What inspired you to write a crime novel?
Simon: I expect I was driving. I've found that's a very productive situation for coming up with new ideas. Anyway, it was rather sudden when it happened. I thought how interesting it would be to create a detective story with a strong musical component because music and crime novels are two special loves of mine. I've lived in Helsinki for the last 30 years, and it's the city I know best, so that would clearly be the best place to set the story. As to the music angle. . . Sibelius was the obvious choice. He's revered by Finns, and he's also at the top of my personal list of composers. I thought fairly casually about the novel's structure for a couple of weeks, and then came up with what seemed to me an original way of handling the denouement. It so excited me I was compelled to put pen to paper. After that there was no turning back. It took me two and a half years, but I did eventually finish the job.
I've never done any extended writing before. It came as a big surprise to me that, at the age of 52, I seemed able to write rather fluently and naturally. Of course, to a certain extent, I had to learn the craft by trial and error. But I was very lucky to have an American colleague who'd published several novels herself, and who'd been teaching writing skills for many years. She took me under her wing. She read everything as I produced it, chapter by chapter, dissecting it, criticizing its weaknesses, praising its strengths, covering the MS with detailed annotations; above all she made me think carefully about what I was doing and how I was doing it. She taught me about being economical with words, and she edged me towards tighter and more convincing dialogue. It was a veritable private crash course, and all out of the generosity of her heart!
You provide a great deal of information about
Sibelius in your novel. You have also marked some
passages that focus solely on Sibelius's music as being optional reading. Do you feel that a reader will
regret not having read those passages?
Simon: Nearly twenty people read the first draft of the novel and gave me their valuable feedback. Some complained that they got so caught up in the story they didn't want to take time out reading the Sibelius lectures, even though each of them is no more than a few pages long. But just as many of my guinea pigs said they enjoyed the Sibelius passages enormously - that they were an integral part of the reading experience - and on no account was I to remove them. The best solution seemed to be to leave it up to the individual reader. There are certain parts of the lectures I'd like everyone to read - just one or two pages each time - but the remaining sections are now optional.
You are, I believe, a language teacher at the very music colleges that you wrote about in your novel. Did this focus make your job as a writer easier or
more difficult?
Simon: As with using Helsinki for the novel's venue, it was helpful to incorporate other familiar aspects of my own life. But there was one disturbing corollary to that. . . The Seven Symphonies features a set of serial killings, and many of the victims are young female music students from the music schools at which I teach myself. One beautiful spring afternoon I was walking from the Sibelius Academy - my main working place - along a footpath through a patch of forest which leads to the music students' biggest hall of residence (what's the American equivalent of that??). My intention was to pick out a suitable location where one of the novel's victims would be dragged off into the trees and murdered. As I was walking and surveying the possibilities, I passed two pretty girl students from one of my own English classes. They waved and smiled breezily to me. Suddenly I had this awful feeling: what if by writing these terrible events I somehow made them happen in reality. This superstitious fear so took hold of me that I afterwards modified all of the crime scenes so that (apart from the first one which occurs at the Sibelius Monument) they no longer correspond exactly to any true location. The places are more or less defined, but the details are inaccurate. In this way I hoped to deter fate from stepping in with any copycat killings.
Who are your favourite authors?
Simon: When I was younger I read the classics: Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad. But as work and family responsibilities more and more limited my free-time, I found myself reading mainly for relaxation - although I still prefer books that are in some way stimulating to the mind and the emotions. Over the last twenty years I've read a lot of detective fiction: PD James, Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, and many others. I very much enjoy the jigsaw puzzle aspects of the crime novel. But I'd have to say that my favourite living author is probably in a different genre: that's John le Carré. I also admire John Fowles' early books, in particular The Magus & The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Your main character is a woman detective. Isn't this an unusual choice for a male writer?
Simon: When I started writing the book, I had this crazy idea that I'd use a female pseudonym. . . Well, most of the successful crime writers are women, so perhaps I'd be taken more seriously if I pretended to be a woman myself. The idea further amused me because it was a reversal of earlier times when some women writers felt obliged to adopt men's names: George Eliot and George Sands, for example. The first draughts of the early chapters of my book actually bore the name Samantha Bell. My 16-year-old son put a stop to that. He said: "But, Dad, what am I going to tell my friends in the future? . . .That my father is the famous author Samantha Bell? They'll laugh at me!"
So I fell back on my own name. But by then I'd adopted a heroine detective called Miranda and set myself the task of writing about her convincingly from a woman reader's point of view. This was a tremendous challenge. Men are notoriously inept at understanding how a woman feels, especially in romantic contexts - and there were plenty of those in my novel. Hopefully I haven't made too bad a mess of the job! Most women I've talked to say they've been able to empathize rather well with Miranda.
What are your future writing plans?
Simon: I do have a new project in mind. Again it has a strong musical component - this time focusing on a different composer. But it'll be a supernatural detective story rather than a murder mystery. I feel that in The Seven Symphonies I've covered everything I'll ever want to say on the subject of serial killers.
