As far back as I can remember I’ve always been writing something. Stories, plays, novels, treatments. But it wasn’t until recently that my book caught the interest of an agent and then a publisher. It’s very exciting when it happens and it makes up for all the rejection letters that are the forerunner of any success in writing.

It seems like you’ve simply got to do your time on the fringes and keep writing for the sheer love of it. Getting noticed, in the end, is down to one person taking an interest in your work and that is in part due to determination, in part due to simply not giving up, but a big part of it all seems to be luck. And I’m very grateful for the chance I’ve been given. So thank you to my agent and publisher!

My interest in crime fiction comes from an early age. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, I was an avid fan of American retro - of the crime and gangster fiction and movies of the 1950’s and, of course, their re-emergence in 80’s TV crime series, such as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.

I’m still a big fan of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and writers who shaped the crime genre.

I wrote my first detective story aged sixteen – more of a pastiche than a serious attempt, and although it was a less than successful Mike Hammer-style copy and was never to see the light of day, it was the process of imagining the art of detection that was exciting.

AMERICAN DEVIL

My first version of American Devil was different in almost every conceivable way from the book that it became. The process of drafting and redrafting in order to please myself, my agent and my publisher meant that the book became tighter and more focused. It was an exhilarating process, seeing the book develop and, in my humble opinion, get better and better.

American Devil comes out of a love of the American crime writing tradition and the mythical landscapes and cityscapes of America. America and New York are places that really fire my creativity because they are places of the imagination. I love New York because it is such a mythical city and it’s a place I knew first as a fiction, through the many films and novels set in the city. I only later got to know it as a real place.

America presents the writer with an enormous and dramatic backdrop for fiction. It is also the home of the serial killer. Although found in every country, the serial killer is a particularly American killer. There are more serial killers in America than any other country on earth. The question that should interest us is why?

Perhaps it is because America is not only the land of opportunity and dreams, but the place of disappointment – a place where the disenchanted are reminded everyday of their failure because they sit right next door to extraordinary wealth. America is a melting pot - of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, of easy access to weapons, of freedom and dreams, of endless desire, all within a vast shifting and changing population. 

The devil as an idea had always been there in all societies – the idea of something evil living in your own community, possibly unbeknown even to his or her own family. In America, there is a kind of devil that haunts the cities and remote towns. And he’s not a chimera, he’s a real thing. A very real thing.

He tends to look like some regular, everyday guy, most often quite a pathetic figure – but this devil preys on weak or defenceless people and tortures and kills them for no ulterior motive. Only for some internal meaning or purpose – excitement, pleasure, anger. It seems to me to be the very definition of evil: a random, purposeless and determined destruction.

I was inspired to write the book a little by chance. A copy of James Patterson’s Along Came a Spider was left in a hotel room and I picked it up. Although I’d read much of the old-style crime fiction, I hadn’t read the modern incarnation. The pace and tension of the story was astonishing. The thrill gripped me immediately and I wanted to make something work like that. I wanted to try to make something exciting for the reader.

Once I had that idea in my head, the story came out of a chance event. One of the characters in the book was someone I saw crossing a street. Sometimes, you look at people and make up stories – you look at their shoes, their mood, their clothes, their expression – and try to work them out and give them a story.

I saw a man – a harmless looking but strangely determined overweight man struggling along wheeling a suitcase beside him. He wore a red turtleneck and his trousers were an inch too short. The story that came to mind for this guy was the story of a killer, trundling along with a body in a suitcase. The story grew from the sight of that man and the possibilities he suggested.

The main character in American Devil is the detective, Tom Harper. He’s a traditional guy looking for something bigger in life – love, nature, meaning. His day job is chaos, he looks at the fragments and destruction of lost lives and tries to hunt for the killers. He is also driven, so can’t always control his temper which gets him into trouble.

The idea for the story of American Devil was of a cop who was on the edge of his own world – with the fantasy of a happy life crashing about his ears, his own anger breaking in – and his desire to run away from it all. And instead of dealing with all of this, he has to put it to one side and help catch a ruthless killer.

I wanted to explore the idea that violence is a way to cope or run away for many people – cops and criminals. It’s a way to react to the world that disappoints us or which we disappoint.

I hope you enjoy reading American Devil and will come back soon to read about the next book in the series. 88 Killer will be out in August, so more about that soon.

Oliver Stark