Book Review - Redline by Dave Rigby (Review by Clair Wright)

Redline is the second  "Harry Vos Investigation". Set in Belgium, the novel begins with the discovery of a body - identity unknown - and takes us, and Vos, into the worlds of tattooing, nuclear waste and fracking. I caught up with author Dave Rigby to chat about the book, Belgium and the business of writing. 

What inspired you to write about environmental issues and shady land dealings?

I’ve always had an interest in environmental issues and specific concerns about nuclear power and more recently, fracking.

There’s been an increasing need for storage sites for nuclear waste, particularly with problems around reprocessing of nuclear fuel, the decommissioning of older power stations and recent proposals for building new ones.

Likewise, there’s been a lot of interest from companies wishing to develop sites for fracking, another area of activity which has serious environmental implications.

(Although fracking is not currently permitted in Belgium, there’s an assumption in the book that this position could change and that therefore companies might well be actively looking for potential sites in anticipation of a change in policy.)

It seemed to me that if an organisation like Redline was able to provide land for such sites it would have the potential to make a lot of money. So, I put the company at the centre of the story and portrayed it as a ruthless organisation which protects its commercial interests by using both a high degree of secrecy and a range of underhand and illegal activity.

This provides significant scope in the book for tension, intrigue and ultimately, murder.

There's a strong sense of place in the Voss novels. In this story we learn more about the area, especially its wartime history and the regional dialect. You obviously feel an affinity to the region – do you have family connections there?

Unfortunately, no family connections at all!

But…I have visited Belgium on many occasions, starting in 1966. Over the years I’ve built up a strong feel for the country and in particular for cities such as Brugge, Gent, Antwerp and Mons. Aspects of the country remind me of Northern England, such as the coal mining heritage, the popularity of cycling and the interest in high quality beer!

On one of my trips, a few years ago, I had the idea of writing a book featuring a Belgian private eye. I saw the name Harry Vos in a local newspaper and decided immediately that I’d use this for my central character. When I visited a small town not far from Antwerp called Heist-op-den-Berg, to watch a football match, I was quite taken with the place and decided this would be a good location for Harry to be based. With very little more detail than this, I started writing what became Shoreline, the first of the Harry Vos investigations.

In both Shoreline and Redline I’ve tried to include enough local colour and specific place references to convince the reader that they are in Belgium. I’ve visited the country about a dozen times and I think this gave me sufficient confidence to be able to attempt this. I’ve had lots of positive feedback about the sense of place. It would be interesting to get the views of a Belgian reader and maybe I should try and arrange that!   

There are several storylines running through the novel. How did you handle them? Did you plan them separately or let them develop together?

I like the idea of having a number of plots in a novel, some of which link together. One of my starting points was that Harry should have more than one case on the go at any time. The main case involves the Redline company. The Waarschoot case, which is about a husband who has suspicions about his wife, is at a different scale and pace and appears to be totally separate from the main case but in the end the two make a link. The case involving the search for and discovery of Demotte’s wartime journal and gun stands on its own, but provides a different perspective on local life and some historical context. Harry was originally commissioned for this case at the end of Shoreline and this is one of the links between the two books.

Because I don’t do much planning before I start writing, I had to go back through the story, once I’d got a first draft, to make sure that the different plot lines hung together and that there was a logical development of each one. I ended up having to do this several times!

Identity is a big theme in this novel- people are not who they seem, lead double lives, even have more than one name! Did you begin with this theme in mind or did it develop as the plot unfolded?

I didn’t decide from the start to make identity a central theme in the book, but it emerged fairly early on. Charlie’s identity is a key part of the book. I wanted him to be a mysterious character where the reader only finds out a bit at a time what he was like and how he ended on a riverbank near Charleroi. Those involved in the investigation refer to him as Charlie – a name made up for him by a journalist. Those who knew him before his death refer to him by a nickname, Rudy. And there’s a twist later on in the book where it turns out that his actual name really was Charlie.

Webers certainly leads a double life! I wanted the reader to be unclear for as long as possible about who he is and who he works for. Hopefully that maintains a tension in the plot and adds to the intrigue.

I enjoyed writing the character Maes in a series of present tense monologues, gradually revealing more about him and clarifying where he fits into the plot.

Will there be a third Harry Vos novel?

I don’t have an answer to this question right now. However, Harry has been quite persistent in suggesting that there should be. So, who knows!

Redline is available on Amazon , in bookshops and from the publisher,  Troubador.