Risky Business

Late last year I had the distinct pleasure of having lunch with crime novelist Peter James, whose novel Looking Good Dead was recently in contention for a British Book Award. (It didn’t win.) So, I was interested to discover in this last Sunday’s London Times a quite candid piece regarding James’ complex financial affairs. The, er, money quotes:

How much did you earn last year?

I made a fairly high six-figure sum.

Have you ever been really hard up?

When I was about 24, I made a fortune with a film-production company in Canada. I owned it with three partners and we sold it for £8m, so I got a share of that. I then personally guaranteed a girlfriend’s company in Canada which made television commercials. That went under for a massive amount of money and it nearly dragged me down. Suddenly I was faced with the prospect of losing everything. While I was still in the film business, I wrote a novel and, to my surprise it was published, which helped me to recover. It was a very bad spy thriller called Dead Letter Drop. It’s out of print now--at my request.

When James was asked about his best investment, he revealed in his answer that sometimes, crime really does pay. Handsomely.

About five years ago, I spent two years without a publishing contract so I could research a detective character called Roy Grace. For me, that has been the most successful thing I’ve ever done. Novels based on this character, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, have done very well. I went round the world and spent a lot of time with police in places like Sussex, Spain and Germany. It was a bit of a risk, but it paid off.

If you’d like to read the whole Times piece, it can be found here.

James’ next Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novel, Not Dead Enough, will be published in the UK in June of this year, but not until 2008 in the States.