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Baptism by Max Kinnings

January 7, 2014 David Marshall 1 comment

Baptism by Max Kinnings (Quercus, 2013) comes to me in the American edition. In the UK, it has been out in the market for some time and the sequel, Sacrifice, is already published. Such are the vagaries of the international publishing scene where there can be quite long delays between the launch of titles in different copyright jurisdictions. There are also problems in that the subject matter of the books may not transfer and find a resonance within the new culture. In Britain, using the widest term to embrace all the people who live in the constituent states, the London underground has an iconic status. Even those who live in the Outer Hebrides and have never been further south than Oban (not to be confused with the brand of sunglasses) have some awareness of the significance of this transport system. Indeed, because it’s embedded in the culture, it’s been a regular target for terrorist attacks, the first major bombing being in 1885. In due course, both the IRA and Islamists planted bombs. Given more than one-hundred years of attacks, Londoners have therefore become somewhat blasé about the continuing threats. Moving across the Atlantic, the recent attack by Al-Qaeda on American soil has sensitised local culture to the reality of its vulnerability to attack. Given this book offers a graphic description of an attack on an underground train network, the US market now has the opportunity to both explore emotional reactions to a home-grown terrorist attack, cf the Boston Marathon bombing, and to deal with the claustrophobia of an attack trapping several hundred in a deep tunnel.

As to the book itself, it’s a fascinating piece of writing on two counts. First as to the prose style: it’s what I might describe as meticulous. This is not in any way a bad quality, but the volume of detail creates a slightly dense text. This is a book that expects readers to take their time to absorb all the information on offer. Second, the structure of the plot is very dynamic. This author has significant experience in film and television. We therefore have very short chapters, each one dealing with just a few minutes of time with shifting points of view. On most occasions, the transition between points of view is consecutive, often just moving the plot forward on a different part of the underground train or in other locations of parallel significance where law enforcement plans its response. However on one or two occasions, there’s a slight reprise where we get the first run through a scene followed by a second person’s response. The overall effect is a very fast-moving narrative. Even though the prose itself invites a measured approach, the plot actually pulls the reader through to the end. For the record, there are spec trailers for a film version of this story: the shorter being at YouTube. These were shown at Cannes 2013 with a view to raising the finance to make the film.

Max Kinnings

So what’s it about? Ed Mallory is an expert negotiator. On what threatens to be the hottest day of the year in London so far, he’s called to the Underground. A train has unexpectedly stopped in a deep tunnel and the driver is not responding. Although it could just be the driver has fallen ill, no-one wants to take any chances. So the hostage negotiation team is moved into place and armed officers approach the rear of the train. As things warm up, we’re given this officer’s backstory which saw him blinded in only his second negotiation. With some thirteen years of experience since this tragic incident, he’s honed his listening skills. Consequently, he’s now rated as one of the best negotiators in the business. In this instance, however, the textbook approach is not going to work. The terrorists are led by Tommy Denning, a young ex-soldier who’s convinced himself he’s on a mission from God. Since he does not have the usual agenda of demands, Ed Mallory is forced into less than conventional tactics. The result is a fascinating set of relationships. The train driver, George Wakeham, has to deal with Tommy directly. The driver’s wife is on the same train to ensure the driver obeys the instructions given. Ed Mallory has to deal with both his own superior and MI5 while trying to engage Tommy in some discussion, any discussion. Then there are the passengers who slowly come to realise they may have to risk their own lives to escape the situation.

The result is a slightly gonzo thriller yet the fact there are elements which strain credibility all proves part of the fun. So assuming you don’t mind quite a high body count, Baptism proves to be excellent entertainment and well worth reading. I now find myself looking around for the second in the series, if only to see how Ed Mallory manages to keep his job.

For a review of the sequel, see Sacrifice. There’s also an interview with Max Kinnings here.

A copy of this book was sent to me for review.

Categories: Books Tags: Baptism, blindness, disability, Ed Mallory, MI5, police procedural, terrorism, thriller

An interview with Max Kinnings

March 28, 2014 David Marshall 8 comments

Welcome to Thinking about books. By way of introduction, Max Kinnings is the author of five books, the most recent being Baptism and Sacrifice which feature the character Ed Mallory as a hostage negotiator.

Perhaps I should begin with an apology that I’m very interested in the craft of writing and so, with your indulgence, I’d like to talk a little about how you came to draw up the plot of this, so far, latest duology. Hopefully as one who teaches creative writing, you’ll share some aspects of the process of creating this character. I’m curious about the choice of a disabled protagonist. He seems a paradox. His blindness excludes him from the routine of social interaction which so often depends on the ability to interpret visual signals, e.g. choice of clothing, facial expressions, body language, etc. yet his profession requires him to empathise with others under pressure. I suppose the mechanism of communication with hostage takers levels the playing field — he “hears” more than his sighted colleagues — but it also remains a barrier to his integration into the team. So why pick someone with “limitations”?

Originally, the Ed Mallory character was very different from the one that appears in the published version of Baptism. Firstly, he wasn’t blind. Secondly, he was an alcoholic with relationship issues. This version of Ed Mallory actually appeared in the first published version of Baptism in Holland in 2009. However, when my agent had shopped the manuscript around publishers in the UK, they were lukewarm in their feelings towards the character. My agent suggested that the Ed character was possibly a little too derivative. The big drinking cop with relationship issues is someone that we’ve encountered many times before in crime fiction. He suggested that I revisit the character with a view to changing him possibly quite drastically.

Much of the day-to-day writing of Baptism was carried out at the British Library on Euston Road in central London. I love the learned atmosphere of what is one of the world’s great libraries. I would take the Tube up from my home in south London to Kings Cross station. Very close to the library is the Royal National Institute for the Blind and quite often I would offer an arm to blind people who were leaving the Tube train at Kings Cross to make their way to the RNIB as the escalators and steps up from the station can be quite awkward. Whether there was some subconscious connection between this and my decision to make Ed Mallory blind, I can’t say for certain but almost as soon as I started to rethink Ed’s character, I knew that I wanted to make him blind – and scarred, not just physically but emotionally too. His loss of a sense would make his other senses stronger and for a negotiator who spends the vast majority of his time speaking to people on the other end of a phone line, this might be a very useful attribute. One of the key skills of hostage negotiation is what is known as active listening. To create a character whose abilities as an active listener were sharpened and enhanced appealed to me.

Max Kinnings

However, when I started to rewrite the book with the new Ed character, I realised that I had created all sorts of complications for myself. So much of what a writer describes from the point of view of a character is visual. But gradually, I came to inhabit Ed’s mindset and enjoyed the challenge of describing the sounds, the smells and the tactile sensations that he experiences. The fiction editors in London certainly shared my enthusiasm for the new character and whereas the original story had been rejected by a number of publishers on its first round of submissions; the new Ed Mallory character proved to be much more popular and Quercus finally bought the rights.

With hindsight, I’m really glad that I made Ed a blind character. While it excludes him from much in terms of the visual signals and body language of his colleagues and the negotiating team in which he operates, when it comes to the negotiation which forms so much of the drama of the book (and its sequel) it makes for some much more intriguing drama. My decision to make him blind brought him alive for me and I found I could inhabit his character much more effectively.

In Bushi no Ichibun (武士の一分), Love and Honor (2006), the samurai warrior loses his sight but, when his honour is at stake, he learns to fight again. This film offers a fairly realistic portrayal of supervening blindness, unlike Daredevil which makes as much sense as you expect from a comic book hero. Have you been tempted to allow your protagonist to learn new physical skills, or to give him the chance to experiment with new technology like screen readers or refreshable Braille displays to give him internet access, or some of the new sensory substitution systems for giving greater mobility?

My reason for asking is my slight uncertainty whether your hero has come to terms with the blindness. While he’s adapted that’s not the same as accepting and moving on.

Other than the enhancement of his listening abilities which his blindness gives him and which he uses to good effect during his hostage negotiations, I didn’t want Ed to come to terms with his blindness, certainly not in the first two books in the series. Much of his alienation from society stems from his refusal to accept his visual impairment. He doesn’t use a dog to help him in his everyday life and wouldn’t ever consider using a white cane. His singularity as a character comes from the fact that despite having been blinded some thirteen years prior to the events that take place in Baptism, he has still not come to terms with his blindness. His job as a police hostage negotiator and subsequently a negotiator-for-hire in Sacrifice, provides him with some validation as a blind person but this doesn’t mean that he is in any way ready to achieve acceptance of his disability. However, in the event that I do write further books in the series, I think it would be interesting to see Ed change his outlook with regards to his condition and start to explore sensory substitution systems, especially if this can form an integral part of the plot.

You also hew to the Aristotelian unities of time and, to a lesser extent, action. This is a further challenge. In addition to a protagonist with physical limitations, you impose the limit of having everything happen in just a few hours.

As far as my decision to impose the limit of having everything happen in just a few hours is concerned, this was something that had been my intention right from the very first notes that I made about the story. Many thrillers employ the ticking clock concept as a means of ratcheting up the tension. I wanted to place that at the heart of the novel by having the train tunnel flooding over the space of a few hours so there is a very specific deadline for the authorities to adhere to.

I’m a firm believer in the benefits that creative limitations can bring to a story. As a teacher of creative writing, I’ve seen many writers struggle with the ultimate freedom that fiction writing provides. Often this can cause writer’s block. But as soon as some creative limitations are imposed, often the imagination reacts to them and a story is born. A blind protagonist and a narrative of interconnecting story-lines that plays out over the space of just a few hours are two creative limitations that caused all sorts of problems for me in many respects but were also really quite inspiring. Hopefully Baptism is all the better for them.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. It has been illuminating. For those who want to know a little more, here are my reviews of the two books:
Baptism
Sacrifice

Categories: Interviews Tags: Aristotle, characterisation, disability, Max Kinnings, thriller, unities

Sacrifice by Max Kinnings

February 13, 2014 David Marshall 2 comments

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Sacrifice by Max Kinnings (Quercus, 2013) is the second book to feature Ed Mallory, the blind negotiator. After the events described in Baptism, our hero is no longer employed by the police force. No surprise there. He more than amply demonstrated a maverick streak in being prepared not only to ignore standard operating protocols, but also consort with known terrorists to resolve a difficult situation. Such independence of mind elevates him to mythic status in police circles. If this had been set in classical times, the decision to seek the aid of this heroic freelancer would be a mixture of hope he would clean out the Augean Stables, and fear he might loose a thunderbolt or two and incinerate less than worshipful senior officers. So this book finds him called up for the first time since the Incident of the Underground. It’s Christmas Day and no other negotiator is prepared to forego the traditional turkey with all the trimmings. He starts off with a delicate situation. A householder has been all too ready to shoot burglars on sight. So much for the notion of good will to all men over Christmas as one intruder lies dead and another may soon go the same way unless our hero can pull chestnuts out of the fire (but only when they are properly cooked, of course). In part because of the hidebound approach of the senior officer in charge, the negotiation is not as successful as it might have been. This leaves our hero less than whelmed when he’s called to the main course of the day.

The core incident begins with one of the joint operators of an alleged Ponzi Scheme returning to England after a three-month sojourn in Switzerland. The return does not signal a capitulation. He’s decided to return to fight the allegations. This means he, his wife and seventeen-year-old daughter arrive at their home to be welcomed by a hard core of press photographers and three well-prepared security men. However, shortly after they have settled back into their fortress home, the three security men are dead and they are being held hostage by a masked man — the young man delivering their Christmas lunch also proves to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up on the floor beside the family. At the behest of COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room, which is overseeing what’s immediately seen as a major incident, the original team which handled the Incident of the Underground is put back together. Britain depends on the willingness of financiers to live and work in London. If they are seen to become targets for “terrorists”, this could be bad for the economy. Both military and police resources are therefore quickly on the scene. With the press already camped outside, a media scrum quickly develops.

Max Kinnings

This makes the line of command difficult to establish. Our hero is now a freelancer so neither fits into the police authority structure nor is he directly accountable to the military. Yet he finds himself at the sharp end of an increasingly unusual negotiation. The perennial problem in this situation is to establish a meaningful dialogue. In ordinary social and commercial circumstances, the process of negotiating is intended to produce a mutually satisfactory outcome, usually a compromise between the two or more interested parties. In hostage and comparable situations, the undeclared purpose of the negotiation is to agree terms for surrender. The lives of the hostages give the criminals a bargaining advantage but if the hostages die, the law enforcement agencies are not exactly going to be pleased and will take swift and effective action to bring the siege to an end. So both sides engage in a form of brinkmanship in which concessions are provoked or offered as inducements. Yet this particular exchange of words does not proceed along conventional lines and it soon appears the point of the exercise may be to make a public spectacle of the disgraced financier and his family. Obviously this does not appeal to media shy COBRA which prefers the SAS to bring a swift end to the unfortunate affair.

With one cheat, the structure of the book follows a strict unity of time in which all the key elements are introduced and then shown interacting to produce a taut and exciting siege and resolution. The authorial problem is how to sustain excitement when the hero is blind and therefore cannot do all the usual things expected of a sighted protagonist. Put simply, there are only a few moments of heroism required when speaking with a hostage-taker on the telephone (for a discussion of disabled protagonists, see Bleed For Me by Michael Robotham). So as in the first novel, he has to move around and prove he’s just as much a threat to the bad guys as an abled protagonist. How this is managed here proves highly innovative and not at all what I had predicted given the preliminary POV chapters. Indeed, the final chapters prove he’s every bit as dangerous to himself (and others) as you might expect. That he survives is a testament to the others in his team, the dedication of the police force at large, and the bravery of the hostages. Perhaps he should be less fascinated by the idea of suicide and more interested in self-preservation.

Whereas Baptism deals with a major set-piece attack on an infrastructure target in a plot that depends on some less usual features, this plays with a slightly more realistic hostage situation which resonates with the current popular hostility towards bankers and other financial moguls. Although less spectacular, I find Sacrifice more compelling because it takes its time to capture and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of all involved. We get inside the heads of everyone involved from the fraudsters to their “innocent” families, the police team, the hostage-taker, and the shadowy people orchestrating the media event (and collecting donations for their political cause). The result is highly readable and strongly recommended.

For a review of the first in the series, see Baptism. There’s also an interview with Max Kinnings here.

A copy of this book was sent to me for review.