Q&A with Stig Abell

  

 

Stig Abell is the author of the new novel A Twist in the River, the latest in his Jake Jackson mystery series. He is also a radio presenter, and he lives in London. 

 

Q: A Twist in the River is the fourth in your Jake Jackson series--how do you think your character has changed over the course of the series?

 

A: I think Jake has become a little more tortured over the books, a little more conflicted. He is someone who got a second chance at life, away from the grime of the city, a failed marriage, and all the intrusions of technology.

 

Part of him welcomes the peace of a rural life, set apart from everything; part of him still craves the thrill of a murder investigation, the pull of social contact, the vanity of being needed. He has also found a new family for himself, which brings all sorts of joy but also obligation.

 

I like to think of him still as the nude-swimming, fundamentally-decent, overly-hirsute, book-loving hero, but he probably carries a few more mental scars now.

 

Q: What inspired the plot of this new novel?

 

A: My day job is presenting a radio news programme, and we covered a story of a woman going missing near to a river. I didn’t take much of the real-life detail, but it made me think: despite Britain being a tiny island, it is amazing how mysterious disappearances like that can still happen; that for all the over-civilised clutter around us, there are still wild, uncertain places where the inexplicable is there to be explored.

 

I also loved the idea of the river as a character in itself, what T.S. Eliot called a “brown, sullen god” which could claim victims.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Let me absolutely honest with everyone: I am terrible at choosing titles. My working title was Dark Waters, and then I thought – following T.S. Eliot – of The Sullen God.

 

At this point, my editor (as literally always happens) stepped in and gently told me I couldn’t be trusted with naming the novel. They came up with A Twist in the River, which testifies both to the centrality of the location to the story, and the idea of twistiness and surprise you should always get in mystery books.

 

Q: Do you usually know how your novels will end before you start writing them, or do you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I plan out my novels, but only to a certain extent. With this one, I knew that I wanted there to be a killer depositing bodies in the river, I knew about the very unusual method used to incapacitate the victims, and I knew the final whodunnit. Beyond that, a little like the river itself, I allowed things to meander and shift and find their own course.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: This is the fourth Jake Jackson book. I have just finished the final edit of the fifth, which still has no agreed title (see above). It is a tale about a former colleague of Jake’s – a cop gone rogue – coming back into his life, at a time when he is investigating the suspicious death of a Victorian ancestor of someone in the local village. It is slightly different, and I hope people will love it.

 

I have also finished the first draft of the sixth in the series, which sees Jake investigating a cult that squats in an ancient, medieval monastery. 

 

But – in between these two – there is some talk of me writing a standalone novel away entirely from Little Sky and the Jake Jackson universe, so I am currently in full, excitable planning mode for that.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Reading and writing have genuinely saved my life, given me comparative repose and inordinate pleasure, so I would love to keep doing this as long as readers will have me!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb