The Dead Beat
The Dead Beat is a thriller set in modern-day Edinburgh about a young woman called Martha who gets a job on the obituary desk of an ailing newspaper. On her first day, someone calls in, reads his own obituary down the phone, then apparently shoots himself. This sets her on a race around town, trying to find out why people are suddenly killing themselves, including her estranged father. The mystery takes her into her own past and forces her to ask some big questions about her own depression and mental illness. That all sounds pretty heavy, but there’s a lot of dark humour in it and some romance, too.
Please tell us about the character of Martha.
I loved spending time with her while writing the novel, and that’s not always the case when I’m working on a book. She doesn’t have her troubles to seek, but she’s a strong, confident young woman with aspirations and ambitions, and she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She’s had clinical depression since her early teens, and she undergoes sessions of electroconvulsive therapy during the course of the book, but she doesn’t let that stuff get in the way of her life, or of her investigation into the strange things going on around her. She’s very acerbic, I guess, has a cutting sense of humour and an even sharper tongue, but she comes to have more empathy for those around her over the course of the book. Hopefully she’d great company for the reader.
You are also a journalist, so how many of your experiences inspired those of Martha’s?
Well no one shot themselves while I’ve been interviewing them thankfully! But I did use a lot of my own experiences to make the detail of the journalism world seem as real as possible. One of the things I wanted to look at with The Dead Beat was the perilous state of print journalism, how newspapers are on their last legs. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, it depends what they get replaced by as a source of information. I’m also a little obsessed with the obituary pages these days – these little reservoirs of niceness (albeit about dead people) in amongst all the terrible news stories. I was interested in that idea of summing up a life in a few short sentences – does that do anyone justice? What has been left out? How can we know anyone else really, especially from just 800 words in a newspaper? Also, I was interested in why we don’t get more obituaries of regular people like us, why it always has to be the great or the good, the lords and ladies – aren’t our lives just as worthwhile and worthy of a write-up?
The book is set in Edinburgh where you are from so why was this the ideal setting of the book?
Edinburgh is already well imagined in literature, everything from the crime of Ian Rankin to the well-to-do society of Alexander McCall Smith to the Leith schemes of Irvine Welsh. But it’s such a diverse city, there’s room for plenty more. For my first three novels I avoided Edinburgh mostly, despite the fact I’ve lived here for the majority of my life, but then I realised I had so much experience here, it was crazy not to use that. And after all, my experience and knowledge of Edinburgh is different from but just as valid as anyone else’s. It’s also such a dramatic city visually, and I use that a lot in The Dead Beat. The central action happens around North Bridge in the centre of town, which looks out to sea in one direction, over to the castle in the other. More importantly for my book, there’s also a big drop down to Waverley Station.
How much is song writing and novel writing interchangeable for you?
There’s a definite crossover between the two, but I’m not sure how deeply that goes. I’ve written short stories based on songs, and songs based on stories. I’m usually obsessing about the same things for long periods of time in my life, so it’s inevitable that I’ll write both songs and stories around those themes, I guess. In terms of the creative processes, songwriting is definitely more instinctive for me than writing a novel. Writing a whole book is a big undertaking, and I usually have things quite well planned out before I start, whereas the ideas for songs tend to come to me when I’m thinking about them the least, or when I’m just sitting with a guitar in my hand trying to relax. But because I do end up writing about similar themes, it means I can often take my guitar out to book events, festivals and readings, play a few tunes that tie in with the novel or story I’ve just read, which is great fun.
Why was it important to include the music scenes in the book?
Partly that was down to using my own experience again to make the book seem more alive to the reader. I should explain there are several flashback chapters to gigs in the early 90s grunge scene of Scotland, a scene that Martha’s parents were part of. The secret behind everything that’s happening to Martha now lies in the past, in those scenes. I wanted to look at the different ways in which different generations interact with music and culture, also how someone can go from being part of a social circle that is integral to who they are, then suddenly just abandon that, as Martha’s mum does. It was also a lot of fun remembering things like meeting Kurt Cobain in my local pub, Dave Grohl buying me a pint, going to see Teenage Fanclub and Afghan Whigs at small venues. I’m generally not one for looking back and nostalgia, and in fact, I deliberately made Martha kind of ambivalent about that whole idea. It’s not healthy to get stuck in any particular moment in the past, and that’s another thing I wanted to examine in the book.
What is next for you?
My next novel, The Jump, is already written. It’s a much more serious story about suicide, set in the shadow of the Forth Road Bridge, and dealing with a grieving mother who might be given a second chance. I don’t want to say any more than that for now. Sounds like a laugh, right? Actually it is hopefully uplifting at the same time, that’s the aim anyway. So at the moment I’m just starting to think about the next book, while also dabbling in some screenwriting here and there, in between doing the school run, hanging the washing up and making the kids’ tea, because my wife has a read job!
The Dead Beat by Doug Johnstone is out now, priced £12.99 (Faber & Faber)