The War In The Dark - 5 Inspirations
Raiders of the Lost Ark
IAN FLEMING
James Bond is an inescapable shadow for anyone writing espionage stories in the thriller mould. Setting my own book in the early ‘60s, with a resourceful British agent at its core, stared down the gunbarrel of that comparison and forced me to twist my hero Christopher Winter into suitably different shapes (Bond’s an aesthete and a sensualist; Winter pines for Little Chef motorway restaurants). But there’s a side to 007’s creator that’s rarely celebrated. Fleming was a truly gifted travel writer. Just look at the opening description of Royale-les-Eaux in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with its beach “fringed by a sea thick with sun-oil.” It’s the kind of tiny, transportative detail he had an absolute knack for. Back then Bond novels were as much holidays as adventures, paperback portals into a glimmering, distant world. Naturally they were leapt upon by a Britain still pinched and bruised from postwar austerity. Thrilling Cities – Fleming’s collection of travel journalism – was as much an inspiration for The War in the Dark as any of his fiction (that said, some of it probably is fiction...). I have a gloriously musty ex-library edition from 1964. You can almost inhale the promise of all those trains and boats and jets in that vanished world.
MR JAMES
I wanted to splice the classic spy story with the realm of the occult. Both worlds deal in shadows and secrets and tradecraft, after all. But while there are moments of visceral horror in The War in the Dark – and I’m not entirely sure what demon-encrusted pit in my psyche I dredged those from, given I’m a squeamish soul at the best of times – the biggest influence on that side of the book was MR James, who was the master of a very English, very understated dread. Stories like A Warning To The Curious and The Treasure of Abbot Thomas have such a gorgeous chill to them, like the damp stone of a ruined church wall – one with spiders in its cracks, naturally…. Even a title like After Dark in the Playing Fields has so much delicious shudder packed into its six simple words (you’re already running home, aren’t you? Something in the trees, or is it the wind...). James’ universe was one of runes and parchments, dust and concealment, where a little knowledge could be a very dangerous thing indeed…
SPY-FI HEROINES
The women of the ‘60s spy-fi boom were ahead of their time, so much more than the Bond Girl cliché of the decorative screamer in need of rescue. From Diana Rigg’s immaculately cool Emma Peel in The Avengers to newspaper strip heroine Modesty Blaise, the Contessa Valentina in Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD to Fiona Volpe in Thunderball (riding a rocket-loaded motorcycle, no less), this was a proactive, self-assured sisterhood that would probably put you in traction if you asked them to leave it to the men. Karina Lazarova in The War in the Dark is my tribute to that lethal, liberated lineage. She drives the plot just as much as Winter does – maybe more so – and there were times when I found myself running to keep up with her, just like Winter.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
Sometimes I think it’s the greatest film ever made. Most times I know it’s the greatest film ever made. It’s a movie that stole my head at a tender age – I went through a brief period of wanting to be an archaeologist, only to revise my options when I realised bullwhips and lost cities weren’t necessarily part of the career plan – and it still informs my idea of a great storytelling template. Yes, my hero’s also chasing down an occult treasure, but the inspiration I rip from Raiders is deeper than that. My dad turned to me as the credits rolled in the summer of ’81 and said “That was really well paced, wasn’t it?” Until that moment I’d never really considered the concept of pacing, not on a conscious level, at least. The idea that narrative speed could be a thing in and of itself was fascinating, and the next time I saw Raiders I thought about how it moved and realised what a precision instrument it was. If The War in the Dark has any kind of zip to it then it’s entirely down to Spielberg, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and, the film’s unsung hero, editor Michael Kahn. I never became an archaeologist but I still believe a globe-hopping treasure quest is a perfect narrative chassis.
JOAN AIKEN
Joan Aiken wrote spooky, thrilling stories for kids, possibly the noblest calling of all. Not the most obvious influence but she was brilliant, and possibly the first writer to ever strike me as having a style. I looked at the opening pages of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase the other day and realised how much she shaped my understanding of how you can put a sentence together (I even remember learning the word “sliver” from that book – and yes, it’s in The War in the Dark). She could collide words and make them detonate like synaesthetic grenades on the page. Just look at some of her titles: The Stolen Lake; The Whispering Mountain; The Crystal Crow; The Witch of Clatteringshaws (Clatteringshaws! What genius is that?). Her books to me will forever be the battered, sun-faded paperbacks on the classroom shelf, the ones that promised a liquorice-sweet darkness between their covers.