Crippen
by John Boyne

List Price: $24.95
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0312343582
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Q: What drew you to Crippen? And what inspired you to tell his story?

JB: I wasn't deliberately looking for a subject for a new novel, but happened to come across the story of how Dr. Crippen disguised his mistress, Ethel, as a boy and traveled with her as father and son in order to evade the authorities. The image of that--and of the lengths that they would have to go to in order to maintain their fraud--struck me as wonderful subject matter for a novel, both dramatic and comic, and I immediately knew that I wanted to write about it. Then the more research I did into the life of Crippen himself, and the more his character began to form in my mind, the greater were my ambitions for the book. He seemed to be a much more ambiguous and conflicted character than I had previously imagined. Also, the idea of writing a slightly "gothic" crime novel was very appealing. Stories of Jack the Ripper, for example, seem to have been done over and over but Crippen was a story that I felt I could bring a very fresh perspective to. And it's a lot of fun having people walk down foggy pea-soup London streets in 1910, with bottles of poison tucked in the pockets of their topcoats!

Q: How much freedom do you feel an author of a historical crime novel has?

JB: I think that with any story based around real-life events one has a certain responsibility to the truth. But in a story such as this, where no one really knows what took place between Crippen and his wife, or of the events that took place on that fateful evening at Hilldrop Crescent, it's interesting to play with the evidence and suggest alternatives. After all, both Crippen and Ethel always maintained their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's interesting that much of what might seem like coincidence here--the fact that they happened to travel on the very first boat with a telegraph machine, for example, which resulted in their capture--is actually based on the facts of the case. Anyway, part of the fun of being a novelist is that one can take events that are in the public domain and put a fresh, speculative spin on them, bringing details forth to the public that they might not have known before and encouraging debate. Look at The Da Vinci Code for example. The line between truth and fiction in a novel can be quite a fluid one, but at the end of the day the classification at the back of the book says quite clearly that it's "fiction."

Q: Some of the events in the novel seem quite astonishing in terms of modern police techniques. How much of it is actually based on fact?

JB: The circumstances of Crippen's various jobs are true; his early marriage is rarely remembered but is a matter of record, although there's never been any suggestion that he had a hand in her death! The chase aboard the Montrose and Captain Kendall's telegraph to Scotland Yard is all true and Inspector Dew's capture of the couple is also presented pretty much as it happened. Indeed, toward the end of the novel when Dew arrests Crippen, the dialogue comes directly from his own recollections that were submitted in evidence during Crippen's subsequent trial. However, the secondary characters in the novel are all made up and, of course, the personalities of Crippen, his wife Cora, his mistress Ethel, and Inspector Dew are all entirely imagined by me.

Q: Do you feel that Crippen is a change of pace for you, given the scope of your other novels?

JB: Not really. The Thief of Time (NOTE to reader: you can find an excerpt at the back of this book) was semihistorical and semicontemporary, something I always thought of as an adventure story. However, I think this was the most fun to write. Once I got caught up in the action and began to structure the story around the chase from Antwerp to Canada, it became a very exciting novel for me to work on. And, of course, bringing back the character of Matthieu Zéla from The Thief of Time and installing him as a passenger on board Crippen's escape ship was great fun.

Q: There seems to be a deliberate emphasis on gender issues in the novel. Was this intentional?

JB: Definitely. I would go so far as to say it was my most important concern in tackling the book. I mentioned earlier that it was the fact of Crippen and Ethel's disguises that drew me to the subject and through that I wanted to explore how a pair of lovers would behave around each other if they were dressed and behaving as father and son. Whether this would prove a distraction to their relationship...whether it would enhance it in some curious way. And from this I began to play with the genders of many of the other characters, most notably those on board ship. The fact that Ethel turns out to be quite a striking boy catches the eye of a young passenger called Victoria who pursues her/him relentlessly. But is she attracted to who Ethel is as a boy or who Ethel is herself? Even the relationship between Crippen and Inspector Dew is an ambiguous one and it does appear that, despite the fact that Dew set out to capture him, there was a surprising level of affection between the two; when I read what Dew said on capturing Crippen, it was hard not to feel that he felt a certain regret.

Q: Who are the authors who have particularly influenced you in your writing?

JB: There have been so many over the years because I don't think I've had a book out of my hands since I was about four years old. But if I had to pin it down I'd say that reading Dickens when I was a kid affected me enormously--I'm always stretching toward the epic nineteenth-century novel even if I am writing a century and a half later. Every few years I still go back to David Copperfield. Also the American writer John Irving was the first contemporary author who I fell for, whose storytelling ability I'm still in awe of. I've lost track of the number of times I've read his books. A few others off the top of my head would include Patricia Highsmith, Tobias Wolff, and, of course, Philip Roth. But I read widely and frequently and need to stop spending so much money on books!

Q: And finally, your writing seems to have concentrated on history so far. Is this deliberate or is there a contemporary novel on the horizon?

JB: Well Crippen is actually the first completely historical book I've written. However I've moved from the late eighteenth century, to the late nineteenth century, and now to 1910 with this novel, and I'm currently working on a new novel set in 1936 so I suppose I'm getting closer. I'm not a big fan of contemporary novels that just name-drop trends, logos, or celebrity names. To me that gives a book a shelf life of about two weeks. But I think after the next one I'll have to set myself the challenge of writing something set in the present day and just sticking to what I suppose fiction writers are supposed to do--making it all up as I go along.

Reprinted courtesy of Penguin Books U.K.
www.penguin.co.uk


Excerpted from Crippen © Copyright 2012 by John Boyne. Reprinted with permission by Thomas Dunne Books. All rights reserved.

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