As we celebrate National Crime Reading Month, an annual initiative spearheaded and developed by the Crime Writers’ Association which runs throughout the month of June, we asked C. V. Chauhan, author of the Inspector Sharma Thrillers set in Leicester, to tell us what crime fiction means to him and how it has influenced his own writing.
“I was born and brought up in a small town in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Despite the breathtaking natural beauty of the location, my childhood was highly deprived. My local school had ninety-seven pupils, but no resources and no library. At home, my six siblings and I shared three books. I still remember them vividly, because they kickstarted my love affair with reading. Two featured European fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Rapunzel. The third book was about Greek myths and legends. They were probably given to my father, a cobbler, by an ex-pat British customer. I read and re-read those books by the light of a hurricane lamp in the evening, fascinated by the magical world of fairy tales and the adventures of Perseus and Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur. This is where my fascination with heroes tussling with dark forces and sinister figures began.
“At the age of eleven I moved with my family to a Victorian terraced house in Leicester and joined a small secondary school without any playing fields. For all its faults, it did have a library, from which I borrowed copious books, and a good English teacher who introduced us to Shakespeare — I loved the themes of passion, greed, power and corruption in Macbeth, Hamlet and Julius Caesar. The battle between good and evil was a constant theme in many of the books I read.
“As an undergraduate at the University of York, my reading became turbocharged. I suddenly had access to thousands of books and met many like-minded people who were hungry for knowledge. In addition to reading the core textbooks for history and economics, I started reading more widely: Graham Greene, Agatha Christie, Aldous Huxley, James Baldwin, George Orwell. I was such a voracious reader that I often read three books simultaneously — a few chapters from one, a few from another, and so on until I went back to the first. My contemporaries thought I was mad, but I was happily lost in the many different worlds and characters created by these fabulous writers.
“Immersing myself properly in crime fiction came not long after. I trained to be a teacher and taught history in some challenging secondary schools in London and Birmingham. At one of these schools, I became good friends with an English teacher called Jim MacLachlan. He introduced me to a wonderful range of crime fiction authors, many of whom I wasn’t previously aware. I soon became embroiled in the lives of the characters in the 87th Precinct series of police procedural novels by Ed McBain, as well as the thrilling plots created by Elmore Leonard, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Raymond Chandler, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Patricia Cornwell and Joseph Hansen. Like Shakespeare, the genre delved into complex human behaviours, grappling with morality and justice whilst immersing the reader into danger from a safe distance. I was hooked.
“As a writer, I continue to read widely in all genres. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain are perennial favourites, as are Lee Child, Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver and James Lee Burke. The Laidlaw books by the late William McIlvanney are fabulous. I also love historical fiction with a criminal element and, more recently, have discovered the many wonderful Japanese writers of crime fiction.
“I gave up full-time work a few years ago to focus on writing crime-fiction. My thrillers are set in Leicester and feature Inspector Rohan Sharma and his idiosyncratic African Grey parrot, Fernando. I have drawn upon my love of detective fiction and police procedurals to write about the city I live in, whilst exploring contemporary themes of diversity, organised crime and human trafficking.
“As we celebrate Crime Fiction Month this June, I often reflect on the fact that crime fiction is a wonderful vehicle through which to examine social and moral dilemmas. I try to bring that to the forefront in my writing and if a reader reflects on something they have read in one of my books, then I’m happy. It’s how I remember the books that have made an impression on me. Even today, I still remember the stories of Perseus and Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur.”
Visit C. V. Chauhan’s website for all his latest news.
For more information on National Crime Reading Month, visit: https://crimereading.com/
