He Kills Coppers: Interview

The man who wrote the book

Published: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 1:25PM

Jake Arnott’s chilling debut The Long Firm catapulted the author into the ‘overnight success’ bracket (despite having been writing for seven years prior to its publication).

Proving he was no one hit wonder, the subsequent books ,He Kills Coppers and Truecrime, earned him acclaim and at least one superstar fan. On the covers of his novels David Bowie is quoted.

The music stars writes: “Whenever he's got a new book out, I drop everything, knowing that the next couple of hours are going to be pure gangland bliss.”

The heady cocktail of corruption, sleaze and glamour combined with a healthy dash of historical fact has proved irresistible and the sophisticated fusion of gangsters, show business, politics and gay culture in Arnott's “gangland trilogy” has already spawned one critically acclaimed serialisation starring Derek Jacobi and Mark Strong.

His second novel, He Kills Coppers, a stylish crime narrative concerned with the moral legacy of Flying Squad corruption in 1960s London, tells of the infamous murder of three Met officers in 1966.

Starting in the build up to the final of the 1966 World Cup, it takes in Nipper Reid’s clean-up initiative on Soho clip-joints and moves through the Thatcher era to the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s.

He explains how the story formed in his mind: “With He Kills Coppers I came across Nipper Reid’s clean up for the World Cup squad quite by chance. I was in Collingdale newspaper library looking something up on a minor detail about 1966 when there was a whole story I had not been looking for just sitting there.

“It’s sometimes very hard knowing where your characters are going to be and what the background to them is. There was a headline in The Evening Standard which was ‘Clean Up The World Cup’ July 1st 1966’ with a photo of one of the charismatic police officers who was putting a special squad together and suddenly Frank and Dave (now Jon in the adaptation) were on a temporary secondment in the middle of Soho. Everything just ran from there – I’d love to say I did loads and loads of research, but sometimes you just happen across stuff which is a real gift.”

How does he feel about the book being adapted for TV? “People often ask me if I have sold the film rights and the second question they often ask is what control you have over it. I always refer them to the first question. If you sell the rights, you sell the rights; you make a conscious choice, and if you don’t like people messing around with your work then it’s probably not for you.

“The disturbing thing is that this is a much bigger medium than literature. It’s more sociable and it’s more collaborative and there are constant compromises. Nobody has complete control over this huge beast, least of all the author.

“The compromise comes right at the beginning when you agree to the adaptation. The novel instantly becomes something else and that’s what you always have to remind people of because it’s no longer my book, it’s the drama.

“The relationship between Frank and Jeannie has really come alive because of the writing and directing. But also the emotional chemistry between Rafe and Kelly is really believable. You can’t write that stuff because it’s visual and it’s physical and it’s in real time in a way. Also the way Mel has dealt with the Billy character is incredible.

“I think what they have done with it is extraordinary. It’s quite strange because there are occasional moments that I’ve looked at the screen and said: ‘Yes, that’s very close to what I thought when I wrote it.' To be able to say that is just a wonderful feeling. I’m very, very happy.”

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