Elise’s Thoughts and Book Description
Dead in Three Two One by Peter James brings back beloved detective Roy Grace. All his stories have unexpected plot twists, sinister antagonists, and realistic plots. Most of this book takes place at the Royal Courteney Hotel.
One sub-plot has Dritan Dervishi, the cold-blooded consigliere for Albanian mob boss Roel Albazi, arriving with a beautiful woman on his arm and a lethal secret in his suitcase as he checks into the hotel. He has specifically requested Room 321, a room with a perfect view of the sea, and a deadly proximity to a target he’s been dreaming of for years.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is already pushed to the limit, coordinating the city’s massive security operation amid whispers of a potential terrorist attack. But the threat is more personal than he could ever imagine. Back in a prison cell, his old nemesis Albazi is counting down the seconds to a revenge that will not just take Roy’s life, but erase his entire bloodline. Roy and his wife Cleo prepare for a night of celebration at the Royal Courteney, but they have no idea that they are stepping into a deadly trap.
The secondary storyline has a long-term resident of the hotel who claims her family wants to kill her. Her son and daughter are angry because they think they have been cut from the will and see their mother spending all their inheritance.
This is a police procedural where the investigations are of a potential terror threat, a murder, and a potential killing. The hotel becomes a character in the book and readers learn about the goings on of a classy hotel.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Were you influenced for the story idea by Arthur Hailey’s novel, Hotel?
Peter James: I read Arthur Hailey’s novel Hotel in 1968. It was set in a grand old hotel in New Orleans, and the hotel was dilapidated and this elderly owner doesn’t want to spend any money on it. He’s got a young, ambitious manager and all the big hotel chains like Hilton are all circling like vultures. And it’s got all these characters in it. It’s got a career burglar who’s checked into a hotel, systematically robbing the rooms, and there’s an elderly aristocratic couple, who just killed somebody by a hit and run, and they’re hiding in the hotel. There is so much detail about the running of a hotel. After I’ve finished that book. I thought, so that is how a hotel works. And I was in awe and I thought, wow, you really must do a lot of research if you want to be a successful author. It always stuck in my head, and I decided one day I wanted to write a novel set in a hotel that had that kind of depth of research. So that was very much my starting point.
EC: There is a reference to Margaret Thatcher in the story, why?
PJ: One subplot was influenced when in 1984, the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, tried to murder Margaret Thatcher, who was then prime minister. A month before the Conservative Party conference, they knew Margaret Thatcher would be staying in her suite. A guy called Patrick McGee checked in the Grand Hotel with a timer bomb set to go off at 1:30 in the morning. And he specifically requested the suite that Margaret Thatcher will be staying in four weeks’ time. He planted the bond behind the bathroom and what saved her life was that she was a workaholic, and hadn’t gone to bed at 1:30 in the morning because she’s still working. But the bomb tragically killed six people, and badly injured many others.
I thought it’d be kind of fun to have somebody checking in the hotel. The book starts with describing this tall, handsome guy, in a smart suit, good haircut, a nice watch, and checked in at Brighton’s fabled Royal Courteney Hotel. He had his arm around a beautiful woman, a smile on his face, and a bomb in his suitcase. The reason this bomber is there is that he knows that Detective Roy Grace and his wife are going to be staying in the suite he wants to check into in exactly a week’s time. And he’s there acting on behalf of an Albanian gangster that Roy Grace put away who wants revenge on Roy.
EC: The other sub-plot?
PJ: I’ve always been fascinated by people who stay a long, long time in hotels who kind of make it their home. I asked three different hotel managers, ‘do you like having long stay residents?’ I figured they would. But they said no, they’re a bloody nuisance. And I said, ‘seriously, isn’t it good to have a steady income?’ They said, no. If you have a lot of those guests, then it means they can’t rent the whole hotel out to a company for a conference, which is very lucrative. They become a nuisance after a while, because what they do is they start to become priority proprietorial. And they’re quite disruptive. So, I thought it would be great fun to create a character, who is a long stay resident, whose husband died 15 years earlier, and she’s moved into the most expensive suite in the Royal Courteney Hotel, which is Brighton’s most fabulous seafront hotel. And we learn that she’s got a 50-year-old son, who’s had two failed businesses, and a daughter, who’s just gone through an acrimonious divorce and has not got very much money out of it. And they’re watching mummy burn through their inheritance. They enlist the help of a bent lawyer and a doctor to try to bring Mum’s death forward a few years.
EC: How would you describe the de Bairde family?
PJ: The mom is clearly a selfish lady who is pretty much uncaring, rude, and demanding. I think the son is just an angry person. He’s got his crappy little office, opposite a Porsche dealership, and he stares out his window day after day, looking at all the Porsches, and he’s really angry how life worked out, with his business systems failed, which means he can’t buy one of those lovely things that are tempting him, and his mummy won’t lend him the money to help bail the business out. His sister, Alex, is a spoiled bitch, who can’t accept the fact she’s being dumped by her husband and that she suddenly hasn’t got a means to live in the style which she believes she should be accustomed to. So, there are two angry people watching their mother, holding court, living in this grand luxury hotel, spending what they believe is their money.
EC: There is this book quote where Grace is upset about these criminals having juries declared not guilty as he investigates the murder done by the bomber. Can you explain?
PJ: You are referring to this quote, “While there were intelligent people on juries, there were occasionally some incredibly stupid ones too…Too often juries would be swayed, not by the facts, but by the defense-or-prosecution-counsel’s power of storytelling”. When I was on jury service, there was a case in which a father and son put up the marquis for a big motor show. And after they finished, they took all their workers out. They all got drunk. And then some got in a fight with one of the workers, punched someone in the face, broke his nose. blood everywhere. He’s now charged with causing assaults and bodily harm. The prosecuting council was laying out the case, and then we had a break, and we all went into the jury room. And one of the Tweety women on the jury said, ‘the man’s obviously guilty.’ I said, ‘excuse me, we haven’t even had the prosecution case fully laid out yet, and we haven’t heard from the defense. How can you say he’s guilty?’
EC: You like writing books about juries. One I really liked was titled Find Them Dead about a woman forced to convince other jurors for a not guilty plea. Care to comment?
PJ: A key gangster has his men target her and a couple of other jurors to convince them that they should not return a guilty verdict.
EC: As long as we are speaking of previous books my absolute favorite was Love You Dead. The main antagonist, Jodie Bentley was devious. Want to go down memory lane about this creepy book?
PJ: She was a black widow that used reptiles to poison and kill people. Jodie came about when I went to a prison. I am one of the charges of an ambassador of four for the reading agency. And we try to encourage people into reading and literacy generally. And I also do it for prisoners in English prisons, because the average reading age for 60% of the inmates is less than 11 years old. I was giving a talk in a women’s prison where all the inmates are lumped all together. So, you really don’t know if some of these are in there for a small offense or if they killed 10 people. Anyway, there’s this one woman in the audience. She’s about 55. And she keeps on interrupting me. She asked me smart questions about literature. She’s asked me about Dickens, Hemingway, and Fort. She’s got a very posh voice. And I’m wondering, trying to guess what she’s in for. Anyway, at the end, I get to mingle with the prisoners. So, I made a beeline for her. I said to her, ‘how much longer do you have to go?’ She responded, ‘Nine and a half more bloody years. And it’s just not fair. I asked, ‘What brought you in here?’ She replied, ‘I poisoned my mother-in-law, the old bag. The thing was, she went to the hospital to die. So, I cleaned out her bank account. And the bloody woman didn’t die? She came back home, so I realized she’s going to find out, so I thought I better poison her. And then I was afraid my husband would find out, so I thought I’d better poison him, too. And it’s just not fair. This woman did exactly what I did in London. She has only got six more years.’ Her husband was on life support for three months and he’s got permanent brain damage. And I thought you must be a character in a future book. And that is how Jodie came about.
EC: Is the Book Aid Ball charity for real?
PJ: It is one of Queen Camilla’s charges that she’s a patron of. So, I thought it’d be kind of fun that Cleo is giving a speech for that in the story. A quote by Camilla in the book, “Reading is exciting. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories-It’s like making new friends.” Or enemies, like Jodie.
EC: What about the antagonist of this story, Albazi?
PJ: He is a classic, completely immoral gangster. His background is that he was working for a Chinese triad group as a debt collector, and he defaulted. There are a lot of Albanian criminals in England. A lot of good Albanians too, but yeah, the Albanian crime fraternity has a particularly nasty way of operating, which is that, if someone is doing business with an Albanian criminal, like a drug deal and they don’t pay them their way of getting back will be to go to the grandmother back in Albania and kill her. They go for the family as their way of retribution. Albazi is an Albanian gangster, who has been living in England, and basically Roy Grace has put him away. And as a result, Albazi had several of his beloved close relatives in Albania murdered by a rival gang. He was angry, so he is out to get revenge. It was Roy’s estranged, and now dead wife, but that caused Albazi problems, and it was Roy that ultimately put him away.
EC: Next book?
PJ: I don’t know the title yet. We haven’t got it, but it’ll be out this time next year, and it’s all set on a cruise ship. I’ve done quite a lot of talks on cruise ships so I set this next book on one. Roy’s gone along for a holiday. I was on the Queen Mary some years back and I was on the bridge talking to the captain, and I said to him, ‘Have you ever had a murder on this ship?’ He said, ‘Not on this ship but 34 people a year disappear off cruise ships.’ I thought, ‘wow, that will make a good story. Nobody should sit on the balcony. Plop. Person overboard.’
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
