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The Kill List (Inspector Henley - Book 3)
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Thank you for joining me. Don't forget to subscribe, download and review.
The Kill List (Inspector Henley - Book 3)
Follow Me:
www.nadinematheson.com
Threads: @nadinematheson
Facebook: nadinemathesonbooks
Instagram: @queennads
TikTok: @writer_nadinematheson
BlueSky: @nadinematheson.bsky.social
There are still things to do. There are things I can't talk about today not because of being sick or anything like that, because I mean, one of them may make me well up. If I even talk about it, I'm not over it. And could you come across? You don't just come across scary stuff, you come across some kind of sad stuff, heartbreak.
Nadine Matheson:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Conversation Podcast with your host, best-selling author Nadine Matheson. As always, I hope that you're well. I hope that you've had a good week, and can I tell you why I'm looking forward to this week? It's because it's Easter week and that means it's a four-day weekend. In the UK and also, I think, most of the Commonwealth countries, it is a four-day weekend where I have nothing planned but to just chill out, read my books, watch movies, hang out with my family and eat my body weight in sweets, possibly Easter egg. Right, that's my plan. That will be it, and I hope that you're going to be doing the same. Anyway, let's get on with the show.
Nadine Matheson:This week, my guest is author Neil Lancaster. Neil Lancaster's backstory is absolutely amazing. In 1983, he joined the RAF, where he worked as a military policeman, and after six years he left and joined the Met Police, where he was a covert police specialist. Yes, that means he was working undercover, following serial killers, human traffickers. What else have we got? Drug dealers, fraudsters. Neil was that man, and then, after nearly 30 years, he left and he's now an author, and he's the author of the DS Craigie crime series. But I'm not going to tell you anymore, because you really do need to hear from Neil Lancaster yourself. So in today's episode, neil Lancaster and I talk about the moments that lived with him as a detective, how over 30 years of policing prepared him for author life, and how you ride your luck as an author.
Nadine Matheson:Now, as always, sit back, we'll go for a walk and enjoy the conversation. So, neil Lancaster, welcome to the conversation. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to have you here. You're welcome, but I got. My first question for you is I was doing my research into you, even though I know you and I've met you several times in person. I've seen my research and you retired at 49. Is that correct? It is correct. I thought I was cross examining you. Sorry.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nadine Matheson:I know yeah, no. What was your plan? Could I start a young age to retire Well?
Neil Lancaster:I left school at 17 with no qualifications and then I joined the REF. So I did six years in the REF as a military policeman and then joined the Met and then did 25. Of course, because I was in the REF first, I got five years nearly of pension. So it meant that my 30 years in because I'm old, I'm on the old pension scheme meant that I could retire on a full pension at 49. And we've had this dream.
Neil Lancaster:My wife and me and my son Olly, had had this dream that we would move to the Highlands of Scotland because we'd been visiting it for many years and love it very dearly up here. And that's what we did. We just decided we live in Eastern Albans, as I'm sure you know, like a little sort of suburbia, provincial town, really nice north of London. But I was commuting into London every day which was destroying me. The actual commute was killing me. I hated it so much, you know, three hours minimum a day, and I just we just said let's do it, let's do it. And so we moved 600 miles north to the Highlands and I now live in this rural Adil with views all the way to the Kangolms. I'm looking out now to a very white landscape because we've had a big dump of snow and that was it.
Neil Lancaster:And then I found myself yeah, because my plan was didn't extend beyond, let's move to the Highlands. I didn't know what I was going to do with myself and although I sort of, you know, I was having a pension, it wasn't really enough to live on long term. You know I would need to do something else, and also for you know your sanity so I did a bit mucking about. I do this thing. I'm an evacuee. I'm still actually do this. I'm an evacuee support officer, which means if anyone gets evacuated off of an oil rig, I'm there to support them and I'm supposed to set up like reception centers if there's a major evacuation off a rig, because obviously, you know, north of Scotland you've got the rigs, not, you know, going out of the North Sea. I've never been called out ever, but they do still pay me a retainer, so it's like money for sitting at home, which is perfect. But then I did some work as a private investigator and it was. It was awful, I hated it and I was loving it.
Nadine Matheson:Why was it awful? Because you know it's like we go back to you like you know you're in the RAF and then you're in the police force, you're in the Met for God knows how many years doing covert police and all of that, and then you become a private investigator and you hate it.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, because I I mean there's no crime up here, you know there's. Well, I mean you know obviously there is crime, but compared to other stuff, you know, this is a very peaceful place, so there's nothing significant happening and really it all sounds great Because everyone thinks private investigator and they think you know gum shoes, you know going out doing all this. But I was the investigator. I was, you know, remember I was a covert detective working at the top end of serious crime investigation and they got me up here investigating the fact that there's been a crash on the A82. And or one time this was funny I got a phone call because I was with a.
Neil Lancaster:I was with some sort of an agency and I said there's a woman who thinks her boyfriend not even husband, boyfriend is playing away. Can you use some surveillance on the boyfriend? So I said, well, yeah, I guess so. And he was the most boring man in the world. Bear in mind, I've done surveillance behind, you know, major international criminals, gangsters, murderers, levi Belfield, all this sort of stuff. Now I'm behind a bloke who works at a garage all day, goes home and gets himself a takeaway and a carry out a six canselarga and doesn't leave me else again.
Neil Lancaster:So I decided that wasn't for me. And I was, I was crap at it and because I was lazy and didn't want to do it, I was not interested in him. You know, people had lost, had their car stolen in dodgy circumstances, and I thought I don't really care. So I I I was a big you know, probably like yourself been a massive reader my whole life and you know when all my pals are reading the Bino, I mean much as I read. I'd read the Bino today if you gave me a copy. However, that's by the by.
Neil Lancaster:I I was reading thrillers aged 11. I was reading like Alistair McClain, desmond Bagley, dick Francis, all this sort of stuff at 12. And I'd never really stopped reading and I'd been. I was walking all the time up here because I didn't have much else to do with my dog up in forest and all that sort of stuff, and I was listening to all your books and loving them and getting all excited by it. And then I thought, just literally thought I wonder if I could write a book. And then I didn't give it any more thought than that. And then I opened the laptop one day and I got a basic idea for a story about an undercover detective who sent in to investigate a corrupt solicitor.
Nadine Matheson:Now, I'm not offended at all. I'm not offended.
Neil Lancaster:Now this was inspired by I use the word inspired by a case I actually ran into a corrupt solicitor, a corrupt immigration solicitor who was facilitating large-scale reaches of immigration law by organizing and facilitating sham marriages between non-Europeans and Europeans, massive industrial scale. At least a thousand times he's done it and he was a really unpleasant man. But inspired me. I thought, well, there's a story, there's something to write about. So I did this story and I wrote this book quite quickly and got, you know, I sent it out to like we all do, sent it out widely and got widely rejected because it, you know, the book wasn't really ready. But then I worked on it and got some advice from some people and I wrote it again and got to deal with a small publisher, a small publisher called Burning Chair, which were just a little much small press.
Neil Lancaster:And the books actually did okay. You know they sold reasonable numbers. I mean, you know, not knocking anything out of the park, but they sold okay. It gave me some inspiration to keep trying and trying to get better and so that's how I ended up being a writer. So kind of unconventional route. I didn't do any courses, I didn't do any sort of, you know, creative writing courses. I didn't do anything. I just opened the laptop and started typing.
Nadine Matheson:It's going to sound like a really silly question. It's maybe offensive, but did you know what you were doing when you sat down that first day and opened up your laptop, or whatever it was, or your notebook? Did you know what?
Neil Lancaster:you were doing? Not really. No, I read the basics. They said that a manuscript should be 12 point font, aerial or whatever, double spaced paragraphs, indented header and a foot a page numbers. I set that up and I literally I just kind of went with the sort of things I'd read and I'd read really widely and I've come up with a theory about this is that when I was young and into these books, there was one particular book I view it as my biggest inspiration.
Neil Lancaster:It's a book called Running Blind by Desmond Bagley. It was a massive author in the 70s. This book was published in 1970. And it's about a lap spy called back in reluctantly to do a job in Iceland that he really didn't want to do, and he smells a rat and it's a massive, great, multi-handed conspiracy. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I loved it so much I read it multiple times.
Neil Lancaster:I read it until it fell to pieces and I think what that did was kind of because I was so young you know I was 11 or something like that. But because your brain's incredibly malleable, I think it's sort of imprinted on me the lessons, because Bagley was such a genius, brilliant writer in terms of pacing, structure, revelation, twists, that I think maybe it went into my subconscious, and so I think I kind of did a creative writing degree as a 10 year old self-taught, just by reading one book that I still think stands up brilliantly today, and reading it over and over and over again, literally until it fell to bits, and then I built on that by reading a lot more. That's how I think it happened.
Nadine Matheson:You know, back in your policing days, in your covert policing days, was there any time when you fought yourself? You know I need to do something else, or was your job so all-consuming you couldn't see beyond?
Neil Lancaster:the job? Exactly that. Because you know what I did really badly at school. I failed all my exams. I got English and History O-Levels on retakes. So school was something I just wanted to get away from. I just wanted to leave. It's a really bad school I went to, you know, even though everyone thinks I grew up in Seven Oaks in Kent, and although everyone thinks Seven Oaks is dead posh of course it is, but it still has some rough parts and all the posh kids went to Seven Oaks school or Judd school in Tumbridge or private schools.
Neil Lancaster:All the rough kids went to the school I went to and so I just wanted to get away from school and so I didn't give it any thought. But the one thing that stuck in my mind was I remember doing some writing in English and I came up with some sort of wild story based on probably Desmond Bagley's book, and one teacher said this is really good, you genuinely have some talent. Please don't lose this, please build on it. You could write. Of course I didn't do anything about it. I was, you know, but didn't do anything about it. 40 years later I actually did have that in my mind, I did remember it and I managed to track this teacher down. A guy called Mr Yabakum and I went to his Rotary Club meeting online. I was in Rotary Club meeting to talk about it. He's long retired. He ended up a VECA and retired at it, but it was really great. So I've gone more on the way, off the point, as always.
Neil Lancaster:But you are quite right, whilst I was a cop I was too busy, because working in I mean, you probably have seen the evidence of this when you've come in, no doubt as a duty solicitor, when someone's been nicked on a surveillance job or on a major job and you've got a major crime team there and you can see the state of them, because all the cops are all going to be like falling to bits because they've not had any hours off. They've been working all the hours God said. And I was doing that all the time for years and years and years. I was working mental mad hours and I didn't have time to pause. My life was consumed by commuting or working and so, yeah, I didn't have the mental capacity or the space in order to write, but I had kept on reading. During the commutes I'd read. So I think it all comes down to the reading. And then, when I retired, I found myself with time and space to breathe, and that's when I thought I'd give it a shot.
Nadine Matheson:Thank you. Yeah, I always say there's always some kind of pivot in your life when you've had a previous career. That then creates the space, because mine was when I took redundancy and I took redundancy Then I became self-employed, as a slitter I mean, because I was. I was narrowing control of my time and how, the hours and the days I chose to work. I was then able to find the space to actually sit down and Write a book and actually think about it. Because when you're working, you know it's like when you're working full-time and you're working on these cases I always say you know the difference between me and you. You're there from day one, I think from day dot, on the minute the suspect is identified and then you're building this case and then it's kind of like it's then handed over. You hand it over to the CPS, then I get my version of it to prepare for the defense and then we start building the case from that point. But it's all consuming like there's no space, yeah, for anything else.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, I mean some people manage it. I mean your friend and my friend, tony Ken.
Nadine Matheson:I don't know how busy I.
Neil Lancaster:Mean. He is a properly busy barris, yeah, defending at the very top end of crime, and he still manages to knock a book out every year. I know I dare, I'm a how he manages the men, the mental space for it. He's knocking out brilliant thrillers. When I was sort of one a year on average and he still manages. I couldn't have done it because my brain was full to the brim or I was always tired. So yeah, it is. It's exactly that I needed this, the mental space, and I needed it, and I took a year, probably two years, just doing nothing really apart.
Nadine Matheson:You have to recover from it, don't you? I Just need it, and I also needed that.
Neil Lancaster:I think I needed to sort of realize Because, again, we all the same. You think I'd like, I want to write a book, I want to write a book or a book, but you never, you're not convinced you will ever be able to do it, because it seems, before you've done it, it seems like this pipe dream, this almost unimaginable that you would be able to do it. And then you do it and you think I Can do it, I see you can do it, and then you write a book and you sell a few copies and then, obviously, I then went on. There was a bit of a damacy moment, which I'll tell you about, which made me start writing the currencies series. It was the Max Craigie series, which is obviously we share a publisher. I I was. It was Christmas, it was the Christmas before lockdown 2019 and I was.
Neil Lancaster:We were with some friends, a big, lovely house in the Highlands and there was an old guy there who told me the story. I thought I always told this story and he'd spent most of his life in Australia, but he was back over and he was the proper Scott. His accent hadn't diminished at all and he said I've got any new as a writer and he says I've got to tell you this story because I think there's something in it and maybe you could use it in a book. And you know what it has you. You haven't. You know now. So you get people who tell you that you think, oh, this is gonna be crap, because mostly they are people telling a great idea for a story. You do so. I listened, but it was a really nice bloke and we were getting on famously. And he said it was in the 1960s because when I was researching my wife's family, he used to be a police officer himself before he emigrated to Australia. He goes on I went to this graveyard in the wilds of the Highlands in Kaithness this he goes and it was barren.
Neil Lancaster:There was nothing there. But there was this walled graveyard, this Abandoned he goes just drystone walls. Everything was falling down. I had to like clear all the undergrowth away to get through the gate. I then was clearing away some of the gravestones so I could see what was on them, and I cleared away one on the ground and it just said this grave never to be opened. And I thought what? And he goes that's got to be something you can use in a book and I'm by a cost, you're right. I said I can see your faces. Romance. Oh my god, that's cool, that's really cool. This grave, no date on it, no name, nothing, just this grave never to be opened, literally those words. And then they just got me thinking like what, why and what? I, you know.
Neil Lancaster:And I did a bit of asking around and I asked some people because it sounded like the sort of thing someone might have used in a book, hmm. And I asked some people that I know, you know, and I said if you people are in the well, in the right game, so have you heard anybody deploy in it? And they also will know. But Christ, if you don't, I will. I said no, no, I've paid into it.
Neil Lancaster:So I then thought how do I, how do I then deploy this?
Neil Lancaster:How do I deploy? I thought, well, it feels historical, but I'm not a historical writer, I'm far too lazy to do the research. I saw and I'm not writing about a pandemic, because by the time I, you know, was really thinking about it we coveted it and I thought, well, how can I use it in a contemporary crime thriller? That's gonna play to my strengths as an ex detective and all this sort of thing. So I came up with the idea of the DS Max Craig in all about how the grave would form part story about a Feud from 1830, when I thought about this grave would be that comes to life in the modern day and that's where the Max Craig II series was born. Out of that one flash of inspiration, the half-cut old guy told me a Big house in Pitlockery and I then took a chance and I got, came up with the idea for it, got myself an agent just on, just on the idea, and I wrote the book and then I Got a publishing deal really quickly with with HQ, who we are both published by.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, did I surprise you.
Neil Lancaster:When all that I knew it was a good book. You know what I mean. Sometimes you write something and you're not sure. Sometimes you write something you think this is. I think this is a good book, I think this is a good story and I really, really think there's something here. And I mean ended up with a couple of offers and I went with HQ, predominantly because they were part of Huffle Collins and you know we've all got the big five dream and we. But yeah, the editor who acquired me was Finn, a guy called Finn con, who was just fabulous. The scumbag then moved after and now he is lovely though.
Neil Lancaster:He is a really great guy and he's now getting promoted and flying up the tree. You know he's a trans world and you know editorial director and all that sort of stuff. But I'm, you know, very thankful to him. And then it was just easy to write more. It was just easy because, you know, I, what I found is I created a cast of characters and Managed to chuck a load of humor into it and make it funny to me. Anyway, I think it's funny and you know that's the and and they've sold Really really well.
Nadine Matheson:They have. Very well, haven't they?
Neil Lancaster:I'll tell you a secret, because I've only just learned it's such a secret, but I just sold over a quarter of a million. So bad, it's not bad, is it? Quarter of a million books, and so I'm obviously really delighted with that. And then I got another contract to write three more, which I've done. I've written all of those and, I'm right, some more. So, yeah, it's ended up being a proper life and a proper job from something that I didn't really ever take that seriously.
Nadine Matheson:Why was it like? What was it like, you know, that transition from being with a small indie press I was at, burning chair and then Moving to you, move to the big, one of the big five, when you were, like, aware of that?
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, it felt different. Yeah felt different the editing process. I don't want to disrespect the what the edits, but the difference between an editor who's where it's their full-time job, where they they've been doing it a long time, where they're fantastic at it, where they are supremely gifted at it, was different from working with a couple of guys who have got a lot of respect for and you know, the Novak series are so well, bearing in mind a small and it still sells well and I get great reviews. But it was a different process in terms of the mechanics of getting it felt. Obviously You're, you become part of a big organization in terms of cover design, in terms of the audiobook production, in terms of the advertising strategies, the marketing strategies. You also get your books in bookshops, which is again a big difference because it's hard to get when you're with a very small press that nearly only publishes really through Amazon. Obviously the bookshops aren't interested.
Neil Lancaster:But I had again a couple of more strokes of luck in the first of the Craigie Books. Dead Man's Grave was long listed for the McElvaney Prize, which really made HQ set up and think, oh, hang on, do we need to really get behind this? Then they really started pushing me. They put me into hardback. They did decent, solid print runs of the paperback. It was then Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month at the end of the first year, which meant it sold a load in Waterstones. Then really really got me in with all the booksellers, because all the booksellers were certainly in Scotland. All the booksellers really liked it. I also discovered the secret with making booksellers really like your books, which is to go to the booksellers and say thank you and then give them cake. Give them cake. They love you for it. They're great people. Honestly, I owe the booksellers a huge amount. Then I found myself in this thing where people are starting to get excited about books. That's fantastic. It's a dream come true. It's a dream come true.
Nadine Matheson:It's an eye-opener, isn't it, though? When you first come into the industry I'm not just talking about just coming into it from indie to traditionally one of the big five when you just come into it, moving from a reader and then moving into a writer, and then seeing how the entire machine works, it happened quickly for you and you had all these amazing things happen to you, but then you have to explain to people outside how all these things they're not really even like normal, because it's hard to get into the bookshops.
Neil Lancaster:It's hard to get into the supermarkets.
Nadine Matheson:It's hard to go from digital print, then a move over to hardback. You think these are just automatic things when you're just a reader.
Neil Lancaster:You meet lots of writers because we go to festivals and all that sort of thing. We all knock about together and have beers together. You know that not everyone has the same experience. I do thank my lucky stars that everything aligned to put me in. There's a load of luck.
Neil Lancaster:Ask Ian Rankin about it. He said what are the big things you need to become a successful author? He says you've got to get lucky and you've got to stay lucky. That's very true. I got lucky because I got the right editor at the right time.
Neil Lancaster:I became Scottish Book of the Month Waterstones because one bookseller in Glasgow loved it and really loved it. He went to the boss of Waterstones in Scotland and said I think you should make this Scottish Book of the Month. He did that really because they say and you go and see the bookseller, they say a Scottish based thriller, gritty old Scottish crime book is going to sell. If you make it Book of the Month, then everyone starts getting interested. When you start selling a lot of paperbacks, not everyone has the same experience. You've all got lots of friends who are with all different publishers. Even if you're with a big five publisher, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be having the same experience. It can be tricky for some people and it can get quite demoralising. You ride your luck, don't you? You ride your luck and you don't look a gift or sin the mouth.
Nadine Matheson:Did you ever have any doubts or imposter syndrome? One thing I would say notice or common theme when I've spoken to other writers who've had other careers is that you can be so sure of yourself in your previous career, you spend years in it, decades in it, you know your way around it, you can do it with your eyes closed and then you move into this new career and there's a moment of doubt. Did you ever have?
Neil Lancaster:that? Yeah, I guess. So I think the thing is I didn't go into it with any expectations beyond. The first thing was just can I write a book? Can I write a book? That's the thing. Can I do this thing? Can I write a book that other people might want to read? That's point one.
Neil Lancaster:First one is just can I finish a book? Can I finish a story that makes sense? And then it's can I write a book that other people want to read? And then, of course, we don't get satisfied, do we? We're never really satisfied because, even though you know I've sold 250,000 books that's fantastic I want to sell more, because you want people to read the book.
Neil Lancaster:And, yeah, okay, it's nice that you start making a couple of quid out of it, but the reality is, what's really exciting? It is exciting is when people come up to you and tell you I love your books. You know I'm really loving it. It's great. I want to hear what's happening to your characters. Next, what was it?
Neil Lancaster:One of my favorite reviews, and it wasn't from another one, it was just a Amazon review or something. And someone said when I open a Neil Lancaster book for the first time, it's like meeting up with old friends and I thought, oh god, I really like that. That's nice Because I put the effort I put in and I think the stories are good. I'm proud of the stories and the plots. I'm proud of the plots and I think they're intricate and twisty and all that sort of stuff and I've become so attached to the people in the books and the characters Love writing them. I really like them, and even the ones that are horrible, I really like them. I love writing about them. They're great fun to write. These horrible, evil villains and these I mean I don't go to your depths of I'm not that awful. Oh, your books are oh blimey. I mean the Jigsaw man. Oh, my giddy Cracking book mate Cracking book, but got it, thank you. Wait for the next one.
Neil Lancaster:Oh god, yeah, I think I'm getting one, aren't I? I do hope so. I think I have asked for one, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we've all looked. We all have self doubt and sometimes when you go and I mean look, it is a way to make yourself feel like an imposter. Last year I was on stage on an in conversation with Mark Billingham for an hour and a half. You think crikey, you know I was really Mark Billingham book thinking these are great and it'd be nice to be, you know 110. And then I'm on stage next to him. You know I'm doing an event in April locally to hear with Ian Rankin. He hit crikey, that's. You know.
Nadine Matheson:that is something that's just meant to you, though, isn't it? Well, look, you have to look at yourself and be like. I deserve to be here. Well.
Neil Lancaster:I do think the books are good. Honestly, I do think they're good and you know, my wife tells me she likes them, so that's good enough for me. And you know, family keep telling you they're good. I mean, family always tell you they're good. Family want to like them, don't they? But when you look and I think crikey, you know lots of people do seem to like these books you start getting a little bit of confidence. I think is the other thing when you start a book. When I finish it, I think this is okay. I think I'm pretty chuffed with this book. Now I think I have less self doubt. But then I can talk to other writers, way more successful ones than me, and they'll say, when I finish the book, I'm convinced it's crap. Maybe it's arrogant of me, but I think I am at the stage where now, where am I? Now? I've written one, two, three. What is it coming out? And I'm just looking at the pile of them over there. There's five I've got. I have seven, yeah it's going to be eight.
Neil Lancaster:It's going to be eight next month because my fifth Max Prege the devil, you know comes out next month. I've written number six. That's inedit at the moment. So, yeah, I start to think I think at the end of them and then you have your doubt and you think I do think it's good, I do think it's good. And then when you get it back from your editor saying I love it, and then you get your structural edit and you start looking into that and then it's great and you think I'll crikey. And you know they give some good, solid advice around how it can be improved and you know sorting out some of the motivations and things like that. So I personally I think I've got a little bit more confident in the fact that I can do it. But then whilst I'm writing it I still have my moments thinking. I mean I'm writing number seven at the moment and I'm about what 25% of the way through and I'm at the it's a bit crap moment, even though I know there's some good stuff in it. I was with that.
Nadine Matheson:I was with that. I was like I had to stop writing book four because I had to do a proofread of book three, so I had to stop. But it took me so long to get into the flow of book four and I was finally I was saying it to Finn Cotton last week. It's like I didn't know what to do. I had these two characters. I had Placier and the DS Eastwood and I had them at the Scotland Yard and, you know, westminster Pier, it's like across the road. So I had them there. I did not know what to do with them.
Nadine Matheson:Neil, I have a plan and I had no idea what I'm doing with these characters. Where are they going? And I said to Finn, I literally stuck them on the river bus and I sent them back up to Greenwich. And I was like, once I put them on the bus, on the river bus, sent them up to Greenwich and I was like, okay, now I know what I'm doing with you, but I let you have to put them somewhere and have them move in, because they were sitting on the page for like a week. I was like I'm going to get them to move until I put them on the river bus.
Neil Lancaster:Well, I never know what's happening. Honestly, I don't plan anything I haven't got. I mean, I've got a whiteboard that I wrote some notes up there, which I wrote some notes on for Craig E7. Honestly, it's just like the worst spider-graph, not very big. I wrote it a number of weeks ago and I haven't looked at it since. It's in there but I don't look at it.
Neil Lancaster:There's nothing that I literally have to find the story out as I go and it takes me ages to write the first half of the book, but not ages, but you know comparative ages. Once I'm in then I can really fly and I'm starting to get into this, the one I'm writing now, starting to get into it. I've got some new characters in there and you know some of the extra new cops that I'll bring in building up the bad guys and where's the jeopardy and all that sort of thing. But yeah, no, we all get that. I mean, ian Rankin will tell you that he'll get to 15, 16, 17, 20,000 words in there. He says his wife will say to him he'll walk downstairs and say this isn't working and she'll say you always say this and you always say it at this particular moment, and then he gets back on with it and finishes the book. That's the way it goes.
Nadine Matheson:I don't think there's one writer who will say anything different. Same thing. So I'm sitting there and there's two characters outside in the Scotland yard and I'm like this is crap, this is rubbish, I don't know what the point of this is. And you have that moment and then you have them. You know, you force them to do something. You're like, oh yeah, what's going on now? Yeah, you just have to get over that initial pump, and aren't they the great moments?
Neil Lancaster:I think they're the great moments. They're sometimes the bits where I think this is really worth it. This is really great. Yeah, I think it's a bit of a over plot point. I remember going back let's go back to the blood type.
Neil Lancaster:I was near the halfway point of the book and the crux of the book is, I mean, maybe a bit of a spoiler, but it doesn't matter. But I'm sort of halfway through the book and there's these couple of corrupt NCA agents and they were going to be the sort of the driving villains for it. And then I thought, I don't know, I feel like the book needs something. I need to wake the reader up, I need to make the reader have a WTF moment and I thought why am I going to kill them? I wonder what would happen if I kill them.
Neil Lancaster:And I asked somebody who a friend, who is a decent writer but is good with the structure and how the mechanics are right in the book, which I have no clue about, you know about whether it's three act, four act, five act, snowflake method, all that. I don't know any of that. And I said to her I've got this and I'm thinking of doing this. I'm thinking I might just kill these two and see where it takes me. And she said well, where are you in the book? I said I'm about halfway. She has midpoint twist. Do it. And I did and it worked so well. It worked so well, but before then that wasn't the book I was planning. It turned into a totally different book.
Nadine Matheson:I love it. I think you and you have to run with those moments because you know me. I said I plan out my books, but there's so many moments in I think all the books I've written so far, there are subplots which I did not plan for and when they come up, when I've been writing them, I've had that. You said the WTF moment and I was like what is this? Where has this come from? But then you just go with it and they have been the best moments.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, that's when it's exciting and that's when it's fun and that's when it's really really good fun.
Nadine Matheson:Neil, can I ask you a question right going back to your policing days? Yeah, I think it's something. It's a common question that we both get, which is that you know, how do you not take your work home, like how do you separate yourself? But then I was thinking I remember being in Belgravia police station years ago, like three o'clock in the morning and I'm going there to represent my client and my client's got serious mental health issues, really violent, and I remember one of the police officers saying to me like I'm going to stand outside the door and I'm like I'm going to be fine, and he's like no, he's dangerous, I'm going to be outside the door. And I said but I know I'm not in danger and I was thinking whatever moments when you were in dangerous situations, but you didn't feel that you were in danger.
Neil Lancaster:I don't know really, because these things can turn on a sixpence and obviously you know, being a police officer, for most of the people you're encountering, you know kind of the bad guys as far as they're concerned. There were some times where I thought you could see it, and you could see it in someone's eyes. They were being very threatening, they were posturing, they were flexing, but I could see it in their eyes that they didn't mean it. I could see it in their eyes that they weren't going to carry through with it. But you still got to be on your guard. Yeah, I, yeah, there were times I was scared. I'm not going to lie. There was plenty of times I was scared, but they don't live with me. I don't remember those. They're the things that you asked me to remember about those times and there was once or twice where it was very hairy, but I don't sit and get the shakes or I don't give those any thought. There are things that live with me to this day. You talk about taking you work home with you. Yeah, sometimes, absolutely I did. There are still things today. There are things I can't talk about today, not because of being sick or anything like that, because I mean one of them may make me well up if I even talk about it. I'm not over it. And because you come across you don't just come across scary stuff, you come across incredibly sad stuff, heartbreaking, yeah. And there are things I won't get over Not many. Mostly it's okay. But it's funny what the brain filters out. It's funny what memories will sit and you will not shake off. I'll give you a quick example.
Neil Lancaster:I was posted with one particular cop. He's one of the uniform cop. I was posted with a uniform cop. We used to post together for a month if you were driving one particular vehicle. So you sort of build up a team, work and all that. It was a really, really pectic, busy month and cops deal with a lot of death because people die all the time. People have been born all the time, people are dying all the time. If someone dies, generally a cop goes, even if it's not suspicious.
Neil Lancaster:We got called to a premises by a guy who said I was out with my mate last night and we drank a stupid amount and I can't raise him. I can't, I'm knocking on the door and he won't answer and he never. So I said, all right, we'll walk it in. So I managed to get in, climbed through the window. He was dead.
Neil Lancaster:Only a young lad in his twenties, he'd basically they'd drunk themselves to death. He'd drunk himself to death, literally down the bottle of whiskey and he was lying spoiler alert for anybody, because I'm going to just talk about a dead body. He was lying in the fetal position on the bed and it wasn't gruesome or anything like that. But then obviously we have to search the body and all that sort of stuff to make sure there's no injuries or anything obvious like that. Anyway, it didn't appear to be that. And then the undertaker came along to move it and they said look, can you give us a hand Now? Rigamortis had set in, so he's in this fetal position. So we had to pick him up to put him into the body bag. And he's like hands I'm describing it but his hands were like by his face and everything stayed in the same position. We had to put him in and then zip him into the zip him into the body bag. Now that was a clean body. He hadn't been sick, particularly I mean he hadn't soiled himself.
Neil Lancaster:It wasn't gruesome in the way that I should have horrendously gruesome ones, but it it stuck with me and it disturbed me because he was so young and because of it, it's just the mental image that I had of it. And I was talking to this guy many years later, decades later, and I was talking to him about it and I said do you remember that body? And I talked and recounted the story and he goes. Well, yeah, I do, vaguely he goes, but I'm surprised that's what you take away from that week. And I said why Do you not remember the place who went into him, wilson Green, where a bloke had an axe in his head. And I went, I'd forgotten about that, and I know you laugh at it and it is funny. I'm not, I shouldn't laugh though, but I know, but it is funny because it's not. I mean, obviously they're, both were horribly, not horribly, yeah, but what got me is the far less gruesome, dramatic, horrible one stuck with me, whereas the guy with literally an axe in his head I'd forgotten about and that just struck me.
Neil Lancaster:You know that some things and it's not necessarily the gruesome, unpleasant, and I've seen, you know I've been into three months old bodies, I've I've, you know, people with dreadful injuries. You know I mean the worst one that I still cannot. I really struggled to talk about was a cop death and I can't talk about it. It was a Christmas in 1997. I remember it like it was yesterday and I struggle to talk about it. I think about it every year at Christmas. I will cry about this and it's horrendous and but you know, and then I get angry with myself because why, why should I? You know, I I didn't lose anybody. What about these poor people? These Christmas will never be the same. So so much does come home with you as a cop and I'm sure it can be the same as a solicitor, because you're dealing terrible tragedy. It's just not tragedy.
Neil Lancaster:In the same way, you're looking at perhaps a young man in front of you who's got himself into terrible situation because of his background, because of what's happened to him, because of the trauma in his own background. He's got involved in something and someone's dead on the pavement. That lad is now looking at 25, 26, 27 years in prison. People go on about jail sentences need to be longer. Jail sentences are way too long. There's too many people in prison. People you know you're getting a kid committing a crime at 18 years of age getting weighed off for 30 years. Now that never used to happen. Jail sentences used to be what? 16, 17 years, 16 years.
Nadine Matheson:I was talking about this before I spoke to you. I was talking to someone, I was giving them legal advice for their book and I was saying, like back in 2008, 2009, when I had 17 year olds getting convicted of murder, they were getting life sentences, but the terrorists were only like 16, 17 years. Now, fast forward to now for the Rary 2024. 28, 28 years yeah, easy, imagine for a 17 year old.
Nadine Matheson:And I think you said how do you stay with me differently as a solicitor? Because I said I get it, you know you deal with from day one. Then it's all packaged up and handed over to me. But then said, the cases that probably might not affect me I mean, I wasn't going home crying about it but the ones where I would say to the 17 year old kid you've got my personal number, not just my work number. I've given you my personal number because I'm scared for you and I need you to call me in case something you find yourself in a situation. I need to know that you can get through to me. Those are the cases that stuck with me, the one where I was scared for them because I may be like, okay, I've got you out of this situation. You know you've been given a chance, but the way your life circumstances are, your home people you're associating yourself with, you're a good kid, but I can see it only going one way. Yeah, and those were the ones that Life mapped out. I do talks.
Neil Lancaster:I do some talks for schools. I do some talks for schools about being a writer. But I was equated to my former occupation and I give a case study, an example, for a young lad called Jamal Moore. That I was dealing with Jamal Moore when I was a uniform cop, when I first joined up, and I really liked it. He was a great lad, he was a real good, he was a good laugh, he was funny and I don't know. He was 13 year old and whatever.
Neil Lancaster:But then as he grew up, he got drawn into crime. Now his mother was a crack dealer, his dad was inside for life, his brother was an armed robber and his life was mapped out and the inevitable thing happened he got murdered. He got murdered, he got involved in crime and people were saying, you know, cops can be really, really, really quite cruel sometimes and they can say, oh well, he played big boys games. You know big boys rules, fine, fuck about find out all this sort of thing you hear about now. And I could. I said no, what chance did he have? His life was mapped out for him. He was a good lad with a decent upbringing, with decent parents. He could have gone wherever he wanted because he was dead smart and you know so.
Neil Lancaster:So, yeah, there's tragedy everywhere and it's not the obvious places, it's not always in the obvious places. Jamal was objectively a bad man at that time, but you only have to scratch the surface to see that life ain't fair. You know, I don't come from privilege. I grew up on a council estate but I had two parents who cared deeply about me and I had a, so I had a really great example about how to live my life. He didn't have that and I think that's an absolute tragedy and that lives with me. Things like that live with me Because I had to go and see it. I thought that's Jamal Moore. People didn't know who. He was dead on the floor and I go, I know who that is. That's Jamal Moore. I like Jamal, you know, and it was just. They're the things. They still live with me.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, the kids. I say for me it's always the kid I can deal with. I've sat in the room with murderers and like if the worst you know what I'm saying the worst of society I've sat in the room with and I've had to represent, but the kids are the ones I would get. I'll get angry with them as well, but the anger wasn't like it's like a parent getting angry. It wasn't angry Like I can't believe I got to do it. This is like I can't believe that. I don't want to see you like go this way. So I'm doing whatever I can to get you to just turn the other way.
Neil Lancaster:It is honestly, and it's such a tragedy that, I mean, the race plays an enormous part in this, doesn't it? I don't know what it is, because people go on about stop and search and there's lots and there's lots of arguments that can be had for and against it, but the problem is we've got a real problem with young black kids killing other black kids. You know, black kids are committing a lot of stabbings, but black kids have been stabbed at a horrible rate and I don't know what we do about it, and it's a tragedy.
Nadine Matheson:I don't even understand it. Like when I think about you know, like when you always look back at your youth and you always think it was like God, it was only like 10 years ago, then you realise, actually, like it was a much longer period of time.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, certainly for me.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, it was really a long time ago. But you're looking back at your youth and I'm always thinking I remember the gags and stuff that were around when I was growing up and I remember the fights that would go on when I was growing up, but I don't remember this prevalence of knives being around and maybe I'm romanticising it a bit, but maybe I'm like I'm thinking we're never fights. They use okay, they use weapons, but it wasn't knives. It's a base and there's this, there's that.
Neil Lancaster:The big point is and that's the difference between now and then is back then, if it was a knife, it was a knife they got from their mum's knife block.
Nadine Matheson:Now it's a zombie knife.
Neil Lancaster:It's a machete and the fact is that one stab from a kitchen knife a six inch or a four inch kitchen blade, all right, you still do a big charts of getting killed, but it's a lot less than if someone stabs you with a 12 inch zombie knife. So there are changes and God knows it's. You know, I, I feel, and I feel for many of these kids because I, you know what, what is it? Look, we could talk about this all day.
Nadine Matheson:No, I'm watching the club and I'm like, and the thing is, we are on the same we're on the total same page about it now.
Nadine Matheson:So I tell you, I can promise you that yeah, and I remember the argument though I had as I solicited one of the kids I was telling off, I'm like I do not. He got the warning but I do not want to be turning on BBC London, you, and seeing your name Like I, I don't, I like I can't deal with that and about. So we did this case and he was up for GBH section 18 and it was. It was a stab in. He was in a house with friends and there's a girl involved and it was just. It was. So I say it was ridiculous. But one of those went he should have left and he didn't leave. He stayed and a stabbing happens and I did his trial and he got acquitted and I was so grateful but we were not all the time. I was going to see him at Felton and I'm giving him the warnings.
Nadine Matheson:I'm like you're young, he was 18. I'm like you're young, you can turn things around. You've never been in trouble before. This is not you, I know this is not you and about. So he was 18. So about four years later, but four or five years later I'm at work and I get first I get a package arrived, get sent to my office address and it's a painting. And then I get an email from him and he was like Nadine, I don't know if you remember me, I've sent you this painting, cause I know if you don't remember that I used to paint, I've sent you this picture and he was wanting to remember. I know that I listened to everything you said and I'm just going to be graduating from uni and I've got my degree in business. That's the only time I've cried.
Neil Lancaster:Oh man, yeah, I'm welling up to self here. What a lovely story, and that isn't that something to be proud of, though, isn't that something to be proud of? I think that's the one thing you must swell with yeah, I'm proud of that.
Nadine Matheson:All the you know, all the acquittals I've got over the God knows how many years and stuff he's like. That's the moment I'm proud of that. He was able to email me and send me a picture five years later telling me he listened and his life could have been so different. Could have been so much different, so much different. So that's one of the things I'm very, I'm very, very proud.
Neil Lancaster:You should be very proud of that.
Nadine Matheson:Neil, should we talk about your new book? Can I put it like this thing?
Neil Lancaster:I forgot. I forgot. We always talk too much when we're together, aren't we? He always says the festivals. Yeah, my next book is called the Devil, you Know, and it's coming out on the 28th of March. It's it is about.
Neil Lancaster:I'm trying to think what it is about. I always fit it. You never quite know where you are in, the sort of in the publishing schedule. I do know what this is about. This is. This is about a woman called Bayarta, who is a Polish sex worker who ostensibly goes missing six years previously. In fact, she's been murdered. She's been murdered on the orders of someone who desperately wants her shut up because she can ruin his life. And the one of the repeating villains from the book of the Hardy family and Davey Hardy, who is currently in jail, offers to help the police to track down the body of Bayarta. And the theme of the book is can you trust a killer to help you catch a killer? So there was a couple of themes I wanted to explore on this.
Neil Lancaster:I'm very interested in the subject of missing persons because initially, Bayarta has been treated as a missing person. And why do some missing persons dominate the headlines? I'm talking about Nicola Bulley, for instance and why do some. Let's look at the figures. We just look at the figures on missing persons. I've been researching it for a hopefully a newspaper feature or what I write. I think it's like 190,000 people go missing every year. Now, most of them come back within hours. Many more come back within a few days. But of these, just look at the figures, go online and see how many are never seen again.
Neil Lancaster:Why do they not get the attention? And why do some get the attention? Now we can make all sorts of things about what they look like. You know Madeleine McCann, for instance. Obviously a very attractive family, a very beautiful young girl, Nicola Bulley, a middle-aged woman with kids who just disappeared for no apparent reason. I can see why it fires the information that one does, but why do some others not? Why do they not?
Neil Lancaster:And it struck me that someone like Beata Dabrowski, who's gone missing in this book, why would she not attract attention? Well, because she's somebody who falls between the cracks. She's not someone that would emote a great deal of public sympathy, and I was interested to explore that. And obviously corruption plays a large part of it, as often happens in my books, not necessarily always about police, but that's it. It's a story of something that's happened six years previously, and there are people who desperately do not want to have found and desperately want anybody connected to this case to not be able to say what's happened.
Neil Lancaster:So it's a again, it's a conspiracy theory, and I'm really really pleased with it. I'm really really pleased with it. I can't wait for it to come out. I think it's really exciting. This is the exciting bit, isn't it? And that's where you think I've written a book and I know this is a good one, and the NetGalley reviews are the best I've had. I've got about 50 reviews so far. I hope they'll get to about 200 by the time it's out and they're overwhelmingly five stars. So I'm dead excited about this one coming out.
Nadine Matheson:Can't wait. It makes it worth it. You know, when you start seeing the reviews come in and it's before general publication you're like, yes, I made the right decision, this was the right story.
Neil Lancaster:And then you get some writers that you really admire. I mean, helen Fields have given me a wonderful blurb, mike Craven's given me a wonderful blurb and loads of others, and so, yeah, you start getting some confidence of an in the book. Obviously, the publishers, my editors, really excited about it and it's really, really. I'm looking forward to seeing it out there and seeing what people think.
Nadine Matheson:It's interesting. You know something like the missing people yeah, missing people, and I remember if it was the jigsaw man or the binding room, but I remember having to look at the figures for missing people and I think back then it was it might have been the jigsaw man, so it might have been like 2018, 2016, 2018. And the figures were. I think it was like 140,000.
Nadine Matheson:Might be less like yes than that Now you know it's gone up and, as you're saying, out of so, let's say 190,000 people going missing, and you'd be looking over the course of a year, only three or four of them are gonna be the ones who make the newspapers and the.
Neil Lancaster:TV.
Nadine Matheson:And there's no. I can't there's no, there's not. It's not like there's an algorithm in play.
Neil Lancaster:Some really garner public attention, yet others don't. And we could make also, you know, who did the public identify with? I mean, then we've also got I mean, I haven't gone into this side of it the whole. I mean, nicola Bulley was a terrible example of the British public, wasn't it With? And the people who think they understand police investigations and people who think they know what they're talking about. People think they understood what was going on, with massive theories about what had happened to her. And I can remember people shouting online going the police have done an awful job, they've not done this, they've not done that. And I'd go on and I'd say where you getting that information from, because the police ain't telling you that they're not giving running commentary on what they're doing. How do you know? Well, I know because. But how do you know? Tell me the source that led you to that opinion. And it turns out they saw it on YouTube. And this is the thing. Everyone thinks. They're a bloody expert now, and it really gets on my nerves.
Nadine Matheson:I tried, I worked really hard to not respond to anything I see on social media From anyone who starts? Yeah, from anyone who starts off their comment with I'm not a lawyer, but oh, yeah, yeah, yeah there was even someone yesterday and it was a.
Nadine Matheson:It was so minor and it was like I don't like when, well, clearly this person doesn't know about police procedure and technique because they keep referring to SOCO, which is seen in crime officers as CSI, and I'm like do you think real life's like now in 2020, even before that it's kind of been yeah, it's pretty common now and it's been kind of like. It's kind of been kind of like phasing out from SOCO to CSI.
Neil Lancaster:I mean, people have asked me that. Because people ask me, so I'll say what is it? Soco or CSI? And I said, well, you're not wrong If you say in whichever one, you're not wrong, because there are still plenty of people. Or if I was going to do it, I would actually use that if I had it in the book. I would use that to separate the opinions of older cops and younger cops, Because a lot of your older cops will still say SOCO, your younger ones would all say CSI. Well, there's a to me, there's a point and an opportunity for a bit of banter out of that.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, I think even in the kill list, because I've been proofreading like I know of if they've been referred to as both. But I mean, I know that's like a little minor point, but there's been more serious things than what you're saying about. You know these SOCO experts, you know giving their opinion and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking but where have you got that information from? And this information is wrong. And you see all the people liking and commenting on their comment, you know, agreeing with them, and then this false narrative is built and then it just mushrooms and then you get amateur detectives turning up at the scene, getting in the blooming way.
Neil Lancaster:There's a book in that. You know there is a book. There is a book in that there's a book in my right. There is a book in that around, you know, because some of you I mean obviously I do a bit of true crime TV, but some of your true crime obsessives are a bit scary, I'm not gonna lie.
Nadine Matheson:But you know what they were. I know we're going off on a tangent, but they were even around, even before true crime podcast became a thing. Because they were around, but not to the extent that they are now.
Neil Lancaster:But you would still have these amateur.
Nadine Matheson:I sound really offensive. But really these amateur detectives giving their opinion, the amount of trials I've done where a jurist had to be dismissed because they've been doing their research on. Facebook online and they come back and told the other jurors about the fact that, yeah, no, yeah no. Yeah, I had one of my clients but you know, with bad character. You know you're not supposed to know about the client's previous, the defendant's previous convictions and they've gone and done. I have no idea how they found out.
Neil Lancaster:They found out and they went and told the other jurors, but luckily you know you also have one said, sir, that's the major Social media is a genuine threat to a fair trial. I would say A genuine threat to a fair trial. Anyway, that is another point. I'm way off the point.
Nadine Matheson:I know I have two questions before I go off to our four. This is the end of the interview questions, but I want to follow through. Was there anything that you learn in your I'm saying 35 years of policing that prepared you for your awful life? And I don't mean that like the stuff you learn and you're able to put in your books. I just mean in terms of being an officer and being in whatever situation that prepared you for being an orphan.
Neil Lancaster:There is actually and I tell you what I've spoken to this about. You know we're both again friends with him, ramamood and Tony Ketch, both writers and great barristers. When I get edits, I have this burning edge to do them and it's because I just need to get them done If they're there. I've got this list of things to do. I have to get it done and I've worked out why it is, and it would be the same for lawyers when I was a cop. You do a big job. You have to set all the stuff up. You're doing surveillance operation and you're following somebody around and you're doing all this sort of stuff you've got to do. And then you have a strike. You take the guy out doing whatever he's doing, you take him back to the police station. You've then got a very limited amount of time to get that paperwork and everything sorted, ready to get to the CPS, ready for a charge, ready for it, and then you've got your court trial to prepare for. You've got to get this done. You cannot hang around because we've all got time. You've got custody timelids, you've got that. So when I get an edit, I have to get it done.
Neil Lancaster:I hear people saying I've got my structural edit. It took me three months. So you've got three months. It's more like it's taken me three days tops. I'm not hanging about, I will literally. I just have to get it done. I cannot leave it behind. I don't know it runs of the same. He got a line edit back and it took him. It was hours. Never mind it, because that's what you do as a lawyer, isn't it? You go to court, you take a load of instructions and whatever, and the judge says well, I need a skeleton by the morning, I need a skeleton argument on this by the morning. So you've got to go home as a lawyer and, right, let's get it cracked. And I think that's what being a cop and I probably being a lawyer does is it makes you get the work done. I mean, I can procrastinate when writing it first draft, but when I get edits, I just get them done.
Nadine Matheson:You are 100% correct. I always say that I'll get my structural edits and there's a moment of like, oh God, they're back and I'll get the email and I'll respond to the email and I'll say thank you very much for the email for the edits. But I know I'm not gonna look at them for a couple of days because I'm not a candidate. I need to psych myself up. But once I've psyched myself up and I've gone in, that's it. If they say to me and it's funny, they'll say okay, we'll need it back, let's say six weeks, I know they're gonna get it back in four Line edits. The other day, yeah, they're like, oh, we can have it back in four weeks. I'm like you're getting it back in two.
Neil Lancaster:I'm telling them that.
Nadine Matheson:But you're looking at it by the end of the week. It's a deadline thing because you're used to a judge saying to okay, yeah, I need to get an argument by. It needs to be filed by four o'clock this afternoon.
Neil Lancaster:You'll get it back in four weeks. You have a court appearance, you get your note back from counsel and he goes. I need you to do X, y and Z and get these things tidied up. Right, I better get it done because the PTPH is in blah and if it's not done ahead of that, I'm gonna get yeah.
Nadine Matheson:I don't think I've ever I may have, because I know I did. I asked for an extra month into deliver my first draft, but that's different. That's just my draft and I probably won't.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, and I'm using that.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, and I'm using it as a buffer, like I may not even need it, but when?
Neil Lancaster:it comes to editing, if you say no.
Nadine Matheson:If you say you need the edits by X date, you'll get it, but possibly a couple of days before.
Neil Lancaster:Or even a week before, because it's instinctive, it's a date, it's a timeline, it's a deadline. Customly it's gonna run out if I don't get it done.
Nadine Matheson:Exactly All right. So what piece of advice do you wish you'd been told earlier in your career as an author?
Neil Lancaster:I don't know. I'm not good at this sort of thing. First time I've seen you quiet. Yeah, I know, I know I honestly don't. Everybody knows I talk too much. I honestly don't know, I think, because I think he's been a journey, you know, and I think if someone had landed it all on me I probably wouldn't have listened to him. Anyway, just do the work and trust yourself. You just gotta do the work. There's no shortcuts to doing the work. Do the work and trust yourself, trust you, trust your judgment. There's another couple of bits of advice I'd give myself, but I can't say those out loud. Other people might be offended. I won't say I'll tell you when we turn the camera, when we stop recording.
Nadine Matheson:All right, we've got a big foot, stop it All right. So, neil, are you an introvert or extrovert, or a hybrid of the two? You said, isn't it?
Neil Lancaster:obvious.
Nadine Matheson:To ask the question. Everyone gets asked.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, I'm a. I am quite extrovert. I guess I would never have guessed yeah, but you're one to talk.
Nadine Matheson:See, I describe myself as a hybrid. I'm fucking. When I'm out there, I can do what I need to do, but I don't mind having my quiet moments.
Neil Lancaster:No, I tell you what I love my own company. I mean I am an extrovert. When I'm in company I'm very extroverted, I'm a showoff. I'm a natural showoff. I really enjoy panels. You know I'm not shy. I don't mind talking, standing up on my own, talking to a big crowd of people, quite happy with that. But I love time on my own. I enjoy my own company very much. My happy times, a happy time is a long walk with the dog on my own. I enjoy the time in the house on my own with my thoughts reading. So yes, I can be away from people and perfectly enjoy that. I genuinely enjoy my own company, but I do very much enjoy the company of people as well.
Nadine Matheson:Yeah, and. I'm much like yes, you do. You're definitely much right. So what challenge or experience in your life shaped you the most? God, you've got me stumped again. I know I knew it would happen. Challenge, oh experience.
Neil Lancaster:I like challenges. I like challenges. Having kids has been incredible. I love having kids. I've got three kids. I've got three sons. There's another, yeah, becoming a father in my 40s again. I was a father in. I was a dad at 20. I was a dad at 22, which is mental, but I don't regret anything, obviously, because I've got two great kids, you know, two great sons, two great grown-up sons. I've got a grandson now. Having a son, was I 44? Yeah, 44. That was brilliant. That was brilliant because that changed my life in a really good way. And now I've got a 13-year-old. I'm coming up 58. I'm 58 next week and I've got a 13-year-old son and it's fantastic. He's a cracking lad and I really enjoy his company. So it was. It's not a challenge, but I view it as a challenge. This view is something that I did, you know, and having been a father again at 44, I think. So that was really great.
Nadine Matheson:Was it hard the first time around, when you were 100% committed to your job as a detective and that covert policing and having yeah, get your kids early.
Neil Lancaster:That is a balance. That is a balance and it's not one that I did very well at, because certainly, when I was on the homicide teams and I was on a proactive unit on the homicide teams the hours I were working was ridiculous. I 19-hour weeks were commonplace and I did that for five years, and so I really missed five years of my older boys growing up because I was always at work. I was literally always. I was always at work. And it became that thing because we were a very small unit that you see it called in by the major inquiry teams and most of the time it would be when they couldn't find someone. We'd do the manhunt, and that would generally be on a Friday afternoon when they'd realize they couldn't find someone, and so they'd say, yeah, homicide task force, we need you to find Joe Blogs, who we believe has just murdered this other person. Can you find him? So the first thing we'd do, you know, do a bit of phone checking or banking check, and you'd say he's just hit a cell mask in Manchester, and then we'd be in the cars driving to Manchester and I might come back a week later, and so, yeah, that was a compromise and it's not one I recommend because your kids are only young once, and I'm lucky I still have a great relationship with my kids, but I did end up getting divorced. So you know, the hours can play an enormous havoc on your life, but you get wrapped up in it because it's always urgent, because we were always hunting a murderer. It was always urgent. But you that is one of the lessons.
Neil Lancaster:Ah, you talk about advice. There you go and go back. What advice would you give? I've just thought of one when everything is urgent, nothing's urgent. That is good advice. That is advice because literally every single job was urgent. Well, if they're all urgent, they're all the same, aren't they? So you know, and I got wrapped up in that. Therefore, I would end up working the most ridiculous hours thinking I could do this work, and you know, though, and then we come into the house at 2am, fallen into bed, and then the phone goes again at 5 saying we've just had a fastball happen. You need to get in now, and I'd be on the way in after three hours sleep.
Nadine Matheson:You know, when you look back on it it is ridiculous. I mean it's not the same thing, but it is the same level of stupid hours. As a defence solicitor, absolutely I've been leaving the police. That you would know.
Nadine Matheson:You know I've been sitting in a police station with you doing an interview, and I've walked out there four o'clock in the morning, I've got home at the cell, got home at five, I've slept for an hour and a half maybe and then I've got to find myself at court to do a duty, do whatever, do a trial, that finishes, and then oh you happen to be on the midnight the graveyard shift for the police station calls. I've been there from midnight to seven. I may not go out, but I'm getting all the calls from midnight.
Neil Lancaster:No, no, it's seven, it is. It's ridiculous. You never hear me denigrating what defence lawyers, whether they be barristers or solicitors do. I mean I could see the hours barristers work. Probably you should know during the trial they would always be at court before me and after me. So, yeah, I get it, I get it. So, yeah, the hours you don't always get, you don't get that time back when you're kids that are young and also you can end up with no, I have no life. That can be the thing. You can go through a period of your time where your work is your life, and that's not always a good thing. So I would caution anyone to and I'd caution my younger self that maybe you know the world don't stop turning because you're not at work.
Nadine Matheson:Well, you might have already answered the next question then, because it was if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice. What would it be?
Neil Lancaster:Don't listen to him. Don't listen to that daft old get that's coming to give you some advice. He didn't know anything. You'll work it out just fine on your own, mate. I think I do know what I always say, that I do like to quote a bit in Nietzsche. We've all heard that the Nietzsche, the German philosopher, quote what doesn't kill me will make me stronger. I think you've got to go through the hard times to get yourself to the place where you can be truly happy, but life ain't always a bowl of cherries. So therefore, I think you have to go through those bits and do that difficult stuff to find yourself in the position you might want to be in. Maybe I'm being a bit profound.
Nadine Matheson:No, you just being real yeah.
Neil Lancaster:Walking bollocks as usual. But yeah, I mean, I look, you've got to find your own way through it, haven't you? That's the thing. That's why I'm saying that is that you have to.
Nadine Matheson:One's path is different, and what may work for one person is not going to work.
Neil Lancaster:Yeah, and who's to say that bit of advice I give might lead him into a worse situation, so I'm not sure about that.
Nadine Matheson:Finally, neil Lancaster, where can listeners of the Conversation podcast find you online?
Neil Lancaster:I'm at NeilLancasterCrimecouk. I'm on Twitter. You can easily find me there, much as it's terrible. I am on threads, but I'm not very good at threads. I am on Facebook. If you Google me, you'll find me. I'm not hard to find. I'm not secret. I used to be secret, but I'm not anymore.
Nadine Matheson:Before we go like properly go. Did you find it strange? I was talking about this yesterday, moving going from a private individual to like me. Before the book stuff happened, everything I did was all my social media was private. If you found me, you'd have to wait to be accepted by me to become a part of my followers. So everything I did was private and then, when the book stuff happened, I had to switch everything to public. Did you find that hard?
Neil Lancaster:Very odd Very odd.
Neil Lancaster:Because, quite obviously, I objectively kept my face out of any type of media. If there was cameras about, I was gone. I didn't want anything to do with them Because my job was being covert. I was a surveillance officer. I was doing covert work, up close and personal with bad guys. I didn't want anyone to be able to Google me and find me. Now you Google me, I'm all over the place. I'm on tele. I'm on discovery plus at the moment with the tele series. I'm all over the blooming place. It was weird. You get used to it, but it was weird. So, yeah, it's a weird one seeing yourself on tele and then going oh God, I'm looking old because they fill me a close up in 4K, and you're thinking, jesus, I'm looking old, you know. So it's fine, though it's fine. It is what it is, isn't it?
Nadine Matheson:It is what it is and I'm not a no-knit. Neil, Can I just say thank you very much for being part of the conversation.
Neil Lancaster:It's been an absolute pleasure.
Nadine Matheson:Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I'll be back next week with a new guest, so make sure that you subscribe and you will never miss the next episode. And also don't forget to like, share and leave a review. It really means a lot and it also helps the podcast. And you can also support the podcast on Patreon, where every new member will receive exclusive merchandise. Just head down to the show notes and click on the link, and if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Conversation, all you have to do is email theconversation at nadinemathesoncom. Thank you and I'll see you next week.