Upclose with David Hawson
David Hewson is a British journalist turned crime novelist and author of a thriller series following young detective Nic Costa. In the latest book of the series, “The Seventh Sacrament,” Hewson has Costa diving into underground Rome in a mess that involves disappearing sons and the lost cult of Mithras.
HK Magazine: What’s the perfect crime?
David Hewson: I did a BBC program once, on that very question. My scenario: you have someone killed in a mortuary, and the body is stuffed in a casket headed for the crematorium. And the guy is killed on the undertaker’s embalming table, where any physical evidence would be mixed up with biological traces of other dead bodies. That said, I don’t write about perfect crimes.
HK: Why not? What do you write about then?
DH: They’re boring, the ones people get away with. A lot of my books are stuck in a very real world, where crimes are not very well planned, and most of them are committed by people not regarded as criminals. They’re just people stuck in an awkward situation, and who take an odd way out. I focus more on my characters and the issues they face.
HK: And your favorite character?
DH: Everyone loves Costa. The number of women who like him... I deliberately didn’t want the stereotypical cynical sergeant – the middle-aged alcoholic divorced man in a raincoat. Costa is young, naive, and vegetarian. He’s a nice guy in a rotten job.
HK: What makes the tawdry thriller?
DH: A lot of crime thriller fiction comes from classic Raymond Chandler. There are certain models for it that I suspect are a little tired in the 21st century. Like Cold War-style thrillers, where the bad guys were the Russians or Chinese and not quite human. Russians bad, Americans good; we all know the world isn’t that simple. At one point, you could write a successful thriller just by setting it in exotic locations. Now the same places are holiday destinations.
HK: What are you reading right now?
DH: Something on the Etruscan language – the Etruscans were a very interesting race. They pre-dated the Romans, got swamped by them and wiped out. The Etruscan language isn't quite fully understood. I’m thinking about doing something on them.
HK: As a fiction author, does your journalism background come into play?
DH: Not at all. I have to consciously turn off the journalist part to write fiction. The first novel any journalist writes is a fictionalized assignment. And that’s pretty boring. In journalism, truth is everything; in fiction, truth is death. The great thing about fiction is I’ve committed beastly crimes in the Vatican and assassinated the president. Journalism teaches you to type and to edit. The good thing is you get used to the idea of editing, and you’re not precious about every word you write. I regard everything as imperfect and only look at it as, how much time do I have left to write this?