The Search for Anne Perry

by Joanne Drayton

  After the First World War series came to an end in 2007, discussions about their filming moved from speculation to hard copy. Although the books were highly cinematic, representing a quintet was challenging. Under the title ‘The Peacemaker’, John Sealey had written the first draft of a screenplay. Meg sent the manuscript to Ken Sherman, who felt it was too ambitious in the amount of material it contained, and too derivative — ‘lacking a personal style or spin of his own’.31 The problems of staging a First World War series for film or television were immense in terms of both scale and budget. The solution, Meg suggested to Sealey, was ‘re-inventing this as one film which encapsulates the series’.32

  While they were still awaiting an answer from Wild Bear about The Face of a Stranger, another approach was discussed. Meg outlined the situation to Ken. ‘From my conversation with Alchemy yesterday, they’d be keen to do anything with Anne; they just prefer the Monk series because it’s darker and richer. If things get really tricky with Wild Bear, maybe (with a bit of luck) we could persuade Alchemy to take the Pitt series (which is getting darker anyway as the series goes on, and could be developed to be darker).’33 If Alchemy were to take over from Wild Bear, they were not interested in using the Julian Fellowes script. On the other hand, Jane Merrow explained to Ken, ‘in case Alchemy goes pear shaped, which I really hope it does not, Gary Kurtz of Star Wars fame is interested in the script provided Julian’s attached’.34

  In August 2008 Alchemy took out an option on the Monk series with a view to moving them out of their Victorian frame and giving them a contemporary American setting. Anne was delighted with the idea of the United States and saw a real advantage, because the death penalty would give them added dramatic tension. Ken outlined the process to Meg. ‘The idea would be for Anne … to come over here to pitch the contemporized “Monk”, or whatever it will be called at that point, to network or cable companies, and possibly bring in a show runner i.e. someone already network-acceptable as a writer to work with Anne and … to co-author the script.’ One of the people being considered was ‘Dawn DeNoon who’s on Law and Order which Anne loves if I remember correctly.’35

  On 28 October 2008, Anne celebrated her seventieth birthday. Her most meaningful present, which came from Jonathan and her stepbrother, Mike Ducker, was an astonishing find in a second-hand store. ‘It’s the plays of Shaw and it must have been nearly eighty years afterwards … [from when it was presented to] my father … He got the Smith Prize which is the highest prize [at Cambridge] for Mathematics … and this is the book, the actual book he was given.’36

  Her film and television options were taking her down a route that would involve her directly in the business of scriptwriting. This was something she felt more compelled to do than ever before. She was keen to write with other people and believed a television series could achieve this. There was no speedy way to make this happen, however. All the major decisions concerning the Alchemy project were being made in California, and were dependent on big-budget backing and alliances.

  Anne was beginning to find the isolation of the Highlands oppressive, and wanted to spend more time with creative people in cosmopolitan Los Angeles. Waiting for a resolution and for filming to begin was tedious. ‘There are aspects to getting older, when you don’t have the blazing hope you have when you were younger. I am beginning to feel that there are one or two things that I would like to have in life — and get on with it, already …’.

  She was concerned about money, and dogged by the sense that time was running out. ‘I find I worry more … I think: “Get on with it, don’t tell me it will happen in x years’ time, I haven’t got x years to wait.” … A lot of my friends are packing it in now … you have to have a faith to keep going, because sometimes it doesn’t look like it’s going to be possible.’37 Her dream was still to work in Hollywood on the adaptation of her books to film, and her greatest anxiety was that by the time it finally happened she would be too old or infirm to participate. Her creative imagination was her comfort, a place to escape to and a sign of her redemption. The strategy to handle the tension was by now a reflex: keep writing.

  The title that seized her imagination in 2008 was The Sheen on the Silk, the fruition of her trip to Istanbul three years earlier. With the help of Meg and Don, she had developed a 100-page outline of the book to work from, and, as she wrote, memories of her trip came to life in the settings and scenes she created. A journey by car with a guide was especially vivid. ‘The extraordinary thing was going across the water and driving up the Asiatic side, and standing there in the grey stone ruins of a castle and seeing the blue, blue sea, which was the Black Sea, and looking at the vegetation. It was exactly identical to what you find here if you went to the west coast — bracken, pine trees, brambles … I could have gone out to the headland here and seen the same stuff, but the light, you can’t recreate the light.’38

  As she wrote The Sheen on the Silk, reviews began to appear for her latest Pitt, Buckingham Palace Gardens, published in February. It is darker than her previous Pitts, as Meg had promised Ken Sherman, but perhaps its greatest achievement is to set a murder story in Queen Victoria’s Royal Household, with her son the Prince of Wales as a prime suspect, and make it completely convincing. From The Whitechapel Conspiracy onwards, Anne had built up the role of Victor Narraway, ‘a lean man with a shock of dark hair, threaded with gray, and a face in which the intelligence was dangerously obvious’, until he plays a pivotal role as Britain’s principal spook.

  When the cruelly carved-up body of a prostitute is discovered in a linen cupboard in Buckingham Palace in the early hours of the morning, it is Narraway from Special Branch who is called in, and he passes the interrogation part of the investigation over to Pitt. Together they stand in front of the cupboard doors, sickened by the sight of the poor woman, ‘who lay on her back, and was obscenely naked, breasts exposed, thighs apart. Her throat had been cut from one side to the other and her lower abdomen slashed open, leaving her entrails bulging pale where they protruded from the dark blood.’ There was blood splattered up the walls, soaking into the piles of sheets and collecting in a large scarlet puddle on the floor. It would have been a shocking discovery in Whitechapel, but in the elegant confines of Buckingham Palace it is an abomination.

  Pitt’s angry reaction to the killing proves to be almost an exception in the Royal Household, where most simply want a speedy, discreet conclusion before the queen, who is away, is back in residence. As Pitt pieces together the events of the evening, he finds that the Prince of Wales and his house guests enjoyed more than just cigars and port after their wives retired. A small group of prostitutes had covertly entered the palace to give the prince’s party the type of illicit pleasure that is alien to most marriage beds.

  After investigating palace security and checking the whereabouts of domestic staff, it becomes clear that the murderer is either the Prince of Wales or one of his entrepreneur guests, invited to invest in a scheme to build a trans-African railway from Cairo to Cape Town. With the assistance of maid Gracie, who is deputized as a palace plant, this privileged crowd becomes the focus of Pitt’s enquiries. It is a collision of class, a situation where meritocracy and ruling élite are pitted against each other.

  Anne’s writing in Buckingham Palace Gardens has a fluidity that is one of the key achievements of her late novels, and exposition builds seamlessly through dialogue and scene change. All the elements that made her earlier books appealing are here, but less self-consciously so. In April 2008 the novel reached number 12 on the New York Times bestseller list, and was nominated in 2008 for the Romantic Times Best Novel and for an Agatha Award for Best Novel in 2009.39

  Buckingham Palace Gardens was dedicated ‘to my friends Meg MacDonald and Meg Davis, for their unfailing help and encouragement’, and was a fitting tribute to two pivotal people in Anne’s life. Meg Davis had now been working with Anne for 25 years. ‘Yes, here we still are,’ Meg wrote to a colleague in Canada. ‘As you say, agents seem to go on for
ever — although I cheer myself up by realizing that even though I feel like The Ancient Mariner when advising our young agents here, there are still plenty of scarily active and successful agents around to whom I’m still a promising young whippersnapper.’40

  Not only did Meg feel there was more she could achieve with Anne’s writing, but she was keen to pick up the pace. Anne’s prodigious output was creating a backlog of books waiting to be released. She decided to approach Susanna Porter, Anne’s new editor at Ballantine, with the suggestion that the rate of production be increased.

  As you’ll remember, [the slower rate of publication] was pretty much imposed on us … at the same time as you were taking over as Anne’s US publisher … Now, a couple of years later, I’d like to address with you whether this is having the desired effect of increasing sales. I’m under a great deal of concerted pressure from all of Anne’s other publishers, all of whom report that this is in fact slowing momentum dangerously.41

  Susanna Porter was less keen to pick up the pace. For her there was still virtue in not flooding the market with Anne Perry titles that competed directly with each other.

  When the manuscript for The Sheen on the Silk was finally submitted, it was 260,000 words long, and Vicki Mellor at Headline had doubts. ‘I am very aware that Anne has put a lot of hard work and thought into this novel,’ she told Susanna Porter, ‘and that she fully intends for it to be an epic, and in some ways a signature novel, and that we both want to help her achieve this.’42 The problem was its size. Vicki Mellor was not even sure they could bind it for printing at that length.

  Ballantine wanted clarification of aspects of the complex plot and, because it was so long, some substantial cuts. Anne easily elucidated the plot tangles, but the cuts were a sticking point. Meg communicated to her Anne’s sense that too much had been sacrificed. ‘In particular, it’s the religious and philosophical nuances where she felt the cuts had been too deep. And, as you know, Dante is very special to her as a poet and as someone whose writing her grandfather loved. She was thrilled when the dates were found to overlap, so perhaps we might indulge her.’43 The resulting compromise brought The Sheen on the Silk to print.

  Like Anne’s French Revolution novel, The Sheen on the Silk is set at a crucial time when decisions made by pivotal people have the potential to change the world. The book opens with the arrival of Anna Zarides in Constantinople, in 1273. It is a city on fire with riches, religion, culture and political intrigue, but its blaze is in imminent danger of being extinguished. For surrounding Constantinople are the rising powers of Europe and the Middle East. To the north and south are Barbarians and Infidels, to the east ferocious Ottomans, and to the west the brutish Venetian Empire that had mounted a crusade nearly 70 years before and sacked the city — and to top this off, a warring pope.

  To garner the support of the west, Constantinople must placate the Church of Rome, but there is a fundamental schism in belief. Orthodox Constantinople does not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit, and the Church of Rome does. Will Emperor Michael Palaeologus convince Orthodox Christians in Constantinople to give up their souls to save their skins? The city is on the verge of civil war.

  Against a backdrop of religious slaughter and assassination, Anna Zarides attempts to find out whether her twin brother is innocent or guilty of a murder for which he has been banished to the desert. Even a noblewoman in this world is confined and never privy to the conversations that count. Anna’s solution is to disguise herself as a eunuch doctor named Anastasius. She finds mobility in the role of medic, and freedom in the persona of a eunuch who can oscillate between masculine and feminine. In disguise, Anna meets Giuliano Dandolo, a sea captain who finds himself inexplicably drawn to this ambiguous and beautiful human being. A love story and a quest weave their ways between the cities of Venice, Rome and Constantinople, getting darker and more terrifying as they proceed.

  Dedicated to Jonathan, and released in 2010, The Sheen on the Silk rapidly found a place on the New York Times extended bestseller list. As critics and readers understood, it brought what could have been dry church history to life. ‘Readers whose tastes tend toward epic-sized mysteries set in a far-flung past will jump right in, captivated by the intriguing story and the author’s seemingly effortless grasp of her historical setting. This could open up a whole new readership for the versatile Perry,’ commented the reviewer for Booklist.44

  The Sheen on the Silk was translated into French, German, Spanish and Serbian. Anne toured France, promoting the novel with her 10/18 publisher, Emmanuelle Heurtebise. In one bookstore two young men caught their attention, hanging back and appearing shy. They were holding the English version and they were looking at it. ‘We would like to read it in English,’ they said, ‘we’ve never done that before. We are not sure our English is as good as it deserves, but we would like to try.’ Emmanuelle thought it was strange that they would want to try with ‘a big, big, big book like that’ and Anne asked if they might prefer the French version. They were adamant, however. ‘But we have a question for you. There is a word we can’t understand on the back cover.’ Emmanuelle offered to help. ‘Eunuch!’ they said. ‘Oh là là!’ said Emmanuelle. ‘Okay, over to you, Anne. Good luck!’45 Anne explained without missing a beat. This was the kind of encounter that made all the hours of writing worthwhile.

  Although delighted with the response to The Sheen on the Silk, Anne knew that her crime novels were her bread and butter, and this was important during a global recession in publishing. Execution Dock, her Monk published in March 2009, was the first title to show the impact of the financial crisis. Although it was well received critically, and gained a starred review in the Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal, there were fewer rights sales to international publishers, who were beginning to feel the pinch.

  The book opens with Monk chasing Jericho Phillips, a man who is wanted for the murder of a 13-year-old boy named Fig. The boy’s body has been found on the river near Greenwich with his throat cut so violently that he has almost been decapitated. Phillips is a pimp who deals in child pornography. He has a boat on the river where men with money and power go to buy pornography and sexual favours from children. Phillips is hard to convict, because he is protected by his wealthy patrons and customers.

  When Monk captures Phillips, he is charged with the murder and Rathbone is asked by his father-in-law, Arthur Ballinger, to defend the case. At first Rathbone sees only the positives. ‘It would please him to assist Margaret’s father in a matter that was important to him. It would make Margaret herself happy, and it would draw him closer into the family.’ He uses every skill he has to see Phillips freed, even stooping to using personal information against both Hester and Monk when they are giving evidence.

  He draws attention to everything that he knows will undermine Hester’s credibility, that ‘she was feminine; he had harped on about her womanliness. She was vulnerable; he had subtly reminded them that she was childless.’ His manipulation is so artful that Phillips is set free.

  Rathbone then begins to realize what he has done and tries to justify it: ‘I did what I had to do, to uphold the law.’ Hester responds, ‘So now do what you can to uphold justice.’ Rathbone must face not only his terrible mistake, but also the fact that he does not really know his wife or her family. He tells his wife, Margaret: ‘It takes courage … I think those who have never made any grand mistakes do not realize how much that costs.’ This is telling commentary from Anne, as are Monk’s words to Hester: ‘I didn’t want to talk about my past, and I didn’t care about [Durban’s]. For any of us, it’s who you are today that matters.’ Hester’s epiphany is to ignore Monk’s request that she leave her philanthropic work at the hospital in Portpool Lane. It is central to everything she values and ‘she could not allow him to simply remove it because he thought he could’.

  The fearless street urchin Scuff, who finds a home with the Monks in the later books, provided a model for a character Anne developed to appear in a series
of six short historical novels she was commissioned by publisher Barrington Stoke to write for reading-impaired children, especially boys. These were to be published in 2011. ‘A young teenage boy (who has difficulty in reading himself) dreams he’s at each historical event.’46 By the beginning of 2009 Anne had delivered the manuscripts for the conquest of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the story of Thomas Becket’s murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and the execution of Edith Cavell in 1915. Each was a short, vivid immersion in history.

  Through 2009 and 2010 Anne worked on these stories, her latest Pitt (Betrayal at Lisson Grove), a new Monk (Acceptable Loss) and on television scripts for her Monk series. ‘Looks like the contemporary series that Anne’s been discussing … is our big hope,’ Ken Sherman wrote to Meg in February 2009.47 In April 2009, Meg, Diane Hinds and Anne travelled to Washington to collect a Lifetime Achievement Award in honour of her contribution to crime fiction writing.

  Towards the end of 2009, Dana Linkiewicz’s documentary, Anne Perry: Interiors, was released with a minor change requested by Meg Davis. ‘Anne, as you know, is very aware of how her life impacts on her family, and we need to be careful of their sensibilities. We’ve given you a lot of freedom and openness, and it’s really just this small detail that we need to insist on … If you could confirm that you’ve made the cut, I’ll send you an agreement signed by Anne.’48 Linkiewicz’s 70-minute film sensitively evokes Anne’s place and the people to whom she feels most connected. Her house, the farmland it sits on, the countryside and dramatic seascapes of Portmahomack are hauntingly portrayed. The murder is never represented, but subtly remains like a trace of loss and tragedy.