There’s a famous scene in The Magnificent Seven when Steve
McQueen’s character, Vin, is asked why he took on the job of defending the
dirt-poor Mexican villagers. He replies ‘It's like a fellow I once knew in El
Paso. One day, he just took all his clothes off and jumped in a mess of cactus…
Why? ... It seemed to be a good idea at the time.’
That’s pretty much how I felt about having given up the
comfort and safety of writing a series set in a city I know very well to
instead come up with an entirely new set of characters in a place I’d never
been to. Even worse - and yet in many ways better - it is set in a place far
removed from the Glasgow that’s home to my Tony Winter/Rachel Narey series.
Torshavn is the capital of the Faroes Islands, said to be the
smallest capital city in the world with just 17,600 inhabitants. Buffeted by
the harsh weathers of the North Atlantic, the people live in multi-coloured
houses with turf roofs and most of them depend on the sea for a living. They
eat whale and puffin, drink akvavit, enjoy endless summer days, endure long,
dark winters and frequently have four seasons in an afternoon.
They are said to have the lowest crime rate in the world and
live in a landscape as dramatic as it is stunningly beautiful. Apart from the weather
and the fact that they don’t/can’t grow vegetables, it’s all very unlike urban Glasgow.
The more I learned about the place as I scouted for an
overseas location as part of a planned Winter/Narey book, the more I knew I
wanted to write something there. It just didn’t fit for my police photographer
and detective sergeant so it had to be a standalone. New characters, new plot,
new location. There was nothing else for it but to visit.
In November 2012, I flew from Edinburgh to Amsterdam, to
Copenhagen – it took eight hours before I got north of where I started – and
then finally on the bumpy final leg to the Faroes and one of the world’s
smallest and supposedly most dangerous airports to land at. I booked into the
Hotel Torshavn for eight nights and endeavoured to learn as much as I could in
that time.
There were two things in particular that I was keen to find:
a good pub and a good place to kill someone. Within a couple of days, I’d
discovered both. (Just to be clear, they are not the same place. Torshavn pubs
just aren’t like that. Another difference from Glasgow.)
The people were just as friendly though and frequently
someone would come up if I was sitting in a bar – which I had to do in the name
of research – and start a conversation. They were more than happy to talk about
their town and the islands, sharing both the joys and hardships of living in
the middle of a rain-lashed triangle between Iceland, Norway and Scotland. They
generously gave me what I needed to write a book.
They have a lot of weather in the Faroes, most of it wet. In
those eight days there were two brief occasions when it didn’t rain – and it snowed
instead. There was not a single moment when there wasn’t something falling from
the sky. It felt like home.
Obviously, much as I liked the place, I had to spoil the
Faroe Islands’ crime figures. I felt a bit bad about doing so, even if it was
only in the pages of a book. A crime novel without a crime just wouldn’t be
right. So a place with only murder in 25 years had to have (at least) another
one. And there’s quite a bit of blood spilled, not all of it human. Sorry about
that.
It did seem like a good idea at the time and now, countless
hours of research later, it still seems like a good idea. Much better at least
than jumping naked into a mess of cactus…
