Our spotlight is now focused on a writer who's as witty and lovable as the lead character of his detective thrillers, PI Daniel Beckett. Come and get to know DOMINIC PIPER.
Tell us about Dominic Piper, the Writer. How did you choose this genre and where did the
inspiration for the PI Daniel Beckett Series come from?
I’d been working as a television writer and script editor for quite a long while, and a former colleague put me in touch with a publisher, who was looking for people who could write in any genre. We had a meeting, and out of the blue I came up with the idea of a private investigator with some sort of secret past that is never revealed to the reader. His skills and general amorality would allow the reader to speculate (as many reviewers have done), but nothing more.
It’s become a bit of a cliché in books, television and film to have some main character who is ex this and ex that. It gives everything away too soon. I wanted my main character to be more mysterious and to give the reader clues about him through his actions, then being contradicted and/or dumbfounded.
Writing these novels is an interesting process, as I’m actually finding out more about him with each one that’s written. It’s an intriguing MO. People have noted that these novels are markedly different from others in the genre, and I think that may be because I’ve never been a big reader of thrillers or murder mysteries, so I’m not unconsciously copying anything or being influenced by anything.
Introduce us to the man behind the pen or keyboard. Who are you and what do you love doing when you're not writing?
I have quite a large range of interests! I’m quite an enthusiastic surfer (the type you need a surfboard for), though I’m certainly not competition standard. The UK has a lot of good spots, but the worst thing about it is the cold, even with a wetsuit on. It’s something I’ve never got used to. Even though I don’t surf regularly, you have to keep pretty fit to get out of trouble, should it arise. So far, I’ve only ever had to be rescued once and that was my fault; I got caught in a riptide and wasn’t aware of it (though, luckily, a lifeguard on the beach was smart enough to spot it). I felt like such an idiot.
I also listen to a lot of music, particularly when I’m working. I like discovering artists that I somehow missed the first time around. At the moment, I’m working through the catalogues of Hooverphonic, Angel Olsen and Sun O))), who are an American black metal band, whose music I’ve seen described as ‘the sort of thing Satan listens to when he’s lying in a bubble bath sipping champagne’.
What can readers expect when they meet PI Daniel Beckett? Are there parts of you in his character?
Beckett, whatever his mysterious background may be, is obviously an intelligent, resourceful individual with a lot of different skills. He seems to be a firearms expert and is obviously a skilled martial artist, seemingly expert in at least half a dozen different disciplines. He’s adept at counter-surveillance and seems to be able to speak a dazzling variety of languages. He’s also a skilled burglar and a thief. You have to think ‘why would he know all this stuff?’
But there’re a number of other skills which are little more unusual, such as his ability to identify different perfumes and art. But I don’t think that these skills come from any personal interest. I think they’ve been acquired to assist him in his previous and current life. He’s not an unpleasant character but is quite capable of psychological manipulation. The art thing comes into play in the latest book, Bitter Almonds & Jasmine, where he uses it to gain the confidence of one of the characters by identifying a relatively obscure artist whose work adorns her walls. This knowledge and interest is work for him, one suspects.
Having written professionally for quite a while, I’m never sure whether I’m putting much of myself into these books or not. Sometimes, if I’m describing the books that a character has on their shelves, or the prints they have on their walls, I’ll take a quick look at my own bookshelves and prints and write down the first things that I see. But that’s more like laziness than anything else.
My attitude to women and to a certain type of boorish, entitled, sexist, privileged male certainly comes through. One reviewer mentioned that whatever the vices/lifestyles/occupations that the female characters in the books have, Beckett never, ever judges them.
The books have even been described (by two separate female reviewers) as being feminist novels, and while that was not my intention when I was writing them, I can see what they mean.
The character of Beckett exists on a kind of knife edge, and is frequently misunderstood, being called a womaniser, among other things. This is incorrect. If I’m in Beckett’s personality, it’s unconscious on my part, though I can see how it can happen.
Another (male) writer told me that as most writers put a lot of themselves into their main characters, he didn’t just want to read my books, he wanted to be me.
Of all the books you've written, which one is your favorite and why?
It’s always the latest one. I tend not to read them again once they’re complete, so I don’t have them all in my head to make any comparisons. The only time I re-read them is to check on what I’ve already written about when I’m working on a new one. These are usually technical things for the sake of consistency, like the descriptions of Beckett’s flat.
I try not to repeat martial arts techniques that Beckett has already used, though sometimes that can be difficult; there are a great number of martial arts techniques, but not all of them lend themselves to good, written descriptions. In aikido, for example, it’s difficult to see what’s going on in some techniques in the first place, so it’s even more difficult to describe those techniques and make them understandable to the reader.
You've just released Acid Yellow.
Tell us a little about it and what's in store for readers.
Acid Yellow is what would probably be termed as a ‘cold case’ thriller, But I can’t be 100% certain, as I don’t read those sorts of books!
Beckett is hired by the CEO of a South Korean tech conglomerate with offices in London, to track down the murderer/s of her sister, Kiaraa Jeong, a famous classical pianist, who was kidnapped two years previously. The sister, Micha Jeong, paid a massive ransom, but the perps murdered her sister anyway. The police have made no headway, and three large private investigation companies have all hit a dead end.
As usual, Daniel Beckett enlists the help of various dodgy contacts, including computer hacker Doug Teng, manic tech criminal Krysia Hodak, and libidinous psychiatrist Aziza Elserafie, previously encountered in Death is the New Black. Soon, the net begins to close, and the list of suspects increases.
The mystery of who Beckett is and where he learned his lethal skillset is still not resolved, but an intriguing flashback chapter answers some of the questions about him, but, unfortunately, generates even more.
How do you prepare when writing a new novel?
I usually start preparation for a new book by doing a lot of reading on the subjects that I have in mind for the story. Sometimes (as has already happened) I abandon one of these subjects and try to think of something else. Something usually pops up! Usually, there are two or three subjects that I attempt to cram into a story, despite them having no obvious connection at first. It’s a challenge for me to make them have a connection and to make them meld together in a satisfying way.
In Femme Fatale, I wanted to include freemasonry, contemporary burlesque and the Triads. It took a while, but I got there in the end!
Do you prefer Traditional Publishing or Self-Publishing? Why?
I’m ambivalent. My first two novels, Kiss Me When I’m Dead and Death is the New Black were originally published through a traditional publisher. As often happens in writing (and it’s happened to me with literary agents, as well), there’s a moment when you suddenly think ‘Well, I could do better than that!’ Once that moment comes, there’s no going back, and you have to quit. I asked the publisher for the rights back to those two novels and republished them along with the third in the series, Femme Fatale.
The way I approached it was totally different. Just the covers, for example. The originals had photographs of a gun and bullets on the cover, which made them look like many conventional books in the genre. The covers that I wanted, and which I think work, were more like the striking photography of Marc Lagrange and Helmut Newton combined.
Obviously, I’d like someone to come along and take them off my hands, do all the promo etc etc etc, but it would have to be someone whose competence and motivation I trusted.
What advice can you give other writers?
With your permission, I’ll reprint my reply to that question that I gave in a recent interview with the author Anthony Lavisher. I still stand by it!
It always sounds a bit condescending if you give advice like this, but my gut reaction is to say,
‘Dump everything else, even if it causes you personal or financial harm. Make absolutely sure you have nothing to fall back on. Spit on normality. Reject your family. Mock your friends. Renounce God.’
Thanks for the interview, Dominic!
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