Thanks for reading and sharing the 9mm series, and Crime Watch in general (and my work elsewhere) over many years. I've had a lot of fun talking to some amazing crime writers and bringing their thoughts and stories to you in this column, along with magazine and newspaper features, event panels, podcasts, and more.
I'm currently at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, one of the best book festivals of any kind in the world, and it's been terrific catching up with an array of crimeloving pals old and new, and being surrounded by creative, bookloving people who love a little darkness on the page but are largely pretty awesome, collegial, and supportive in real life. It's a great tribe to be part of, and as someone who'd loved books and mystery fiction my entire life, since I was a week kid growing up in a smalltown near the Top of the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, I feel very fortunate to get to wear a few different hats and be involved in the crime writing community variety of ways.
But back to 9mm. You can check out the full list of of past 9mm interviewees here. All 238 of them, and counting. What a line-up! With lots more fun to come. Kia ora rawa atu (thanks heaps), everyone.
If you've got a favourite crime or thriller writer who hasn't yet been part of the 9mm series, please let me know, and now I'm back on deck more fully, I'll look to make that happen for you. We've got several interviews with cool crime and thriller writers from several different countries 'already in the can' that will be published very soon, so lots to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.
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| Elcin and I in the 'big green chairs' where I've done some fab interviews over the years |
Like me, Elçin is a bit of a globetrotter; in her case she's lived in Istanbul, Brussels, Washington, London and Madrid. We immediately hit it off a few years back, perhaps due to some elixir of both being foreigners at Harrogate who loved journalism, politics, travel, and deeply cared about law and justice issues, among a few other things in addition to the shared passion for crime and mystery writing most attendees have. Some great conversations, and we've stayed in touch since.
So it's been really terrific to catch up with Elcin in person again this year at Capital Crime in London last month, and now Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate this weekend.
Alongside her journalism career, Elcin is also a leading Turkish crime writer - though for those of us Anglophones, her books are not (yet - watch this space) available in English translation. Still, it has been fun following her adventures at various book events in Turkey since we met, and seeing how popular she is over there - if slightly frustrating that I can't read her novels given my largely monolingual status (a few scraps of Maori, Spanish, and Japanese aside).
From the critic reviews and reader reception in Turkey, and some translations of feature articles and commentary I've read, Elcin's books sound really fascinating. She writes both standalone thrillers and series crime fiction, including four books starring Chief Inspector Suat Zamir, a very strong, determined female detective and third-generation police officer who's trying to deliver justice from within a shadowy police and political system. She won the Turkish Crime Novel of the Year prize for her fourht novel, Ecel Cicekleri (Death Flowers). The latest Suat Zamir tale, Gölgenin Eli (The Hand of the Shadow), came out earlier this year. It centres on the brutal murder of a social media celebrity alongside Suat Zamir being tasked with tracking down a missing journalist and having to confront family secrets.
I'm really looking forward to reading Elçin's stories in English in the not-too-distant future, hopefully, but for now, this superb Turkish journalist and crime writer becomes the latest author to join me for an interview on the famed 'big green chairs' of Harrogate, and to stare down the barrel of 9mm.
9MM: AN INTERVIEW WITH ELCIN POYRAZLAR
Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction character?
You know, I think it's Mr Ripley. I love Patricia Highsmith. When I was growing up, I wanted to be her as a writer, and the fact that he is such a morally conflicting character. Patricia Highsmith puts the reader in a position where you hate the guy, you know, he's a murderer. He's a sleek operator that manipulates, but at the same time you want him to escape, to succeed. So this moral contradiction that she puts us in, it's so thrilling. It's such a good character, and Patricia Highsmith is a master of writing thrillers, right? So I think it's him, but I also like a lot of espionage characters.
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| A Turkish translation of Dostoyevsky's classic tale |
Oh, that's an easy one, Crime and Punishment. I think I was somewhere around 14, when I was really hungry for books. When I get real taste of good literature. And I think Crime and Punishment is the best crime fiction book. Not many people admit that [it's a crime novel], but it's a fascinating book. And Dostoyevsky, I was reading all the classics, then I remember stopping right in the middle of it, and wandering around in the room, because it moved me so much. The writing was in itself art, but where it took me was a super psychological level. Yeah, so I loved it.
Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything) - unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?
So my very first book that I wrote was never published, and it was a dark satire of the Turkish politics, a composition of many stories, but at the end, all characters came together and killed the author that was writing the book. It never got published, because I knew that if we published it, I would end up in prison. And my husband was a bit nervous about that. But at some point I would love to publish it, because it was very Kafka-esque, yeah. And at the same time, it was quite a dark thing, and it was my first attempt into entering the genre.
Before that, I was always writing many articles about Turkey or diplomacy or the world affairs. I hadn't written books, but I wanted to write a journalistic book, and it ended up being an espionage book.
Outside of writing and writing-related activities (book events, publicity), what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?
I love walking, and I try to duplicate what Charles Dickens was doing with his night walks. We live in the same neighbourhood in London. I also love music, it's a fantastic way for me to relax. I almost became a musician, but then changed my mind. I played classical guitar when I was 15, and then I was going to go into Conservatory, and I said, you know, life as an artist will be very hard, so why don't I do something and then go back to music?
But then I became a writer, so I don't know which part of the artist life I avoided. I also travel a lot. I talk to people. And coming together with readers is also very inspiring.
What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider?
My hometown is Bursa, the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. It became quite a rich city because of the car industry but I would definitely recommend people go to visit the historic mosques, and eat a doner kebab. It is the hometown of the original kebabs, if you go to Iskender (which we translate as Alexander in English), definitely try one of the restaurants for the real deal of the doner kebab origins.
Iskender was the family that started it. Basically because you know how you make a roast, you put a lamb or other animal on a horizontal [spit over the coals], and the thing they did was what if we put the animal vertical and get it all flowing into each other instead of the fire, just changing the direction of it.
So they've been doing that for more than a century.
If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?
Oh, wow, that's a tough one. I don't know. Can I think on that... Kirsten Stewart? Oh, yes, I think she's a very good actor. I also quite like Scarlett Johansson, but we don't look alike... you know, any character actor would be great, like a tough journalist who is on the brink of maybe being arrested every time she goes back to Turkey.
Of your writings, which is a bit special to you for some particular reason, and why?
Well, the first one was always special. But then is the first book, the book that makes your writer? I'm not sure. So I think my third book Mantolu Kadın (Woman in a Coat), where I tried my hand at domestic noir, was the book I realized, 'Oh, my God, now, I really have to take this seriously'.
And you know, the first two are good, they're above average, but this third time out, I really have to be a professional writer. So, it's domestic Noir. A dead woman, a young dead woman, is telling the story. I tried my hand in a completely different sub genre, which I loved. And I think that's how my name got to be known in Turkey as well.
What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?
Well, when my first book was published, I got some royalties, something small, then I immediately gave a wine party to my friends. I spent it in all one night. We celebrated. It was great.
When I first saw my book in a shop, I didn't celebrate it, but I was very touched and then I realized that right that moment that books are different entities than you. Once you write them, they don't belong to you anymore. They belong to the readers.
What is the strangest or most unusual experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?
I can easily tell you that, because this happened with two books previous, a couple of years ago. I was in an event, and then there was this woman coming to meet me. She drove like six or seven hours to meet me because I was in my hometown, but she was in another part of Turkey, which is quite big. Now she said that she's an Inspector, and she said "Are you also police? Have you ever worked as a police?"
I said, No. And now she says, But you wrote about me. You know your character, Suat Zamir, is me. Everything that's happened, like in her career, happened to me. So this really, really touched me, you know? Because that was so real. She drove all the way to meet me to see who this woman is writing about a character just like her.
Kia ora, Elçin, we appreciate you having a chat with Crime Watch.
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| Since visiting Gallipoli in 2011, I've said Anzac Day is about three countries, not just two, so here's a full trifecta in London; Australian authors Hayley Scrivenor, Kate Kemp, and Chris Hammer, Kiwi me and Turkish journalist and crime writer Elcin Poyrazlar |
Do you enjoyed politically charged crime novels? What about reading books set outside of the UK and USA? What's the latest translated crime novel you've read?
Let us know in the comments - and if you're a Turkish reader, please share what you think of Elçin's novels and her heroine Chief Inspector Suat Zamir.
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