The House Of Silk

deaths. Given that they were supposed to be a slice of UK life in the 21st Century, there were a surprising number of murders in the two five-part shows that I developed for ITV:
Collision
and
Injustice
.
    And then there’s
Foyle’s War
, which has now run for ten years on ITV with Michael Kitchen superb as a reluctant detective investigating crimes during the Second World War. Perhaps this was the programme that brought me to the attention of the Doyle estate. More serious and low-key than
Midsomer Murders
, it was set in the past, very carefully researched and perhaps more in keeping with the book they had in mind. I wrote twenty-one two hour episodes and although we did our best to keep the body count down (my favourite episode,
The French Drop
, has no murder at all) the deaths still added up.
    And that’s not counting my children’s books. The Alex Rider world is necessarily a violent one. I have produced over thirty horror stories. And then there are the less well known but surprisingly blood-splattered detective stories featuring the Diamond brothers.
I Know What You Did Last Wednesday
, contains seven violent deaths in just seventy-eight pages.
    I’m often asked why readers have such a keen interest in murder. The short answer is that actually I think we don’t – but in fiction, whether it’s television or books – murder is a simple, very immediate way of focusing attention on a character. We may have no particular interest in a man who makes pizzas but the moment his wife is found with her head in the pizza oven, we’re forced to ask questions about him, to look behind their relationship, to search for the truth. In detective drama, the viewer and the detective have a very similar role. And what is it about the British that makes us so pre-eminent in this field? Well, I think the fictitious county of Midsomer provides part of the answer. As a race we’re very secretive. By and large we don’t display our emotions in the same way as, say, the Americans. We live behind net curtains. This is an atmosphere very conducive to murder and it reminds me that when I put together a document to explain the ethos of
Midsomer Murders
– this was before the series had even been commissioned – I put at the head of it a famous quotation from the Sherlock Holmes story,
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
: ‘the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’
    How do I set about creating a murder mystery? This is another question that often comes up at literary festivals. For me, all murder stories boil down to a very simple formula: A+B=C. A is one person. B is another person. C is the reason why A wants to murder B. The genius of Agatha Christie was that she managed to find so many variations on this basic formula. The narrator did it. The detective did it. The little boy did it. They all did it. And yet, the strange thing is that when you come to think them up, there are very, very few reasons why anybody actually wants to murder anybody. In fact I can only really think of three: money, fear and passion … which may be sexual passion, revenge or whatever.
    I see a murder story as a series of concentric circles, almost like a dart board. At the very centre is that equation. It is where I start because it is both the beginning and the end; the springboard and the solution to the crime. But then I have to add the next levels. The other suspects. More stories which, though often irrelevant, nonetheless link up with the bull’s eye. In
Foyle’s War
, I would add whole stories which had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime but which in many ways interested me much more: anti-Semitism in Britain, the birth of plastic surgery, funk holes, spies, etc These would all be layered in. Every book has to have a shape. A murder story is circular.
    If there was a model for Foyle or, for that matter,
Midsomer Murders
, it was probably closer to Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers than Doyle. The crime is committed. The detective is introduced and pursues a scattering of clues, meeting people who all add a new perspective to the original crime. A second murder takes place and seems to send the story in a completely new direction. At last the suspects gather in one place. The detective has his moment in the spotlight – and if he’s Poirot he accuses everyone in the room before he finally settles on the guilty party who is, of