Glasgow-born former investigator Douglas Skelton talks to us about his latest thriller novel 'A Thief's Blood' and shares how he created the character of Jonas Flynt from his Company of Rogues series.
Douglas Skelton was born in Glasgow. Before turning to writing full-time, he had been a bank clerk, tax officer, shelf stacker, meat porter, taxi driver, reporter, investigator and editor. While his non-fiction charts the true life exploits of murderers, criminals and cause celebres, his fiction settings are invariably set in his home town of Glasgow or the windswept Scottish highlands. He is the author of the Davie McCall series and more recently he has written the investigative journalist Rebecca Connolly series. His latest series of books is the Company of Rogues series featuring Jonas Flynt. His latest book in the series is A Thief's Blood. You can find A Thief's Blood and more of Douglas's books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
I don't have a memory of there being too many books in my home in the early years. There were a few in a glass fronted cabinet and I remember taking them all out on occasion and laying them on the floor, then rearranging them. I don't know why. I do remember one of them was a copy of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. It wouldn't have been an original copy, though. Like others I read comics, both the weeklies from the UK and superheroes from the US. For the record, my favourite was Batman. I did go to libraries.
I have an early memory of visiting the central library in Manchester, where we lived at the time, and reading Thomas the Tank Engine. Later, on returning to Scotland, I would be sent to the library not just for myself but also to select books for my mother. She loved crime fiction. I was reading a lot of westerns, Billy Bunter and then discovered horror. And, obviously, crime and thrillers. I suppose school played a major role in my reading habits, for among the books we read for English were Huckleberry Finn, White Fang, Kidnapped and Shane, all favourites of mine now. I sought out Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island myself, as well as tales of Robin Hood, King Arthur and even more westerns.
I had always wanted to write fiction, so even my non-fiction had a sheen of storytelling over the top. I wrote 11 non-fiction titles, ranging from more modern crime to historical, but by the time I'd completed the final one, a history of Glasgow crime from 1800 onwards, I felt I'd done everything I wanted to do. That was when I turned to fiction but it took five years before my first novel was accepted and published. That was Blood City, a gangland tale featuring Davie McCall. The four-book series covered the period from 1980 to 2000. It was published in 2013, so I didn't realise I was writing historical fiction!
My writing routine is extremely haphazard, though I do try to do 2k words a day. I don't always manage it, however. I have a desk in what would otherwise be the dining room of the house I'm in at the moment, but it looks out onto the patio of the house next door, so I keep the blinds closed. I'll be moving soon and have an office-cum-library, with a window looking out onto the street, so I'll be able to divert myself with people watching.
I remain proud of what Lisa and I did. It was both an exciting and terrifying time, because I couldn't believe that we had stumbled into something so big. The book certainly helped change the public's view of the case, which was a very tragic, very well-known one in Scotland at the time, but it still took almost ten years before being heard properly by the appeal court and the convictions quashed. I stayed with the campaign during that time, interviewing more people, making further inquiries on behalf of the accused's solicitor, who worked for them unpaid for a long time. What I learned while writing the book and subsequently eventually fed into the Davie McCall novels. I'm often asked to appear on TV programmes to talk about it, but following one I fronted for a digital channel and another in which I appeared for the BBC, I've decided that's the end of it. My view is that there is nothing fresh to say and until there is we shouldn't keep dredging it up, for the sake of the families involved.
A Thief's Blood is the fourth in my Jonas Flynt series of historical thrillers, which began with An Honourable Thief. In the last one, Jonas was last seen in the north of England but now he's back in London and asked by both his criminal contact, The Admiral, and his superior in the secret Company of Rogues organisation, Colonel Nathaniel Charters, to investigate the murder of a family in the east end. He finds himself on the trail of a serial killer and trying to avert a full-scale gang war between The Admiral and the Thieftaker-General, Jonathan Wild. I've tried to make the feel of each book different. The first was an espionage adventure, the second a murder mystery, the third my western and the fourth is the serial killer.
I had written a prologue set in the mid 18th century for A Rattle of Bones, the third in my contemporary Rebecca Connolly series. The author Denzil Meyrick, who is a friend, read it and suggested I should write an historical piece. I baulked at that, to be honest, but eventually admitted I'd had an idea in my mind for about 20 years. While researching my non-fiction book Dark Heart, about the Edinburgh Tolbooth - the old town jail - I saw a line about a document that Queen Anne may, or may not, have penned more or less leaving the throne to her half-brother, James Stewart, in exile in France. If such a document existed, it would enable the Jacobite cause and perhaps also cause some constitutional issues given that the throne was promised to George of Hanover by the Act of Succession.
My idea, built over those years, was that there would be various factions who wished to find that document and use it for their own purposes, and I came up with the Company of Rogues, a top-secret security organisation run by Colonel Nathaniel Charters and consisting of various thieves, gamblers and killers like Jonas Flynt. He is a former soldier and is blackmailed into working for the Crown by being threatened with conviction of a capital crime he didn't actually commit. The first book brought him back to his native Edinburgh in search of the document and revealed to the reader much about his past.
I have always been drawn to US crime fiction and the most recent one by Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies, is one I would heartily recommend. It's tough and gritty, but so well written and the pace and dialogue are wonderful. Away from crime, I'm also a big movie fan and recently read a fascinating examination by Robert Sellers of the lives of Peter O'Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and Richard Harris called Hellraisers. The author threads each life story through and around the others and for me was a compelling account of these firebrand performers.
I really have no idea why Scotland is perceived as being a centre for crime writing. There are good crime writers everywhere, but perhaps for such a small country we do churn out more than our fair share. Too many, frankly. I may have to get rid of a few (but keep that to yourself). Perhaps it's rooted in the dark Celtic psyche, and we certainly do have a strong criminal element, but despite propaganda to the contrary, no more than anywhere else really.
I once spent the night with actor Brian Cox. At one time I wanted to be an actor and managed, with a friend, to win a small role in the BBC TV series 'Sutherland's Law.' This was back in the 1970s and we played drunken car thieves. Brian Cox was the guest star and as we were filming exterior night shoots, we spent a number of hours in the dark of the countryside around Oban waiting for the call to perform. It was very cold, and Mr Cox became the company morale officer, keeping our spirits up in the mini bus with a series of stories. He was great. He even proposed me for the actor's union Equity. Obviously, as I'm not under consideration to be the next James Bond, my application was refused.
