In Full Retreat: Writing in France

Zo� Sharp

I went to France at the beginning of July planning to get a start made on the new Charlie Fox book. I�m happy to report that the tentative 15,000 words I�d hoped for morphed into 20,000 once I got into the writing, and I�m even cautiously pleased with the way it�s going so far. I promised myself I�d have a break when I hit that point, and do some driving around to look at locations for later on in the story, but at the same time, I�m anxious not to lose too much momentum.

No chance of getting out of practise with the writing itself, though. I also had a last-minute Q&A to write for the #BlogTour I did at the start of the month for the launch of the new crime thriller standalone, Dancing On The Grave. Thank you so much to everyone who took part or supported me along the way.

And then I was reminded that I�d promised to provide a short story for a proposed anthology earlier in the year. The editor contacted me and asked for a brief sentence or two about the story, and particularly the setting of it. Within a week, if possible.

Argh!

My mind was a complete blank.

Me and fellow crime thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann at
the American Cemetery, Omaha Beach in Normandy

When I came out to Aveyron in southern France, I had with me my author friend, Libby Fischer Hellmann. She needed to finish a book just as I needed to start one. Incredibly useful to have someone else along on the 1100km drive south, though, as trying to drive a UK-spec right-hand-drive car through a French toll p�age, where all the payment booths are set up for left-hand-drive vehicles, can be a bit of a problem.

French toll p�ages can be tricky in a right-hand-drive UK car!

We did quite a bit of touring about in the afternoons, having spent the mornings dutifully scribbling. And when I picked up another visitor, who arrived the afternoon following Libby�s departure, I had already seen one or two of the nearest and most popular.

Chateau de Bournazel with medieval crane in evidence...

So, I found myself sitting with my notebook outside a fabulous French castle on a baking day, waiting for them to finish sightseeing, and suddenly a short story came floating by. Needless to say, I grabbed it with both hands. By the time my visitor returned, I had the main points mapped out, and I finished off fleshing it out sitting in the garden, with one of my feline muses for company.

Spatz, one of my muses

So, I�ve been trying to work out what it is about being here in in the Aveyron valley area that�s been so good for my inspiration. It can�t be the weather per se, as it�s been similar weather in the UK.

It can�t be the presence of the feline muses, either, as I have two on hand back in Derbyshire. (Who would be mortified if they knew I�d been unfaithful to them by sleeping with other cats on my bed here!) Perhaps it�s the lack of distraction. Good internet for research, but no TV. Friendly locals, but no close friends except on the end of a phone line or Skype call. And no other purpose than writing except to keep the place running�easier said than done after an ant invasion, near-miss lightning strike that knocked the power out in the house, and neighbouring dogs chasing the cats around the garden, at which point Inkypuss went and hid in the rafters of one of the outbuildings. We spent ages searching for her and fearing the worst.

Inkypuss, showing there is Something of the Night about her...

French road signs are entertaining to me as a Brit�particularly the fact the Stop signs have �Stop� on them, rather than �Arr�t�, but are still the distinctive octagonal shape as at home and in the States, so they are instantly recognisable even if obscured by snow. And whoever designed the signs warning of the approach to a pedestrian crossing must have been a closet fan of The Beatles�

Abbey Road, anyone?

 This area is very arable. It suddenly becomes understandable, if the French farmers object strongly to some aspect of government policy, why it creates a serious problem for their politicians. The chestnut-coloured and cream cattle are beautiful muscular animals in the fields. Every garden is full of hydrangeas.

Hydrangeas are everywhere in this part of France, both pink and
blue ones often growing alongside each other.

 By the time you read this, I will be on the way up-country heading for the ferry home from Calais on Monday. We have several side trips planned for the journey, so expect to hear more about that part of the trip very soon.

Me driving over the famous Millau Bridge (the Bridge in the Clouds)

Meanwhile, I exceeded my cautious target of 15,000 words by another 5000, I�m well into writing the short story. I plan on making lots of notes for both novel and story while on the road�or during the overnight stops, at least�so I can leap back into my August workload of writing as soon as I get back. Hopefully, still thoroughly invigorated by my time away.

Vive la France!

This week�s Word of the Week is deracinate, meaning to uproot (usually a person) from their natural social, cultural or geographical environment. It comes from the 16th Century French d�raciner, from d� (removal) and racine, meaning �root�, from the Latin radix.

�We still don�t know how it worked!� the Amazing Thai Cave Rescue

Zo� Sharp

Members of the Wild Boars soccer team

The story started on June 23 2018, when a group of 12 boys finished football (soccer) practice and went, with their assistant coach, into Tham Luang Nang Non, (which translates to �Great Cave of the Sleeping Lady�) a cave system in the Chiang Rai Province of northern Thailand, almost on the border with Myanmar.

The reason the boys, aged 11 to 17, from the Wild Boars junior association football team, decided to go into the cave isn�t clear�maybe for them it was the equivalent of a trip to Alton Towers. And it does look to be a natural wonder. A huge karstic cave system beneath the Doi Nang Nom mountain range.

The Doi Nang Nom mountain range, Thailand

Unfortunately for the boys, the monsoon rains arrived earlier than they expected. As the water levels inside the cave rose, the boys and their 25-year-old coach found themselves marooned on a small plateau almost two miles underground.

There they remained, undiscovered, for nine days.

What those nine days must have been like for the boys, I can only imagine. But they must, surely, have thought nobody was ever going to come, or even find out what had happened to them.

The fact they survived in such apparent good spirits despite oxygen levels running low and lack of food, has been credited in part to the presence of the young coach Ekaphol Chantawong, a former monk who encouraged them to rest and meditate to alleviate the boredom and stress. Sadly, I have a suspicion that once the euphoria of subsequent events has subsided and the media begins to look for a continuation of the story�ie, who to blame�this young man�s life may take a more unpleasant turn. Everybody loves a heroic figure, but the media seems to love nothing more than bringing such a hero figure to their knees.

Eventually, on July 02, the boys were discovered by a British cave diver, John Volanthen. By that time, cave rescue experts had been drafted in from all over the world to supplement the Thai Navy SEALs and local volunteers.

I regret that, in the early stages, the details of the story passed me by. I was getting ready for my trip to southern France, and the imminent launch of my new standalone, DANCING ON THE GRAVE. And, I confess, I was trying to tune out anything connected to the World Cup. The fact that the boys were collectively described as a football team in the news did not serve to make them register strongly in my mind. (I seem to remember that when I initially heard an entire football team had gone missing, I even thought they might one of the those entered in the World Cup who had disappeared while in Moscow.)

It wasn�t long before I was as hooked as everyone else and reading the regular updates on the excellent The Guardian website. And as more complications and difficulties emerged, the more hooked I became. It was a rollercoaster of highs and lows that gripped you by the throat and wouldn�t let go.

They found the boys alive�great. They were trapped two miles underground�oh no. The Thai authorities brought in heavy duty pumps and had shifted, by the end of things, more than one million cubic metres of water out of the cave system�amazing. More monsoon rains were forecast and some were predicting it might be months before the boys could be safely extracted�what?!

By July 05, after attempts failed to locate a point directly above the boys� position in order to drill through 600 metres of rock to reach them, the only logical option was to bring them out underground. This would involve using scuba gear and air tanks for much of the first mile, which was extensively flooded despite the pumping crews� best efforts.

None of the boys had ever scuba dived before, and there were doubts if a mask small enough could be found to fit the youngest boy and seal reliably throughout the journey. Plus, when they were found the boys had been surviving only on small amounts of water. They were in a weakened condition.

Elon Musk's solution was a mini submersible, but it's doubtful
that the craft would have made it through some of the
incredibly narrow passages inside the cave.

But, by now they�d been trapped for thirteen days. The oxygen levels inside the small pocket that contained them had fallen to 15 percent. Medical experts warned that at 12 percent, the boys would start to fall into coma. Still, it was a choice fraught with danger, as was tragically illustrated by the death of Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL diver.

former Thai Navy SEAL diver, Saman Kunan, who died during the rescue operation

But they were fast running out of options. The monsoons were forecast to let rip at any moment. When heavy rains failed to materialise on July 07, as predicted, the authorities realised they had to make best use of what might be their only reprieve.

The resilience of the boys at this point was quite remarkable. It is reported that they were excited by the prospect of going diving as much as being rescued. The original plan was to bring the strongest out first, but Australian doctor Richard Harris who went in to assess their condition, found they were all equally fit. Eventually, the boys decided among themselves, with the coach making the final pick.

The first two boys were given a sedative as a precaution against panic, then and brought out tethered to two divers for much of the first part of the journey. At a dry area known as Pattaya Beach, they were loaded onto wraparound stretchers and taken the rest of the way, aided by a daisy chain of other supporters along the route until they finally reached the largely dry third chamber, which was the Forward Operating Base for the rescue attempt. From there, they were hooked up to a pulley system and guided through the cramped, muddy terrain by more than a hundred further rescue workers.

If this had been a staged event instead of an emergency response, it would have been years in the planning. The authorities had a couple of days to co-ordinate teams from all over the world. Fortunately, the hand-signal language of diving is much the same everywhere.

The divers involved admitted that it was only as the first boys were being ferried to hospital that they allowed themselves to believe they might be able to pull the whole thing off. Even so, the slightest problem would have seen the plan collapse and might, perhaps, leave some of the boys compelled to stay underground and wait out the monsoon season.

the boys are ferried to hospital as they are brought to the surface

Having managed their amazing feat of co-ordination and co-operation�not to mention skill and bravery�to bring out four of the boys on July 08, the divers then went back and did it all over again the following day. And again the day after that, successfully bringing out the entire team. The coach left himself until last.

Even after the last of the Wild Boars was safely out of the cave, it seemed that the Sleeping Lady had one last drama to throw at them. A water pipe burst and the main pump stopped working, causing the last of the rescue workers to run to escape the rapidly rising water. It will be months, they reckon, before they can return to retrieve their equipment.

the rescued Wild Boars recovering in hospital isolation

Hollywood, as you might expect, has already announced not one but two movies in the works about the event. It is hard to see how they can possibly make this remarkable example of human ingenuity and teamwork any more dramatic than it was in real life.

This week�s Word of the Week is karstic, meaning the topography in a region where the rock is soluble (such as limestone or dolomite) and over time forms sinkholes, caverns and underground streams and passages. Karst is thought to derive from a pre-Indo-European word, karra, meaning stone, or from the Latin carsus, stony ground.

an example of karstic topography in Madagascar

Events:

I am currently in the midst of a Blog Tour for my latest standalone crime thriller, DANCING ON THE GRAVE, which came out on July 01. The tour started out at ShotsMag Confidential on July 09, and will finish up at Sean's Book Reviews on July 22. It's a mix of guest articles and reviews, so I hope you'll join me somewhere along the way. Full details on my website here.

Where the Story Began: the Washington Sniper Incident

Zo� Sharp

I make no secret of the fact that it was the Washington Sniper incident from 2002 that gave me the original idea behind my new standalone crime thriller, DANCING ON THE GRAVE. But, although I was aware of the story, I didn�t research it in detail because I knew from the start that my take on it was going to be very different.

It�s only recently, therefore, that I�ve gone back over the events. They make horrifying reading. The basic facts are that between February and October 2002, the partnership of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed a total of seventeen people across the States, injuring a further ten. Events culminated in the incidents that became known as the Washington Sniper or the Beltway or D.C. Sniper in October of that year.

  

Lee Boyd Malvo (l) and John Allen Muhammad

Malvo was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1985. His mother, Una Sceon James, met Muhammad in Antigua and Barbuda around 1999, and he and the young Malvo formed a strong bond. James left her son with Muhammad when she came to the States, and the two followed in 2001. 

Both mother and son detained by Border Patrol in December of that year, and in fact Malvo had just been released on a bond in January of the following year, just before the killings began. It�s hard to define the exact relationship between Muhammad and Malvo. The certainly stayed together for over a year. At one point Muhammad enrolled the boy in school claiming to be his father. Malvo later claimed that he�d been brainwashed and sexually abused.

Lee Boyd Malvo at the time of his arrest

Muhammad was born John Allen Williams in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His mother died when he was three and his father left him in the care of his grandfather and an aunt. He served in the National Guard and the US Army, serving in the Gulf War, and was a noted expert shot. He mustered out in 1991 with the rank of sergeant, after seventeen years� service, during which, in 1987, he converted to Islam. He changed his last name in 2001.

It was initially claimed that Muhammad�s motive for the killings was that he wanted to kill his ex-wife and regain custody of his three children, but there was insufficient evidence to prove this. He had indeed kidnapped his children in 1999 and taken them to Antigua, which was when he met Malvo.

 

John Allen Muhammad at his trial

Events unfolding

In February, 21-year-old Keenya Cook was shot and killed at her aunt�s house by Boyd Lee Malvo. Keenya�s aunt was a friend of Muhammad�s ex-wife, and had encouraged her to seek a divorce.

Following this, a further five apparently random people were killed in various states, including a liquor store clerk in Mongomery, Alabama who was shot to death during a robbery�where the two men left behind fingerprint evidence that would eventually convict them. Another seven people were injured, such as a man in Louisana who was shot in the neck and played dead while Malvo stole his wallet, and the owner of a pizzeria in Maryland who was shot six times at close range but also survived.

map showing the locations of the sniper shootings in order

Washington area

On the afternoon of October 2^nd 2002, a shot was fired through the window of a store in Aspen Hill, missing the cashier. As nobody was injured, the incident was not thought to be serious, until an hour later when a man was killed in the parking lot of a grocery store in Wheaton.

The following morning, a landscaper was killed while mowing grass; a taxi driver while he was filling up his car; a housekeeper while sitting on a bench reading a book, and a woman while vacuuming her car at a gas station. These killings all happened within the space of two hours.

Later that evening, a retired carpenter was shot while out walking. He died an hour later.

 

the Bushmaster rifle used in the sniper shootings

Initially, the police had little to go on, and received conflicting reports about what type of vehicle the shooter(s) might be using, although one of those reported was the blue Chevy Caprice that did indeed belong to Muhammad.

The next day, October 4^th, a woman was shot and wounded while loading groceries into her vehicle in Spotsylvania. The police soon had a forensic link between the killings.

On October 7^th, a 13-year-old boy, Iran Brown, was critically wounded as he arrived at school in Bowie, Maryland. After this shooting, police recovered a shell casing and a tarot card with the code �Call me God� written on it.

drawing by Malvo, showing the interior of the Chevy Caprice

Two days later, a civil engineer was shot dead while filling his car just outside Manassas, Virginia. On October 11^th, a businessman was killed also while pumping gas, this time just outside Fredericksburg, Virginia.

A few days later, on October 14^th, an FBI intelligence analyst was shot in the covered parking lot of a Home Depot just outside Falls Church, Virginia.

As soon as the first connection between the killings was made, schools went on to lockdown. Later, gas stations started putting up tarpaulins to shield people filling their cars from view, and the White House and other federal buildings had their security beefed up. Specific threats were made against schoolchildren, and many schools cancelled outside trips or physical education that involved being out of the school buildings.

tarps were strung from the awnings of fuel stations to shield customers

Eventually, Muhammad and Malvo tripped themselves up. They began to contact the authorities, boasting. During one such phone call, they mentioned an unsolved murder in Montgomery, where Malvo had dropped a magazine with his fingerprints on it. Once he was identified, his close ties to Muhammad soon came to light.

And with the identification of Muhammad came the licence number of his blue Chevy Caprice, which had already been stopped and checked near to several of the crime scenes. Eventually, after a public alert, the men were spotted sleeping in the car in a rest area off the Jones Falls Expressway in Baltimore and were arrested. A slot was found in the rear panel of the car which allowed a rifle to be sighted and fired from inside the vehicle.

Muhammad's blue Chevy Caprice, with firing point slot in rear panel 

Both were convicted of the homicides. Muhammad was given the death sentence, which was carried out by lethal injection in 2009. Malvo, only seventeen when the crimes were committed, was given six life sentences without the possibility of parole. Although he originally confessed to pulling the trigger in most of the sniper attacks, he later changed his story and claimed that he was attempting to protect Muhammad from the death penalty. 

Last week, a federal appeals court threw out four of the life sentences Malvo received for his part in the killings, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile to such a term. However, life with parole sentences still stand for murders committed in other states, so despite his apparent remorse and changed attitude as a result of his imprisonment to date, it is highly unlikely Malvo will ever be released.

Lee Boyd Malvo now

I didn�t know, when I was writing DANCING ON THE GRAVE, that Malvo�who acted as Muhammad�s spotter and lookout�had tried to take credit or blame for the crimes. But that does have spooky similarities with my story.

Sometimes I�m not sure if it�s art imitating life, or life imitating art.

This week�s Word of the Week is commination, meaning a threat of punishment or vengeance, a denunciation, or in the Church of England it is read on Ash Wednesday to proclaim God�s judgement and anger against sinners. It dates back to the 16^thcentury, from the Latin comminatorius, from comminat- threatened.

DANCING ON THE GRAVE, out today!

The Thorpe Affair�Back When English Scandals Led the World

Zo� Sharp

Tonight (Sunday) is the final episode of a three-part BBC drama written by the excellent Russell T Davies called A Very English Scandal, starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw, about the Thorpe Affair of the late 1960s/early 1970s. As I write this, I have so far watched only the opening instalment, but will certainly be catching up on the rest.

Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, with his second wife, Marion (r)

For a start, Hugh Grant�s performance as Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal Party politician embroiled in a scandal of sex and politics, is a revelation. Gone are the foppish tics and verbal fumbling that have (let�s be honest) characterised just about Grant�s entire career to date. In their place is an acting tour de force of sleazy intensity.

Jeremy Thorpe (l) played by Hugh Grant (r)

Maybe Grant had no choice but to up his game, appearing as he does opposite the excellent Ben Whishaw�an actor whose previous credits include Q in the Daniel Craig Bond movies, and the voice of Paddington Bear. Wishaw plays Thorpe�s gay lover, Norman Josiffe, who became better known as Norman Scott.

Ben Whishaw (l) as Norman Scott (r)

Much of their affair was conducted at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, but it was Thorpe�s alleged attempt to have his inconvenient and troublesome ex done away with that led to them both appearing at the Old Bailey in May 1979.

Jeremy Thorpe joined the Liberal Party whilst he was studying law at Oxford and was later adopted as a prospective candidate, successfully being elected to Parliament in 1959 as one of a handful of Liberal MPs.

He met Norman Josiffe, as he was then, while Josiffe was working as a groom at stables owned by Norman Vater, a friend of Thorpe�s. When Thorpe came to visit in 1961 the two met and Thorpe told the young man to contact him if ever he needed to.

After Josiffe lost his job with Vater, had a mental breakdown and spent some time in psychiatric care, he visited Thorpe at the House of Commons, homeless and seeking help. Thorpe took Josiffe and his dog to the home of Thorpe�s mother, Ursula, for the night and, it�s alleged, there began the affair.

Although it was relatively short-lived, all this took place before homosexuality was legalised in 1967, and would have spelt the end of Thorpe�s political career. He was the Liberal Party�s leader from 1967 until 1976.

Jeremy Thorpe became leader of the Liberal Party in 1967

For a short while, Thorpe put Josiffe up in a flat and bought him clothing, introducing him to friends. Josiffe had various jobs working with horses but always seemed to end up out of a job. He was prone to bouts of depression and attempted suicide.

One recurring problem, which also features in the dramatisation, was that Josiffe had mislaid his National Insurance card, which he needed in order to claim any state benefits, and a replacement card appears to have been withheld by Thorpe.

Josiffe changed his last name to Scott in 1967. By this time he had been through a variety of horse-related jobs, as well as periods of depression and mental illness. Throughout this period, he continued to contact Thorpe on occasion. The higher Thorpe�s political kudos rose, the more of a threat Scott became to his ambitions, until in 1969 Thorpe called two colleagues into his office and apparently first began to suggest the idea of having Scott killed.

This continued, waxing and waning according to how much of a nuisance Thorpe and his people believed Scott had become. After a promising showing in the 1974 General Election (when it looked for a time that the Liberals might hold the balance of power in a coalition) this became an even more sensitive issue.

With the threat of Scott�s embarrassing re-emergence once again on the horizon, a large amount of cash was supposedly siphoned off from a political donor and used to pay an airline pilot called Andrew Newton to kill Norman Scott.

Airline pilot Andrew Newton, who was supposedly paid to kill Norman Scott

Scott botched the job, only succeeding in shooting dead Scott�s Great Dane, Rinka. Newton was caught and claimed Scott had been blackmailing him. A piece in the December 1975 issue of Private Eye by Auberon Waugh ended: �My only hope is that sorrow over his friend's dog will not cause Mr Thorpe's premature retirement from public life.� It would seem that most of the newspapers had heard the rumours concerning Thorpe and Scott, but were wary of being sued for libel.

Scott continued to contest that his life had been ruined by his relationship with Thorpe, even doing so in court during the case against Newton. Thorpe was finally convinced to resign from his position as Liberal leader, although he claimed to have done nothing wrong. Newton was convicted of destruction of property (Rinka) and sentenced to two years in prison.

In May 1979, Thorpe and his co-conspirators were put on trial, during which Thorpe elected not to give testimony. After the Not Guilty verdict, satirist Peter Cook performed a version of the somewhat controversial summing-up as stand-up at The Secret Policeman�s Ball.

Peter Cook at The Secret Policeman's Ball performing the biased judge skit

Despite being acquitted, Thorpe�s reputation was beyond redemption. He resigned and remained on the sidelines. An attempt to appoint him to a high profile position with Amnesty International in the early 1980s was met with such public outcry, the job offer was rescinded. Jeremy Thorpe withdrew almost entirely from public life after being diagnosed with Parkinson�s disease. He died in 2014.

Jeremy Thorpe in 1999

Now, it has just been announced that the police are reinvestigating the case. Apparently, it was incorrectly assumed that Andrew Newton was dead, and there are various other factors that could lead to a rather different verdict this time around. It may have been a long time coming, but Norman Scott might get his vindication after all.

Norman Scott

This week�s Word of the Week is cacoethes, meaning the urge to do something inadvisable. It dates back to the mid 16^th century and comes via Latin from Greek, kakoethes, meaning ill-disposed, from kakos, bad and ethos, disposition.

No events on the horizon, but I do have a new book coming up at the beginning of July. DANCING ON THE GRAVE is a standalone crime thriller featuring CSI Grace McColl and DC Nick Weston. It�s my take on the Washington Sniper incident, but set in the English Lake District, and is now available for preorder.