Not Your Ordinary Serial-Killer Novel

You may recall my excitement last year, after reading Martyn Waites’ The Mercy Seat, the inaugural entry in a new series of books featuring investigative journalist Joe Donovan. That dark thriller, first published in Britain, was also well-received in the United States, marking Waites’ debut across “the pond.” Well, a year later we have the follow-up, Bone Machine, an even more disturbing look at violent crime, set in the northeast of England and sharing its title with a 1992 album from the author’s namesake, craggy-voiced American crooner Tom Waits.

I’ve come to know Waites’ work over the years (his first novel was Mary’s Prayer, 1997) and enjoy his cynical insights into what lies beneath the veneer we know as modern society. So I asked him to tell Rap Sheet readers a bit about what we can look forward to in Bone Machine, which was just released in the UK and is due out in States in April. His response:

Bone Machine is the second novel to feature my protagonist Joe Donovan. He’s an ex-journalist who went off the deep end when he lost his six-year-old son. He now runs an information brokerage in Newcastle, where the novels are all set. Bone Machine sees him and the team tracking down a serial killer.

Ah, yes, a serial killer. I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of serial-killer books. There was a time when, yeah, I would read and rave about them. When Thomas Harris was on form (obviously we’re going back a bit here) and even before that, when Joe Lansdale’s novel Act of Love just about single-handedly kicked off the genre. A fantastic book, by the way, never gets the recognition it deserves. But anyway, that was then. In the meantime, we’ve had serial killers everywhere. A veritable plethora. To paraphrase Andrew Vachss, serial-killer chic has infected the nation. Christ, even Coronation Street’s had its own resident serial killer. And now they’re done to death. Yesterday’s genre. As fashionable as spats and two-tone shoes. Serial-killer fatigue had set in. Or so I thought.

After The Mercy Seat … I was pitching the follow-up to my editor. I had two ideas. I explained the first one carefully, pointing out what it was about, themes and structure, what the resolution would be, etc. She nodded and asked what the second one was.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s kind of a serial killer novel --’

‘Do that one.’

I didn’t have to tell her the rest. I tried, but she didn’t want to know. Because I’d said the magic words. The words that get the novel into bookshops. On the front table. With a three-for-two sticker on them. [The words] that the sales team can sell, the marketing people can market, the publicity people can publicise:

Serial killer.

So, she assured me it would still be a valid idea once the book came out, and I set about it and wrote it. Now to me, Bone Machine is not a serial-killer novel. There’s one in there, sure, but it’s much more than that. I think it has to be, because I believe that reader are more sophisticated than that. They want something more from a story than just mindless brutality and a high body count. So [Bone Machine] is also a meditation on life, on life after death, on the structure and history of cities, on what we perceive as ghosts. It’s about illegal sex trafficking, the value of human life. And if all that sounds worthy and dull, it’s not meant to. Because it’s got car chases, shoot outs, sex and violence, a proper story … all the usual stuff that a crime novel needs to entertain the reader. And a serial killer. Now, one of my objections to serial-killer novels is that they’re all about the killer with little thought or compassion spared for the victims. That was the last thing I wanted to do with mine--let readers get their prurient kicks from my work. I was with the victims all the way. Whoever they are.

Now, when it came time for the book to be released, I honestly thought that no one would be interested in serial killers anymore. But then the Ipswich thing happened. And the newspapers, the TV, and the Internet were full of the serial killer stalking prostitute women in Ipswich and murdering them. And the general public couldn’t get enough of them. And amidst all the death and fear, something interesting happened. The tabloids started out by making the story as salacious and sensationalist as possible: streetwalkers getting murdered, dirty slags, asking for it, etc. … [But then] the general public decided they’d had enough and didn’t want to hear that. These were girls who were unfortunate enough to have to sell their bodies to make ends meet. Backgrounds of abuse, or alcohol, drugs, whatever … the public saw them as victims. They sympathised with them. They could have been their daughters, their sisters, their mothers. This was a new thing. And bowing to this pressure, the reporting changed accordingly.

Luckily, they’ve caught him now. But I don’t think the story will go away. Because--and this, I think, explains the public’s ongoing fascination with murder and serial killers in particular--I think it cuts to the heart of us as human beings. It directly addresses our concerns. It talks about the only two things that people, if they’re honest, ever really think are important. In fact, vital. Sex and death. One, the beginning of life (or the fun you can have in not creating it), and two, the end of life. And serial killers mainline directly into this. There’s the vicarious experience of death and identification (“There but for the grace of God …”) but within a controlled environment. It’s terrible about those girls, but they’ve caught him. Life goes on. For me. The case has brought those thoughts and feelings up and despatched them. It’s postponed the inevitable. And that’s what I hope I’ve tapped into with Bone Machine.

But that’s not for me to say. I just write them, I don’t judge them. That’s for readers to do. I know one likes it--I’ve just had an e-mail from [American singer-poet] Lydia Lunch saying she couldn’t put the book down. So I must have got something right.

Want to learn more about Waites? Click here to find an extract from Ray Banks’ Crimespree Magazine interview with the author.