Say It With Garage Flowers

‘I wouldn’t want to do what Thorne does, but I’d like to have a pint with him and talk about Hank Williams all night’

June 13, 2025June 13, 2025sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment

It’s been 25 years since former comedian and actor, Mark Billingham, became a crime writer, and this month sees the publication of his twenty fifth novel, What The Night Brings.

Since his first book, Sleepy Head, which came out in 2001 and introduced us to country music-loving detective, Tom Thorne, Billingham has sold over 6.5 million novels, had 24 Sunday Times bestsellers and spent more than 150 weeks in the top ten.

His latest novel – the nineteenth entry in the Thorne series – sees the lead character trying to crack what could be his most shocking case yet.

The book starts with the cold-blooded murder of four police officers – the first in a series of attacks that leaves police scared, angry and, most disturbingly of all, vengeful.

Influenced by recent real-life criminal cases, including the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by off-duty Metropolitan Police constable, Wayne Couzens, What The Night Brings is also the first of Billingham’s books where he’s had to include an author’s note pleading for readers not to reveal any spoilers, as there’s a double whammy of shocks and reveals at the end of the novel.

What The Night Brings is the first Thorne novel since 2022’s The Murder Book – since then Billingham has been concentrating on his other crime series, which features comedic copper, Declan Miller, and is much lighter in tone than the Thorne books.

Say It With Garage Flowers invited Billingham for a pint in North London pub, The Spread Eagle, in Camden, which, funnily enough, is mentioned in two of the Thorne books, including the latest one, to reflect on his 25 years of writing crime fiction, talk about the inspiration for What The Night Brings and get his views on the current trend for celebrities writing crime novels.

“Sarah Everard was the starting point for the new book – I knew that was what I wanted to write about. Not that case specifically, but about the changing attitudes towards policing,” he tells us. “You can’t just write about jolly coppers solving murders anymore.”

Q&A

It’s 25 years since you started your career as a crime writer and you’re just about to publish your twenty fifth book. How does that feel?

Mark Billingham: It feels like five minutes… It’s crazy – when I’m working and I turn round and see all the hardbacks lined up on the shelf behind me, I think, ‘where did they come from?’ It’s bizarre – every time I think, ‘Oh my God – this is ridiculous, and I’ve been doing this far too long…’

I’ve just read Michael Connelly’s fortieth crime novel, and Val McDermid has written 35, so I’m not too much of an old dog yet… But, yeah, 25 years… When you start, you can’t possibly think that you’ll be around that long – you don’t even know if you’ll do any more than two books…

I do a book a year – people think that must be hard, but if you write full-time it’s not. What else am I going to do? I don’t think you’ve got any excuse not to write a book a year when you don’t do anything else… I do do other stuff…

But that mostly involves promoting your books…

Mark Billingham: Yes – that’s just having fun…

Your debut novel, Sleepyhead, was published in 2001, and made it onto the Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller list. Why did you become a crime writer after being a comedian and an actor?

Mark Billingham: I’d always written – stories at school, and plays and poems, I used to sit in my room, listening to The Smiths, thinking Morrissey understands me, while writing poems, looking out at the rain.

Did you plan on writing a series of books?

Mark Billingham: When I wrote Sleepyhead, I went into meetings with a bunch of publishers and they asked me if it was the start of a series – I just said, ‘Yes,’ without even thinking about it. I was a big fan of series fiction, and I’d read Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, and John Harvey, but I didn’t quite have the confidence to think it could be a long-running series.

‘I used to sit in my room, listening to The Smiths, thinking Morrissey understands me, while writing poems, looking out at the rain’

I knew that once I’d done the deal and signed with a publisher, I was going to write two books, but I didn’t really think beyond that. You’d be quite egotistical if you were thinking you could write a dozen of them, because nobody would pay you to write them if they weren’t selling… I got very lucky – the first two books did very well, and I was away.

Thorne has been such a successful character. What’s his appeal and what’s kept you interested in writing about him for so long?

Mark Billingham: What’s kept me interested is that I don’t know anything about him – I know as much as there is in the books… That’s all there is – there’s nothing else, no bible or dossier of facts. I’m just writing him book by book and seeing how he changes.

You’ve never really described what he looks like, have you?

Mark Billingham: Not really. I briefly described him in the first book, but when it was the twentieth anniversary of Sleepyhead and there was a new edition, I took it out. There’s no big description of him because that’s the readers’ job – to put the flesh on the bones. I don’t really describe any of the major characters – I don’t need to because I know what they think and I’m looking at the world through their eyes.

Over the 19 Thorne books, how have you noticed yourself change with him?

Mark Billingham: Well, obviously there’s the age thing… I started ageing him in real time and then stopped because I was running out of road very quickly… When I started writing about him, I stupidly made him the same age as me. So, I made the decision that even if it’s a year between books, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a year older – there’s not a year between cases… The next book might start two months after the last one finished. He’s not ageing as fast as I am, but we’re broadly in the same area.

How much of you is there in Thorne?

Mark Billingham: Not that much – not as much as there is in Declan Miller, who is much more like me, because of his comedic instinct. Thorne doesn’t have that, and I wouldn’t want to do what he does, but I’d quite like to have a pint with him and talk about Hank Williams all night. So, apart from our taste in music and our support for an ailing football team…

Although you support different teams…

Mark Billingham: Yeah – I’m Wolves and he’s Spurs.

How easy do you find it to come up with new plots, twists and scenarios for your books?

Mark Billingham: It’s not easy, but something always turns up. I think writers that have been doing it a long time – especially a series – live in fear that we’ve already spunked away our best ideas. Maybe we peaked at book ten… Touch wood, I don’t think that’s the case – I think the new book is as good as anything I’ve ever written, and long may that continue. But in terms of the big ideas and the big hooks… you can’t just pull them out of a hat, like a rabbit. It’s not really about that for me anymore – there’s no great hook in the new book, like there was with Sleepyhead or Scaredy Cat, but there are shocks and surprises. There’s not an elevator pitch that will make people go ‘ooh’ – it’s much more about character.

‘I think the new book is as good as anything I’ve ever written, and long may that continue’

It’s such a cliché to say, ‘character comes from plot, and plot comes from character,’ but it absolutely does. Thorne changes book on book, but in the course of this book he changes a lot. By the end of it, he’s very different than he was at the beginning because he’s seen and become aware of some very disturbing stuff.

Do you still enjoy writing new books, or do you get apprehensive?

Mark Billingham: I enjoyed this one a lot because I’d had two years off, writing the Declan Miller books, so I couldn’t wait to get back to Thorne. In the past, I might’ve had a year off to write a standalone and come back fired-up, but, after two years, I was fired-up and a bit apprehensive… It took a few weeks until I went, ‘There he is…’

I was writing chapters and thinking, ‘That’s Miller’s voice… what I am doing?’ It took a couple of weeks to get back inside Thorne’s head.

Miller is much lighter – don’t get me wrong, I love writing him, and I’m currently writing book number three – but it’s nice to be able to have a change of pace, take a breath and not worry if I’m thinking of a stupid joke because it just goes in… I think of a stupid joke for Thorne sometimes, but I can’t put it in because he wouldn’t say it…

My first instinct is always comedic – if someone tells me something, I’m looking for a joke, even when something tragic happens. I’ve become obsessed with jokes as a coping mechanism in the face of really dark stuff.

We’re not giving away any spoilers for What The Night Brings, but we can say it’s got some shocks in it…

Mark Billingham: It’s the first time in 25 years that I’ve had to write a note at the back of the book saying, ‘Dear reader, I beg you, please don’t let on what happens at the end…’

We all hate spoilers, and we all live in fear of a review giving something away, but there are some big reveals in this book, and I want them to stay hidden until the end. I want it to be like a kick in the teeth… It’s a different book for me, because, if you’re writing police procedurals, which I am, broadly speaking, you can’t do it anymore without tackling certain issues – it’s become a different ball game.

‘We all hate spoilers, and we all live in fear of a review giving something away, but there are some big reveals in this book, and I want them to stay hidden until the end’

I saw how some American crime writers changed after George Floyd – the police were no longer the good guys, and when they arrived on the scene, people didn’t want to see them. The new book is my reaction to Sarah Everard and that kind of stuff…

We can say that the book starts with the murder of four police officers, and it deals with some of the issues that have led to the police being under intense scrutiny, like the murder of Sarah Everard…

Mark Billingham: That was so shocking – not just the case but the general figures. There are enough coppers on suspension at the moment to police a small town. I was getting quite worked up writing the book, as I was looking at some of the facts and figures and going, ‘Jesus – this is absolutely horrendous.’

Sarah Everard was the starting point for the new book – I knew that was what I wanted to write about. Not that case specifically, but about the changing attitudes towards policing. It’s no longer about the one bad apple… it’s about an awful lot of bad apples. Once an official report says the Metropolitan Police are racist and misogynistic, you say: ‘What the hell?’, and you’ve got to write about it. You can’t just write about jolly coppers solving murders anymore.

That said, it’s important to point out that I’m not writing polemics – I’m not interested in tub-thumping, and I haven’t got an agenda. I’m still trying to write an entertaining and commercial crime novel, but that issue was bubbling away in the background.

Thorne is a detective, but I also wanted to write about the mood on the street amongst uniform coppers.

It’s not the first time you’ve written about contemporary issues – Love Like Blood tackled honour killings…

Mark Billingham: To avoid an issue would mean that you end up writing a cartoon – it would be so egregious to not write about it. I’m not lifting things directly from the news, but you’ve got to reflect attitudes and what’s happening in the world.

I still have nothing but admiration for the good coppers, who do an incredibly difficult job – it’s certainly a job that I could never do – but I’ve got nothing but disdain and hatred for the bad ones.

Writing crime novels seems like it’s become the fashionable thing to do. We’ve seen Richard Osman, Richard Coles and Richard Madeley – all the Richards – among others – try their hand at crime fiction. Why is there a trend for it?

Mark Billingham: I think in a number of cases they’re approached by publishers who go, ‘How do you fancy writing a crime novel?’ Or, without mentioning any names, ‘How do you fancy putting your name on the front of a crime novel that somebody will write for you?’

As a long-established crime writer, how does that make you feel?

Mark Billingham: I’ve got no issue with celebrities writing crime novels – Richard Osman’s books are great – and there are plenty of people who are famous for other things writing good crime novels, but there are celebrities who aren’t writing them, but, quite disgustingly, have their names on the front of them. That really pisses me – and every writer I know – off.

I don’t mind books being ghost written if the celebrity in question fesses up to it and is honest about it, but the vast majority of them aren’t. They’ll go on TV and talk about how much they enjoyed writing the book.

‘I’ve got no issue with celebrities writing crime novels, but there are celebrities who aren’t writing them, but, quite disgustingly, have their names on the front of them. That really pisses me off’

It’s a terrible trend and it’s not just the places in the bestseller lists they’re taking up – it’s places at festivals that other writers could be doing.

Have you read anything good recently?

Mark Billingham: Yes. My new crime writing crush is a writer called Dominic Nolan – he is absolutely fucking brilliant. He makes you want to give up. His last two novels, Vine Street and White City, are unbelievably good. He doesn’t write a book a year, like the rest of us hacks, but he’s phenomenally good. I’ve just read the new Ian Rankin book [Midnight and Blue], which is great. He’s still knocking it out of the park after however many books.

But I put everything to one side if there’s a new Beatles book to read. There are so many books I should be reading, but if there’s a book about The Beatles…

What The Night Brings is published on June 19 (Sphere).

www.markbillingham.com

‘My favourite Dylan album will always be Highway 61 Revisited. It’s got everything…’

May 14, 2025May 14, 2025sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment

The recent Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, has thrust the legendary singer-songwriter’s classic ’60s period back into the spotlight. Now a new book by UK author and journalist, Sean Egan, examines how and why during that decade, Dylan made some of the greatest and most influential recordings of all time.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with people who worked with Dylan in the ’60s, including musician Al Kooper and photographer, Daniel Kramer, Decade Of Dissent: How 1960s Bob Dylan Changed The World is a fascinating, accessible, and well-written book, offering some fresh insights into arguably the most important and revolutionary period in pop/rock music.

Egan isn’t afraid to speak his mind, either — he can be scathing about certain Dylan songs or albums, but backs up his opinions with solid arguments. He’s got a lotta nerve…

In an exclusive interview, Egan speaks to Say It With Garage Flowers about why and how he wrote the book. He also shares some of his favourite Dylan songs and explains why Highway 61 Revisited is the album that’s singularly most responsible for transforming popular music into what we know it as today.

“Highway 61 Revisited changed the rules for everything,” he tells us.

Q&A

After The Beatles, Dylan is arguably the most written about rock musician. Why did you decide to write another book on him — you’ve already done The Mammoth Book of Bob Dylan —and what did you set out to achieve with Decade of Dissent? What did you feel you could say that was new?

Sean Egan: I’m not sure there’s ever anything completely new to say about such a well-trodden subject — it’s the way that you say it.

What is new, though, is plenty of never previously published quotes and anecdotes from musicians who worked with Dylan in the ’60s, who I interviewed a few years back for a magazine article on Highway 61 Revisited. I was left, as per usual, with a lot of material that didn’t make it into the feature because of lack of space.

Photo credit: Stefano Chiacchiarini ’74 – Shutterstock

Why did you decide to concentrate on Dylan’s ’60s period? Did you ever consider a book on just his ’70s or ’80s work, or the religious years, or his latter records? Why not write about a period that hasn’t been so well documented?

Sean Egan: I decided to focus on the ’60s because although Dylan has made great albums since then, that was the calendar decade in which he was most influential and in which he was at the peak of his artistic powers.

In the ‘60s, he never stopped moving forward, going from protest with his second and third albums to more generalised beatnik poetry on his fourth album, and going electric in 1965 with all the magnificent results we hear on Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde.

Then we have those weird albums, The Basement Tapes (if we can call that an album – I deal with the demo tapes in circulation at the time in the book) and John Wesley Harding. In those songs he seemed to totally disavow his hipster aura for something that was penitent and quasi-religious and did so to the accompaniment of very rootsy, bare music. Even Nashville Skyline is interesting in a sense because it sees him embracing corny country clichés, which nobody saw coming.

The reason his ’60s material has been so well documented is simply because that is the best and the most influential material. There’s also the prosaic fact that I didn’t actually have much already existing interview material on the latter years.

How long did it take to research and write the book and how much of it relied on first-hand interviews undertaken by you?

Sean Egan: You could say that it took me 15 years altogether because that was how long ago the interviews were conducted for the Highway 61 Revisited feature.

‘The reason Dylan’s ’60s material has been so well documented is simply because that is the best and the most influential’

In terms of physical writing, it didn’t take me that long, perhaps six months, and then the process of reading and rereading — even after it being submitted to the publisher — because endless honing is the way that I work.

Did you learn anything new or surprising?

Sean Egan: What is always surprising is the way that people’s memories differ. So, for example, Al Kooper swears that he gatecrashed the Like a Rolling Stone session — it’s quite a famous anecdote — whereas Al Gorgoni says that he invited him to the session after meeting him by chance on the street outside the studio.

Also, Daniel Kramer, the photographer, remembers Dylan giving musicians a lot of advice, but the musicians were always complaining to me that Dylan gave them no guidance whatsoever and they were essentially dancing in the dark.

Who were your favourite people to interview and why?

Sean Egan: I think Kramer was probably my favourite, simply because he hadn’t been spoken to as much as the musicians and he had a lot of interesting recollections about Dylan’s attitude about being photographed and about creating a public profile of himself. Dylan has always been interested in image and has never been the purist totally into the music that his songs might suggest.

‘The musicians were always complaining to me that Dylan gave them no guidance whatsoever and they were essentially dancing in the dark’

What’s your favourite Dylan song and album?

Sean Egan: My favourite Dylan album will always be Highway 61 Revisited. It’s got everything. It starts with Like a Rolling Stone and ends with Desolation Row, and those two songs alone are enough to make anybody’s reputation, but there’s lots of fantastic stuff sandwiched in between. Including surprisingly, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, which is not only a beautiful ballad, but it’s also an impressionistic song and we don’t really expect impressionistic songs — by which I mean sound paintings — in Dylan’s canon because we associate him with sparkling words, with music as a secondary factor.

In terms of songs, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry is up there, as is Like a Rolling Stone, as are so many other things, but I have to nominate a bit of an obscurity: Up to Me. It was an outtake from Blood on the Tracks first released many years later on Biograph.

I enjoy your writing style and some of your observations, but I don’t always agree with your views. For example, in the book, you are quite dismissive of Positively 4th Street, which is one of my favourite Dylan songs… You think it’s too reminiscent of Like a Rolling Stone… Can we at least agree that ‘You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend… ‘ is one of the greatest opening lines in a song ever?

Sean Egan: It definitely is one of the greatest opening lines, but it takes more than that to make a great song or a great recording. Al Kooper played on both of those songs and he himself said to me that Positively 4th Street just seemed like part two of Like a Rolling Stone. It’s people’s different opinions that makes life interesting.

Nashville Skyline is my favourite ‘Sunday morning album,’ but you’re not a big fan, are you? In the book, you call it: ‘half engaged and lazy…’

What’s your main beef with it? Admittedly, it’s not up there with his mid-’60s run of great albums, but it’s a nice album with some good moments, like, I Threw It All Away, which I think is one of Dylan’s best songs… Do you really think it’s such a bad album?

Sean Egan: It’s very slick and professional and it’s got a couple of classic songs in the shape of Lay Lady Lay and Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You, and if anybody else had made it, it would probably seem a much better album.

The trouble is that we associate Dylan with something more elevated. In fact, he is the very person who made songs and albums like that seem inadequate because he was the first person to prove that you could do so much more with popular music than just load it with clichés and romantic convention.

In the book, you say that Highway 61 Revisited is the album that is singularly most responsible for transforming popular music into what we know it as today. Can you elaborate on that?

‘Highway 61 Revisited changed the rules for everything. It proved that you could have a hit single with a six-minute scathing put down like Like a Rolling Stone, and that you could come up with a magnificent, poetic opus like Desolation Row, which spans 12 minutes’

Why do you think it’s that important? Some people might make the case for The Beatles’ Rubber Soul or Revolver being more influential — I think the latter is the greatest album of all time — but I guess as Dylan influenced the mid-’60s Beatles so much, as you explore in the book, you would argue that Highway 61 Revisited is a more important record?

Sean Egan: Both of the two albums you mentioned came after Highway 61 Revisited and were influenced by them, so while it’s up for debate which of the three albums is the better one, it’s not up for debate as to which one is the more influential.

Photo credit: David Arsham – Shutterstock

Highway 61 Revisited changed the rules for everything. It proved that you could have a hit single with a six-minute scathing put down like Like a Rolling Stone, and that you could come up with a magnificent, poetic opus like Desolation Row, which spans 12 minutes and which seems to take in just about every injustice and iniquity and hypocrisy on the face of the planet.

Just imagine being a Beatles or Stones or Dave Clark Five fan being exposed to material like that and the kind of effect it has on your mind. Then imagine that multiplied millions of times over and you can begin to get a grasp of just how revolutionary Dylan and his art were. Teenyboppers were being exposed to ideas that had never crossed their minds before.

I would argue that ’66, with Pet Sounds, Revolver and Blonde On Blonde, is a better and more groundbreaking year for rock / pop music than ’65, but would you make a case for ’65 being more important?

Sean Egan: Sixty five and ’66 are probably equally important but I think it’s an illusion that ’66 was aesthetically an improvement. I like Rubber Soul better as an album than Revolver, and Highway 61 Revisited better than Blonde On Blonde, and the two Beach Boys albums from ‘65 more than Pet Sounds. All of those ‘66 albums were very, very slick and sophisticated-sounding but they to me don’t quite have the soul or the range of the ‘65 records. For me, the two greatest years for popular music are 1965 and 1979.

Have you seen A Complete Unknown and, if so, what did you think of it?

Sean Egan: Everybody’s asking me that at the moment, for obvious reasons, and the answer to the question is ‘no I haven’t.’ This is a deliberate thing, as it irritates me the kind of liberties with the facts projects like that take, by necessity, admittedly. Life doesn’t lend itself to the kind of tidy narrative and poetic juxtapositions that filmmaking demands.

I will watch it out of curiosity when it ends up on television and I’m pleased that it’s out there because it keeps Dylan’s name alive to new generations of people, but nobody should go to a film like that expecting it to be the exact truth.

‘I don’t know whether a new album’s coming soon and maybe Dylan doesn’t even know, but he might get up one morning and decide he’s got the itch to record or write again’

Have you met Dylan? If so, what was he like? And, if you haven’t, would you like to meet him, and what would you say to him / ask him?

Sean Egan: I’ve never met him. He’s one of the few heroes on my wish list I haven’t interviewed. Naturally, I’ve got some questions in the back of my mind that I’d ask him were I ever lucky enough to encounter him, but I’ll keep those to myself just in case that lucky day comes.

Do you think we’ll get a new Dylan studio album anytime soon?

Sean Egan: He’s at that stage of his life where he can record when he wants to and where his whims are the whims of a man who doesn’t have anything to prove anymore. I don’t know whether a new album’s coming soon and maybe Dylan doesn’t even know, but he might get up one morning and decide he’s got the itch to record or write again. He’s given us enough in his life in any case that we can all be satisfied and grateful for the pleasure he’s already given us.

Can you recommend any good Dylan books to read other than your own?

Sean Egan: Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, which A Complete Unknown is partly based on, is a good summary of why Dylan going electric was so seismic in both music and culture, and he knows a lot more about folk history than I ever will.

Clinton Heylin is the man when it comes to covering the entirety of Dylan’s career, even if he does tend to be a bit snippy about other writers. I’ve lost count of how many books he’s done. His depth of knowledge is incredible.

Decade Of Dissent: How 1960s Bob Dylan Changed The World by Sean Egan is published on May 20 (Jawbone Press).