Het Kwintet van David Hewson

 

Foto: Mark Bothwell

Five Books That Influenced Me

I, Claudius, Robert Graves

I grew up in a cold, bleak town in northern England and didn’t set foot outside the country until I was twenty one. Graves’ two books, written as the diary of the emperor Claudius, took me to two places that will always be in my heart: Rome and the eastern Mediterranean. This book, and the sequel Claudius the God were, in the author’s eyes, journeyman hack work to earn money. They did that many times over, and deservedly so. The story of Claudius is a classic tragedy about a decent man who hates the corruption around him but becomes a pinnacle of that corruption himself when he inherits, by accident, the imperial throne.

A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle

‘There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.’ With that one sentence in this the first Sherlock Holmes book Conan Doyle sets the scene for canon of crime fiction. Holmes and Watson are wonderful creations, each dependent on the other. Great story, great title and two characters that will live forever.

The Godfather, Mario Puzo

Like Graves, Puzo saw this book as hack work, and like him too he was wrong. The Godfather is best known for the wonderful two films based on the book. But it’s a masterpiece in its own right for one thing in particular: the portrayal of murderous evil and ambition at the very heart of something we’re supposed to admire as pure and innocent, the family.

The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

We seem to have lost our appetite for linked short story collections. The Illustrated Man shows what a mistake this is. First published in 1951 this uses a tattooed man as a ‘frame device’, the nexus for the tales in the collection, each of which is represented by an animated illustration on his body. It’s a fantastically creative idea even though Bradbury used some of his old stories, rewritten a bit, to beef up the collection. I’ve admired Bradbury ever since I first read him. He mixes up science fiction, mystery and horror, with antecedents ranging from Lovecraft to Swift, and comes up with something uniquely his own.

The 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain

How do you pick one book out of fifty? That’s the problem with Ed McBain’s ground-breaking crime series set in a thinly-disguised New York. McBain pioneered a style of crime that featured an ensemble cast of characters, not a single all-knowing detective. TV soon took up that idea and gave us the modern cop show, all the way through to The Wire. Now we’re adapting TV back into books, as I did with the three versions of The Killing. But McBain went cross-media first of all with the 87th Precinct and these books still pack a sting today.

Poppenhuis (The House of Dolls) van uitgeverij Meulenhoff Boekerij is nu verkrijgbaar