Lost Souls
My second book made me nervous. I knew I would be given some latitude by reviewers with my debut novel, and maybe even by readers, but I knew that wouldn't apply to my "difficult" second novel. I should have been more relaxed, because I realise now that the pressure increases with each book, as I strive to make each one better than the last.
Lost Souls saw Jack Garrett and Laura McGanity based in the north, with Laura getting a transfer to the town of Blackley, the nearest large town near to Jack's boyhood home, and the setting for Fallen Idols, Turners Fold. The town of Blackley is based mainly on Blackburn, but with bits of other Lancashire cotton towns thrown in. There a bits of Burnley and Accrington thrown in there too, hence the name, with the Black of Blackburn and the ley of Burnley. This has caused some confusion, as there is a Blackley in north Manchester, but the Blackley in the books is fictional.
Another reason why I had to make the location fictional is that I still prosecute in Blackburn, and it would be inappropriate to base crime stories in the town in which I work, as it would involve writing about the police and lawyers (and defendants) I have to work with on a daily basis. That is not to say that real events do not make it into the books, but they tend to be the snippets, the asides. I have never based a book on a case I have worked on as a prosecutor.
Lost Souls was inspired by a documentary I saw a few years ago about an art lecturer from the south coast called David Mandell. He seemed a genuine enough old man, and for years he has been painting his dreams. If he has a particularly vivid dream, he jots it down on canvas and then goes to his local bank, who allow him to be photographed under the bank's electronic calendar, thus giving it a date stamp. Mr Mandell believes that some of the events that he has dreamt about have come to fruition.
I thought he would be a good basis for a central character, someone who imports himself into an investigation as he believes that he has dreamt about it, and points to his earlier paintings as proof of his ability. What interested me about David Mandell was that he seemed to paint the later media images, such as the famous class photo of the schoolchildren in the Dunblane massacre. Although not necessarily a believer myself, perhaps it was interpretation with hindsight, the image that interested me was a painting of a plane heading towards the World Trade Center and clearly the Manhattan skyline, with one of the towers toppling. Although the prospect of an accidental crash might have always been in someone's mind, the date of the photograph in the bank was 11th September 1998, exactly three years before the actual attacks. That took David Mandell's story into the level of "spooky" and so interested me.
Lost Souls took me into a whole world of precogntion, ie, those people who believe that they dream the future, and involved the investigation into a series of child abductions, where children were abducted and then returned unharmed a week later, unsure as to where they had been and with whom. I tried to make it very much a northern story, and so there is plenty of grit and grime, and just the right amount of blood.
Lost Souls was published by Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in May 2008.