Interview with Danuta Reah
by Jon Jordan
Web Site

March/April 2003

JON:  To start this off, why don't you give an idea of what the books are about. They aren't really the typical detective stories, (I mean this in a good way!)

DANUTA:  I like to write about ordinary people who are pushed into difficult circumstances, look at the way they behave under stress. For example, in my first book, Only Darkness, a young woman becomes the target of a stalker/serial killer. She doesn't realize what is happening, she only knows that things are starting to fall apart around her. In Silent Playgrounds (Listen the Shadows in the US), a fragile woman is pushed into a situation in which makes her particularly vulnerable, and she almost brings the disaster she most fears on her family, friends and on herself because of this. For me, it isn't the mystery element that is the most important, it is the characters - though I know that the mystery element is important and part of what makes a book satisfying to a reader.

JON:  I see from your website that you also teach writing. Do you enjoy teaching?

DANUTA:  I like it very much. I think that writing is a very hard thing to teach, because there is no 'right' way to do - all the teacher can do is help people to find their own voice, and to get them to look very critically at their own work. One of the most difficult things is to see what you have written, rather than what you think you have written (I still have problems with this). Students will so often say, if a piece of writing is queried 'You see, what I'm saying here is...', and I have to get them to see that they can't travel with their manuscripts and explain to every reader what they meant - it has got to stand on its own.

JON:  What other kind of things have you done besides write novels? I've heard from a mutual acquaintance that you are also a cartoonist.

DANUTA:  I used to be a university lecturer, but the cartooning was fun. I haven't done it for ages (and it didn't exactly pay well). My biggest commission was for a series of cartoons for a book on software engineering - the writers had this idea about a bad software engineer being like a cowboy builder, and I had to draw the cartoons of all the things that tended to go wrong if software engineering was done like that. I also did some for a medical informatics conference (no, I don't know what it is either) about the ways computing could transform the life of a medical practice. I still do some academic work - I get to talk at conferences sometimes about things to do with English Language, which was my university subject. I've also taught English as a Foreign Language - it's a good way to travel.

JON:  What drew you to crime fiction, both as a reader and a writer?

DANUTA:  I have always liked being scared. I loved ghost stories when I was a child - reading them and telling them. I got thrown out of class when I was 10 for telling spooky stories that freaked the sewing teacher out. Crime fiction became a kind of extension of that, and I think, as well, that there are some very good writers working in the field. I never thought I could write crime fiction, because I haven't got the kind of mind that can think up puzzles and solve them - the mystery bit - but when I wrote Only Darkness, I found that didn't matter - I could let the plot run, and things would sort themselves out eventually. I often don't know myself who the killer is, not until a fair way through.

JON:  Who are some of the authors you consider to be "don't miss"?

DANUTA:  I love Kurt Vonnegut, John Irvine, Pat Barker, Barbara Kingsolver, Alison Lurie, Philip Pullman. It's always a good day for me when a new book comes out by one of these. In crime fiction, I like Francis Fyfield, Ruth Rendell (though not the Inspector Wexford books so much), Minette Walters, Giles Blunt, Stephen Booth, Stuart Pawson. One of the problems I've found with writing crime fiction is that I can't read so much - it's very difficult to read someone else's book while I am working on one of my own, so my reading window, as far as crime fiction goes, is very narrow.

JON:  Silent Playgrounds is one of the best title I've ever seen. Before I ask about the book, why did they change the title in the states?

DANUTA:  I honestly don't know. A lot of people have asked me. I thought at the time that it was a US/Brit language thing - that 'playground' didn't mean in the US what it means in the UK - but it seems this is not so. So I'm really at a loss there.

JON:  Now am I correct that your family background is Polish? What brought them to the UK?

DANUTA:  My father was born near Baranoviche, which is in Belarus. It was briefly in Poland - but he was actually Belarusian. He fought against the Nazis in the war - it was complicated, because the Soviets came across the border to reclaim territory at the same time as the nazis invaded from the west. My father escaped and came to the UK to join the Polish Free Forces. He was a paratrooper. After the war, he trained as an architect at Liverpool university, where he met my mother (Irish-English), and the rest is history, really...

JON:  Your books are a bit intense at times, and a little dark. How does writing them effect you?

DANUTA:  I think I have a depressive streak - it must be those Belarusian-Irish genes. The people I write about have a dark side to their lives, and that is what I like to explore. I write about people under pressure, and the way they react and behave when life is going badly - that is what interests me. I draw on my own experience, and sometimes I can find myself getting too much into a book. Then I need to get away from it - do some gardening, walk the dog, go for a walk. But to a writer, everything is material. I got my ideas for Silent Playgrounds (Listen to the Shadows) when I was walking the dog in the park.

JON:  How do you think living in Yorkshire influenced you, say as opposed to be brought up in London?

DANUTA:  Yorkshire is a very beautiful county, but it's also very poor, or it is in the part where I live, South Yorkshire. It's an area that depended on coal and steel, and both of those industries have gone. In the 1980s, we had a long and bitter miners' strike. The miners were put down with a lot of brutality - I was on a picket at Bolsover where the police charged the miners on horses. The changes have led to a lot of social deprivation and a lot of poverty - which leads to drug and crime problems. Before I became a full time writer, I taught in a college that catered for the kids from the mining valleys. They were great, but they had hard lives. Some of the characters from both Silent Playgrounds and Only Darkness were based on those kids. It's an area with a lot of contrasts and a lot of interesting history - there are a lot of stories here.

JON:  Do I remember correctly that you have a connection with the Yorkshire Ripper case? You knew some one involved?

DANUTA:  Yes. Peter Sutcliffe was caught in a car about ten minutes walk from where I live, with a woman I knew. She lived in the same accommodation as a friend of mine. Our children used to play together. I'd lost touch with her about nine months before it happened - it was a real shock.

JON:  Writing about people in jeopardy is a bit tricky. You do it quite well. Realistically, and not over the top. How do you accomplish this? Is it just damn good writing or is there a secret you can share?

DANUTA:  I think I draw quite a lot on those Yorkshire Ripper days. We were all very aware of the fact that he was around and could attack anyone. I've lived on my own a lot in old, Victorian houses, usually in urban, but isolated, settings - very gothic. I can imagine myself into a threatening situation, and I use that to create these scenes. I try to write them in a way that gives the reader a chance to use his or her imagination, draw on their own experience of threatening situations. I've also read a lot of scary books - Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill - I love them!

JON:  Are you surprised by the response of American readers? You are really getting a following over here.

DANUTA:  I was told that American readers wouldn't relate to the kinds of settings I use - provincial, urban England. But I have found that this just isn't true - I think that American readers range very widely in their tastes, and like books that offer something different. I've been surprised - but really pleased - by the response I get. One thing I like about American readers is that they are very happy to tell a writer if they like the books - and there's nothing a writer wants to hear more than that. I've very much enjoyed my visits to the US - as a total flight phobic, I had never been, until I came across for Bouchercon in Washington. For all sorts of reasons, the trip was a disaster, (flight delays, stolen wallet, illness - I did an article for the CWA magazine about it: Jonah at Bouchercon) but it was worth it because I met so many people I liked - and it's been worth it since - I have closed my eyes and flown across for Bouchercon and for Magna, and now for the mid-west tour. I still hide behind my scarf for take-off, and hold the plane in the air with my fingers dug into the upholstery, but I'm getting better..

JON:  The subject matter in Silent Playgrounds (Listen To The Shadows in the US) was kind of dark. Was it a hard book to write?

DANUTA:  I based it on some work I did with young male offenders, when I was researching into a possible link between language disorders and criminal behaviour. Most of the youths on the programme were slightly troubled teenagers, often very bright and talented, who needed to do some growing up, but some were very badly damaged and had the kinds of backgrounds that give you nightmares. They were so young - that's what I remember thinking the first time I met the group. And they were also very vulnerable - some of them were a danger to themselves, and to others. It seemed a tragedy that some people should be so disadvantaged from birth. I know some people are strong enough to come through it - but not everyone. I'm in no way convinced I would have been. So I wanted to write about the damage we do to our children - and the first damaged character who formed in my mind was Suzanne, who is actually the researcher. She was, when I first began plotting the book, supposed to be a strong, independent woman who was very together, but she just didn't work out that way, and I couldn't understand why - then I realised that she had this middle-class abusive background, and a terrible guilt about something in her past. Then I realised that she was doing the research in a kind of misguided attempt to assuage her guilt - though she didn't realise then. I knew she would empathize with the youths on the programme, and the story began to roll. I truly like almost all of the characters in that book. Parts of it were very sad to write. It took a lot of work - I found it very hard to write.

JON:  What question do you get asked more than any other?

DANUTA:  Apart from 'Where do you get your ideas?', I get asked if I've ever thought about writing a 'proper' book (Truly, people ask me this!). I always say: 'You mean one with pages and things? Oh, I'm not clever enough to do that.'

JON:  Do you think that as a writer you are more prone to watching what goes on around you and observing behaviour than most people are?

DANUTA:  I've always been an observer rather than a participator. I like watching people, and I like watching them interact. Mind you, I'm also a daydreamer, so I miss a lot. One of the things I tend to do is try to work out how to put what I'm seeing into words - how I can describe it so that the person reading the book will see something like what I'm seeing.

JON:  What’s the most difficult part of being a writer?

DANUTA:  Being creative when I just don't feel like it. When I wrote my first book, Only Darkness, I wasn't working for a contract - I didn't expect to get it published - so I could write when I felt like it (which was most of the time, as it turned out, but that was because the pressure wasn't on). But sometimes it's hard to stare at a blank screen and put words there. I don't suffer from writers' block - I just write - but I press the delete button a lot. As a writer of stand-alones, I find it very hard to say goodbye to the characters at the end of a book, and to start creating a whole new set of people in a different set of circumstances. And by the time I've got to know them - I've got to say goodbye again.

JON:  Crime fiction seems to be a very good way to make social commentary, why do you think that is?

DANUTA:  I think because crime is part of all levels of society and anyone can commit it. Crime can come from social disharmony and disorder, and often from injustice. A lot of crime writers look at modern society and say - look, terrible things come from terrible circumstances. I've never had a lot of time for the kind of book that has a criminal who is just plain evil - I like to know, at the end of the book, why the person did what they did, and what could have happened in their lives to change things. So much crime has its roots in wider society. Silent Playgrounds and Only Darkness both looked at different kinds of abusive backgrounds, Night Angels looked at the effects of the fall of the USSR on the poor, particularly the trafficking of young women, Bleak Water looked at the effects of miscarriages of justice. The book I'm working on at the moment looks at guilt, and asks the question: Who has the truth of the past?

JON:  What is your favorite way to spend a weekend?

DANUTA:  Either at home in the garden - We have a big, mature garden that is always ahead of us. There's always work to do in the garden. Ken, my husband, is a keen gardener, but I'm more hit and miss. I am death to honeysuckle, but quite good with clematis and forsythia. I wage war on the slugs, and Ken does the expert work. Otherwise, I like to go to the sea - we can drive across to the east coast in a couple of hours and go to one of the fishing towns - Whitby is my favourite - and stay for a couple of days.

JON:  What kind of movies do you enjoy?

DANUTA:  I used to love scary horror movies, but these days I'm more into fantasy. I loved the Lord of the Rings movies, both of them. I still like subtle horror, or creepy films. I thought The Others was amazing, and I liked The Sixth Sense. I thought The Blair Witch Project was over-rated, but it had been so hyped, I don't suppose it could possibly have lived up to expectations. I'm very behind with movies just now - there are several I want to see, and I just haven't had time. I saw The Hours recently, which I liked a lot. As you can see, it's a wide range - but I can't wait for the next LoTR.

JON:  What’s the coolest thing a reader has said to you?

DANUTA:  Someone said once that they'd been traveling north in the UK, and they'd made a special detour to visit Sheffield, because they wanted to visit Shepherd Wheel (one of the locations for Silent Playgrounds/Listen to the Shadows). And they said that the locations were exactly the way they had imagined them from reading the book. I was bowled over by that.

JON:  What’s the one thing always in your refrigerator?

DANUTA:  Green and Black's plain chocolate. Mmmm! It should be banned.