Following an author's Twitter feed is an excellent way of getting an insight into the daily - and in some cases, hourly - lives of writers.
Followers can see who is struggling with their writing, who is flying, who is being kept up all night by a new baby and the excitement, nerves and joy they exhibit as a new manuscript is turned in or a new book prepared for publication.
Peter James is among the most active crime writers on Twitter and his dialogue reveals, first, a very engaging, gregarious and approachable writer, but second a diligent and enthusiastic researcher and a man who takes a very close and active interest in the subject matter of his work.
One recent tweet revealed that James was on his way to New York, in the company of his police adviser, to research the mafia for a future novel. Another said: "My cleaner left note last year "Dear Peter, your study is full of books on ladies shoes & male pregnancy. Is there something I should know?"
The "something", of course, relates to Roy Grace, not Peter James, the Brighton Detective Superintendent, who has become one of UK crime fiction's leading men in recent years as the consistently excellent "Dead" series has become a summer staple for hundreds of thousands of loyal readers.
The male pregnancy I won't comment on, but ladies shoes become the key piece of evidence and most promising lead in Grace's investigation into a series of rapes that take place around Brighton around the New Year. I don't know my Jimmy Choo's from a pair of Dunlop Green Flash trainers, but Peter James clearly does as the detail in which each pair is described might lead the reader to believe he was an obsessive.
And he is - but in the sense that accuracy and credibility are critical to the Grace series, and the time spent on shoes is indicative of the precision and care with which James treats all his subject matter. That is particularly true of the police procedural elements of his work, which in my experience are the most authentic and believable of all current work. Grace works with urgency, passion and a pronounced sense of justice but without the histrionics, machismo and antagonism that mars the way a lot of fictional coppers go about their business.
Another think I like about Grace (and by extension Peter James) is his sense of perspective - he is a man who sees the broad picture of the work he is doing, and does not view the world in black and white. Instead he tempers his idealism with pragmatism, and is all the more engaging for it.
One of the areas in which this is evident is in his treatment of Norman Potting, a detective on his team. Potting, a presence throughout the series, is a sort of unreconstructed Gene Hunt - if you can imagine such a thing. He's an old school policeman, with little time for the dogma of political correctness and is always ready with an inappropriate remark guaranteed to infuriate female colleagues. In some hands, this would be a recipe for a disaster of cardboard cutout caricature, but James is careful to illustrate the insecurities and environment that has made Potting what he is. Grace treats him with a mixture of encouragement and headmasterly discipline, embracing his subordinate's strong policing skills and trying to temper his worst excesses.
In the case of a rape investigation, Potting is more subdued than normal and Grace perhaps even more driven than normal, frequently expressing his hatred for the crime and its perpetrators. Rape is dangerous territory for male writers, but unsurprisingly James treats it with great sensitivity but also fearlessness. The sense of horror he creates in his victims prompts urgency and almost desperation in the police officers attempting to apprehend a rapist they begin to understand is following a fixed pattern with pre-ordained dates which ratchets up the tension still further.
James creates a classic mystery writer's smokescreen, introducing a number of potential suspects and maintains the whodunnit element right to a climactic finale. He also gives the case a personal dimension for Grace as the crimes mirror - and perhaps even recreate - a case that occurred at the time his marriage to his now-disappeared wife Sandy.
Dead Like You is the complete police procedural novel. It is rich and satisfying and doubtless will keep James' legion of fans very happy on the beaches this summer. Bravo!
REVIEWS of previous books in the series: Dead Tomorrow; Dead Man's Footsteps; Not Dead Enough
