The Cutting Room

"No, she’s not, although funnily enough our mothers are very good friends! I think she is a very interesting writer. To my mind she is not really a crime writer. She is a very serious literary writer working in crime. She is a bit like Dostoevsky in the way that she uses the existential thriller and the crime genre as a way of exploring individuals’ relationships with society. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . She has this very interesting protagonist Rilke, who is this predatory homosexual, and that’s the kind of character you don’t really see in standard British crime books because the people in there are normally white male divorced alcoholics who listen to jazz. So, for me, that is interesting. The plotline is basically the same as that terrible film 8mm with Nicolas Cage but it is one hundred times better written. Yes, it is about someone who finds a snuff movie and he wants to find out whether it was a mistake. When he is chasing the crime it goes into the underbelly of Glasgow and is very atmospheric. It makes Glasgow seem this very dark Gothic and Victorian city, which it obviously can be. You have beautiful descriptions of walking through parks and the mists and fogs. There is a lot of spectral imagery conjured up. Rilke is this kind of walking cadaver stalking through the town."