Ian McGuire

It's a kind of noir novel, you know, similar to the Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett.

So I think those I mean, actually, when I was writing about it, I never thought of it as a noir novel, but I suppose it is in some ways.

And of course, that the city of Los Angeles, which is a dramatically different city.

from Manchester in the 19th century, but it fulfills a certain similar function.

There's a sense of that background as a kind of presence which sets the atmosphere and which is a kind of an important character in the novel.

So I've certainly read Chandler and Hammett and admired them.

So I think those, in terms of urban novels, novels in which the city plays a big role, those probably would be the novels that first spring to mind.

Yes, and California, the weather is very different from Manchester as well.

Well, so many, I suppose.

I read quite sort of widely kind of old classic novels and new ones.

But I think that the writers that I go back to most are probably writers of a generation a little before me.

So the American novelist Richard Ford, for example, is I think he's a wonderful writer.

you know, the Bascom trilogy or was a trilogy, now it's expanding, is one of the great sort of achievements of post-war American writing, I think.

And also in British terms, Martin Amis, I think, is a wonderful writer who probably changed the course of British fiction.

Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, obviously, she's a huge figure in contemporary English writing, but she's a wonderful writer as well.

I have, yes.

I thought it was wonderful.

I mean, the whole trilogy is amazing.

I'm kind of, you know, awestruck by what she's done.

But also I've heard her speak about historical fiction.