It’s, as ever, a busy time for Peter James, creator of Brighton-based detective Roy Grace.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Absolutely
00:07lovely as always to speak to Peter James. It's a really exciting time, isn't it? The
00:11new stage show Picture You Dead is really betting in. I've seen it, absolutely loved
00:16it. You are delighted with it too. It's a stage adaptation that is really, really working
00:21incredibly well, isn't it?
00:24Thank you, it is. I love the play myself. Picture You Dead is the seventh adaptation
00:33of my work. Six of them have been Roy Grace's, and we did The House on Cold Hill. But Picture
00:40You Dead, I think it's going down best of all, and they've all been huge hits.
00:45Why do you think that is best of all?
00:48I think when you read a book, you know, you're reading it on your own. And if you're watching
00:54telly, you're actually watching it on your own. When you're at the theatre, you've got
00:58this shared experience. And I think theatre works really well for certain genres in particular.
01:07I think anything with those thrills and shocks, where the audience go, you get this collective
01:14gasp. And when you've got humour, again, you get this collective laughter. And I think
01:22Picture You Dead is doing so well, because right now, I don't have to go out on a limb
01:31to say we are in slightly darker times than usual. I think there's a lot people are worried
01:37about ranging from Trump to the economy to everything else. And Picture You Dead is actually
01:43escapism.
01:44More so than the others, do you think?
01:47I think it is in a way. I think it's got more humour in it.
01:50And that's deliberate, obviously.
01:52Absolutely deliberate. You know, the nastiness has been toned down. There is nastiness in
01:59the book. But on the stage play, we've toned it down, not camped it up at all. I mean,
02:05it's still a thriller. But I think it's got the most feel-good ending of any other stage
02:12play.
02:13Which is depressing in a way, to say the least.
02:15I'm not going to give anything away, but I promise you, anybody watching that is going
02:18to go up back into the auditorium and go, yeah, that was fun.
02:22And it's so cleverly staged, isn't it? I love that sort of three-part division, or more
02:27than three, isn't it? Because there's the foreground as well. So it just flows, doesn't
02:31it? There's no interruptions.
02:34I think what's so important with live theatre is that, you know, in one of my books, I can
02:40have 100, 200 scenarios, and I can set the book in Barbados or anywhere I want. On the
02:48stage, you are limited to that stage, and really one big main set with maybe two or
02:54three small sets, and that's it. So you've got to make them, I think, spectacular in
02:59some way. You know, you've got to wow the audience in a completely different way. Partly
03:06through the staging, and obviously partly through the live cast, and partly through
03:11that audience interaction, which is so wonderful in a theatre.
03:15I hadn't twigged until you mentioned just now the extent to which so many of your books
03:20would be pretty impossible to put on the stage, wouldn't they? So many of the graces, given
03:24the big dramatic conclusions, the new morns and finales. So you're not choosing from
03:30every book, are you, as you start to think about what could be the next play?
03:35Yes, I'm always sort of thinking, okay, what would work really well on the stage? And I've
03:42always loved live theatre, and I think when I was a kid, my parents would go to the Theatre
03:47Royal in Brighton every Thursday, and they had the same seats about five rows back from
03:53the stage. And I used to, from about the age of nine, I'd sit there, watch the curtain
03:58rise, and I would dream, like, one day that curtain might rise and something I've written
04:04is going to be performed. It was a dream I never thought would come true. And that magic
04:09is still there. Every time I see that curtain rise, and my play is on the stage, I still
04:14have to pinch myself.
04:16Absolutely. And in the meantime, the day job, the paperback of Roy Grace No. 20, is on April
04:24the 10th.
04:25April the 10th. One of us is dead.
04:27And 20 books, that is one hell of an achievement, isn't it? We've said before, you could never
04:34have anticipated to reach 20 books with the 21st out in October.
04:39Do you know, I remember a phone call from my agent, and I can remember where I was,
04:43actually. I was on holiday in Rome, funny enough, and I was standing on the Spanish
04:49steps with my ex, and my phone rang. This was 2002. And it was my agent, Carol Blake,
04:56sadly, she's no longer with us. And she said, oh, I've just been speaking to your publishers,
05:02and they said, have you ever thought of writing a detective novel, with a detective as a central
05:06character? And that was 23 years ago.
05:11It's hard sometimes to remember that precise moment. Now, all these years later, No. 20
05:18has had a fabulous response, hasn't it?
05:22It has. One of us has said it's been probably the best reviewed of any. I think the story
05:28touches a nerve in so many people, because the novel begins with a... And it's based
05:38on a true story. But probably three years ago now, I found out I was at a funeral, and
05:46the son of an old friend came up to me afterwards, and he said, I've got a story you're going
05:52to want to write, Pete. And I said, I'm sure you have, John. He said, no, no, no. I've
05:56got a story. I'm going to tell it to you. I promise you, you're going to want to write
05:59it. I said, John, I get told this but once a week. No, no, no. Please, trust me.
06:07So I had a coffee with him a couple of days later, and he said, it's a guy I know. He's
06:13a bit dodgy. And he told me that six months ago, he'd gone to a funeral. He arrived late.
06:20It was a country church, rammed. It was pelting with rain. Every seat was taken. So he had
06:25to stand at the back. And halfway through the service, he notices a bloke sitting six
06:30pews in front of him, whose funeral he went to two years before and gave the eulogy at.
06:37I said, OK. And what happened? He said, well, he tried to get to him at the end, but everybody
06:43stood up. And by the time he got to the front entrance, the guy had vanished. And I looked
06:48at John, and I said, you're right. I have to write this. And that is the opening chapter
06:52of one of us.
06:53And that was specifically, you had to write the What Happened Next, didn't you?
06:58Yes. And I had such fun with that, because I've always been fascinated by people who
07:05disappear. It's not easy to fake your disappearance, and just how elaborate you have to be. So
07:17I had huge fun with that book. And also, with some of the items in the book, I had a scenario
07:27in which somebody gets poisoned by a mushroom. In fact, the unfortunate star of the show
07:36at the funeral, who's in the cask on the catafalque, his latest failed business venture was his
07:44Instagram chef. And he managed to poison himself with a death cat mushroom. And it's weird,
07:51you know, I was just filled, because so often this happens. I was just writing the story,
07:57and I said to Laura, my wife, about the mushroom. She said, do you really think that can happen?
08:04Bump, next day, open the paper, and there is a woman in Australia who's poisoned three people,
08:10including her husband, who have all died at this dinner party. And then I read about
08:17Nicholas Evans, the writer who wrote one of my brilliant books called The Horse Whisperer,
08:23some years ago. And I read this literally about two weeks later. He and his wife,
08:29and I think his brother and a cousin were in Scotland, and they went foraging. And they
08:35picked death cat mushrooms and cooked them by mistake. They're very easy to mistake for
08:40field mushrooms. And I think they all, two of them end up having to have kidney transplants.
08:48Yes, you can never really equal real life, can you?
08:53No. People say to me, do you think you inspire villains sometimes? And I say,
08:58no, I said, there's nothing I can write that somebody hasn't thought of.
09:01Fantastic. Well, really lovely to speak to you again. Congratulations on the success of
09:08the stage show, which is brilliant. And also the forthcoming 20th paperback. Thank you for your
09:14time. Thanks, and great show, Tim.