Christopher Fowler tells us about his literary influences, Bryant & May and his latest book, The Book of Forgotten Authors.
Christopher Fowler is the award winning author of many novels and short story collections. Suffolk readers will probably know him best as the author of the popular Bryant & May mystery novels, which record the adventures of two golden age detectives investigating impossible London crimes. He is also a five-time British Fantasy Award winner. Fowler's standalone novels include The Sand Men, Nychtophobia and Hell Train.
His books have been optioned by everyone from Guillermo Del Toro (Spanky) to Jude Law (Psychoville). His latest book The Book of Forgotten Authors is a foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves, and it already looks to be popular among our readers.
I often think I started backwards, exploring experimental works from J. G. Ballard and B. S. Johnson when I should have been reading the classics, but in many ways I’m glad I left the classics until I was old enough to appreciate them. I thought I had to love all canonical literature because of its status, but quickly realised I had no connection to much of it. I preferred War and Peace to Pride and Prejudice, loved Mervyn Peake and Dickens, but saw no demarcation line between comics and classics.
Not for a second. The book was turned down by my then publishers, but a Transworld editor told me it could be a series. Then I saw that I could write any kind of crime or mystery novel I wanted so long as I used the same characters. I’ve written without them many times, in novels like Psychoville and Disturbia, because I enjoy writing standalones too.
On the face of it they are not obvious heroic types… That was precisely their appeal. I wanted not anti-heroes but non-heroes, the kind of quirky, unworldly academics my mother knew. I love the idea that a complex investigation is being undertaken by a team utterly ill-equipped to handle it!
I was born in central London and although I periodically live in other countries I always return. You can research from books but nothing beats walking around the city and talking to its inhabitants. I’m pretty good at using London well, i.e. going out to lots of events without spending a fortune. London is prohibitively expensive, but there are ways of getting around the problem. The young are very good at spotting great things to do. Tonight I’ll probably go to the Cinema Museum and meet friends –it’s on my long list of hidden London gems.
I only had to look up at my shelves to wonder why so many incredible writers had vanished from sight. As a child I haunted libraries like some kind of reading-addicted ghost, and kept a notebook of names to investigate, so writing the book came organically.
Yes – you are appreciated. Reading can save your life, and certainly got me through some bad times. Writing is heroic, lonely and often unrewarding work, but writers have a secret: We own the well. Librarians, booksellers and readers are the pipelines that deliver succour.
At any given moment I’m either writing a book or testing out an idea. I’ve just completed a fantasy epic called The Foot on the Crown, there are three more Bryant & May novels in the pipeline starting with Hall of Mirrors, and I’m about to start on the second novel from my pseudonym, LK Fox.
I’m a really good cook!
