His Remarks

"Things were eas­ier for the old no­ve­lists who saw people all of a piece. Speak­ing ge­ne­ral­ly, their her­oes were good through and through, their vil­lains wholly bad."
W. Somerset Maugham. A Writer's Note­book. 1949.

"But down these mean streets a man must go who is not him­self mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid …"
Raymond Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. An Essay. 1950.

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 have published my first magazine article when I was eighteen, a double-page spread on glossy paper with black-and-white illustrations. But after hundreds of columns and articles, I'm still a slow writer. For some years now I write fiction books. Writing them relaxes me. I write slowly, but I write. I'm not in a hurry to publish anything.

Some­times I get this question:

"Have you writ­ten a new de­tec­tive novel?"

My rather personal response is: I do not write detec­tive no­vels, at least not in the orig­inal sense of the gen­re; hard­ly anyone writes de­tect­ive novels nowa­days. I write books that I label 'political thril­lers', which may be an appro­priate descript­ion, but it doesn't do them full just­ice.

Enter­tain­ment and suspense: yes, absolu­tely; de­scrip­tion of society: yes, wanted; liter­ature: na­tur­al­ly; his­to­ry and stories.

It is difficult to squeeze them into one genre: are they adven­ture no­vels, spy novels, de­velop­mental novels, 'en­ter­tain­ments' — or per­haps satires? Gra­ham Greene, a writer both of 'serious novels' and of thril­lers, la­bel­ed his thril­lers 'enter­tain­ments'. I guess that is a nice term for my novels too.

Not justice and mora­lity dominate the world, but il­legal­ity, in­just­ice and egoism. The de­pict­ions of an ideal world, in which an evil­doer is imm­edia­tely tracked down and ex­pell­ed from so­ciety, are — as in Eng­lish detect­ive liter­ature — mere fairy tales.

Spy novels live from espion­age and all its side ef­fects. They were, in turn, pri­mari­ly a British, and to a les­ser extent — and later in time — an Ame­ri­can li­ter­ary genre.

In my novels I write what I want to write and read. How­ever, I also read books of many other gen­res. And I don't necessarily write to sell books and cap­ture as many rea­ders as poss­ible, rather for my own pleasure — and for my per­so­nal rea­der friends. Their comments show me that they like to read my books.

Rea­ders and writers might have separate agendas. Still, en­ter­tain­ment is something positive and deep­ly human. If others enjoy them, it is also my pleas­ure.

Many authors write on the one hand for them­selves, on the other hand, and first and foremost, they pro­duce com­mer­cial enter­tain­ment for their pub­li­shers and readers. In most cases, there is no direct feed­back between writers and readers — although authors usual­ly enjoy receiv­ing en­cou­rage­ment, praise and advice. Un­fortuna­tely, there are also un­founded mali­cious criticisms, which can only be avoided by ig­nor­ing them.

Then there are readers who can­not or do not want to dis­tin­guish a novel from real­ity in every­day life. For example, they accept many things in a spy novel as facts — even readers from 'edu­cated' circ­les.

Things get worse when detective novels or poli­tical thril­lers are written in the first person, which some rea­ders inter­pret as auto­bio­graphy.

Bruce Marshall writes in the preface to his (almost detect­ive) novel 'The Divided Lady'(1960):

"So many intel­ligent persons mis­inter­pret the no­ve­list's trade that I feel I must explain that not only are all the char­acters and events in this story ima­gin­ary, but that the narrator is too and that his cre­a­tor does not always share his views or com­mend his conduct."

As I stated above, my novels are written in the form of the poli­­tical thril­ler, moral­­ly neu­tral — still mo­ral, vi­gi­­lant, full of sus­­pense, ton­gue in cheek, and based on solid fact­­ual and hist­o­rical found­a­tions.

And I hope to 'entertain' my readers.