For reasons far too convoluted to explain here, I’m off to Spain for a week in a couple of days time. I’ve been to the country a few times before, but only to Barcelona and only ever on business. This time it’s Andalusia and what could be a very nice jaunt around Granada, Seville and the Costa del Sol. I might even stray into Gibraltar. I’ve even had the odd fantasy about jumping on a ship over to Morocco. Who knows? I’m a restless soul at the best of times but just at the moment this trait is really to the fore. The recession has not just hit the family Nadel it has smashed it in the face and kicked out its guts. Without going into too much detail (if I told you everything I’d have to kill you) this is a work issue and the upshot of it is that I now find myself breadwinning for a small army. Spain was booked way before any of this came to pass and so I have to go because it’s all bought and paid for. I am wondering how long I can make a single plate of paella last and am considering possibly a little light busking. I wonder if you get arreasted for singing badly on street corners in Spain?

But it’s all grist to the authorly mill. Also people in Spain are very angry about the recession at the moment and so there will be an element of ‘home from home’ about the whole experience. Apparently young Spaniards are on the march about their truncated life prospects and quite rightly so. The international financial crisis is affecting the whole of Europe and is eroding hope for millions. We got angry here in the UK at the beginning of the year, although things seem to have calmed down again now, for the time being. But we’ll get mad again here, I can guarantee it. After all, the terrible Sir Fred Goodwin has been back in the papers again in the last few weeks and he is an absolute dead cert to send any right thinking person into a cycle of madness. Sir Fred used to run the Royal Bank of Scotland which he basically bankrupted. However because he’d locked the bank into a legal contract that meant that whatever he did they (or rather the taxpayers once the bank went bust) would have to pay him a vast pension for the rest of his life whatever terrible things he may have done, Fred walked away with £600,000 per year no questions asked. Now we discover (in yet another super injunction revelation) that while Fred was bankrupting RBS he was also allegedly having an illicit affair. Couldn’t give a damn about that except that there is a suggestion that one of the ways in which he attempted to ‘impress’ this woman was by doing very big, very risky business deals with the banks money. Now that is of public interest and, if true, his great big fat pension should be withdrawn immediately. Except that it won’t be.

Anyone rich enough to be able to pay to take our a super injunction to gag the whole world is almost completely beyond the law. They are untouchable in a way that Joe Public cannot even imagine. I can say almost anything about the Queen (God bless her!) but there are businessmen, footballers and ‘reality stars’ in this country who would bankrupt me just for mentioning their names. They’d bankrupt a woman struggling support a family in hard times. What kind of world do we live in? Look for me at the barricades with all the Spanish youngsters.

They were sitting in a circle playing cards. They were big old aunties and overweight nieces and it could have been a family reunion if it weren’t for the fact they were dressed (barely) in transparent halter-necks and large underwear that highlighted their bulges. They appeared to be having a good time but I don’t speak German so I lost a lot of their jokes. They were apparently playing strip poker because one by one they removed their garments until each of them was naked. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It occurred to me I’d chanced upon the on-demand porn channel and they’d bill me for 1000 Euros the next morning, but no. It was, like CNN and the cartoons, just a channel that you surfed your way through on the hotel TV. I wondered whether perhaps this was another development of my religious experience in Munich. Whether just by looking at the newsreader I might be able to convince her to remove her clothing. I imagined it was what God might do as a hobby when running the Universe got a bit slack. And, you see, in Munich, I had become God.

Somewhere in the bible, probably the beginning, there was a line that went something like, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”. I was there in the beginning and it was me who wrote that first word. Before me there was no Dr. Siri and no series and no book tours and absolutely no reason for five hundred people to turn up at the city mortuary lecture theatre with photos of me and autograph books and cameras. There would have been no interview with the city coroner, no movie star sitting beside me reading a German version of my words, no morgue dolly with police tape to lie on, no after-show dinner with actresses and directors and beautiful publicists. I had created this universe so I was God.

I’d had no clue of my forthcoming omnipotence as I sat on the veranda with my empty notebook, my budget pack of blue biros, my glass of cheap red box wine and my pack of sleeping dogs. ‘The Word’ extended to two or three then the Sentence then the Paragraph and a year later there was the Book with my name on it. The Book did reasonably well but did not make me wealthy nor change my life greatly. I received emails from Texas and Western Samoa and Milton Keynes but these were isolated outbreaks of Dr. Siri fever. No communes sprouted out of this sporadic enthusiasm. But somewhere in Germany seeds of wonder Germinated into a flowery patch of addiction and Dr. Siri cultivated his own cult. And like William Shatner arriving at the Star Trek convention, we were mobbed by adoring fans and our heads grew large to a point where we could no longer get into the hotel room through the door and had to be inserted via the French windows.

Last night my movie star and his entourage of beautiful starlets and God moved on to Stuttgardt, another corner of My universe where Dr. Siri fans crammed into a small windowless bookshop and the sweaty scent of adoration pervaded. German crime writers sat at our feet and offered us wine and roasted boar. Tonight our road show moves on to Hanover followed by Hamburg. Hamburg airport is currently closed due to another Icelandic volcano (Iceland’s only known export) but I figure that if I can denude women on television, what is a cloud of volcanic ash to stand in the way of Me?

For those you concerned that God may be affected by this in a negative way, rest assured that God is a humble deity and will continue to associate with the little people. May I be with you.

I ran across this quote by Dr. Sriprapha Petcharamesree of the Centre for Human Rights Studies at Mahidol University who is quoted as having said, “We are stuck in a system of impunity. We can’t break it without accountability.” I want to come back to this idea that links impunity with accountability. It is indeed a truism and while necessary, it is not sufficient.

Crime fiction is a big house covering many approaches to anti-social, unlawful, and harmful conduct. Just to say the word ‘crime’ is to create a range of visions in the listener. Like ‘pornography’, ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’, ‘fairness’, and ‘justice,’ the term ‘crime’ evokes as much a visceral, emotional reaction as they do a philosophical debate.  What if, like in the Lord of the Rings, you can put on the magical ring and become invisible? And the ring makes you exempt from law. Makes you immune from punishment. Would you be able to take that ring off after it had been in your family for generations, and would you want to keep the family tradition and pass it down to your children? The claims made by kin and friends are often in conflict with the claims made by society. Politics and crime is a series of questions of who do you put first, second and third in the scheme of things?

These are the questions of our time. In Thailand and many other parts of the world ordinary people are trying to change the old political arrangements elites have enjoyed, including their control of State and major institutions.

Francis Fukuyama’s The Origin of the Political Order (2011) gives a good framework to evaluate this process of change against the historical record of cultures going back to ‘deep’ time. Fukuyama’s thesis is: By understanding the nature of a structure of a political order, its institutional strengthens and weaknesses, and the historical forces that shaped the order and institutions, we can begin to understand the origin of big crime. By big crime, this isn’t the serial killer or major bank heist, but crime of a different order of magnitude. It is the difference between slavery and bank robbery. The scale is radically different, the damage and harm infinitely greater and more enduring. Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s genocide are examples that come to mind.

Chinese emperors had the absolute right to put anyone to death on a whim. Nothing in Chinese power and authority, which according to Fukuyama is over 2,000 years old, making it the first ‘modern’ state. But this modern Chinese state wasn’t accompanied either self-constrained in the exercise of power or laws that made power accountable. If the emperor chose to have hundreds of his court buried alive, that wasn’t a crime. In this case, the emperor had violated no law in carrying out the mass murder of courtiers. There was no accountability in such a system.

What strikes us is how such conduct was not regarded as a crime in ancient China. Fukuyama provides a compelling reason for the political deficits in ancient China and modern countries such as Thailand. The culprit is the degree of strength of the rule of law. Thailand, like Latin America, holds elections, has a parliament and other institutions of government, but the weakness of rule of law is evident in the corruption and bribe-taking culture. So far so good but at this stage we don’t really understand what makes for a ‘weak’ rule of law as opposed to a culture which has a ‘strong’ rule of law.

Fukuyama is instructive on this point. The place to start is with the political and social elites of a legal system. You learn about the nature of the system by studying the attitudes, privileges, alliances and culture of the elite members of that society. They are the most powerful and influential actors within the legal system. Whether the elites ‘own’, ‘control’ and ‘administer’ the legal system is another indication of stability. The elites and their allies want the state to act to protect their property rights and liberty against the state but not to act against them. They wanted it both ways in other words.

But it doesn’t stop there. That’s why this is the “origin of Big Crime” as someone has to pay for the system. If the elites won’t pay, that leaves the rest of us holding the bag. The unfair taxation and resource allocation can be traced to the elites who once they’ve secured their privileges and protections see no good reason to extend the rule of law to the vast majority of the population. Plunder their resources, and give them little in return is an old, tested and tried way of governing in many cultures throughout history.

Indeed Fukuyama gives good examples of Spanish and French elites aligning with the state against the masses to tax and exploit them. Ask yourself, is the rule of law a narrow category protecting the elite or does it cast its net wide, covering all members of the society and the institutions of government ensure the protections are not hollowed out in practice.

The fundamental issue of fairness becomes a central issue. Fairness of law quickly comes into play if members of the elites exempt themselves, relatives, and friends from the law. The exemption isn’t necessarily formal but is the background operating system for the entire governing enterprise. If a pattern of systematic exemptions occur there will be, in time, a backlash, and members of the non-elite segment—the vast majority of people in a society—believe the law (which might on the surface be ‘just’) is unfair because the authorities have failed or refused to apply it even-handedly. Ask yourself, do members of the elite in a legal system go to jail for breaking the law? It has been a question asked by many inside Thailand where elites and their children—no matter their political affiliation—avoid criminal sanctions for their criminal conduct.

Fukuyama drives home the elite exemption point throughout the book as a defining characteristic of a political system:

“For how can a mere institution constrain the rich and powerful if they don’t at some level believe in the need for self-constraint, or at least in the need to constrain others like themselves? If the judges and prosecutors and police can be bought off or intimidated, as happens in many countries where the rule of law is weak, what difference does the existence of the formal institution make?”

If the state can’t enforce the law against the elites then the law’s legitimacy won’t survive and it matters not that the law may have a respectable lineage in religion, tradition or custom. Laws are inextricably woven with the even-handed enforcement of the law. Exempting the elites from the application of laws is the surest way to bring the legal system into disrepute and to undermine the legitimacy of the law-makers, law-enforcers, and the law.

Without an elite willing to be constrained by law, the legal system will find itself under increasing pressure until it finally collapses under the weight of its own internal contradiction. From the ruins a new legal system with self-constraining elites create the environment for legitimacy to take root.

Dr. Sriprapha Petcharamesree’s remarks for the need for accountability of the elites is certainly true. But without a broad consensus that the elites not only wish protection from the law against stronger agents, but are also subject to laws like all other citizens. Until there is an attitude among the elites to submit to the law even though certain privileges, benefits and exemptions will be reduced, there can be no accountability. With such a change of attitude, the old system will cook the accountability books. Claims that the books balance and deflect the uneven-handed application of the law through censorship, intimation, threats, reprisals, exile or imprisonment of critics.

Next time you see the new Benz or BMW with the decals and icons showing the owners affiliation with powerful social, political or economic institutions, you can read them for what they are: we are exempt from laws. We can do what we like. We are too powerful to be stopped by the police and certainly not arrested. We exist above the law. Thailand has become a society divided into factions by colour, and more importantly by decals and logos and icons that represent associations with power, wealth and status. These are more than just symbols. People with the right decal on their windscreen are immune from many laws. It is the prevailing attitude of Thailand’s elites that they are entitled to such immunity that becomes exhibit A in making the weak rule of law case. The Thai elites are strong, and show indication that ‘self-constraint’ isn’t something associated with elite rule.

The new social media is making inroads into the legitimacy of elite attitudes, values and claims. As such matters are difficult to explain let alone justify once raised, the reaction is to attack the person making the assertion rather than addressing the underlining issues. Fukuyama and others like him have raised questions about the social and political obligation of elites to constrain themselves for a common good. Elites, who customarily have left a few crumps for the rest of society, fear democracy. This is totally understandable as to why they would be afraid. Such elites can continue their unrestrained activities only when yoked in the field with an authoritarian government. Cutting down on privileges and benefits by the elites as we’ve seen just about everywhere creates societal conflict and casualties. Fukuyama’s book raises the question as to when and where the elites who absolute power over a legal system voluntary ceded power to a larger community?

This is the great crime story of our time. It remains unclear whether Thailand’s elites, or those elsewhere in the world—and this is hardly a problem limited to Thailand—will find a way to share resources, forgo exemptions, modify privileges all in the name for a more fair, and just society. Technology is not the friend of the elites in this contest. The elites have discovered that they no longer control the information or the message. Ordinary people have tapped in the global information flow that like a tsunami washes over the state controlled media. The elites have also been submerged in the new information age. Fighting against the new technology makes the elites appear desperate and fearful, and their actions harsh, repressive and futile.

We are in the election season in Thailand, with the election scheduled on 3^rd July. It is early days but from the starting gates. So far none of the political parties or leaders has outlined how they propose to deal with the entitlements, privileges and exemptions of the elites. Such an absence of focus might be evidence the election is not a battle to constrain the elites, but a battle between various groups of elites who once in power would wish to have all the privileges, benefits and exemptions that normally go with governing.

Populism isn’t the remedy for the problem when the real issues are justice and fairness. Buying off the masses with money programs is only a temporary way to shore up legitimacy. Sooner or later, the unfairness in the way the system works returns and people take to the streets. The hard political work is to establish a new social consensus inclusive enough to bind the elites and ordinary people in a compact to observe the law. People habitually avoid hard work. But a point does arise, when the pressure, contradictions, and anger can no longer be restrained by the state. That places modern authoritarian governments in a bind: Pressure from the elites to keep their exemptions, and upward from the masses to bring the elites into the fold. There are a number of countries where such issues are less on the table as in the city squares and streets.

The Middle-East is a great test of such a historical event in the making. Marx might have been surprised to find that a digital opium pipe—with an unlimited supply, fixes and addicts—had largely supplanted religion for the literate class. And from those new digital opium dreams, new arrangements of power may lead to a more equitable, fair, just and accountable society. Or would they create a new digital elite whose members like the traditional elites before them hoard and treasure their entitlements and exemptions, and move heaven and earth to preserve society’s buffet for themselves and their kin?

I hope you all like the headline. I think it ought to rate well on search engines. See how technological I’ve become?

The coming week will see the unveiling of my new podcast. I’ll be podcasting as The Man of Twists and Turns, which is the title of my own blog (and the identifier Homer gave to his eponymous hero in The Odyssey.) It represents a new stage in my vigorous efforts to promote my work on the internet and the latest step in the slow creep of technology into my writing life.

Quite slow, in fact. Because I thought I’d start podcasting last week. But I couldn’t get the soundcard to work. Or perhaps it was the microphone, or the mic cord. It could have been the internal soundcard on my computer. Well, look, I’m a novelist; if I had been au fait with such technological things in the first place I’d have been a…I don’t know what, but I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have been a novelist. Oh, yes, rich. I’d have been rich.

Still, everything works now. All I have to do is figure out exactly how the audio editing program on my computer works and then… I’ll bring you my dulcet tones, cast into the pod. If that’s your thing. Otherwise you can read what I write on my blog, or what I post on Facebook or Twitter. Or you can read me…here on Reality Check.

So what’ll be on the podcast?

The first “show” will be me introducing and reading my new Arab Spring short story in which my detective character Omar Yussef goes to Damascus for a reunion and finds himself caught up in the current freedom demonstrations. It’s my immediate response to events in the Arab world – more immediate than spending a year writing a whole novel and then waiting another year for the publisher to put it on the shelves.

I’ll follow that with a chapter a week from each of my novels, introduced by me with some talk about the themes of the book and how I came to write them. I do quite a dramatic reading with my faux Shakespearean-actor voice, so I hope these’ll be a good listen.

These initial ones will give me a chance to master the technology … alone. Because after that I shall be podcasting with guests. I wouldn’t want to inflict on myself the embarrassment of saying (as might be inevitable), “Ah, could we go back and do those last couple of questions again, because I pressed the wrong button and I erased them. Or maybe I pressed the effects button which makes you sound like Cher singing ‘Do You Believe in Life After Love?’”

At that point I shall be interviewing other writers – I plan on starting with my fellow Reality Checkers, CGM, Barbara and Margie (who are learning about this for the first time as they read this; sorry, but the internet and technology moves fast, guys…)

I shall chat with them about their work and their lives. Then I shall invite them to engage in The Man of Twists and Turns’ regular end of show feature (I’m told by those who podcast that listeners like regular features.) The feature is going to be a variation on an old BBC show in which an author or some celebrity was asked to name one of two books he/she’d be allowed to take to a desert island (the other book was always the Complete Shakespeare.)

I’ve updated the concept to this: Guantanamo Bay Books. You, the guest, get to take two books to your cell in Guantanamo Bay. One is the unmissable Deception Point, sorry that should be Decision Point, by George W. Bush. The other is a book of your choice.

So what would your Guantanamo Bay Book be?

And if you have other ideas for regular features on my podcast, write them into the comments section of this blog. I might even name the segment after you.

Really got back to my roots last Thursday. I’m down in London a lot now, on business and researching my new series that is set in and around the modern London Borough of Newham. This is my home borough and so I feel very strongly about it. My hope is that I can make other people feel that way about it too. Newham, after all, isn’t just for the 2012 Olympics – or at least it shouldn’t be.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been out and about on the highways and byways of east London, revisiting familiar spots, finding new places and generally immersing myself back into the old manor. One of the most enjoyable things that I did was get back down on the mud. This is the River Thames mud or ‘beach’ as we used to call it as kids which can be accessed via old sets of stone stairs which pepper the shore line from the City of London right down the river to Dagenham. Just east of the City, at Wapping, my friend Sarah and I went down onto the mud via a set of stairs beside the Prospect of Whitby pub. Wapping is old smugglers London and the Prospect stairs are suitably wet, slimy and forbidding. Clad in monstrous rubber boots, Sarah and I inched forward carefully. Breaking a leg or an ankle down on the mud is no joke even today and, as one who has already broken a leg in the past, I was not up for any of that sort of action. So it was a tense descent towards the low lying river but it was, as always, well worth it.

Down on the mud you can fully appreciate just how impressive structures like Tower Bridge and London City Hall really are. For a native like myself it also brings home just how much the city has changed during my lifetime. When I was a child in the 1960s the view from the mud was of derelict, rotting warehouses and of old buildings rendered black by over a century of dirty coal soot. Now the shore is covered with smart apartments, some of which have been developed from older grain stores and wharves. Both the old and the new views have and had their points. Personally I just wish that the posh apartments were more affordable. The shore has always been, until recently, a diverse place to live. Now it is very much the preserve of the wealthy.

One constant is the river itself. We went down to where it lapped the mud and I was pleased when I saw that it was the same grey/brown colour that it had always been. There’s an old London legend that states that Londoners whose eyes are the same grey tinged with brown as the river, are actually part London rat. Now minus the actual rats, both alive and dead, as well as the fear of cholera that haunted my youth, the Thames is really quite clean. It also still throws up amazing things.

As well as the old ubiquitous crisp and cigarette packets, the Thames also continues to throw up artefacts from other times, both distant and fairly recent. Little bits of blue, green and patterned pottery dot the mud like jewels and stems from 18^th century clay pipes (sometimes complete with the bowl too!) are very, very common. However amazingly really, really common are fragments of Roman roof tiles. Thick terracotta pancakes, sometimes with holes where nails held them to structures long since crumbled to dust require only a cursory scan of the mud to come to light. Not only does this make me astonished at how industrious our Roman forebears were but also at the miraculous preservative qualities of river and of mud. As we trudged about contentedly, even small pieces of patterned Roman Samian pottery came to light.

For the first time in a long time I actually felt rooted, calm and totally at my ease. This year is not proving an easy one thus far and I had not felt as good as I did down on the mud for months. Of course care has to be taken when going down on the mud and tide times must be checked and patches of quicksand have to be noted and avoided, but with some care the mud is a liberating place to be. When Sarah and I did eventually walk back onto dry land again, I actually felt a little sad. But I’ll be back. The mud will always draw me.

The Monty Hall problem involves choosing a door with a prize as opposed to a lion that will leap out and eat you. When a crime has been committed, The Monty Hall problem provides two doors to choose from: one gives the victim revenge against the perpetrator, the other door requires the victim and perpetrator to reconcile.

What’s it going to be? Will it be a knife or a wai (or handshake)?

One of the pre-election promises of the opposition Thai political party is to grant amnesty for those charged with crimes after the coup in September 2006. The premise is, if elected, those on both sides of the political divide and their supporters who face criminal charges will be granted a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Though the details as to what conduct and what individuals is vague. Wiggle room is a Siam twin with most amnesty proposals. Finding the Goldilocks just right spot is not an easy task.

Crimes arising from politics or political activity are on the increase in many countries. Thailand is not alone in the category of nation states where those in authority have passed new laws or used existing laws to impose criminal sanctions on a variety of individuals who claim allegiance to one of a multitude of political factions. Such people are public in their opposition to the government.

In the political realm, those in power find it expedient to criminalize collaborations that threatened their own political legitimacy. Those who dissent, challenge or criticize state policy and actions are particularly vulnerable to the long-arm of the law. While there is often a lot of talk about accountability, in practice leaders abhor the idea.

If writers had the power to imprison critics who wrote critically of their work, they would likely exercise their power to throw their critics in jail. Those critics who remained would sing the glory and praises of all writers. What if an author could ban other competing writers from writing books? He or she backed up that authority with the power to jail other writers who continued to write books or said bad things about them. We wouldn’t much like a world where that was possible, but we shrug off a political world where such conduct is becoming common.

It’s not that politicians are much different than the rest of us. They’re not. But they have power of laws, freedom, and they have the guns to back up their authority. That means, just like writers, members of the public should be able to assign a ‘one star’ vote as to their performance and policies.

Social networks have allowed the disaffected in society to cluster their voices. Co-operation and collaboration is easier as is the information exchange between members of various groups. The two most effective ways to blunt the opposing forces is to interdict, censor or ban information and to criminalize activity of those who trade in such information.

The process of implementing such a program has seen blowback in the Middle East. Political crimes are a different category from the usual crimes such as murder, robbery, muggings, assaults and rape. Though in many cases someone who the authorities wish to sideline may find a traditional criminal charges has been brought in order to avoid the appearance of political reprisal. In reality, the line between political and other crimes is often blurred. It isn’t as bright and solid as we would like.

The problem with criminalizing conduct or words in a political context is those who have been made criminals will look for the opportunity to exact revenge once the tables turn and they have achieved power and those who are now out of power are vulnerable.

This tit-for-tat political revenge leads to a spiral of violence and discord that can last for many years. Revenge is one of the most powerful emotions that we experience. Revenge is a high-octane emotion that is difficult to control. It becomes a high-speed car with failed brakes and the driver simply doesn’t care so long as the crash takes down those who caused him or his loved one’s harm.

Revenge also undercuts the system of justice as the system is co-opted by those in power to get even against those who have been turned out. A justice system that is a handmaiden of revenge is not a justice system but a mechanism for institutions to justify revenge in the name of due process. The rule of law shatters. People lose faith in the administration of justice.

While revenge has many flaws and disadvantages, amnesty isn’t necessarily the cure that will always work if put in place. When people are badly divided, feel aggrieved and excluded, and believe that they’ve been repressed—and repression is both a state of mind and physical reality—how willing are they to forgive and forget? Reconciliation is a process that encourages forgiveness. Forgetting is a different matter. People have long memories. But they can be encouraged, in the right circumstances, with the right incentives, to move on.

Amnesty rest on the basis that nothing or nobody can be reconciled unless the cycle of revenge is broken. The tit-for-tat application of criminal law by the in group against the out group, in theory, comes to an end, once everyone is forgiven, the restart button is pushed and everyone moves ahead, leaving the past behind.

One of the hallmarks of our era is the lack of appetite for forgiveness. That is true for the garden-variety non-political criminal as well as the political activists charged with a number of crimes. Emotions are raw in most countries. People are angry and vindictive. You don’t see pundits or leaders (those in power) offering counsel that one should be ‘turning the other cheek’ (and a new generation couldn’t be faulted for thinking that was a medical term rather than one that falls under morality and ethics).

Keeping with the medical metaphor for a moment, checking the pulse of the larger social groups from Thailand to America and most other countries, it is racing. Hot with emotions. Determined and committed. Amnesty is prescribed like the right medicine. But will the patients swallow that medicine or spit it out? One day, we’ll look back on this period as the time when the nation states around the world suffered from high blood pressure and clogged arteries. And no one wanted to take their medicine.

We live in a dangerous time for peacemakers. Olive branches? Greece has gone bust and there is little chance that a brisk business in selling olive branches will bring their economy back to good health. Forgiveness remains one of those feel good words from a long, long time ago. Though, one shouldn’t be fooled by a woolly notion of the past where everyone turned the other cheek. That past never existed. For most of our history, revenge is what our ancestors carried out with ruthless efficiency. Indeed it may have given some groups an evolutionary advantage by reinforcing the bond of trust among those carrying out the revenge.

We only have thought that we’ve turned a corner and an enlightened human nature would allow us to embrace the concept of forgiveness. Despite our perpetual conflicts with one another, we had hope we open a new chapter in our development where those with power would allow others with differing opinions and views a jail free zone to express them.  That, however, is not our world.

Amnesty is based on something more than forgiveness: it also rests on tolerance.

And how much tolerance do you witness in the political sphere?

Zero is the number that comes to mind. It is unfortunate that zero has attached itself like a demon to the idea of tolerance, draining it of substance and meaning. Without tolerance, the criminalization process will continue on automatic pilot. No one in power, and no one who achieves power, will have the ability to unplug that machinery. Amnesty in this world threatens to become a temporal space where warring factions can regroup and plot revenge.

In the Monty Hall problem, there were three real choices.

In this version of crime, revenge is the reality check lurking behind all three doors. The ‘modern’ guidebook is the Old Testament with its eye-for-an-eye morality; while the New Testament has become a relic from the analog world. One day Hobbes may be viewed as a prophet for the digital age where every wrong is remembered, in a world where no one can forgive or forget and reconciliation is a distant memory. And Noir fiction may be viewed as a documentary record of our time as future historians look back and marveled at our appetite for revenge.

Crime novelists generally write a novel a year. It’s what publishers want. Some big writers—and I mean, 25 million books sold—have told me their publishers and agents complain that if they don’t produce a book a year their readers will forget them.

In the case of such writers, some of those 25 million may have degenerative diseases and others may be plain stupid, but in all likelihood about 24 million of them will remember a writer whose book they read, let’s say, two years ago.

Nonetheless the expectation remains that a book a year will be forthcoming. So do all crime writers have one good idea a year? Or do ideas take longer to gestate? And if they do, where does that leave the writer who needs to get words on paper right now.

In the case of my latest novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA (out now in the UK, but not until November in the US), it was eight years between the initial idea and publication. A most un-crime-fiction-like timescale.

It began with a trip I took with my wife into the Salzkammergut, to find peace among the mountains and lakes at a time when we were living through the Palestinian intifada in Jerusalem. There we stumbled across the remote house where Mozart’s sister Nannerl had lived and a fascination with her was born.

It was nurtured through future visits to Vienna, to Prague (where Mozart’s operas are still performed in the Estates Theater, scene of his “Don Giovanni” premier), dinners with Maestro Zubin Mehta at which we discussed our mutual admiration for the great composer (though it shan’t surprise you to learn that his understanding of the music is on a somewhat, ahem, more elevated level than mine…)

All this was before I began to scribble notes and plot diagrams and to read every letter Mozart wrote and to walk Vienna searching out the places where I wanted to set scenes and to listen, listen, listen to all his music. Oh, and to learn to play the piano so I could play Mozart, but the less said about that the better, because sooner or later someone’s going to want to hear me play and I oughtn’t to inflict that on anyone.

Meanwhile, I wrote four of my crime novels set in present-day Palestine (and Brooklyn’s Little Palestine.) They came quicker. Perhaps because after the first book, THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM, I had a set of characters to whom I could return. The events I described were often based on stories I had covered as a journalist, so there were readymade anchors for the plot—things which had actually happened, which I had heard described or even seen for myself.

The most important element, though, of putting yourself in a position to write a book a year is a matter of managing your head. I’ve come to believe that remaining creatively open, focusing on relaxation and not overstimulation, allows the brain to unleash itself. If our fingers could keep up, we could type a dozen novels a year—if only we’d set our brains free.

Where do you stand on swearing? Do you find it offensive? Do you think it is unnecessary? Is it a sign of linguistic weakness and lack of imagination? Or is it a very natural and normal form of release? A spontaneous out-pouring of emotion that can be articulate, funny and may be akin to some sort of art form?

As those of you who know me will realise without being told, I tend towards the latter opinion. Some of my friends actually call me ‘Sweary Mary’ and I’m afraid that I do think that it is big and it is clever. I think this, not just because I enjoy a good curse but because I believe that swearing serves a very legitimate health and social well-being purpose. Basically while you’re effing and blinding to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ about how frustrating it is to be stuck on the phone for hours on end trying to talk to the local council about your non-existent rubbish collection, you’re neither hitting anyone nor having a heart attack. Although tears seem somehow to be acceptable these days, anger is not (unless it’s done by over-paid footballers) and so one is expected to just ‘take’ whatever crap is thrown at one with a smile on one’s face and a pain in one’s soon to explode, chest. It’s bollocks – if you’ll pardon my French. Legitimate anger and frustration at ludicrous rules and endless officially sanctioned procrastination are just normal responses. Non-collection of rubbish by a council paid to do so in perfectly normal climactic conditions is unacceptable, getting angry about it is just human.

Embarking on a new novel featuring a whole new set of characters is both exciting and daunting. It also throws up sometimes very weird and arcane problems. For reasons I can’t go into here (least I give away the plot, darling) this new book has to begin with a high level of profanity. It is actually essential to the story that it does so. I’m totally comfortable with that and have no problem jumping in with both feet for maximum effect. The character I’ve created is just like that. She/he/it would actually ‘like’ to wham straight in with an early exposure of the dreaded ‘c’ word. So immediately I’m in the arena of ‘how far can you go’ country. The ‘c’ word is very divisive and I know some people who can be put off a book, a play or a film by just one exposure to it.

I admit that it isn’t the prettiest word in the English language and it is a bit dodgy, to say the least, to use the name of female genitals as a swear word. But as a woman, I must say it doesn’t bother me. It’s a word, it’s a bit ugly and old fashioned but it does the job really rather well when all other swearing options have been explored. The ‘c’ word, like the ‘f’ word is proper swearing. Once you’ve got to either of those big boys, there’s no going back. If you use them to someone with authority over you, you are, generally, well and truly f****d. By contrast words like ‘bollocks’, ‘sod’ and ‘cobblers’ pale into insignificance. It is, I know, very possible to recover from two gits and a tosspot. Meanwhile back at c**t…

For me ‘to c or not to c, that is the question’ and I still don’t know the answer. I almost envy people who are cut and dried on this one, mainly folk who would die rather than use the dreaded word. But I’m a Londoner and so it’s different. Words like the ‘c’ word are in my genes. As well as ‘Buggery Row’, London had a lot of colourfully names streets back in days of yore including the marvellously named ‘C**t-Grope Lane’. Unfortunately some killjoy changed it in the 19^th century but still, no ambiguity about what used to happen (and maybe still does) there.

I don’t know how this dilemma will resolve itself but I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Maybe I will suddenly discover some sort of puritanical streak and forget about the wretched word completely. But probably not. What with being short-tempered and a Londoner, I think that rudeness is probably just a part of who I am.

There was a black person at my event in Capetown in South Africa and he wasn’t serving drinks or cleaning the windows. I have no idea how he got in. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that, unlike the suburbs of Johannesburg, the bookshop wasn’t surrounded by ten-foot high, razor wire-topped walls. There wasn’t a private militia security firm patrolling the streets to keep him out. I wanted to talk to him at the end but he skedaddled in the rush for the door that usually ensues one of my ‘live’ events. I remember he looked uncomfortable like a lone African-American at a Klan meeting.  I’d wanted to ask whether they’d hired him but he was gone and when I checked my audience photographs last night he wasn’t there so he might have been a hologram or just another ghost.

There are three shades of people in South Africa; white, black and coloured. I’d imagined the latter to be a bright array of gaudy purples and luminous pinks like the Beneton ads. But apparently, ‘coloured’ just means one of your ancestors was raped by a randy marauding western barbarian leaving you neither A nor B. For convenience, east Asians are classified under ‘coloured’ even though you’d expect in openly racist SA that there’d be a ‘yellow’ category. I was missing yellow folk. The last I’d seen of them was when they stepped off the flight from Hong Kong. I suppose those that weren’t on their ways to work in Chinese restaurants were picked up in a special bus and slotted into the ‘yellow’ tour category. For the last three days I haven’t seen one.

I’d been concerned on the flight in. I’d been working in the garden the week before and I was crisply tanned so there was a likelihood I might not make it into my rightful hue niche. I was expecting a Dulux colour chart at immigration where they would have no doubt. But no! White I was and I spent my days with snow-blindingly white but terribly nice people. Driving around Jo’berg I’d been reminded of those scenes in zombie movies where the star and a small group of hapless extras are holed up in a shopping center. They have to drive across town to get ammunition for their bazooka but ‘they’re out there. You daren’t stop at traffic lights because they come up to your car and terrorize you. They beg for money and try to sell you avocados and twinkly lights. But you have a central locking system so they can’t get at your jugular and you make it safely to the bazooka ammo discount store recounting those close shaves. ‘

For the next few days I’ll be stepping from one white rock to the next as I cross this fast-flowing dark continent and I doubt anyone will notice that beneath this saddle-leather brown exterior there beats an unashamed primrose yellow heart. But that doesn’t stop this feeling of xenophobia that lingers in my head like a hangover. (Of course that might just be the hangover)

Adventures in Wonderland Thai Style

It is the election season in Thailand and a former MP for Samut Prakan. (the Parliament was dissolved two days ago) who is from the opposition party has been shot. The Bangkok Post has run the story as No. 1 lead two days running. Everyone has a say about the botched hit. The police are quoted as having increased “security and surveillance for cash, contract gunmen, and firearms.”

That raises an interesting question as to why the police don’t look for hitmen and firearms in the non-election season. The more you read from police, military, political officials, the more that catches your eye and imagination. There can be no other place where fiction authors face such fierce competition from those employed by the state.

After a quarter of a century, you get use to the police saying after what appears to be a politically motivated shooting, “Hired gunmen should be closely watched.”

Not a lot of disagreement on that score. Though it does beg the question that if you know where they are so that you can watch them, why not arrest them in one of the usual crackdowns authorities employ for a temporary fix to a social problem.

But occasionally you come across an original statement, one that reveals the true fears of those in charge:  “We have information about contract gunmen from overseas being hired.”

In Thailand just about anything is possible, as Alice in Wonderland statements, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” This makes me wonder if Charles Lutwidge Dodgson might have spent a sabbatical in Thailand before penning Alice in Wonderland.

I like a stab at explaining why, in view, hiring imported gunmen is one of the six impossible things I believe won’t happen before or after breakfast in Thailand. There are many reasons but let’s start with 10 obvious ones.

1. Foreign Gunmen work on a much higher fee scale than local gunmen. Thai gunmen work on a pay scale that runs from two hundred dollars to two thousand dollars. Thais are notoriously cheap when it comes to hiring gunmen. Foreign hitmen demand too much money. This causes inflation. And we all know that inflation is bad for the economy.

2. Foreign gunmen are required by law to have a work permit and a permit for the gun. That requires filling out a lot of forms only to be told that hitmen is an occupation reserved exclusively for Thais. And that gun permits are only for locals. It is one thing to kill people for money—this is acceptable; but to take jobs reserved for Thais or to pack heat without a permit is something the authorities won’t allow.

3. Foreign gunmen won’t likely be Thai speakers. People who hired gunmen—as a rule of Thumb—don’t speak enough English or any other language other than Thai to get the instructions straight. There is a communication problem in other words. Pre-hit and post-hit communication is important in the assassination business. In all the confusion caused by an inability to communicate the chances of assassinating the wrong person rises disproportionately. And if things go wrong, the mastermind will forget any English and claim ignorance.

4. Foreign gunmen don’t know the system of small lanes and byroads. Those isolated places where shooting someone in relative private makes the get away easier. Shooting people in their cars is a favourite of local gunman. But that requires someone to ride the motorcycle (or drive the pick up) and the shooter is on the back. That’s a complication. It means the foreign gunman must work with a Thai driver and we all know that isn’t going to work for a whole number of reasons.

5. Foreign gunmen are time sensitive. Thais live outside the normal cycle of time. They are always late or early. They pop up where least expected. In other words, figuring out when is a good time to shoot someone becomes difficult. Thai gunmen, though, who work on the same flexible time mentality have no problem waiting patiently, knowing that marking time is natural and not the cause of massive frustration that might cause a foreign gunman to rush the job, make a mistake, shoot the wrong person.

6. Foreign gunmen are difficult to eliminate by the mastermind if things
go badly. They don’t run to their mother’s house, girlfriend’s apartment,
best friends pool hall because these are the perfect hideout. Foreign gunmen disappear after the job is done. They leave the country. They are beyond the reach of the person who wants to make certain they don’t open their mouth to the police. If the job is botched first time around, they won’t likely stick around and put it right. They’re gone, baby. And did I mention that they want their fee up front?

7. Foreign gunmen because they have white skin, are tall, and smell of rancid cheese are easy to track in Thailand. Facing prison, the gunman would spill the beans and that would result in a massive loss of face for the mastermind. Even worse, he might escape from Thailand only to be caught by authorities in another country and give up the Thai mastermind in exchange for a lesser sentence.

8. Foreign gunmen sometimes find God as their personal savior and confess all of their sins for salvation after death. Thai gunmen lack such fear as they believe it was the victim who was totally responsible for his own death as he chose to get in the way of the bullet. Also Thai gunmen have faith in amulets. They believe they bring good luck and make them bullet proof. Foreigners don’t have proper respect for amulets and this causes problems in the mastermind’s mind.

9. Foreign gunmen find a publisher is willing to pay them a huge advance for ‘A Tell All’ book, which includes a list of his best hits in exotic locations. Thai gunmen are basically illiterate, and even if they could read and write, the book business would viewed as a huge waste of time. Besides, no Thai would ever think of asking one to write a book about his exploits as he would likely become a target.

10. Foreign gunmen would likely celebrate by taking out a bar girl, who would steal his fee, his gun, ammo and passport and disappear to her village. The local district police officials would immediately learn the full story from the bamboo telegraph, pass the information to Bangkok and the gunman would be arrested coming out of his embassy, having applied for a new passport. This would never happen to a local gunman. Thai women are scared of them.