becoming implausibly omniscient, distinctive enough to remember and, ideally, flawed enough that we actually care what happens to them. So, in no particular order: Sherlock Holmes — impossible to leave out. Miss Marple — underestimated by almost everyone, usually to their cost. Harry Bosch — stubborn, difficult and absolutely relentless. Jane Tennison — one of the great television detectives. Philip Marlowe — the template for generations of private investigators. Vera Stanhope — wonderfully human and deceptively sharp. Cormoran Strike — a terrific modern take on the traditional private detective. Easy Rawlins — Walter Mosley gave us a detective and a remarkable portrait of post-war Los Angeles at the same time. Kinsey Millhone — Sue Grafton’s fiercely independent PI, and a character who helped redefine the genre. Columbo — because sometimes knowing who did it from the beginning makes the detective work even more enjoyable. I could easily have made this twenty, and I suspect I’ve omitted someone’s absolute favourite. Who would you add?

One of the questions I’ve been asked most often about Charlie Cooper is: when are the books going to be available in print? The answer, finally, is: now. The difficulty has always been the format. The Cooper stories are deliberately short, fast novellas. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing them so much, but it also makes producing individual paperbacks difficult. Once you’ve accounted for printing and distribution, a very short paperback can end up costing far more than it sensibly should. So I’ve been looking for a better way to do it. The solution is to collect the stories into omnibus editions, which means you get a proper substantial paperback rather than paying too much for a very slim book. And four of them now are available. I’m particularly pleased about this because I know there are plenty of readers who simply prefer physical books. Some of you have been asking me about Cooper paperbacks almost from the moment SANDSTORM appeared. It took a little longer than I would have liked, but we got there in the end.

This week’s glamorous author activity: cutting a path through the woods. We have some woodland near the house, and I’ve been gradually clearing a route through it. Nothing complicated — cutting back vegetation, moving things out of the way and making it possible to get from one end to the other without fighting through undergrowth. What I hadn’t really appreciated until I started was how quiet it is once you’re properly inside. There’s a spot I’ve uncovered that feels completely removed from everything else. You can’t see much beyond the trees, the normal background noise disappears and, unless one of the dogs decides to charge through, there’s very little to interrupt you. I’ve started walking through there when I need to think. I’ve written before about how useful mundane physical jobs can be when I’m stuck on something. This seems to work in much the same way. I’m not going into the woods specifically to solve a plot problem, but it’s surprising how often I’ll come out the other side with an answer. I spend a lot of my working life looking at screens, so there’s probably something healthy about occasionally swapping the keyboard for a pair of gloves and doing something that produces an immediately obvious result.

I used to find bad reviews crushing. When you’re starting out, every review feels important. Someone gives the book five stars and you’re convinced you’ve finally cracked it. Then someone gives it one star and suddenly you’re wondering whether you’ve made a terrible career choice. The sensible advice is not to read reviews. I’ve never been particularly good at taking sensible advice. What has changed over the years is how I read them. A review that simply says the book is rubbish isn’t especially useful. Fair enough — not every book is for every reader. But sometimes a negative review identifies something specific: a character didn’t behave convincingly, a section dragged, a piece of research was wrong. Those are worth paying attention to, particularly if several readers independently make the same point. It doesn’t mean they’re always right. One reader will say a book is too fast; the next will say it’s too slow. Someone loves a character another reader can’t stand. Trying to satisfy everyone would produce a very peculiar novel. But I’ve learned not to be frightened of criticism. The useful stuff gets considered. The rest gets left where it belongs. I’d be lying if I said a particularly savage one can’t still sting occasionally, though. I mean, just look at this one...

A few things I’ve been enjoying recently: 📺 WATCHING — DARK MATTER: 4/5 I’m always interested in stories that take a big science-fiction idea and make it personal, and DARK MATTER does that extremely well. The premise gets increasingly complicated, but the emotional stakes remain very simple and human. Smart, twisty and very easy to keep watching. 📺 WATCHING — LANTERNS: 4/5 Another 4/5. What I’ve enjoyed most is the way it treats its comic-book material seriously without becoming po-faced about it. It feels much more like a proper mystery/thriller that happens to exist in a superhero universe than the other way around, which is probably why it works for me. 🎧 LISTENING — BECK I’ve also been listening to the new Beck album. He’s one of those artists who has been around for so long that it’s easy to forget how restless his music has always been. I’m still working out exactly where this record sits for me, but I’ve been going back to it repeatedly, which is usually a good sign. What have you enjoyed this week?

Inside Publishing: Germany One of the more unexpected pleasures of the last few years has been watching my books find readers in other countries. Germany has become particularly important. The Milton series is doing really well there at the moment, including in audio, and I’ve spent some time recently working with my German audiobook producer to get more of the books recorded and released. It’s one of those parts of publishing that I still find slightly surreal. I write a book here in Wiltshire. It gets edited in English, then translated by someone who has to reproduce not just the meaning of the words but the voice and rhythm of the original. Then it’s edited and proofed. Then another team takes that German text, casts a narrator, records it, edits it and turns it into an audiobook. Eventually someone I’ve never met is listening to John Milton while driving to work in Munich or walking the dog in Hamburg. There are an extraordinary number of people between the blank page and that final listener. Translations were something I barely thought about when I started writing. Now I have readers discovering the books in languages I can’t speak, and sometimes those editions take on a life entirely of their own. The next job is getting more Milton into German ears. We’re working on it.