My Life in Books is an occasional feature on Random Things Through My Letterbox
I've asked authors to share with us a list of the books that are important to them and have made a lasting impression on their life.
Please join me in welcoming crime author Mark Hill to Random Things today. I read and reviewed Mark's debut novel, The Two O Clock Boy back in October. I loved it, it really is superb. Here's a little taster from my review:"Mark Hill has written an explosive and carefully constructed crime story with a lead character who is flawed but intriguing. This is top-class, intelligent writing that makes the reader do some work too. Reading this story constantly throws up questions for the reader, it is impeccably timed and I certainly had no inkling of what was to be revealed during the final chapters."
Check out Mark on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @markhillwriter
My Life in Books ~ Mark Hill
If you’re reading this right now then you
don’t need me to tell you there are just too many damned fine books - just too
many - and I don’t think I could manage to fit them all in here. I’d be writing
this blog post all week, all month. I just wouldn’t know where to stop, and it
would take you forever to read it. We’d both get tired and irritable and
probably fall out. So instead I thought I’d reminisce about some of the books I
read many years ago - this was when I was a young man, sometime in the mid-1870s
– and my reading was picking up steam. Some of those books had a powerful
effect on me. I learned an awful lot about writing and narrative from them, I
think, even if I didn’t know it at the time. So here’s a bit of my life in
books. Let’s get this thing done - and get the hell out of here.
There was a movie of The Day Of The Triffids by John Wyndham back in the day – before my
time, I may add - with Howard ‘Seven Brides’ Keel. It was ridiculous. The
plants were big, shambling creatures who, I think, could be killed with
seawater. But I remember subsequently reading the novel by John Wyndham and I
loved it. The plants are bioengineered creatures who – when an asteroid shower
makes humans blind and the world goes to hell in a handcart – seize their chance to jump a few places up
the food-chain. Most science-fiction books I read were set on other worlds, or
in exotic places, but this was set in locations I knew, and I was mesmerized.
Even today I get a bit anxious when the bushes rustle when I’m walking through
Russell Square.
Everyone’s got a favourite Stephen King,
right? I mean, there should be a law. He has written so many wonderful books.
But I remember loving The Dead Zone,
perhaps because it combined King’s usual horror sensibilities with a storyline
which is also very crimey and psychological. It’s the story of everyman Johnny
Smith who, following a terrible accident, acquires a precognitive ability.
Johnny helps nail a serial killer in small town and then – oh, heck! – touches a presidential candidate
and is plagued by visions of World War III. I remember how thrilled I was
reading it. This wasn’t about vampires or killer clowns, it was about a sweet
guy with an extraordinary gift who bore - almost literally - the weight of the
world on his shoulders. Of course it’s all make believe. The idea that a
narcissistic maniac could get his finger anywhere near the nuclear codes is
totally preposterous.
I will, with your kind permission, take a
few moments to mention a much-maligned subgenre of book: the movie novelization. These days, if you
go to see a film you can pretty much guarantee there’ll be other ways to enjoy it.
There’s probably a TV spin-off in the works, or a computer game or graphic novel;
you can buy the DVD and get more content, if you wish; the script is probably
available online somewhere. Back when I was a teenager, there wasn’t so much of
this stuff. Sometimes, if it was a movie like Alien, I was even too young to
even go see the movie. So I would read the novelization instead. I burned
through loads of them: movies like Star Wars and The Black Hole, and TV-shows
like Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who, too. An author would be commissioned
to write the book of a TV show or a movie directly from the script, maybe
before it had even gone into production, so the detail was often scant and the writing
consequently went like the clappers. As an added bonus they would often contain
scenes that didn’t even make the final edited movie. Sometimes these
adaptations were pretty ropey but sometimes they were incredibly well-written. They
taught me loads about pacing and plotting and character – but mostly about
pacing - and I have very fond memories of them still. 
Now here’s a curious one, because it’s a
little-known novel written by Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman, who wrote
Butch and Sundance and All The President’s Men and loads of other amazing
movies. Some of those, like Magic and The Princess Bride and Marathon Man, were
based on his own books. Control is
one of his lesser known novels, and when I picked it up I couldn’t believe what
I was reading. There’s a scene towards the beginning where a rich Manhattanite
lady goes into Bloomingdales one day and… well, what happens next is totally
nuts. Control brings a lot of disparate characters together in the
most-unexpected fashion. It manipulated my expectations in ways that nothing
I’d ever read before ever had. I bought a copy on ebay recently to read it
again – it looks exactly like the copy I read when I was a kid; maybe it is,
nothing is beyond the realms of possibility – and all these years later it
strikes me as a ludicrous novel. Part conspiracy thriller, part psychological
potboiler and part science-fiction opus - it’s all the things that my teenage
self loved so much. But the big twist at the heart of the book still, all these
years later, took my breath away.
James Ellroy fans all admire LAConfidential and hipsters wax lyrical about his later highly-stylized books
such as The Cold Six Thousand, but it was The Big Nowhere that was a revelation to me when I was a young man. Angry and visceral,
its labyrinthine plot was told from the point-of-view of three very different and
damaged characters on both sides of the law in a sinister 1950s Los Angeles,
and the story hurtled forward like a runaway train. It’s a big, atmospheric
novel – in which the LA sprawl is a corrupt, fetid landscape - and this kid
from a small town was totally astonished by it.
Let’s mention Alan Moore’s graphic novel V For Vendetta, which is as nuanced and
sophisticated as any novel. I remember the comic strip first appeared in a
short-lived British comic called Warrior. V is set in a dystopian future –
looking very much like the grim 1970s - where a mysterious masked anarchist in
a Guy Fawkes mask fights an unrelenting war against a fascist government. It’s
beautifully written by Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, and full of
playful references, and its reputation has grown down the years. V’s iconic Guy
Fawkes mask has been adopted by the Anonymous group. V For Vendetta is a hell
of a thing – Lloyd’s Orwellian visuals are a treat - and it’s as relevant now
as when I first breathlessly turned its pages in the early 1980s. It occurs to
me that this whole post has turned out kind of apocalyptic - I don’t know, it must
be the zeitgeist tapping me on the shoulder.
Everyone’s got to have a classic novel they
love, right? Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is
that book for me. Back when I was a teenager and even more anxious than I am
now, it was my Big And Important Book, and helped me see the world forever more
through a gauze of pitch black comedy. It’s a dazzling comic masterpiece and,
of course, it’s been Big And Important for generations of brain-addled
teenagers. I read it every few years and never fail to find something new to
enjoy or admire in it. Deadpan and gripping, full of wonderful characters and very,
very dark. And the writing – my god, Mother, the writing.
I’m done. You can go now.
Mark Hill ~ December 2016
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