Exactly 20 years ago today (possibly!) Peter James’s first Roy Grace novel was published - Dead Simple. I say ‘possibly’ because while ChatGPT provides 5 May 2005 as the exact date it was first published, other sources offer 6 May, and various other dates, too. Peter James is, of course, a great advocate of Brighton and Hove with many of his much-loved crime novels set in the city.
‘For me there was only ever one location for Roy Grace to be based,’ he told
The Book Trail. my hometown of Brighton. To the outsider, Brighton is a hip, beautiful seaside city, but it has a long history of darkness - right back to its roots as a smugglers village! In Regency days it gained a reputation both as a fashionable bathing resort, but in 1841 when the London-Brighton railway line opened, criminals flooded down from London, finding rich pickings and a much nicer environment than their city! They brought cock-fighting, prostitution, pick-pockets, muggers, smugglers, burglars, and gangs. Simultaneously, with the railway enabling quick access from London, many wealthy Londoners brought their mistresses down here and it became known as a place for “dirty weekends”.
James, born 1948, is the son of Cornelia James, who, famously, was glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II. He was educated at Charterhouse and Ravensbourne Film School, and spent several years in North America, working as a screenwriter and film producer. He has told interviewers that he briefly worked at the home of Orson Welles. Back in the UK, his literary career took off with the Roy Grace series of novels, selling more than 23 million copies worldwide and making him into a household name among crime fiction enthusiasts. His books are known for their fast-paced plots, unexpected twists, and authentic portrayals of modern policing. The list of awards on his Wikipedia bio is almost as long as the list of published novels! Since 2021, the Roy Grace novels have been successfully adapted for broadcast by ITV - giving Brighton yet more screen time!
Here is James jogging Grace along Brighton Beach in that first novel, Dead Simple (extract taken from chapter 42).
‘Grace started his weekend the way he liked, with an early-Saturday-morning six-mile run along Brighton and Hove seafront. Today it was again raining hard, but that did not matter; he wore a baseball cap with the peak pulled down low to shield his face, a lightweight tracksuit and brand new Nike running shoes. Powering along at a good, fast pace, he soon forgot the rain, forgot all his cares, just breathed deep, went from cushioned stride to cushioned stride, a Stevie Wonder song, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, playing over in his head, for some reason.
He mouthed the words as he ran past an old man in a trenchcoat walking a poodle on a leash, and then was passed by two Lycra-clad cyclists on mountain bikes. It was low tide. Out on the mudflats a couple of fishermen were digging lugworms for bait. With the tang of salt on his lips, he ran alongside the promenade railings, on past the burnt-out skeleton of the West Pier, then down a ramp to the edge of the beach itself, where the local fishermen left their day boats dragged up far enough to be safe from the highest of tides. He clocked some of their names - Daisy Lee, Belle of Brighton, Sammy - smelled bursts of paint, tarred rope, putrefying fish as he ran on past the still-closed cafes, amusement arcades and art galleries of the Arches, past a windsurfing club, a boating pond behind a low concrete wall, a paddling pool, then underneath the girdered mass of the Palace Pier - where seventeen years back he and Sandy had had their first kiss, and on, starting to tire a little now, but determined to get to the cliffs of Black Rock before he turned round.’
And here is James, a year or so later, again jogging his detective along the seafront in the second of the series, Looking Good Dead (chapter 34).
‘His route took him straight down to the Kingsway, a wide dual carriageway running along Hove seafront. On one side were houses that would give way in half a mile or so to continuous mansion blocks and hotels - some modern, some Victorian, some Regency - that continued the full length of the seafront. Opposite were two small boating lagoons and a playground, lawns and then the promenade with stretches of beach huts, and the pebble beaches beyond, and just over a mile to the east, the wreck of the old West Pier.
It was almost deserted and he felt as if he had the whole city to himself. He loved being out this early on a weekend, as if he had stolen a march on the world. The tide was out, and he could see the orb of the rising sun already well up in the sky. A man walked, far out on the mudflats, swinging a metal detector. A container ship, barely more defined than a smudge, sat out on the horizon, looking motionless.
A sweeper truck moved slowly towards Grace, engine roaring, its brushes swirling, scooping up the usual detritus of a Friday night, the discarded fast-food cartons, Coke cans, cigarette butts, the occasional needle.
Grace stopped in the middle of the promenade, a short distance from a wino curled up asleep on a bench, and did his stretches, breathing deeply that familiar seafront smell he loved so much - the salty tang of the fresh, mild air, richly laced with rust and tar, old rope and putrid fish - that Brighton’s elder generation of seaside landladies liked referring to in their brochures as ozone.
Then he began his six-mile run, to the start of the Marina and back again.’
