Award-winning crime author and playwright Trevor Wood talks to us about his latest thriller 'The Silent Killer' and the time Lee Child was a visiting writer during his Creative Writing MA.
Trevor Wood is an author and playwright who has also worked as a journalist and spin-doctor for the City Council. Before that he served in the Royal Navy for 16 years. He holds an MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) from UEA. Trevor's first novel, The Man on the Street, was published by Quercus in March 2020 and won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger and the Crimefest Specsavers Debut Crime Novel of the Year. It was also shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. It was followed by the sequel, One Way Street, in 2021 and the final book of the Jimmy Mullen trilogy, Dead End Street, in 2022. His fourth novel, You Can Run, a standalone thriller set in Northumberland was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.
Trevor's latest book, The Silent Killer, was published in July 2024 by Quercus. You can find The Silent Killer and Trevor's other books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
They were pretty much all musicians and footballers! I have always loved reading but back then writers were mostly invisible or inaccessible and I could never have imagined becoming one so I never really thought of them as heroes. I loved David Bowie, from the Ziggy Stardust era, the most. I’m a big fan of people who dare to be different.
I had co-written a few plays before I tried my hand at a crime novel. My first attempt won me an agent but no publishing deal. I then did the first Crime Writing MA at UEA which was absolutely crucial in my development. We considered every aspect of crime writing imaginable and I got to work alongside some fantastic fellow students, including Harriet Tyce and Kate Simants, as we all pushed each other to become the best writers we could be. The Man on the Street, which was the book I wrote while on the course, would never have happened without it.
And yes, Lee Child was our visiting writer on the first residential weekend of the course and we got to spend several hours quizzing him. He also gave me my first ever quote ‘An instant classic’ for The Man on the Street. He’s a very generous writer!
Not as long as you might imagine. He seemed to come into my head almost fully-formed. I wanted to introduce a main character who’s at one of his lowest points when you first meet him so that his development through the book is clear. In Jimmy‘s case, he’s homeless, an ex-serviceman suffering from PTSD and entirely estranged from his once-loving family. He’s hiding from life for fear of inflicting any more damage on his loved ones and his only friend is his dog. He has nowhere else to go but up. As an ex-serviceman myself, and someone who has volunteered in a homeless kitchen (and still does) I was able to draw on some of my own experiences to round him out. The homeless are regularly demonised and by making a homeless man, and two of his friends, my main protagonists I wanted to humanise them. I hope I succeeded.
The Silent Killer is about a Detective Chief Inspector, Jack Parker, who discovers he is in the first stages of Early Onset Dementia. With a serial killer stalking the Newcastle streets and one of his closest colleagues lying in the mortuary he had thought that things couldn’t get any worse but he should have known that trouble always comes in threes. As he does everything he can to hide his deteriorating condition from his family and colleagues, Jack realises that the serial killer is haunted by events from his childhood, while his own memories are built on increasingly shifting sands.
Ha! I’m so tempted to say he’s a prima donna but David is genuinely one of the nicest men around and a wonderful actor. I’ve known him for a long time, having worked with him on one of my plays, Alf Ramsey Knew My Grandfather, fifteen years ago so I was delighted when my publishers suggested him as the voice of Jimmy Mullen in my first three books and didn’t think twice about saying ‘yes.’ And now, after a hugely successful run playing the eponymous Daniel Blake in theatres all over the country, he’s back as the voice of Jack Parker in The Silent Killer! It’s wonderful to have an authentic Geordie voice narrating my books as, though I’ve lived in Newcastle for more than 30 years, I still don’t dare to try and speak the language.
Yes, for sure. I’ve created a soundtrack for all of my books and The Silent Killer is no exception (you can find it on Spotify).
I can’t listen to music while I’m writing but in the gaps in between I’m always listening to something and constantly inspired by songs. I was listening a lot to The National while in the process of writing TSK – they put out two albums in that year - and you’ll see that reflected in the soundtrack. I saw them headlining the Other Stage at Glastonbury this year and was delighted when they finished the set with About Today, which really resonates with one of the themes of the book.
I’m currently working on a sequel to The Silent Killer which follows Jack’s attempts to slow down the effects of the disease while he’s trying to solve the case of a woman and child who appear to have disappeared off the face of the earth. It’s provisionally called The Inside Man, but whether that title survives until the end of the process is anyone’s guess! My editor hasn’t even seen that suggestion yet so I guess that makes this an exclusive for you.
I’m going to read Andrew James Greig’s The Girl in the Loch, which has just been longlisted for the McIlvanney Scottish Crime Book of the Year. I’m doing an event with Andy in August so want to catch up with his new series. He’s got some hard acts to follow as I’ve recently read three wonderful books: White City by Dominic Nolan, Living is a Problem by Doug Johnstone and the remarkable Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville, all of which are yet to be published but absolutely worth waiting for.
When I wrote The Man on the Street I named the main character Jimmy after a couple of people, Jimmy Johnson, who wrote The Veteran’s Survival Guide and a well-known homeless man who was regularly seen on the Newcastle streets. I named his wife Bev as I like short names for my characters. It was only when my brother-in-law read the book and pointed it out that I realised I’d also, inadvertently named them after him and my sister-in-law.
I once had to wrestle a goat. We were staying on a farm near Carcassone, in France, and my wife had taken our then baby daughter for a walk while I read a book in the garden. I heard her shouting and went to see what was happening only to find her trapped in a bramble bush with our daughter in her arms and a billy goat trying to trip her up with its horns. The only way to stop it was to grab it by the horns and hold it in place while they escaped. I discovered that goats are remarkably strong and quite smelly. He may have thought the latter about me too.
