The Question I Wasn’t Asked

Last night I took part in the “Gaslit Voices” discussion at the Waterstone’s bookstore in Hampstead (North London), with a trio of my fellow historical crime novelists: Lee Jackson (A Most Dangerous Woman), Andrew Martin (Murder at Deviation Jungle), and Frank Tallis (Fatal Lies). Writer-critic Barry Forshaw served as moderator (and a great job he did too!).

Everything seemed to go rather well. People turned up. They sat on chairs. They listened to what we had to say without heckling us. I noticed some smiling faces, as if they were the faces of people enjoying themselves. There was some laughter. It seemed to come in the right places.

Getting down to history with Andrew Martin, Lee Jackson, R.N. “Roger” Morris, and Frank Tallis. (Photo by Clive Bremner)

I think I managed to hold it together without saying anything too stupid, or drying up completely. I was slightly panicked right at the beginning, with the very first question. Despite the fact that Barry had given us warning that he would be asking us questions, it somehow came as a shock that he was going through with it. As he turned to me for an answer to the first one, all I could think was: He’s asking me a question! I’m supposed to answer it! I’m supposed to answer it NOW!

One question that Barry had prepped us for, but in the event didn’t get a chance to ask, was whether we were happy being categorized as “crime” writers or would prefer to occupy a more “literary” space. Something like that, I think.

I was sorry he didn’t ask this, because I was going to answer it by telling the audience about a dream I had had on Wednesday night, the night before this event.

In that dream I had been called into the offices of my publisher, Faber and Faber, to have a meeting with my editor, Walter Donohue. Walter began the meeting by saying, “This isn’t about your book. I have something to tell you. You don’t know it but you have secretly been recruited into the police ...” He showed me my badge and all the paperwork that went with it. He revealed that he had been working for the police himself for a long time. Indeed, his true role was as a recruiting sergeant--his work as a crime-fiction editor at Faber was really a front, a means of discovering writers who had potential to become detectives in the service of the police. It was then that I noticed he was wearing a jacket with the word “Policeman” on it. I was given a similar jacket to wear. I was also given the folder for my first case and told to get on it. It is perhaps significant that my new occupation was presented to me as a fait accompli--I was not given a choice in the matter.

I was now a policeman.

My dreaming self then telephoned my cousin, who is in real life a police inspector in Manchester, to tell him that I had joined the force. He was incredulous. Wounded by his incredulity, I woke.

I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to relate this dream last night, because my fellow panelist, Frank Tallis, is a clinical psychologist with a special interest in Freud. I feel sure that Frank would have been able to tell me whether the dream means I am happy to be thought a crime writer, or not. As Freud saw all dreams as a form of wish-fulfillment, it could perhaps be argued that the dream shows I want to move even further away from the literary end of the spectrum, dispensing even with crime writing, to take up crime detection. Or it might mean something else entirely.