Phil Rickman was born in the northwest of England but has spent most of his life on the Welsh border trying to write realistic crime novels that also reflect mystery in the original sense--that is, the kind of mystery that isn't easily solved. He is best known for his continuing series about Merrily Watkins, diocesan exorcist. Night After Night (Atlantic Books, January 1, 2015), a mystery involving reality TV and the paranormal, is a standalone novel but includes some characters readers may have met before.
On your nightstand now:
One lamp. Does a plumber go to bed with a wrench?
Favorite book when you were a child:
I was a child for quite a while, and my favorite book changed every week or so, but I always remember The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters by Enid Blyton--my first crime novel, passed on by an aunt, had lost its dust-cover years before. The following week it was Blyton's The Rubadub Mystery--a touch spookier. At the age of eight, my future was being shaped.
Your top five authors:
When writers name their top five living writers, they're usually lying, so here are my top five dead writers: John Fowles, Margery Allingham, P.G. Wodehouse, M.R. James and Raymond Chandler. That's this week, anyway, and it doesn't mean I've enjoyed everything they've done.
Book you've faked reading:
Never have. Has anybody? There are some books I wish I'd faked reading.
Book you're an evangelist for:
This is not going very well, is it? I really hate it when somebody thrusts a book at me and says, You've got to read this. I'm sure some people have been put off reading for life that way.
Book you've bought for the cover:
It was probably some old James Bond hardback, with one of those pale, washed-out, almost bland Richard Chopping covers. I can see now just how revolutionary those were and would be--even more so--today. Today's publishers are far too timid about covers. If I see just one more featuring a lone silhouette on the end of a landing stage....
Book that changed your life:
The View over Atlantis by John Michell, a very seductive, speculative book involving prehistoric remains, which awakened me to the layered mysticism of the British countryside and suggested a new direction in fiction. I'll stop there as I don't want to get evangelical.
Favorite line from a book:
"She was twenty or so, small and delicately put together, but she looked durable." --Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep.
Which character you most relate to:
I keep trying to think of a novel about a paranoid, struggling novelist who isn't a complete pain in the ass. I'm going to have to get back to you on this one.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Rivals by Jilly Cooper. It's a big, sexy page-turner about people trying to win a franchise for a TV company in rural England. I started off disliking most of the characters but, 600 pages later, was so desperate for them to succeed I couldn't sleep. The greatest pop blockbuster of all time.
Genre you generally avoid:
Fantasy and magic realism: I don't have much patience with imaginary worlds or allegory. The real world is so much more mysterious around the edges.