RELEASE DAY POST FOR “THE FINAL RESORT”
Warning: significant spoilers
If ever a story was defined by its setting, it’s this one. The whole thing came out of a four-day visit to Blackpool with my long-suffering other half, Hannah, and her mother and uncle. For some reason, for the whole four days, I had my author circuits switched on, and drank in everything I saw around me. I quickly realised that what I had here was a fabulous setting for a novel. I remember texting my friend, Anne-Marie, in Canada in wild enthusiasm - and then having to explain Blackpool to her...
By the time we got home, I had several thousand words of notes (mainly on my iphone) my two main characters, and the beginnings of a plot.
I want to make one thing clear: this is not a novel about Blackpool. It’s not even set in Blackpool. It’s set in Molton-on-Sea (a name with which I’m still not totally happy, but we’re stuck with it now). I don’t want Fylde local council putting out some kind of Fatwa on me. Molton could really be any English seaside resort, on any coast. They’re curious places, nowadays. There is a kind of glamour to them: but the façade can be awfully thin. Some of them – Blackpool is one, actually – have made a determined effort to modernise, and it has worked, at least a little. But the cracks still show. Particularly as seaside towns (as I mention in the book) have a surfeit of accommodation which has, in modern times, been used to house the most vulnerable members of our society. They are always there in the background.
I always say I’m all about the characters. But then at the same time, I’ve always been fascinated by small-town communities – possibly because I’ve lived in them for most of my life. I explored that a little in The Last Great Radio Show – but that was a book whose ending rather precluded going back. In Molton, I feel that I have a setting into which I can settle, at least for a couple of (possibly even three) books. I’ve always had a feeling for the people at the fringes of society; those who don’t fit into the conventional nine-to-five (perhaps because I was one for a long time, and possibly still am) – and Molton gives me the chance to express that.
Which brings me, rather neatly (see what I did there?), to the characters.
Right from the start, I had one note about Laura in caps in my header notes for the book, which is this: LAURA MUST NOT BECOME BAD-ASS. This was important. I kind of felt I’d done enough gun-wielding female characters. The Shattered Land was full of them, of course, and even Shannon in Sharkey ended up being if not full bad-ass, then certainly moderately naughty-ass. I rather think Molly Walsh from The Last Great Radio Show would have been perfectly at home with an AK-47, too. Laura was inspired by a barmaid in the Litton Tree pub in Blackpool; a bonny blonde girl who, though run absolutely off her feet, somehow had a smile and a friendly word for everyone. A very ordinary, rather likeable girl, doing a good job. That can be quite a powerful thing. In a radical departure for me, I decided to make her popular, likeable and basically happy: but it seemed to me that a girl like that would more likely have a horror of violence than revel in it. This confused me for a while, until I realised that, even though she abhors violence, this does not necessarily mean that she lacks courage. Laura is, in many ways, the bravest of all my characters, because she is mostly terrified but somehow manages to overcome that and, ultimately, succeed.
Janowski, on the other hand, started out bad-ass, which is also a bit of a departure for me, since a lot of my male characters have been rather passive, compared to their female counterparts (cf Joe Ackerman, Rajiv Lal, Juan Gonzales, Henry Braxton…). The name came from a Dead South song (Ballad for Janoski) and they also inspired his ‘look’ – and his job. The Janowski/Kowalski family history – referred to throughout the book – came originally from a single fact, which is that the famous 303 Polish RAF Squadron – also mentioned in the book – was formed in Blackpool in 1940. I wanted to create a family which was British in many ways, but which had retained its Polish identity and was, despite everything, steeped in the history of their home country and still linked to it on a deep, emotional level. That's an idea I am going to explore further in the sequel.
Which brings me, in another rather neat - not to say DJ-like - segue, to the history.
Regular visitors to my strange world may know (or will perhaps have guessed) that I like to get my history right. In this case, I have taken only a few liberties with historical fact. William Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw) was, of course, a real person and was executed in Wandsworth Prison in 1946. He was the last person to suffer the death penalty in Britain for treason, despite the fact that he was arguably not British at all, having been born in America of Irish parentage. His organisation, The National Socialist League, was founded in 1937, after he had been sacked from Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Its emblem was a ship’s wheel, coupled with the motto Steer Straight. The character upon whom I’ve based Walter Brand was in actuality called Roy Walter Purdy (or variants thereof). His history was much as I have described it in this story, save only that he was born in 1918, not 1921, and died in 1982.
The Britisches Freikorps was a real unit, albeit not nearly as sizeable or as dangerous a formation as I have suggested in the book: in reality, they never existed in much more than Company strength, and saw little in the way of action before the last desperate months of the Reich in 1944. Its founder, John Amery, was executed in Wandsworth in December 1945.
Perhaps more happily, 303 Squadron, which is mentioned several times in the story, was a real unit, one of several Free Polish squadrons of the RAF. It was formed at Blackpool in 1940 and based out of Northolt during the Battle of Britain, flying Hurricane fighters. 303 Squadron was the most effective of all the Hurricane squadrons in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, and the Polish RAF squadrons in general served with great honour throughout the war - facts which might be remembered by those disposed to be unwelcoming towards modern-day Polish immigrants to the country which their compatriots fought so courageously to protect.
Finally, for the avoidance of doubt, the town of Molton-on-Sea, its Grand Hotel and the secret prison facility below it are all, of course, fictional - although a well-known hotel in Blackpool was requisitioned by the Intelligence Services during the war and served as a base for them - which, of course, was where I got the idea.
The Village People, on the other hand, are - or were - very real indeed, just like their tribute band.