Our next guest on the Crime Cafe podcast will be Iain Parke!
He has two books to give away for you here. In fact, you can download them right from this post! How about that then? 🙂
However, before we get to the giveaway, let’s hear what Iain has to say about his writing.
It’s been called a cult
Just think, next time one of your mates has a snort at a party or your bird drops a tab at a club, someone’s had to source it for you, someone like me. This coke and shit doesn’t smuggle itself in y’know? It takes a bit of good old entrepreneurial risk-taking and effort on somebody’s part so’s you can get off your face.
There’s demand, we take the risk and supply, and we get the rewards. Ain’t that how it’s supposed to work?
Anyway, big tobacco sells stuff that kills you and if you’ve got a pension I bet you own some of it.
Damage
I think it’s fair to say at the outset that my books aren’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea. I get that. I’m not a traditional crime writer, writing police procedurals or cosy detective mysteries.
I write crime stories from a different perspective, that of the protagonist.
I’ve always been fascinated by the images and realities of the outlaw biker scene and irritated by the way bikers have been caricatured in films and TV.
Whatever you think about outlaw bikers and the clubs, there’s no denying it’s a serious lifestyle, taken very seriously by those in the life, and back when I first started writing fiction it seemed odd that no one seemed to be writing about it in a way which treated it seriously.
Write the story you want to read they say, so if no one else was going to cover the life, then I would.
I wanted to explore what it might be like to become involved in the scene, what would motivate someone to join, what choices it might lead them to make, what would it mean for them as a person.
Which is how I met Damage, and the rest is history.
I’m a lifelong biker but I’m not, and never have been, a member of any club, so I had to make my stories up while trying to imagine as authentic a voice as possible and strive to ‘get it right.’
All I can do is leave it to others to judge how far I succeeded or not.
*****
And here’s the giveaway … at last! 🙂
Your 25 Key Books About Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs
Your 25 Key Books About Gangland and Gangsters
And, while you’re at it, read this!
*****
Iain imports industrial quantities of Class A drugs, kills people and lies (a lot) for a living, being a British based crime fiction writer.
Iain became obsessed with motorcycles at an early age, taking a six hundred mile cross-country tour to Cornwall as soon as he bought a moped at the tender age of sixteen and after working as a London dispatch rider, he built his first chopper in his bedroom at university, undeterred by the fact that his workshop was upstairs.
Armed with a MBA degree, he worked in insolvency and business restructuring in the UK and Africa which inspired his first novel The Liquidator, a conspiracy thriller set in East Africa. Whatever you do, don’t take it on holiday as your safari reading!
This was then followed by his ‘Biker Noir’ crime thriller Heavy Duty People, set amongst UK outlaw bikers in the North East and Borders; which turned into a trilogy, now optioned for TV, with Heavy Duty Attitude and Heavy Duty Trouble after two of the characters unexpectedly met up again in his head and demanded he write it.
Iain has now found that biker books are a bit like zombies, whenever he thinks he has them dead and buried, they just keep lurching back to life, only dirtier, bloodier and more violent than before as a further three books, Operation Bourbon, Lord of the Isles and DILLIGAF have followed.
Iain has returned to the world of politics and espionage with Best of Enemies, which explores the potential impact of a shocking World War 2 plot on modern day international relations.
Iain lives off the grid, high up on the North Pennines in Northumberland with his wife, dogs, and a garage full of motorcycle restoration projects where as detailed in his dark short story collection How To Win The Lottery, he’s always working on a number of projects and now runs publishing house BAD PRESS iNK.
