The desire for revenge is primeval. It’s not considered to have a place in civilised society but, let’s face it, we all know what it feels like to want to ‘get one’s own back’ on someone who has hurt us, or those we love, although the extremes to which we’re prepared to go probably don’t mutate into murder even if we feel murderous. For this reason vengeance is a popular theme in thrillers and crime fiction. It’s a gift to a writer simply because it creates the maximum opportunity to slip off those kid gloves and let rip with the action. In ‘Final Target,’ the old adage ‘Hell hath no fury …’ is the point, hence the creation of sexy Simone Fabron. Women, when they seek retribution, can be very bad indeed.
As much as ‘Final Target’ is a ‘whodunnit,’ it’s also a ‘whydunnit’, and this is the aspect of characterisation that interests me most as a writer. In a sense, we’re all amateur psychologists and I’m very much in the camp of people aren’t born bad, but created, often through a host of complex and converging reasons that don’t need to be discussed here. Suffice to say that I don’t believe any of us are immune. Given the right circumstances, most of us can be corrupted by life events and, consequently, behave appallingly. It’s this motivation, which, for me, holds a certain fascination. Almost more compelling is the horrific chain reaction that can spring from a single malign act. Luckily, this kind of thing is easier to chart in fiction than control in real life.
Any reader familiar with my stories will recognise that I’m a fan of redemptive themes. Having made a pretty good start to redeeming himself towards the end of ‘A Deadly Trade,’ Hex is still working on his path back to what passes for a decent life in ‘Final Target’. But, in addition to a high body count, conflict is the name of the game in thrillers so right from the get-go, Hex struggles with his natural instinct, which is to revert to type. For me, it was an easy sell. Having spent his adult life devoted to the next ‘job’, the buzz and thrill of the chase, Hex was never going to credibly settle into a 9 to 5, with weekends and Sunday roast lifestyle. He’d find it far too mundane. Fortunately, Inger McCallen, Hex’s weak spot – every main protagonist needs at least one – and voice of conscience, turns his new life upside down on the opening page and rescues him from a slow death from boredom.
I love McCallen. Smart, competitive and ambitious, she’s a woman who works to her own agenda. Their ‘will they, won’t they’ get it together relationship is a deliberately teasing, fun element in the book. Aside from serving a primary role as joint ‘sleuth’, McCallen allows Hex to explore that streak of sensitivity that passes for his emotional side and makes him more attractive.
Did I face any difficulties or dilemmas when writing the novel? Yes, there was one. It’s virtually impossible to write a contemporary story with more than a passing nod to espionage, without referring to technology in some form or another. This was made doubly difficult because the novel is set in Cheltenham, which is home to the U.K’s third intelligence service: GCHQ. In fiction, as in life, there is heavy emphasis on the way we are tracked, watched and studied by unseen powers with the kind of sophisticated technology that can identify, not only the terrorist at a distance, but the brand of cigarette he or she smokes. Technology plays a huge role in all our lives and the UK has possibly more CCTV than any other country in Europe. We all believe that we are under surveillance 24/7 and that the chances of pulling off a crime are zero. And yet, we also know that individuals can and do get away with murder, that crimes remain unsolved, that people evade capture, sometimes for decades, that folk disappear without trace, and that, sadly, airplanes can mysteriously vanish. In the spy world, there are advocates of what’s described as ‘humint’ – intelligence gained from human sources, and ‘sigint’, which makes up the volume of intelligence, from signals and technical communication. Both systems of obtaining information have advantages and disadvantages, which is why a combination of both is used by security services throughout the world. Some believe that, irrespective of the massive amount of data gleaned from sigint (machines), the gathering of human intelligence from assets provides a closer explanation of why people do what they do. It’s also worth remembering that even the most advanced technology is only as a good as the person operating the system. As a writer, this is what interests me and, for that reason, I’ve concentrated on the human element in the story, sometimes at the expense of the technical. In ‘Final Target’, the powers that be may well have an inkling of what our main man is up to but, for political considerations, are willing to sit back and let him run his own course and, more importantly, take the flak and the fall for what unfolds. Cutting to the chase, the importance of gadgetry in this work is understated. I hope readers, who are fans of uber-technology, will be forgiving.
Eve Seymour, Cheltenham 2014.