On Saturday evening I got a message from my friend Roz that Chris had died. Awful, sad, a massive loss, but to be honest it wasn’t unexpected. He had been ill for a very long time – and after many health setbacks I think he really wanted to go.
He leaves a massive hole. No other writer in crime fiction cared as much about how to represent truth as Chris did. He worked with phenomenal diligence to unearth the facts behind each of his stories.
I hadn’t seen him since January, when I dropped round to say hello before I left for Ireland and he gave me a copy of a Lawrence Osborne book to read, enthusing about how good it was.
The first time I met him was at a writing class we went to. I remember our tutor’s jaw dropping to the table when Chris read what was to become the opening paragraphs of what was to become Dissolution. In fact he already had the title, I think.
When the course was complete, he finished his manuscript and started working his way through the agents section of the Writers and Artists yearbook. One of the things I’m proudest of is that I told him not to do that. Instead, he should try and send it to three people he admired to get a quote on the manuscript so he could stand out on the crowd. As far as I know he sent it to two. One as a critic, who thanked him in a few words, but who said nothing useful. The other was PD James who wrote back swiftly, asking if she could share the manuscript with his agent. That started. a 23-year-long working relationship – and friendship – between himself, his agent Antony Topping and his editor Maria Rejt. Together they produced an incredible nine novels.
Roz, myself and the other members of the small writers’ group we formed after the short course continued to read his work as it was being created. Because he was so keen to do the best work possible, he appreciated other people’s eyes on it. And in return, he read and commented in ours. Fittingly, when my turn came around to submit my first novel A Song From Dead Lips, it was Chris who gave me the quote I needed to get people in the publishing industry’s attention. It was like getting a gold star before you’d even started.
We stayed friends. He was always loyal to our book group. Two of the novels include dedications to us. When he gave us copies, we always checked to see if our names were in the back. They always were.
When his last novel Tombland was published, he asked me if I would interview him for the launch event at Norwich Cathedral. There were 800 people in the audience that night. We talked for an hour about his career and his absolute attention to detail. I am so glad I did that. I would love to se that interview again. Chris was a very private man. He hated the attention being a public figure brought him, but that night the waves of love for him and his work that came from the audience were extraordinary. I am so glad he was there to witness how much he meant to everyone in that place that night.
Roz and I – and Jan – from the group read the first 20,000 words of what would have been his next book Ratcliffe, set in London at the dawn of Elizabethan mercantilism. It would have been wonderful if he had been able to finish it, but years of cancer had left him exhausted. It’s so sad that he didn’t finish, but what an incredible legacy he has left.