Roger Corke is a TV journalist who for many years made investigative documentaries for flagship current affairs series like the
BBC’s Panorama, ITV’s World In Action and Tonight and Channel 4’s Dispatches.
His work has taken him around the world, but he has also been involved in many
investigations in the UK -
four involving some of the most notorious cases in British legal history.
https://www.rogercorkeauthor.com/
Lizzie: Hello Roger, thank you for taking the time to chat with Mystery People. Looking at your bio, you have led an interesting, varied and fascinating life as an investigative journalist. Now in September 2024, you have written your first crime novel Deadly Protocol. Can you tell us how this came about?
Roger: Hi Lizzie. Thanks so much for inviting me onto Mystery People. Yes, I've spent more years than I care to remember making investigative documentaries for TV series like the BBC's Panorama, ITV's World in Action and Tonight and Channel 4's Dispatches.
Some years ago, I was filming in America for ITV and I had a chance conversation with a cancer researcher. He told me that there had been amazing advances in our knowledge of this terrible disease over the last few years.
“It used to be as though you were throwing darts at a thousand dartboards with a blindfold on,” he explained. “Now at least we know which dartboard to aim at.”
I asked the obvious, if naïve, question: “Does that mean we’re going to get a cure for cancer soon?”
His answer completely floored me.
“Well, it’s possible they might have found a cure for cancer already but an awful lot of people would have a lot to lose if a cure ever saw the light of day.”
The idea for a thriller jumped into my head in an instant. Deadly Protocol is about the brutal murder of a man researching the Holy Grail of medicine – who killed him and why? And the why? is the reason I wrote the book. It deals with life-and-death dilemmas that face us all and is designed to make the reader sit up and think.
Lizzie: When you set out to write Deadly Protocol, did you already have Dr Ronnie Akerman, your main character in mind, and if so, was she based on anyone you know, or did she emerge as you wrote?
Roger: She very much emerged as I wrote. As you know, most thriller writers are either “plotters” or “pantsers” – they either plot the book out in advance or they “fly by the set of their pants”. I am very much a plotter – you can’t spend your working life making TV documentaries and be anything else. When you’re commissioned to make a current affairs film, the TV channel will want to know who and what is going to be in it and how you are going to tell the story. So, you have to write a fairly detailed outline. That doesn’t mean the outline won’t change as you make it – I always says the key word in the expression “current affairs” is “current” - but someone paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for a documentary wants to know what you’re going to spend their money on.
So, when it came to writing Deadly Protocol, I approached it in exactly the same way. Before I started, I knew who the victim was, who the bad guys were, who the red herrings were and, most important, why they did it.
Lizzie: Did the book change during the writing process, or did it pan out exactly as you had planned?
Roger: The basic plot didn’t change at all but almost everything did! The names of all the main characters were changed for various reasons and I introduced a sub-plot that involved the cut-throat politics of Scotland Yard. That brought in a third viewpoint character, along with Dr Ronnie Ackerman and TV reporter Daniel Plowright. She is Detective Superintendent Alice Mahoney who, previously, was very much a minor character but is in almost as much jeopardy as Ronnie and Daniel by the end of the book.
Lizzie: Deadly Protocol deals with the continuing search for a cure for cancer. Did it incur a lot of research to bring yourself up to date as to exactly where the world is in relation to a cure for cancer?
Roger: Absolutely. As a working journalist, I believe getting the facts right is sacrosanct. Of course, the plot and the characters are imaginary but, if they were to resonate with the reader, they needed to ring true. In fact, I wanted to go one stage further: I wanted to write a medical thriller that even a doctor could read without wincing. For that I needed help and I enlisted the aid of consultant haematologist, the wonderful Dr Jane Stevens. She put the chapters dealing with cancer through their paces to make sure that a doctor really could read them without wincing
Lizzie: Having written many documentaries, you must be a disciplined writer. How different did you find it writing a novel, easier or more difficult?
Roger: I don’t find easier or more difficult, but I do find it more liberating. Over the years, people like me have been given smaller and smaller budgets to make investigative current affairs films. These days, you always have to think “can I afford to do that on this budget?” or “is there a cheaper way of doing it?”
It’s a mindset that is difficult to shake off. After Ronnie finds the body and begins investigating the murder with the other main protagonist, Daniel Plowright, she flies off to Trinidad and I still remember saying to myself at one point, “we can’t go to Trinidad because it’s not in the budget”!
That’s the knee-jerk reaction you’re taught time after time in TV. Then I realised, “of course you can go to Trinidad because you’re in charge of the damn budget!”
And that’s the wonderful thing about writing fiction – you can go to the moon if you want.
Lizzie: Do you have a favourite part of the writing process?
Roger: I have two. The first is plotting. I love the intellectual exercise of making a whole series of characters and events fit together so that they ring true and make the reader want to read on.
The second is the final re-write. I really wish I could be one of those authors, like Lee Child or Felix Francis, who can write a chapter and then put it away for ever without revising it. But I’m just not like that. I rewrite and I rewrite. To start with, what I’m writing just doesn’t seem to be working on the page but, suddenly, it all starts fitting together like that jigsaw. That’s really satisfying.
Lizzie: You say that your work to date has taken you around the world, so are you thinking of setting future novels in different parts of the globe, or have you relinquished globetrotting?
Roger: Absolutely. You can read the first couple of scenes in chapter one of the sequel – Deadly Messages – at the end of Deadly Protocol. They’re set in an airport and on a plane, so the novel will definitely be set in different parts of the world! I don’t want to say too much but the action will involve going to the Far East and probably former Soviet central Asia.
Lizzie: Do you set yourself a target of x number of words to write each day?
Roger: No, I write to a deadline. I don’t know of a journalist who can galvanise themselves to write unless a deadline is put in front of them. Usually that deadline will be from your publisher or a TV channel but, if one doesn’t exist, then you create one. You gave me a deadline to write back to you. If you hadn’t, this interview would still be sitting in my in-tray!
Lizzie: Who are the authors whose work you enjoy, and why?
Roger: Deadly Protocol is a high-concept novel, by which I mean that it takes a concept with which we’re all familiar and turns it on its head to make you think. Another name for it is as a what if? novel, and those are the novels I very much like to read.
Jo Callaghan’s In the Blink of an Eye is a great example. It was my book of the year last year – I read it long before it started getting the plaudits it so richly deserved, and I was delighted when it won the Crime Book of the Year award at Harrogate in July. I loved it for two reasons. First, the high concept – a AI-generated life-size detective – is a really hard thing to pull off and Jo did it brilliantly. Second, because she writes absolutely dialogue that doesn’t so much sing of the page as bounce around your head. You really can hear her characters talking.
The second is Dan Brown a writer who has faced his fair share of criticism over the years. But he’s also a high-concept novelist, even if you might not think so. In The Da Vinci Code, he asks the ultimate what if? question: “what if Jesus hadn’t died on the cross but lived on and had children?” Of course, the plot is baloney but it’s plausible baloney, which is why it works. The second reason I like his work is the way he injects pace into a book. Originally, the plot of Deadly Protocol was spread out over several months. After I read The Da Vinci Code, which takes place over a few days, I shrunk the time frame down to just four weeks and Deadly Protocol is much more of a page-turner as a result.
Lizzie: I see that a second book is underway. Will it also features Dr Ronnie Ackerman?
Roger: Deadly Messages most certainly does feature Dr Ronnie Ackerman, and also Daniel Plowright and (now) Commander Alice Mahoney. And I have plans for a third book in the series. But let’s not get too far ahead. Deadly Protocol has received amazing praise from some of this country’s leading crime writers – I’m really humbled and surprised by the extraordinary reaction to a debut novel from a writer unknown to crime fiction. To get the same reaction to Deadly Messages will involve the same detailed research, followed by rewrite after rewrite until I get it right. It’ll be a lot of work but a lot of fun! I’ve already started.
To read a review of Deadly Protocol, click on the title above.
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