Four proof copies of Now You See Me arrived earlier
this month. One instantly disappeared. Must check under small
child's bed, his interest in mum's books has gathered apace lately.
(Note to self: given small child is nearly ten, perhaps fortify
oneself with stiff drink before doing so.) A second was claimed by
Jo-Next-Door, who likes to be ahead on all things news-worthy in
the village. The third was sent to Box of Blue, so that they can
update this website with suitably scary images and the fourth is on
the bedside table of my proof-reader of last resort: Mr B.
Himself has the dubious honour of being my first and last reader
at proof stage and has an annoying, but possibly quite valuable,
habit of spotting significant errors in the final proof copies.
This time, he points out that I describe a six foot two inch,
well-built bloke as weighing around 150lbs. "Chicken," he says
(because he will insist on doing so) "you probably weigh 150lbs
after a blow-out breakfast." Well, that I deny. A month off the
chardonnay and I'm back down to my fighting weight, thanks. That
aside, he has a point. I rattle off a quick email to
Copy-Edit-Kate, who is always serenely unruffled by last-minute
author panics.
It's a tense old time, when the final proofs arrive, because
this is the last chance to put right wrongs and, as any author will
tell you, the world is full of people who live to go through books
with a fine tooth comb and enjoy only one thing more than finding a
mistake: emailing the author to tell her about it.
Now You See Me, is likely to be subject to more intense
scrutiny than normal because, perhaps foolishly, I've chosen to
deal with a subject close to the hearts of millions - that of the
notorious Jack the Ripper.
Quite why I should stick my head above the parapet in such
fashion, I'm not sure. I like to think that PC Mizon, first on the
scene of one murder, was an ancestor of mine. (My mother's family
were called Mizon and lived in London at that time.) A friend from
the village is a descendent of Montague Druit, an undisputed Ripper
prime suspect. And, for a couple of years, I had an office in EC3
that directly overlooked Mitre Square, where the mutilated,
still-warm corpse of Katharine Eddowes was found on 30 September
1888.
Tenuous links, I grant you. But from the time I got my first
publishing contract and could with some justification call myself a
crime writer, I knew that, one day, the crimes I wrote about would
be the brutal murders of 1888. I'm looking forward, in the coming
weeks, to sharing some of my fascination with this most infamous of
serial killers.
Now You See Me (a ripping good yarn, though I say it
myself) is out in May and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
