‘The Silencer’ – Turmoil in Turkey and a ‘lone wolf’ who sets out across the Balkans for a strike on a foreign target…

What inspired you to write this story?

I’d had the idea of writing a thriller with a ‘slowly approaching danger’ for some years, but when I read into recent incidents of the persecution of the church in the nearby country of Turkey, it anchored the story in that context more. I began to feel in a new way that there were people not dissimilar to myself close by facing grave dangers. The book gives some account of events there, but I think it is a story that could have come similarly from numerous other countries too. Then I set about looking at how the main character and others around him might deal with facing such frightening realities emotionally and spiritually.

Where does the story begin?

The opening scene on a taxi van (a ‘furgon’) coming over the spectacular Qafë Krrabë road, which climbs into the mountains south of Tirana, Albania, was the first piece of the story I had in place in my head. It is a thrilling route to travel, but preferably in safe driving hands. The manner of driving in the scene is not exaggerated for effect and I’m not alone in having been through some of those white-knuckle experiences written for the protagonist Jude. Though, to be fair I think the general physical condition of many ‘furgons’ has improved in recent years... if not the driving.

What are its themes?

Justice is a main theme of the story, and how when people prosecute their own notions of it, how wide of the mark that frequently falls. In one scene before Jude leads a discussion in class about justice in the French Revolution, two neighbours argue in a nearby apartment block, and one throws dirty water down, but it falls on passers-by, and this is how it is. In the story the Leeds United FC fans’ vengeance catches Sheref, who is not even Galatasaray, he’s Fenerbace... and Sheref’s vengeance falls... well, you’ll need to read it to find out.

Did you make the antagonist’s journey?

Yes, but during the field research I discovered that the ‘Friendship Express’ service between Istanbul and Thessaloniki had stopped altogether just a month before I wanted to get on it. So I had to work out an alternative way of experiencing the journey Sheref makes. My wife and I found a coach trip for Istanbul from Albania on Women’s Day 2011, and travelled roughly along the same route through the night, at times parallel to the railway lines. The excursion degenerated into chaos in Istanbul as the passengers complained and demanded their own personal itineraries be met, and the organisers, who had had enough of them, dumped them all in fatigue. Caught in the middle of it, we ended up locked inside the coach for over two hours. But that said, I was still able to do what I had set out to. I would have loved to have taken the train. As an aside, it is the first section of the route James Bond travels with Tatiana Romanova and the ‘Spectre’ machine in Fleming’s ‘From Russia with Love’.

Are some of characters based on real people?

There are shades of people that I have met and known, but no real people wholesale: they are imaginary concoctions. Though, that said, Jack and Flori Moshohori, the Albanian border guard, come close. The back-story of hard-man Mehmed Krasnichi is loosely-based on the life of someone I have met in Albania, though it is not a true telling of it. It has fictional additions and elaborations, a different physical description, and shouldn’t be taken as accurate at all. In common with other writers, many of the characters are given names that fit them. To mention a few, the goatherd boy in Jude’s class, ‘Liridon’ means, ‘longing for freedom’, and the Turks ‘Gazi’ which means ‘wounded veteran’, and centrally, ‘Sheref Dushman’, which means ‘honour/pride’: ‘the enemy’. There was an Albanian tribe by the name of ‘Dushman’ too.

Have you a favourite minor character?

The minor player of Defrim, a driver with an excess of gizmos on his dashboard, typifies those surprising connections you can find with people when you are travelling. In the back of beyond, you chance upon someone with whom you share absurd things in common. In this instance Defrim is an improbable enthusiast for the 80’s synth-pop act ‘The Human League’. He is also someone for whom Providence has a role in a greater story unfolding all around him.

Where did you learn about the pistol in the epilogue?

Among the many tiles that were brainstormed for the book was ‘The Tokarev Falls’, the reason for which I think is apparent in the epilogue. The operation of the Tokarev TT pistol, standard Albanian Police issue, is correctly described there, and was shown to me by a relative who is licensed to hold one. He dismantled his quickly and set the oily pieces out on my desk inviting me to reassemble it, and I stared blankly at it. He then quickly clipped it all back together, waved it under my nose, and offered it to me to handle. He left me three copper-coloured bullets in my pencil holder as souvenirs.

Can we guess the ending?

I hope that as the plot unfolds there is a sense of events not being pre-determined, and of how in the midst them outcomes can turn on prayer.

Video trailer on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/51611355

Amazon UK reviews: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silencer-...