Peter James on 'Dead Tomorrow'

Both Gareth and I read the brilliant 'Dead Tomorrow' by Peter James, and wanted to find out why Peter wrote about organ and child trafficking in Romania. Here are Peter's answers.

BFK: Why did you choose the twin subjects of the black market organ transplant business and Eastern European child trafficking from Romania.

PETER JAMES: I like to take human issues that affect us all and turn them into dramatic stories. Eight years ago I met a famous documentary maker, called Kate Blewett. She told me that there is a huge world shortage of human organs for transplant, primarily kidneys and livers and hearts - and that ironically this shortage was caused by better transplant techniques, and less people dying of head injuries in car accidents because of seatbelts and better car construction! As a result there is a huge world blackmarket, principally from Columbia, India, Romania and China. A healthy human being is worth $1m in body parts. She had heard that there were some people in Columbia making more money out of human organs than drugs and she sent two researchers there, who were both murdered by the Columbian mafia. She got too scared to continue but offered me all her research material if I would like to write a fiction story on the subject.

BFK: Did you go to Romania for your research and in fact found more than you could ever put in your book?

PJ: I visited Romania in March, last year, on a research trip for Dead Tomorrow. Romania has some of the most vulnerable people in the world living in it, an inept and utterly inadequate social welfare system, corrupt politicians and a corrupt police force. And - last year - we welcomed this country into the EEC.

Thanks to the legacy of Nickolai Caucescau, the despotic dictator who came to power in 1965 and was eventually, mercifully, shot in 1989, there are an estimated 10,000 people, many of them kids, living rough on the streets of Romania, mostly in Bucharest - and about the same amount of stray dogs. These children are known as "Children of the Decree."

When Caucescau came to power, he had a vision of building Romania into the greatest industrial nation in the western world. To do that he needed to rapidly increase the population, and to this end he made it compulsory for all girls, from the age of 14, to have a pregnancy test at their doctor's once a month. If they were pregnant, they were not allowed to abort. The result was thousands of unwanted children who ended up in care homes - grim, government institutions, from which many then ran away.

I was fortunate to meet a truly good man in Romania - a former UK police officer called Ian Tilling, who was recently awarded an MBE for his services to Romania's homeless. Seventeen years ago, whilst serving hin Kent, his son was killed in a motorcycle accident, and his life fell apart. He decided to have a complete change and went to Romania to see how he could help the plight of street kids there. Shortly after his arrival, he was offered a visit of a state institution for homeless crippled children. Any kind of deformity was frowned upon in old Romania. He told me how he had decided to buy a sackload of toys to take to the kids. When he arrived he was shown into a dormitory containing forty children, aged between eight and eleven, each of them in a cage - which, he was told, was to stop them from stealing each other's food. One solitary matron presided over the room, Rosa Klebb's double, seated at a table, reading magazines all day long.

Ian handed out the toys, and then saw the children staring blankly at them. They didn't know what to do with them. No one had ever taught them how to play.

One of Caucescau's legacy's is a communal central heating steam pipe, a network of which scans the length and breadth of Bucharest. In the city centre it is underground, but in the suburb it runs for kilometres above ground. Every office, house and apartment in Bucharest used to get its heat from tributaries of this pipe, and some still do. The heating is switched on in autumn and off in spring. For most of the street kids, it is a lifeline. They live along side it, either in shanties built along the pipeline, or in holes beneath the roads, where the pipe is underground, getting warmth from it. They beg, they sell second hand newspapers, they steal, and they sniff metallic paint, called Aurelac, not because it gives them a high, but because it takes away their constant hunger pangs.

I went with my publisher at midnight one night to Bucharest's main railway station, Gara du Nord, where a lot of street kids hang out. We bought armfuls of chocolate and biscuits and approached one group. My publisher asked them if they would speak to me, telling them I was an English writer. They were delightful. One teenage couple was holding a baby, and all of them told me that they were brutalized by the police, slept rough, were desperate to get out. Several of the girls said they had heard there were people who could find them good jobs in England, working in bars, nightclubs, restaurants, hotels. But that is not where they will end up.

The lucky ones will find themselves "debt bonded" - which means arriving in a country such as the UK already £10k in debt to their kindly trafficker. They will be put to work in a brothel until they have paid this off, except of course they will never pay it off because their handler will get them hooked on drugs, and they will just be on a permanent downward spiral. I say "lucky" ones, because a worse fate awaits the unlucky ones - who will find themselves unwitting organ donors. Some will lose just one kidney; others will lose their lives.

Ian Tilling runs a hostel, which provides a temporary home for 50 people. I talked to one of his residents, Andreea, who was dumped in a home by her mother at the age of eight, and lived on the streets for the next fifteen years. She has been raped, given birth and had the child taken from her. When I met her she told me she had just been talking to a friend, who was going to introduce her to someone who could get her out of Bucharest, and to London, where she could a highly paid job as a waitress and a really nice flat. A nice dream. She'll be arriving soon, debt-bonded, to a trafficker near you....

BFK: The ending to "Dead Tomorrow" is a very brave and could be considered, though realistic, controversial. Did you write many scenario's down?

PJ: No I had this ending right from the very start. I always know the ending to each of my books, although sometimes it changes from my original plan. But the ending to this one is the original ending I planned. It is emotionally hard, but I felt it is right.

BFK: What were the factors that made you decide the actual ending?

PJ: I have a belief that most people are born good and stay good. A mother might do anything for the life of her child, however many lines of immorality she has to cross. But her child might take a different perspective.

BFK: Why did you give Glenn Branson such a pretty hard time with his personal life and sea sickness.

PJ: There is a really high divorce rate in the Police and I want to show through Glenn Branson commitment to his work at the expense of his family one of the main causes of that - if a wife is not prepared to make the sacrifices.... I portray him as a bit of a dandy and I thought it would be fun for the police on the dive boat to have a laugh at him. That seasickness is something I've been through personally!

BFK: You were pretty graphic with some of your descriptions of what happened to Simona - how much of this was based on reality?

PJ: I talked at length to several people working with street kids in Romania and then I met and talk to several, through a translator, who told me their horror stories. I was sickened by the brutality they have endured and wanted to portray it accurately.

BFK: When researching the character of Caitlin how did you find talking to people in her and Lyn's position?

PJ: Dead Tomorrow is inspired by a couple I met, both medics, whose 17 year old son had been chronically ill with liver problems since 11 years old. He was going to die unless he got an ugent liver transplant. The parents became worried, when they learned that 3 people die every day in the UK alone waiting for a transplant and went onto the internet to try to buy one - and almost succeded. They were about to transfer the money on the day they got a call saying a suitable liver had been found. A lot of Caitlin's attitude came from talking to him - the family were incredibly supportive to me.

BFL: How much longer can you envisage the Sandy storyline going?

PJ: It has a long way to go yet!!!!

BFK: Of all the "hooks" you could have chosen - what made you choose the missing wife?

PJ: In creating Roy Grace I thought very hard about what it is that detectives really do, and I realized that more than anything else, what they do is to solve puzzles. I thought it would be intriguing to create a detective who had a puzzle of his own that he could not solve - which is how the riddle of Roy's missing wife, Sandy, came about.

BFK: Did you always know how the Sandy story arc ends?

PJ: Yes, right from the start!

BFK: The Roy Grace novels are to be televised - what's the difference between writing for a screenplay and writing a novel.

PJ: Length is one factor - my novels are about 130,000 words long. A 90 min screenplay is 20,000. A screenplay has to be visual - in a novel you can write in a character's internal thoughts - you have to find a visual way in a screenplay. Also in a screenplay you have far less dialogue - in many ways a perfect screenplay has no dialogue at all!

BFK: When do you envisage filming starting on the series?

PJ: My guess is late 2010

BFK: How do envisage some of the more graphic parts of the Roy Grace series being portrayed on the small screen?

PJ: There is very little really graphic violence in the books - and modern audiences have become quite used to grisly scenes, so I am not too worriedl

BFK: What do you like better, writing or producing?

PJ: Writing, by far. Producing is always a committee process - which can be intensely frustrating. In my writing I have total freedom and absolute editorial control and I love that.

BFK: Do you prefer working with famous people, or non-famous and does it make any difference for your main characters?

PJ: I honestly have no preference. I've met famous people with terrible egos and uknowns with egos that are just as big! My three favourites of all time have been Terry-Thomas, Al Pacino and Sharon Stone, all brilliantly talented and fun to spend time with.

BFK: Would you ever consider directing a film?

PJ: That was my big ambition when I started out at film school. I still may do one day, but it is a long, long process - one that with development, pre-production, production, post production and then promotion would consume a year of my life and not leaving much time to do anything else.

BFK: If so, would you ever think about directing one of your own novels especially the Roy Grace series if asked?

PJ: Now that could be fun! At least I have have no one else to blame if I didn't like it!

BFK: Will you ever revisit the spy genre?

PJ: I doubt it - I don't have the insider knowledge you need to be a convincing spy writer.

BFK: What was your first writing job?

PJ: The Canadian TV series for pre-school children, "Polka Dot Door"?

BFK: How did you get the job of translating the Biggles comic books?

PJ: I bought the film rights to all 93 books in 1975 and read all them as part of my development process for the first film so I became something of a Biggles expert! The publishers asked me if I knew a Biggles "expert" and I said, "uh huh - me!"

BFK: Would you ever consider writing a comic / graphic novel?

PJ: I've been thinking about a graphic Roy Grace novel!

BFK: Who is your favourite writer? Contemporary / Classic?

PJ: Conan Doyle, Hemingway, Graham Greene, William Boyd, Ira Levin, Stephen King (early works)

BFK: What writer has inspired/influenced you the most?

PJ: Undoubtedly Graham Greene. His Brighton Rock was really the book that made me want to be a writer - along

BFK: What gets your creative juices flowing?

PJ: Getting my head around a character in the novel I am writing. I love creating off-beat characters, such as the Weather Man in "Looking Good Dead", Skunk, in "Not Dead Enough" and Yac in my latest, "Dead Like You".

BFK: What subjects would you like to write about but haven't yet?

PJ: It is a long, long list! High on it is injustice - someone who has been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned - and the person who has got away with the crime.

BFK: Tell us about your experiences diving with the Sussex Police coastal service?

PJ: I leaned that being a police diver is not as glamourous as I thought. Most of their work consists of diving in sewers, drains, canals full of supermarket trolleys and barbed wire, etc, and retrieving decomposing bodies. The worst are those in the sea, covered in crabs. Surprisingly few police divers will eat seafood!

BFK: How did you get involved in producing the low budget horror films in Canada? (such as Shivers)

PJ: I became involved because they were the cheapest films you could make at the time! You didn't need expensive actors or locations -just somwhere creepy and a good looking girl with a convincing scream!!!

BFK: What was it like working with David Cronenberg?

PJ: Gosh it was 35 years ago and although my company was involved, I was actually more involved with another film at the time. But he was very professional and did a great job.

BFK: Would you ever consider working with him again - maybe producing another one of his films?

PJ: No, but only because from now on I will only produce films based on my own work.

BFK: Have you given us a clue as to what your next book is about in chapter 7 in Dead Tomorrow by putting in italics the Shoe Man?

PJ: It is about a rapist who takes his victims shoes. He stalks them first - but only very expensive shoes!

BFK: Have you now completed your research for your next book and the final chapters?

PJ: Yes, the book is delivered and I'm about to start the editorial process. Gulp!

BFK: What do you do to relax - apart from keeping the travellers away?!

PJ: I run, play tennis, and race cars, which is my mad passion!