Peter James: new paperback and huge success on stage

Season five of the TV version will hit the screens soon, but in the meantime Peter is enjoying the success of his seventh stage adaptation, Picture You Dead which is enjoying some of the best responses he's ever had on stage. And coming up on April 10 is the paperback of the latest Roy Grace novel, One Of Us Is Dead. Just as with the play it's a book that has enjoyed an excellent critical response.

“I'm really, really pleased with Picture You Dead in the theatres. It has had the best reviews of any of the plays that we have had, and I think partly because it's the least dark of any of the plays that we have done. I think right at the current moment people are just wanting to escape Trump and everything else. It has got all the trademark thrills and spills but there is actually a lot more humour in this one which is quite deliberate. And there is much more of a feel-good ending and that's not giving anything away!”

Peter enjoyed the play in Brighton, his home city, and he is pondering where to see it next: “But actually I quite like sneaking in at the back of the stalls and just watching the audience’s reactions. You learn so much from watching people and the way they respond. One of the most interesting things I learned was when Dead Simple was staged and that was just how much people love a beautiful female villain rather than stereotypical male villain, and in this one we have got one a female villain who is very glamorous!”

As Peter says, the hardest thing is translating all the characters from the book onto the stage: “In a book you can go anywhere but on stage you've probably got three or four sets at a maximum, and in the book you can have as many people as you like but with the theatre you are probably limited to a maximum of nine.”

And in that sense there are certainly a few of his Roy Grace books that rule themselves out when it comes to stage adaptations: “But we're thinking about the next one at the moment. We do one every other year. So we're starting planning now. It will take Shaun McKenna the best part of a year so get a script that we're happy with and then you've got to cast it which can be really difficult. It's very hard to find a cast that is happy to go on tour. TV pays more and even if they're shooting something big on TV, they probably still get the chance to go home whereas on tour you could be away from home for six months. So it can be really difficult and it's hard to find major stars that are willing to do that.”

Long before then, the paperback of One of Us Is Dead hits the shelves on April 10, Roy Grace number 20, ahead of Roy Grace number 21 which will be out in hardback in October.

“And I've had some of the best feedback for the book of any of the books that I've done. I think people really like the fact that it's inspired by a true story

“At least once a fortnight somebody says to me ‘I've got an idea for a book that you are just going to want to write’ and I would say ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and often it's a really nice idea but wouldn't necessarily make a novel. But I'll always listen but then one day the son of a friend of mine came up to me and told me that he had a story that I would absolutely want to write. He told me that he had been at a funeral at a country church in the pelting rain six months ago and there wasn't a seat to be had. It was absolutely packed and he turned up five minutes late and then halfway through he realised that six rows in front of him was somebody standing there whose funeral he had been to two years before and at whose funeral he had actually given the eulogy.”