Lynette P
After 25 years of captivating readers with his Charlie Resnick novels, John Harvey’s new book will be his last. He tells LYNETTE PINCHESS why he is ‘retiring’ Nottingham’s favourite Polish detective
IT did cross John Harvey’s mind that he should end his long-running series of Charlie Resnick novels by killing him off.
Over 25 years the Polish detective inspector has solved the cases of sadistic murderers, smashed a drugs ring and tackled violent robberies and assaults so it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for the jazz-loving sleuth to meet a dramatic end.
But Harvey, 75, thought better of it and decided to ‘retire’ the character.
In the twelfth and final Resnick novel Darkness, Darkness readers leave him sitting on a bench in Nottingham’s Old Market Square, nursing a cup of takeout coffee.
Harvey says: “I did think in a way I suppose I’m going to kill him off just so that nobody can say ‘oh you’re going to bring him back one day’ but then I thought that was wrong.
“I didn’t think that was the kind of ending that most of the readers, who are familiar with the Resnick novels, would particularly like and I didn’t want to do that with him.
“I thought no, let the poor old guy just have his cup of coffee and go and buy his Thelonious Monk album and let him drift off into retirement.”
With Resnick having been a major part of Harvey’s life for so long, does he think the two of them would get along?
“I think we’d have a lot to talk about. We could compare our jazz record collections and talk about coffee,” says Harvey, who like Resnick, is a cat lover. At the precise moment the phone rang for this interview his moggy brought a mouse into the house from the garden.
It was back in 1989 that Resnick made his first appearance in Lonely Hearts, which was named by The Times as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.
One million books later, including the Frank Elder crime series, short stories, poetry, standalone thrillers and the Resnick novels, Harvey is going out on a high with Darkness, Darkness.
When a body is discovered, the murder mystery takes Resnick back 30 years to the time of the Miners’ Strike when the disappearance of young woman baffled police.
“I think it’s about quitting while you’re ahead,” says Harvey, about calling it a day.
“I knew at some point I would want to stop writing and it seemed only right, if and when I did that, that I did it with a Resnick novel as he’s the best-known character I’ve created. “When the idea came to me of using the Miners’ Strike as a setting and a background for the story that seemed to me to potentially give the book an extra element, an extra kind of strength that made me think if I can make a decent job of this, this is a good book to finish with.
“It’s almost certainly the last crime novel I’m going to write. I’ve written 20 or so crime novels in the last 25 years and I think that’s enough for most people and there are one or two other things I’d like to do. I told myself I was going to retire from writing when I was 70 and I didn’t and now I’m 75 and I thought God if I don’t stop soon it’s going to be too late to stop. This seems a good point,” says Harvey.
The “other things” are studies, travelling and letting life take its course. He plans to enrol on a MA history of art course at Birkbeck College in London and go on a six-month trip to New Zealand.
Harvey has been toing and froing most of his adult life between Nottingham and his native north London, where he now resides.
He first moved to Nottingham in the mid 60s and lived in a flat in Castle Boulevard while teaching English and drama at a secondary school in Heanor.
It was during his second spell in the city that he began to write Lonely Hearts, which was adapted for TV and filmed locally.
He’s had homes in Lenton, The Park and Lady Bay and his son Tom currently lives on the edge of St Ann’s.
Harvey, who won the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2007, says: “I didn’t want to write and set something in London or somewhere else where so much crime fiction was set at the time. There have been one or two people writing about crime in Nottingham since but at the time I don’t think anybody had. That was a way of striking out and doing something a bit different.
“It’s an interesting place to write about fiction. My strongest and most loyal audience is in the East Midlands.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike and Harvey chose it as a backdrop for two reasons: as a key social and political event and the opportunity it gave him to take Resnick back to his early police career.
“I think the strike was and still is in many ways a really important part of people’s lives in Nottinghamshire and social history of Nottinghamshire. Talking to people about the book in Mansfield last week, it’s very very alive in a lot of people’s memories. And yet some people, younger people, say was there a Miners’ Strike? So I think it’s really important.”
Clashes between miners and police aren’t the only violent incidents in the book. Resnick’s high-flying colleague Catherine suffers domestic violence at the hands of an ex-lover.
Harvey is shocked by the statistics: “Something like two women per week are killed by some kind of domestic violence.”
He has kept on top of any shift in police policy or procedures with the help of former Notts CID officer Peter Coles.
“He was a high ranking CID detective for a number of years, who is now retired. I’m still in touch with him. In fact I spent a couple of days talking to him about his role in the strike before I began writing this book.
“He regularly looks at the proofs. I e-mail questions back and forth about procedure and so on.
“But, unlike when I started so much basic organisation material about the police is now available on the internet.”
He also picked the brains of Detective Supt Jon Morgan, who is retiring from the Metropolitan Police later this year, who was a young policeman during the Miners’ Strike.
Harvey usually pops up to Nottingham once a month but his visits are more frequent at the moment.
He will be at Waterstones, in Bridlesmith Gate, for an Evening with John Harvey on Thursday, the day Darkness, Darkness is published.
Soon afterwards, on June 4, he will be launching his new poetry collection, Out of Silence, at the Five Leaves book shop in the city.
And football has been driving him to the city as he got behind his beloved Notts County’s Great Escape.
“I’ve been coming up every other week to Meadow Lane helping Notts County escape relegation.
“I’m a season ticket holder and an honorary member of the supporters club so I go and sit with Billy Ivory (the screenwriter) up the top of the Pavis stand and cheer them on.”
Former County striker Tommy Johnson provided the inspiration for a short story, Not Tommy Johnson, which is Harvey’s contribution to OxCrimes, a collection out this week, featuring 27 crime writers who are donating their royalties to Oxfam.
With his novel writing days behind him, Harvey hope to continue writing short stories, poems and drama for radio – in between his studies.
He says: “I guess the bulk of my writing over the next couple of years will be writing essays. A different kettle of fish – much more difficult.”
* An Evening with John Harvey, at Waterstones, starts at 7pm. Tickets are £5, telephone 0115 947 0069.
After 25 years of captivating readers with his Charlie Resnick novels, John Harvey’s new book will be his last. He tells LYNETTE PINCHESS why he is ‘retiring’ Nottingham’s favourite Polish detective
IT did cross John Harvey’s mind that he should end his long-running series of Charlie Resnick novels by killing him off.
Over 25 years the Polish detective inspector has solved the cases of sadistic murderers, smashed a drugs ring and tackled violent robberies and assaults so it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for the jazz-loving sleuth to meet a dramatic end.
But Harvey, 75, thought better of it and decided to ‘retire’ the character.
In the twelfth and final Resnick novel Darkness, Darkness readers leave him sitting on a bench in Nottingham’s Old Market Square, nursing a cup of takeout coffee.
Harvey says: “I did think in a way I suppose I’m going to kill him off just so that nobody can say ‘oh you’re going to bring him back one day’ but then I thought that was wrong.
“I didn’t think that was the kind of ending that most of the readers, who are familiar with the Resnick novels, would particularly like and I didn’t want to do that with him.
“I thought no, let the poor old guy just have his cup of coffee and go and buy his Thelonious Monk album and let him drift off into retirement.”
With Resnick having been a major part of Harvey’s life for so long, does he think the two of them would get along?
“I think we’d have a lot to talk about. We could compare our jazz record collections and talk about coffee,” says Harvey, who like Resnick, is a cat lover. At the precise moment the phone rang for this interview his moggy brought a mouse into the house from the garden.
It was back in 1989 that Resnick made his first appearance in Lonely Hearts, which was named by The Times as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.
One million books later, including the Frank Elder crime series, short stories, poetry, standalone thrillers and the Resnick novels, Harvey is going out on a high with Darkness, Darkness.
When a body is discovered, the murder mystery takes Resnick back 30 years to the time of the Miners’ Strike when the disappearance of young woman baffled police.
“I think it’s about quitting while you’re ahead,” says Harvey, about calling it a day.
“I knew at some point I would want to stop writing and it seemed only right, if and when I did that, that I did it with a Resnick novel as he’s the best-known character I’ve created. “When the idea came to me of using the Miners’ Strike as a setting and a background for the story that seemed to me to potentially give the book an extra element, an extra kind of strength that made me think if I can make a decent job of this, this is a good book to finish with.
“It’s almost certainly the last crime novel I’m going to write. I’ve written 20 or so crime novels in the last 25 years and I think that’s enough for most people and there are one or two other things I’d like to do. I told myself I was going to retire from writing when I was 70 and I didn’t and now I’m 75 and I thought God if I don’t stop soon it’s going to be too late to stop. This seems a good point,” says Harvey.
The “other things” are studies, travelling and letting life take its course. He plans to enrol on a MA history of art course at Birkbeck College in London and go on a six-month trip to New Zealand.
Harvey has been toing and froing most of his adult life between Nottingham and his native north London, where he now resides.
He first moved to Nottingham in the mid 60s and lived in a flat in Castle Boulevard while teaching English and drama at a secondary school in Heanor.
It was during his second spell in the city that he began to write Lonely Hearts, which was adapted for TV and filmed around the city.
Harvey, who won the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2007, says: “I didn’t want to write and set something in London or somewhere else where so much crime fiction was set at the time. There have been one or two people writing about crime in Nottingham since but at the time I don’t think anybody had. That was a way of striking out and doing something a bit different.
“It’s an interesting place to write about fiction. My strongest and most loyal audience is in the East Midlands.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike and Harvey chose it as a backdrop for two reasons: as a key social and political event and the opportunity it gave him to take Resnick back to his early police career.
“I think the strike was and still is in many ways a really important part of people’s lives in Nottinghamshire and social history of Nottinghamshire. Talking to people about the book in Mansfield last week, it’s very very alive in a lot of people’s memories. And yet some people, younger people, say was there a Miners’ Strike? So I think it’s really important.”
Clashes between miners and police aren’t the only violent incidents in the book. Resnick’s high-flying colleague Catherine suffers domestic violence at the hands of an ex-lover.
Harvey is shocked by the statistics: “Something like two women per week are killed by some kind of domestic violence.”
He has kept on top of any shift in police policy or procedures with the help of former Notts CID officer Peter Coles.
“He was a high ranking CID detective for a number of years, who is now retired. I’m still in touch with him. In fact I spent a couple of days talking to him about his role in the strike before I began writing this book.
“He regularly looks at the proofs. I e-mail questions back and forth about procedure and so on.
“But, unlike when I started so much basic organisation material about the police is now available on the internet.”
He also picked the brains of Detective Supt Jon Morgan, who is retiring from the Metropolitan Police later this year, who was a young policeman during the Miners’ Strike.
Harvey usually pops up to Nottingham once a month but his visits are more frequent at the moment.
He will be at Waterstones, in Bridlesmith Gate, for an Evening with John Harvey on Thursday, the day Darkness, Darkness is published.
Soon afterwards, on June 4, he will be launching his new poetry collection, Out of Silence, at the Five Leaves book shop in the city.
And football has been driving him to the city as he got behind his beloved Notts County’s Great Escape.
“I’ve been coming up every other week to Meadow Lane helping Notts County escape relegation.
“I’m a season ticket holder and an honorary member of the supporters club so I go and sit with Billy Ivory (the screenwriter) up the top of the Pavis stand and cheer them on.”
Former County striker Tommy Johnson provided the inspiration for a short story, Not Tommy Johnson, which is Harvey’s contribution to OxCrimes, a collection out this week, featuring 27 crime writers who are donating their royalties to Oxfam.
With his novel writing days behind him, Harvey hope to continue writing short stories, poems and drama for radio – in between his studies.
He says: “I guess the bulk of my writing over the next couple of years will be writing essays. A different kettle of fish – much more difficult.”
* An Evening with John Harvey, at Waterstones, starts at 7pm. Tickets are £5, telephone 0115 947 0069.
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