Where the landscape becomes a central character

Malign Intent is the sequel to and the second in a planned series featuring the protagonist Garda Inspector P.J. Crowe. It’s my second contemporary crime thriller. Like its predecessor A KIND OF DROWNING, it was inspired by the rugged coastline of Ireland’s East Coast. A coastline with local tales of smuggling, small coves, and fishing towns. A coastline rich in both oral and written history. In these books of Crowe, the landscape and its many shifting moods is as much a character as the people who populate the story.

I created the fictional town of Roscarrig situated between Dublin and Drogheda and made it a fishing town down on its luck economically, dependent on the vagaries of the tourist season and situated on a lonely peninsular where Crowe, a disgraced police officer is lying low. 

Whereas A KIND OF DROWNING was inspired by Lambeg Island, opposite the town of Rush, Co Dublin, MALIGN INTENT was inspired by a nearby derelict caravan park surrounded by disused and dilapidated agricultural greenhouses. And I posed myself the question – what would happen if Crowe were attacked in these abandoned greenhouses and how long does it take for him to be discovered? From that central premise, I began to build the story.

A stranger drifts into town with a monkey on his back and a mystery to solve… MALIGN INTENT is very much a character driven novel. I drew on my experiences as a musician (bass guitar) in the pub / rock scene in the 1980’s & 90’s to create one character: an ageing punk rocker named Danny Razzor – who is a composite of several guys I toured with. He was a pleasure to create. Other characters were drawn from my years of employment; as the saying goes, there is no shame in earning a weekly wage and life throws up some wonderful personalities that stay with you. I take what I call ‘thumbnail’ impressions, a gait, a hairstyle, or a turn of phrase. As Brecht once observed, every character needs a trait or as he used to call it ‘a guest.’ I keep a daily journal and try to capture some elements of my day; weather, who I met, something about them that stayed. I use it regularly.

In the antagonist – retired Chief Justice Barry Gartland, I had to create a complex, though fundamentally unlikeable individual. I am fascinated by power, both acquired and passed down. So, I created a ruthless individual, a polite sociopath who has political nous and understands how to acquire useful favours. Nothing will stand in his way. 

Certainly not P.J. Crowe.

Crowe is a flawed character – as one reader remarked ‘He’s my dad,” I created a man in his late fifties who is technologically challenged, unvarnished in his opinions, no filters but an honest cop. He’s not politically correct – but fights for those who cannot speak for themselves. He will always fight for the underdog. It is his flaws, which give him such appeal.

MALIGN INTENT took three years to write. I jettisoned ¾’s (approx. 50 000 words) from the first draft and retained just three inciting incidents. From these small scenes, I began to rebuild the book. I watched old westerns – and homed in on the 1940 movie ‘The Westerner’ with Walter Brennan portraying Judge Roy Bean. It was his performance that cemented in my head how I wanted to portray Chief Justice Barry Gartland. And then, I treated MALIGN INTENT as a western, albeit in 21st Century Ireland. I started thinking in cinematic terms and John Ford. The landscape very much part of the plot. It both roots the action and allows the action to flow.

In the rising tide of AI generated books (something that is akin to mushrooms growing overnight) I set out to have one POV from Crowe, but to put my writerly stamp on the story, I shifted perspective with only one character late in the tale – Clodagh Robertson. She is Crowe’s love interest, but with Crowe’s personal relationships, very much hanging on tenterhooks. I used this approach to shake up the plot and allow the reader to view Crowe from another character’s eyes. I also took the approach of pausing the story; by inserting an interlude (again, a cinematic trick) to show, no computer program generated MALIGN INTENT.

Robert Craven 

2024