There is a report by John Dugdale in the Guardian today (gu.com/p/3daqd/tf) on the author event I took part in last Monday with Barry Forshaw, Mark Billingham, Laura Wilson and pathologist Carla Connelly at the British Library. He correctly says we discussed violence in our books at length and considered any taboos in our writing. I forgot to mention that in Dead Man’s Land there was to be a scene of gang rape. I sat at the head of that chapter for days thinking: my wife and kids are going to read this. I really didn’t want to write it. Yet it was a pivotal inciting incident. Then the solution came to me: tell it in song. Not some cheery ditty, but a murder ballad (or rape ballad I suppose). In the end I re-worked the lyrics of Fairport Convention’s Matty Groves (a sort of Lady Chatterley’s Lover tale with added murder, marvellously sung by Sandy Denny) and had one of the characters sing that. I checked with Joe Boyd, who produced the album Liege and Lief,

that I wasn’t breaching any copyright by keeping one line of the original words in as a clue to its origins, but he assured me it was a traditional piece. I was subsequently asked (of which more later) to help with a piece for the forthcoming Benjamin Britten centenary at Snape Maltings near Aldeburgh. And I discovered that Britten, too, had used a version of the Matty Groves story in a piece called The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (for male voices and piano). If you look up that piece, it will say, bizarrely, that the world premier was at Oflag V11b, a POW camp in Germany. Britten composed it in 1943 or Richard Wood, the husband of one of Britten’s singers who was a POW at the camp at Eichstätt, Bavaria. He organised a music festival for the prisoners between February and March 1944 and Britten’s work – sent out in a Red Cross parcel – was performed at seven of the concerts. The Imperial War Museum has the original score. As part of the Britten centenary celebrations Jon Boden, BBC Radio 2’s ‘Folksinger of the Year’ 2010, weaves a new work into The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard at Snape Maltings on August 11 (see www.brittenaldeburgh.co.uk). My efforts – with someone else supplying the music – will be at the same venue on June 12.

The new novel Dead Man’s Land (out today, January 3rd) is dedicated to Clive Powell, “a genuine Leigh pal”. Some of you may know that Clive Powell is the real name of one of Leigh’s most famous sons, Georgie Fame. I have met him several times over the past few years and his famed all-nighters at Soho’s Flamingo club in the early 60s were referenced in my book Signal Red, about the Great Train Robbery.

This time I wanted his help because the regiment in the new novel is a ‘Pals’ battalion, one of the units of Kitchener’s New Army that were raised to replace early losses, and consisted of men from the same village or profession. So there were Salford Pals, Liverpool Pals, Taxi Driver, Artist and Footballer Pals. There wasn’t, however, actually a Pals from the cotton town of Leigh, although I’ve invented one. Originally I used quite a lot of ‘Lanky’ dialect and local phrases for the soldier’s conversations, and Georgie was going to help out by checking their authenticity. Sadly, early readers said they found those sections impenetrable and I re-wrote them in more straightforward language, meaning I no longer needed Mr Fame’s help. Still, Georgie’s concerts have given me much pleasure of late and, coming up to 70, he shows no sign of stopping – his new record Lost in a Lover’s Dream is a laidback corker and he will be playing Ronnie Scott’s for the week starting April 8^th, where he’ll no doubt telling stories about the Zagreb club owner and vibes player who inspired the new album.

Tickets: www.ronniescotts.co.uk

Album: www.juno.co.uk/labels/Three+Line+Whip/

In my introduction to the Complete Sherlock Holmes e-book (available for free – http://tinyurl.com/c9hp4ww), I seem to have inadvertently upped the number of novels in the Conan Doyle canon from four to five. One of the joys of e-books is that, unlike with print versions, such glitches can be easily fixed. Yet I knew very well there were four novels – A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear – and I can only assume I was so taken in by reading Anthony Horowitz’s House of Silk, I added it to the tally. House of Silk, like Dead Man’s Land, has the blessing of the Conan Doyle Estate, although unlike DML it is written in the style of ACD. Most Holmes ‘continuation’ novels read like a pale imitation of the original, or are so reverential they end up wooden and stilted. Not House of Silk – Horowitz nails the classic characters and doesn’t forget to add a rip-roaring plot. Highly recommended and best read by gaslight.

The omni-talented Barry Forshaw, head honcho of Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk) and author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, British Crime Film and Guns for Hire: The Modern Adventure Thriller, among many others, asked me to get involved in this round-robin called The Next Big Thing.

The idea is that I answer the following questions about my writing then recommend other authors who also answer the questions and they in turn recommend other authors until the world begs for mercy. You can find Barry’s answers on the Crime Time website, and my “tag” authors at the end of the questionnaire, who should be posting within the week.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

Dead Man’s Land, out on January 3.

 2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

Dead Man’s Land is inspired by a line from Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow, set in 1914, in which Sherlock Holmes says that Watson intends to ‘rejoin his old service’ – by this time the Royal Army Medical Corps. So it is Dr. Watson’s adventures in WW1.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Historical thriller.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The central character is Dr John Watson – Holmes’s sidekick – but without the Great Detective. It roughly follows Conan Doyle’s (sometimes wayward) chronology of his heroes, so I need an actor in his 60s, someone like Tom Wilkinson, martin Shaw or Michael Kitchen. I’m thinking Kelly Riley (too young?) or Alex Kingston as his flame-haired nurse.

5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

With thousands dying every day on the Western Front, what better place to commit a murder..

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It is published by Simon & Schuster.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About seven months.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Despite having Dr Watson in it, not Conan Doyle, more Len Deighton or early Robert Harris.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My editor at S&S, Maxine Hitchcock said they were looking for a novel based on ‘a detective in the trenches’. She set me on the road to recalling that Dr Watson had served in WW1.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Winston Churchill is a pivotal figure in the novel, because after Gallipoli he went into the army and served on the front line.

To see how other authors tackle this list, go along and visit:

Dean Crawford, a British Michael Crichton and author of science-thrillers Apocalypse, Covenant and Immortal at www.deancrawfordbooks.com.

Howard Linskey, who brings Get Carter and crew bang up to date in The Drop, The Damage and The Dead on http://howardlinskey.blogspot.co.uk/.

Frank Barnard, ace WW2 flying chronicler (Blue Man Falling, Band of Eagles, To Play The Fox) and, with A Time For Heroes, WW1 as well, at www.frankbarnard.com.

As a tie-in to the imminent release of the Dr Watson novel DEAD MAN’S LAND, Simon & Schuster has made available a free e-book of the Complete Sherlock Holmes. As part of the package they asked me to write an introduction, which I duly did. Then the artwork came. You do realise, I told them, that it wouldn’t say 221b above the door? That the ‘b’ signified Holmes’s and Watson’s lodgings, not the whole building? There would be a doorbell or door pull marked ‘b’. We’ll get letters, I said. My editors thought for a minute and said: We’ll get letters if we don’t put it there. Apparently Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss had similar discussions with their BBC Sherlock re-boot. In the end they decided the address was so iconic, the ‘b’ had to stay. And if it’s good enough for them….

* http://books.simonandschuster.com/Complete-Sherlock-Holmes/Arthur-Conan-Doyle/9781471127182

* http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Complete-Sherlock-Holmes-ebook/dp/B00AHEMYEY