… are you reading?

The Bone Garden by Simon Beckett. His first crime thriller, The Chemistry Of Death, blew me away – I knew I was reading an immensely talented new author. He’s since gone on to have huge success and that is because his writing never disappoints. Although I’m only a few chapters into this new one, I know I’m in for a good time!

The book to which James owes his career 

…would you take to a desert island?

If I could only take one novel, it would be Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Told through the eyes of New York optometrist Billy Pilgrim as he fights in the Second World War, witnesses the fire bombing of Dresden and becomes an unwitting time-traveller after surving an air disaster, Vonnegut’s wry look at life and laugh-out-loud humour would sustain me through my darker moments.

But the book I would absolutely have to take is one that has been my friend and constant companion since my schoodays – The Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations. It is a treasure trove, so cleverly curated to distil so much wit, wisdom, philosophy and sheer common sense from so many people, from the greats to the unknowns.

…first gave you the reading bug?

My father would read three novels a week, so I grew up in a house with books all around.

My earliest memory of adult fiction was Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. I was enthralled by them. But the book that truly gave me the reading bug, and to which I owe my career, is Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. It tells the story of Pinky, a mesmerisingly evil 17-year-old boy gangster in charge of a bunch of middle-aged misfit criminals. He’s a killer but also a devout Catholic terrified of eternal damnation. It has, psychologically, the darkest ending of any novel I know. I read it when I was 14 and immediately promised myself that one day I would try to write a crime novel set in my home town of Brighton.

…left you cold?

Tolstoy’s War And Peace. I’ve dutifully taken it on every holiday for the past 40 years and each time back it comes with only a few chapters penetrated. I don’t know what it is – it is certainly not the Russian names, as some people say they struggle with, and I devoured Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment. Maybe one day in the next 40 years…

The Hawk Is Dead by Peter James (Pan, £9.99) is available in paperback now