Below is an article that the ‘Gibraltar Chronicle’ ran in their print edition back in August. Shows how the crime genre is booming on the Rock…
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People come to the Rock for many things, but literary inspiration has not always been chief among them. Yet literature permeates Gibraltar, from the earliest mythology – Hercules was said to have created the Rock to celebrate his Tenth Labour – to the height of modernist fiction, with James Joyce casting his heroine in Ulysses, Molly Bloom, as a Gibraltarian (her sculpture can be seen today in the Alameda Gardens). If contemporary writing is more your thing, the Gibraltar Literary Festival is now an annual fixture in October, with bestselling author Kate Mosse already signed up to headline this year’s event.
One genre where Gibraltar is particularly in evidence is crime fiction. Sam Benady and Mary Chiappe have been publishing their historical novels about amateur detective Giovanni Bresciano since 2010, and their fifth, The Devil’s Tongue, came out last year. Arguably Britain’s greatest living crime writer (some might drop the ‘crime’ prefix entirely), John Le Carré, set part of his latest novel, A Delicate Truth, in Gib, and Stieg Larsson did the same in the last book of his bestselling Millennium Trilogy. Robert Daws, a well-known actor, has launched a crime series set on the Rock featuring a Scotland Yard officer, Tamara Sullivan, and a grizzled RGP Chief Inspector, Gus Broderick, which is proving hugely popular – I’m told the second book, Poisoned Rock, has just been completed.
So what is behind the crime boom? Why should a place where the murder rate is famously low have inspired this rush of thrillers?
One reason is scale. Crime fiction has always thrived in enclosed locations. Look at the work of Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile, and the longest-running play in modern history, The Mousetrap, all of which feature a colourful cast of characters trapped in a tight environment. One of the first books to make use of this tension-building device in Gibraltar is the Raffles continuation novel by Berry Perowne, which rejoices in its no-nonsense title, Raffles’ Crime in Gibraltar. The gentleman thief finds himself on the run in Gib in 1937, with the border sealed due to the Spanish Civil War, and a Main Street loudspeaker system broadcasting his description to anyone who will listen. How does he escape? Rest assured, the master of disguise finds a way.
Another aspect is Gibraltar’s variety of life. The crime hero – particularly in hardboiled fiction – tends to move between different strata of society over the course of an investigation. In Farewell, My Lovely, for example, Raymond Chandler’s hero, Philip Marlowe, flits effortlessly between the seedy LA nightclub world of Moose Malloy and the wealthy beau monde of Mrs Lewin Lockridge Grayle. Gibraltar’s unique blend of religions, nationalities and heritage is all crammed into a small space. A person can walk between Ocean Village and the Moorish Castle Estate in a matter of minutes. Where else do you find Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches, synagogues, Mosques, and a Hindu temple so close together? Rich and poor, party-animal and traditionalist – all walks of life are to be found there.
A third draw is history. How many crime novels feature taglines like ‘Some secrets cannot stay buried’ or ‘The past comes back to haunt you’. There are so many tales of bloody goings-on in Gibraltar – from Herculean feats, to stranded Neanderthals dying out on the Rock, to Moorish invaders, Anglo-Dutch invasions, Spanish sieges… the list, as anyone who lives in Gibraltar knows, goes on and on. And each has the potential for a fascinating plotline.
From my perspective, two things drew me to the Rock as a setting for my crime fiction. One was the sheer number of lawyers. As a law student, it occurred to me that the variety of work available to the Gibraltar lawyer is almost unparalleled. Not only do they usually operate both as solicitors and barristers, but their caseload can cover anything from minor offenses in the Magistrates’ Court to big money admiralty or tax trials in the Supreme Court. What better way to allow a character to access the contrasting sides of Gib than to make them a lawyer?
The second relates to the Gibraltarian people. Crime heroes need to be tough, resilient and adaptable. Given the background of many Gibraltarians, these attributes tend to come fitted as standard. After many years of visiting the Rock, and talking to the locals, the personality of Spike Sanguinetti, hero of my own crime series, started to come into being. Spike was born on the Rock, went to London on a Government Scholarship to study Law, then returned home to Chicardo’s Passage to look after his cantankerous father and practise as a lawyer. His work takes him to different parts of the Mediterranean – to Morocco in the first book, Shadow of the Rock, to Malta in the sequel, Sign of the Cross, and to Italy in his latest adventure, Hollow Mountain – but he always begins and ends in Gib. Look out for him on Main Street, and if you don’t spot him there, you can always try the Gibraltar Bookshop…
© Thomas Mogford, 2014
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