July 13, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode we talk to crime writer Gordon Brown about his new novel, The Cost - written as Morgan Cry. We also delve in to his colourful employment history which includes finding a way to sell all sorts of things in all corners of the globe
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Gordon Brown. No, not the ex
Prime Minister, but the far more debonair, handsome and intriguing
crime fiction writer. Gordon. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thanks very much for having me on. God then, I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Good, I'm good.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Where are you You in the country?
Speaker 5 (00:26):
Now I'm in the country. I'm in Glasgow.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Just just landed last day, my ja sating lifestyle. So
I just got in last night.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
You really are jet setting. Let's tell us, tell our
audience a bit about you.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
You are.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
I mean, how many novels you got?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Twelve twelve crime and thriller novels and the latest couple
under the pseudonym Morgan cry It's funny because I was
thought Gordon Brown was the pseudonym.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
It was for years and years. It was.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I just decided I wanted the same name as the
ex Prime minister. I thought it was a better fun because.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Before that you were your real name. Is Barbara that right?
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Yes it is? It is. It's funny. You don't know
many Well, let.
Speaker 6 (01:04):
Me tell the audience a wee bit about you, right,
So you are a founding director of Bloody Scotland, where
I think a lot of people will have seen you
either on stage or propping up the bar.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
And you also run.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
A strategic planning consultancy, but we don't need to talk
about that right now.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And in a former life, you delivered pizzas in Toronto,
sold non alcoholic beer in the Middle East, launched a
creativity training business, floated at a high tech company on
the Stock Exchange, and compared the main stage at a
two day music festival. And I mean this last one,
(01:42):
vissim will sort of relate to. It was once booed
by forty nine thousand people while on the pitch a
major football cup final. Tell us about that one. O.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The last thing was back a while, but I used
to be involved. A brewery in Scotland called Tenants used
to sponsor what was the Scottish Up and back in
those days when the Scottish Cup Final was on, the
brand director which I was in charge, along with the
head of the Scottish i FA, had to walk onto
the pitch two minutes before kickoff and shake hands with
all the players. But the guy that was with the SFA,
(02:15):
a guy called Jim Farry who's no longer with us
was one of the less popular people, shall I say,
with the football fraterality, because he was the head of
the Scottis Football Association. So Julie three minutes to three
o'clock comar versus Full Cup playing at Ibrocks.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
We announced Stacy, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Welcome on the pitch to say hello to the players
and good luck. Mister Gordon Brown from the Bruels tenants
and mister Jim Farry from the SFA. And to a person,
forty nine thousand people bowed right and they're being like crazy.
And as we're walking out to the pitch, Jim Farry
turns around and says, don't like you.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
Much, Gordon? Do that well?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I be hinted that the same experience had happened to me,
and he's absolutely right, because I'd gathered in front of
this crowd of forty nine thousand and then I tried
to read them from Abbey's book and I was lucky
to make it out. But gets let's find you back
in time. Gordon, tell us a bit about growing up.
Where did you grow up? What did you do once
you got to the stage where you had to make
a decision about your life?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
So I grew up. I was born in well.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I was actually born in a place called Leonarx Castle,
just outside Glasgow, which was famous for the fact that
half of it was back then what they termed the
mental institution. Only I didn't know this at the time,
and I used to tell people I was born in
a castle, thinking it was really poorsh Yeah, then I
would say Leonarx Castle and they be a silence for years.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
And it was only when I was about.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Maybe thirteen or fourteen my mother actually told me, you
do realize that half of Lenarx Castle is for people
with mental issues.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
The other half is the Mentality Ward.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So I didn't know that, so I still say I
was born in a castle, just not sure what half.
Brought up and born and bred in Glasgow, first in
East End, then the South Side. So my dad was
a police so he was Glasgow Paula, which is important
because my new book.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Has got to do with Glasgow Police.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
My mother was a secretary and I had three brothers,
but there was six of us in a house that
was big enough for about two roughly. Kind of that's
to kind of grow up South side of Glasgow in
the seventies, late sixties early seventies, so kind of the
gang time at Glasgow, if that makes sense. So no
mean city time and the rest of it. So, but
we were quite lucky. Where we stayed was a place
(04:26):
called Sims Hill, which is actually quite famous because Willie
mckelvanny said laid Law who wrote laid Law Laidlaw lived
in Sim's Hill. And I asked Willie one day, why
did it, of all the places, it's a kind of
relatively new scheme in between a massive place called Castle Milk,
which was one of the kind of new town not
new towns, but the area is the built in Glasgow
to move everybody out to. And Willie said, because he'd
(04:48):
heard lots.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Of police live there. And it's true.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
When they closed down the says they closed the police
houses in the sixties, the policeman had to find somewhere
to stay. My dad's friend moved out next door went
to Sim's Hell. My dad then went to Sim's Hill.
And by the time I was about ten, you couldn't
go two or three doors without hitting police. And that's
not a joke. It really was two or three doors.
So we had more policeman per square range than anywhere
(05:13):
else in Glasgow.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
It's that cop land right, it was.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Do you know what?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
We had Castle Milk, which is fine, but Castle Milks
knowing in Glasgow is shadowy delay. Castle Milk was one
of the more deprived areas and because of the way
Castle Milk was, there was a lot of the needge
would hang around at the edge of Castle Milk, which
is the edge of where we were, but they never
came in. And the reason they didn't come in they
walked up the street. Within two minutes a panda car
(05:39):
would appear and lift them because there was just there
was place everywhere. I mean, we had even now I've
got I know sons and sons who are all police.
So I get brought up in this world of strange
world of police where everyone around you knew every day
around you, but they were all police. So that's that's
where I get brought up. And then when I finished there,
(06:00):
I went to university, which was just kind of not
what you did back then. To be fair, most people
won in ten they said, went to university. So my
mom and dad, you didn't really have the money for it,
let me go anyway, which is a bit strange of them.
And then I rewarded them by paying them back. Because
as soon as I finished the university, I went to London.
I worked for six months, didn't like it, jacked in
(06:22):
the job and flew out to Canada to follow my
now wife. So there's a romantic tale there, and stayed
out in Canada for a while. I never put any
money back in the house.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
So let's let's get this right. You went off to UNI,
which your parents paid for. What did you study.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
I studied marketing, business administration and marketing.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Studied marketing, which is basically a noddy degree. Wasted your
parents cash, and then you went and stopped some women
to the other side of the world.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's exactly That's exactly I stopped. I know, although stalking.
She still married me.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
We're together.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We were now forty one years together, so she's still
not she's not quite figured out yet.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Happy endings.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
It's nice when there's a happy ending.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I like that delivering pizza in So.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
When I got to carry that, I had no job,
I had no money, I had no car to work,
so I had to find some way of earning cash.
My wife was working for Sony at the time, or
my girlfriend, so the only way I could get money.
Was my next door neighbor. Sadly, when he was young,
kid had polio. There's a reason I say this because
both his legs were in calipers and he was always
(07:34):
shot at cash. He worked during the day and never
had any money. And he figured out that if he
drove and I delivered, we could do pizzas at night.
We had to do twice as many as anyone else
because you get paid by delivery. But he reckoned we
could make enough money in a week to support the
two of us, him because he needed extra cash and
me because I just needed any money. So from about
(07:54):
eight o'clock at night till about four in the morning,
four or five nights a week, we deliver pizza across Toronto,
and that in itself does it so much. But it
was thirty minutes for free. So if if you got
thirty minutes to deliver the pizza, but actually you didn't
get the pizza because they had to phone it through
in those days, then they had to send the order
to the shop, the shop would make it. We would
(08:17):
get about ten minutes to deliver a pizza, and if
we didn't deliver it, pretty oh wait, came off your
wages the second pizza, so the rest of the working
for minus money.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So my Atom, whose lovely guy came from Yugoslavia, used
to drive like a complete idiot across the whole of
the North of Toronto and North ort to deliver pizzas.
And the best thing about that was because he was disabled.
He would stop and all the places you were meant
to and he just played the disabled card. They would
(08:48):
they would, they would suff a car. I would leaf
out the car with a pizza, run into the building
and grab the money. No cars, no pre cash. You
had to get cash, run back and we'd be doing
like three orders in a row. So that's I ended
up doing it. And the weirdest thing is I was
talking to Linwood Barklay not that long ago, and I
said to lindwiod, I have one number you will remember
(09:10):
now Lindwood comes from Toronto. Yeah, that's that's where he's from.
And I just said nine six seven eleven eleven. That's
the number you dial in Toronto for pizza. And I
was there in nineteen eighty five and it's still that number.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So you are responsible for the obesity crisis in Toronto.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Is what we're hearing.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's impressive. That's a story in itself. You should write.
Have you written that?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, I've never written that, but it's it's my I
kind of have to include it in somewhere at some
point down the line.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
You're true.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's a neat segue into writing. I guess let's talk
about your debut. Let's talk about your debut novel, Falling.
So tell us, tell us about this book, give us
the thirty second page and how it came to be.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So the book itself about an accountant who say that
with careful because it wasn't meant to be a bit
accountant who is handed a set of papers that belonged
to a criminal gang in Glasgow and then they want
them back, and in effect, when he finds out what
they're doing, he has three choices. He can run away,
(10:19):
he can decide to fight back, or they're going to
kill him. So it's the story of an everyday person
falling into the crime world in Glasgow, having to team
up with some friends and having to fight back. Sat
in Glasgow, and it wasn't meant to be an accountant.
It was started off life as nothing more than buggering
(10:39):
around with a first line. Pardon the French playing around
with a first line, because I'd heard this story about
a guy in nineteen twenties during the Depression who had
lost all his money, he lost his house, lost everything,
decided to kill himself, threw himself off a building. Don't
know how high it was, but only fell one floor right,
(11:00):
managed not.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
To do it. So twenty odd years later, he says
to his wife, he said, what if.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I had died that day, you know what difference would
it have made to the world, And she, she said, ask.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
Some people other than me.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So he asked his brother, and his brother said, well,
you introduced me to my wife, and my son is
now studying to be a surgeon or with a doctor.
Think of the lies he'll save. And before you know what,
he talked, I don't know loads of people who all
said the same thing. This is the difference you made
to my life. It's very, very small things, and that
really interested me. So at the beginning of the book,
(11:35):
Charlie gets thrown off a building and at the last
second gets saved. And that's that's all I had was
one line when I started writing the book.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
I like that and what was that first line?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
The Falling is the last thing I wanted to do.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
I like that, and I especially like the idea of
an accountant in Glasgow.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
I thought the wrong royalties to make police Gordon.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So that wasn't a crime novel. That's more of a
sort of sliding dose exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And it kind of started off as that and other land.
I had to figure who was throwing them off the building,
and the way I write, I don't plan. I'm one
of those ones where I just start with a line
and enges go, and therefore it kind of became obvious
if you were throwing off a building, the people didn't
like you much, and then I had to figure out
why they didn't like him much, and why would they
be doing that in the first place. Then I had
(12:29):
to figure why they would rescue them, why would they
stop it happening, And that's when it turned into a
crime novel. But I'm not one to write from the
police side, so it kind of then became about him
falling into this world, which is where Falling came from,
and trying to survive. So that's that's where it became
a crime novel. But it didn't start off as one.
It very much started off as actually I have no
(12:51):
idea what it started off, as most of my novels
start that way, some of them even finished that way.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Well must be made of rubbicks. He gets chapped off
buildings all the time by people who don't like him.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
I'm tift on me before we get onto your your reincarnation,
because you reinvented yourself.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Is that because you owe people money? Is that what
it is in your right?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
And Barbara also is the money? So I needed a
third name.
Speaker 6 (13:20):
Well you know that money.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
You did well with it.
Speaker 6 (13:22):
But before we get to that, I want to hear
this story about you selling alcohol in the non alcoholic
beer in the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
How did that come about?
Speaker 5 (13:32):
So I came back from Canada.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We had the chance of staying there and decided me
and my wife Lesley decided to come back. So I
needed a job back in the UK and as a connection,
there was a company in Canada I was working for
called Carling O'Keefe. So if you know Carling Lagger, they're
the original owners of it. And they had a connection
with a brewery in the UK called Bass which doesn't
exist now, but in the old day's own carling and tenants,
(13:55):
and they needed a promotions person for the export division.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Now, the export of a bass was weird.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
It sold beer all over the world, but it also
sold whiskey. It also sold wine and also sold a
thing called barbicane, which.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
If you don't know, barbicane.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Was one of the first non alcoholic laggers back in
the eighties, and our biggest market at that time was
Saudi Arabia. So when I was in the export division
and I got sent to Saudi Arabia for two weeks,
one time to go and see where they were selling
barbicane in Saudi Arabia, which involved me in the yemen
(14:35):
E's Hills, sitting with gunman one day, involved me at
the Jadanium border, sitting with a family who were feeding
me out of an open port because that's how they ate,
and also involved in me not being allowed into Mecca
because not being of the right religion. They were delivering Mecca.
I was in the truck and when we got close enough,
(14:55):
they bumped me out a petrol station and they said
you need to wait there until we've and the delivery,
and then we picked you back up. So I spent
I spent more time than that. I spent a couple
of years working with the guys in Saudi selling non
alcoholic beer.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
And that was the only thing I always said.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Was if you walked into some of the supermarkets, you
could find the non alcoholic beer very close to the sugar,
very close to.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
The yeast, and very close to the week on jars.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Like suspiciously, the three the three things you need.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
To get it back to alcohol were very close to
each other in the supermarket.
Speaker 6 (15:33):
It's a deconstructed alcoholic beverages there.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I can't say for certain, but so I did that
for a few years. We sold boozer the world. So
I had one of the best jobs when I was young,
which was going to like places like Portugal, spending two
weeks in the Algarve selling basil into bars. Hey, what's
not to like?
Speaker 4 (15:54):
How do you even remember what occurred?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I don't remember all of them. I just remember the
stories that really stick in my mind.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I've they found a way into your novels, any of
these hairy stories.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Some of them have.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Funnily enough, the Spanish novels I wrote under Morgan Cry,
which are set out out in Spain, are set in
a bar in expatriates bar which doesn't exist. It actually
sits in a town that I actually me and my
wife own a flat a place called Havier which a
beer has been to which in the books.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I called Eldescarrow.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
But the bar inside is one of those bars if
you described to anyone that's gone to Spain and being
on any of the costas, it's a sort of bar
where there's currency pin to the ceiling. They're selling British sale.
It's sky Sports on TV. Is the Daily Mail sitting
in the corner, It's Golden Wonder Crisp.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
It's that sort of bar.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Weirdly, where we are there are none of those bars.
But when I went round the Algarve there was one
that was almost a dead ringer for that. It was
a guy from England who moved out. I think he
would do with three of them, and they were almost
carving copies of that sort of bar, even down to
the fact they had no windows. He boarded the windows
up because he wanted the place to be inside, you know,
(17:07):
Little Britain was the best way to look at it.
But that's that bar sticks in my head when I
was writing my books.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
All right, So you.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Mentioned Megan Chips so Chips egg and you can.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Have all that.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
You you mentioned Morgan cry there, so tell us about
this this transformation. So the latest book that you're talking
about today is it The Fracture.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
It's The Cost.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So The Cost came out in April, the paperbacks out
of September, and the sequel called The Fracture comes out
on November of the fourth. The reason I changed my
name was I actually changed it before I got a
deal with Berlin with Polygon to do these Spanish books,
and at the time, Gordon Brown, it's problematic as a name, right, Okay,
(17:49):
so you still get the X Prime Minister kicking around.
But the Spanish books are quite different to what I'd
written before, and Polygon asked me would I consider writing
under another name? And then you have to find a name, which,
to be fair, is quite difficult. So I had to
then try and find a name. And the where the
name comes from, or it did then, was My father
(18:09):
was called Morgan, my grandmother's maiden name was Morgan, my
youngest brother is called Morgan, and my second youngest brother's
middle name was Morgan. So I decided I'll just borrow
Morgan because it's quite good. And then Cry. That was
just because I quite liked it from a crime point
of view. The only thing I had to do was
when I took Morgan, I had to phone my youngest
(18:30):
brother just to make sure he was happy the fact
that I was using his first name, to which he
laughed a lot. And it felt a bit like that
scene in Rocketman with Elton John Wheen Elton John tells
the drummer that he's no longer going to be called
Red Dlight and he's going to take the drummer's name on.
My brother reminded me of that the other day. Is
you just stole my name? I said, well, not all
of it, only half of it. So because because of
(18:53):
the name, when I got the new deal for the
new series with Severn House, they were as keen on
Gordon Brown because and it's practical. Morgan Cry with Polygon
sold some copies in the US.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Seven House I got a big market in the US.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
It had some traction, and they said to me, would
you mind doing Morgan Cry again? So that that's why
I end up with Morgan Cry for the new book.
It's it's it's all to do with sales and all
to do with America, although the launch.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Can you can you give us some pen names that
Vasa I could maybe have.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Oh yeah, well, I've always worked to the basis you're
going to get together. I've said that. I talked to
Douglas Skelt of this.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I said, you know, Abint, Costello, Laurel and Hardy, all
the old names for comedians that are no longer around.
I think that should be free range for authors writing together,
is you can use the second names and then put
something in front of it.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I think, because then you would I did, you would
be well, you're not exactly wise.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So that's a tough one, isn't That's a good start.
Canon and Ball we could be Canon and Ball.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I think they should all be freely a reaal about you.
You'd have a certain audience would instantly know you.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Well, you're both Steven and Jeremy Ball.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Well you're both scot So I was going to suggest
the crankies.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
But oh they're still around though, No, you can't have that.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
You can't have that they're around.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, because apparently yea, all right, give us give us
the plot. Because we had to talk about your books.
We had to plug your books. Let's talk about the cost.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
Tell us to talk about the the Blake Glover is
in the police for thirty years, retires at sixties, retires
bit is disgraced and that he tries to fit up
a criminal in Glasgow in these last few days when
he's there, he plants drugs on him, gets caught and
is quietly asked to leave.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
After thirty years, Blake comes from a town called freezer
Ber which is on the northeast shore.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Of Scotland, and Blake decides to leave Glasgow because of
what happened to go back home. But he hasn't been
back in forty years because when he was a kid,
he was convinced that he had a lot to do
with the death of his mother. He's fairly well convinced
it was him, his responsible. He did it in one
way or the other, you can read about it. So
he has to go back. So in essence, it was
(21:14):
a story about going back home. What they always say,
don't go back. And what happens is he's approached by
a friend of his mother's whose daughter has a friend
who's gone missing, and Blake decides to him or he's
kind of blackmailed into investigating it because he doesn't want
to do that. He was never a detective. He was
a police constably his whole life, so he's not like
a time SAEF detective. But he does it as a
(21:34):
favor and then what happens is he reveals a far
bigger crime to do with drugs that's going on in
Phraser br and it kind of comes down to Blake
to rescue the day. That's the kind of number of
the story. But setting phraser aout in the northeast of Scotland.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Now, Vissima and I've both read this and it's brilliant,
I have to say. But one of the things that's
surprising me now is your knowledge of fraser bra is
so intimate. But I'm understanding now you've grown up, were
born and raised in Glasgow, so how do you know fraserb.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
Us so well? So let me take you back.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And my dad is from fraser bur right, so there's
a lot of similarities.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
My dad was from fraser By that.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
My dad left Fraserburgh when he was after school or
after he worked engineering firm, did a National service, came
back to Glasgow, met my mother, married, had us, then
he retired from the police after spending twenty five years
as a constable.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
So same as Blake in my book.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Sadly my father died when he was forty eight, and
the way the story was was I kept wondering what
had happened if he'd gone home. And actually, funnily enough,
in Glasgow he drove taxes. But when we were younger,
my father would take us back to fraser By at
the drop of a hat. Like, we spent a northern
amount of times wandering around the town.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
So the knowledge in there is me when I from
the age.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Of like two to the age of like eighteen or nineteen,
we didn't go on Holligaine else when we didn't go abroad,
we didn't go we didn't go down to the Client Coast.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
We went to fraserbur So my.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Knowledge of fraserber It is born of years and years
as a child wandering around the town.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
And you're not because it's extremely authentic.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Some of the details, you know, the kids playing there,
you could sell. You know, these aren't things that your
average writer makes up. There seem to be memories there.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
There is, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff
about you know, there's places in there. You wouldn't recognize,
I know, names like you know links or Salt the Square.
There's a whole bunch of things in Fraser. When I
was a kid, there was things that happened, and you.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Were asking earlier what I put in my books.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
There is a ton of my childhood and fraserb but
it and the things that happened when I was a kid,
things we used to do because Blake grew up there,
and in fearness, Blakes about ages with me. So actually
it's been quite easy because I've just nicked my childhood.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And your and your knowledge of Dodgy cups. Yes, obviously
comes from your your time in Cupland.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Well it also comes to the fact that, well, let's
be artist. We lived in Sim's Hill. There wasn't a
lot of money, but we were the first people I
ever knew that had a VHS video recorder. In fact,
so much so that I'd be meeting up at school
because people didn't.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Believe I had one.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
We were the first people we knew had a color television.
We were the first people I knew that had a
stereo or a decent stereo.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
We had an Afghan.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Hound, like like the best we had local to us
was much and we had in afghan There was stuff.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Come through our door that made you wonder where it
was coming from. My father.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
My father obviously had a root into things in Glasgow
and the police. That meant stuff made its way into
our house that absolutely no way we should have had.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
No based was based at mary Hill.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
No, he was based. Funnily enough, he's based, but Blake
was which was central. Only Central moved so he did
do mary Hell because I moved Blake around. But funnily enough,
my dad actually was based out of the office Blake
would have been then had he been a bit young Blake.
Blake's got to be quite a bit younger because it
doesn't work otherwise. But even that, my memories of some
of the stuff that Blake does, there's a mary Hill.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Scene in Blake. It's actually not far off.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
One of the stories that I heard that came from
one of my dad's friends about a guy that more
or less ran mary Hill just from a gangster point
of view, it was just he was the guy and
I think in the scene as a Ferrari sitting outside
the tenement house. Yeah, the guy that head the Ferrari
and nobody unless you were a gangster, could park a
(25:25):
Ferrari and Mary Hill in the eighties and expected to
be there.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Or now I would imagine ieah, probably now.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Now you and now the cost is out. Now the Fracture,
which is the follow up to the Cost, is coming
out later this year. Is anything you can tell us
about that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
It's interesting because there's a guy in the course called
Mitch Campbell, who's the kind of criminal that Blake tried
to fit up.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
But I always heard when.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I was younger that a number of the corps had
this on off relationship with the criminals. The way they
kind of always painted it was there was a kind
of line. If you cross the line, then all bets
were off. But there was kind of acceptance, especially back
in Glasgow, that to keep the peace, there was certain
things you could do in certain things you couldn't do.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
And therefore some of.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The police actually had relationships with some of the criminals,
not necessarily the worst or the worst, but some of them.
And therefore the fracture is much more about him and
Mitch on the basis that Mitch threatens to reveal what
happened when Blake was a police officer I some of
the things that maybe he shouldn't have been doing. To
(26:35):
bring him down. He blackmails him to come down to Glasgow. Right,
So Blake has to go to Glasgow, and Mitch has
a reason. I'll not tell you the reason because that's
in the story, but he's more or less Mitch drags
them back to Glasgow because he has something he wants
to do. So the kind of story, the dynamic between
the two of them is based on that sort of
classic you know, you've got a criminal one side, the
(26:56):
policemen on the other side.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
But to be fair, sometimes the line's a bit gray
in the middle as to who's who.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Like signs the same coin.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Although Blake would always say that he never did anything bad,
but then I really met anyone police officer that would
have said opposite of that. I have to be careful
here because I'm painting the police for a very bad
picture or not that sometimes you need to.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
But yeah, but I actually find it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's quite hard to do because my dad didn't really
talk about the police that much. The police were very
much about talking within themselves. They weren't big on telling
I mean, he told the odd story, but I wish
I had more time with my dad because some of
the stories I did here were so tantalizing you almost
felt like, please tell me more.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Like a good corrupt cop story. And presumably you're working
on a third.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I've got a third and a fourth in the works,
so it depends on how currently it goes with these two.
So to talk to seven House, but at the moment
the deals for two of them, but there is a
third in the fourth as it stands at the moment,
again just taking partly taking that relationship, but also taking
the phraser a setting a bit further because I kind
(28:10):
of like it. The only person I know that I
think sets anything near Fraser on a regular basis crime
world is Stuart McBride, who's in Aberdeen. And Stuart actually
did a short story for an anthology that I was
involved in called Bloody Scotland, and he set it at
Canear Lighthouse in fraser Bur And therefore, when I said
to Stuart I was setting a book in fraser Bur,
(28:30):
he said, how dare you stand in my territory?
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Lon was right, He's quite right. Now you mentioned Bloody Scotland,
and you know, in a few minutes we've got left
tell us a wee bit firstly about how Bloody Scotland
started and what's coming up this year.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, so the origin story goes back to twenty ten
and my initial involvement was at a Crime Writer's Association
lunch dinner in the Millennium Hotel in Glasgow where there
was Alex Gray and Lynn Anderson and various other writers
having lunch and Lynn and Alex had been taught been
down at Harrogate, so they've been at Harrogate at late
night at the bar, and as the way things were,
(29:10):
most of the people at the bar were Scottish authors,
crime authors, so there was Chris boot myerther was Ian Rankin,
there was Viole mcdavi, et cetera. And they had this
talk about why wasn't there a crime festival in Scotland
And I uttered the words which fatally I remember uttering,
which is how hard can it be to a festival?
And I was kind of being about arrogant because Tenants,
(29:32):
although we never Teen Apart, which is a massive music festival,
Tennants were just a sponsor, so I never had anything
to do with sett it up, but we had had
been involved with the festival two weeks later, I met
Lynn at Princess Gardens and we tried to work out
what we could do. And then somehow amazingly a year
and a half later, the first of the Bloody Scotland's
turned up and startling and that's how.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
We got going, and we way overreached the first year.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Instead of having one day with you know, one little
venue and you know, a few authors, we decided, well,
we'll have three days or two and a half days,
and we'll have three venues at the same time, and
Buddy Scotland took off and it's kind of just.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Growing from there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I mean last year, I think we did sixteen thousand
tickets over the weekend. This year we've got one hundred
and thirty authors, fifty four events, and some of the
biggest names in crime writing. You know Ian Rankin this
year brilliant at him. He actually stepped in to say
he would be the kind of programming chair. And as
part of that, some of the names we're able to
(30:35):
get Kathy right, you know, some of the elements. We've got,
Richard Cole's it's there, but we've also got people from
all over the place. Judy Muddy's in, We've got Steph mcgovernor.
We've got Jeremy Vine, We've got a huge range of
authors this year, probably one of the best lineups we've had,
from the twelfth to the fourteenth of September.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
And I have to.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Remember to get those dates right because last year I
had to close the festival and so I had to
stand stage and I'd written it really quickly at the
back of the stage to go thank you very much
to volunteers, to everybody else, and I said, and next
year we're on from the tenth to the twelfth of September.
And there was a huge sign up behind telling me
I was wrong. So the biggest I didn't even get
(31:16):
a cheer. All I got was abuse for getting the dates.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
For all.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
That's that's that's Scotland.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Abuse is how you know that people love you exactly exactly, Yeah,
I know exactly.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Here's a man who's no stranger to abuse vast any
any final words before I do the.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Outro, not at all.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It is a lovely jamboree each year, and it's always
lovely to come back to Scotland and meet my Scottish friends.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Yes you are many many Scottish friends.
Speaker 6 (31:45):
Remember that one of my One of my abiding memories
is the seen doing it reciting to a mouse sterling Castle. Yes, yes,
if you've never seen, if you've never seen forsm do burns.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
You don't know what you're missing.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
Third degree burns by the same and it's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Just Gordon, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Coming on.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
We've had a great time talking to you. The times
just flown by and we can see you up.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
In bloody Scotland.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
And the cost is out now, ladies and gentlemen, and
it is a fantastic book, so please do go out
and buy it, the new one, the fracture he set
us out in November.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Remember the fourth on the cost is the cost has
just been dropped to two pound fifty one kindle, given
it was twelve pound ninety nine.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
I think that's a significant deal.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
By five of them, ladies and gentlemen, by five.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
And that brings us to the close of another episode
once again. If you'd like the show, can we ask
you to leave a review, sign up for regular episodes
using your favorite podcast app, and please do spread the
word so vast do you think we could sell non
alcoholic beer in the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
May I think we could sell ice to the Inuit, Sandy,
the Arabs, and condoms to the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
There you are, ladies and gentlemen, canon and ball condoms.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
On that note, we've been your friends. The Red Hot
Chiley Writers on murder Junction
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we are talking to Gordon Brown. No, not the ex
Prime Minister, but the far more debonair, handsome and intriguing
crime fiction writer. Gordon. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thanks very much for having me on. God then, I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Good, I'm good.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Where are you You in the country?
Speaker 5 (00:26):
Now I'm in the country. I'm in Glasgow.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Just just landed last day, my ja sating lifestyle. So
I just got in last night.
Speaker 6 (00:34):
You really are jet setting. Let's tell us, tell our
audience a bit about you.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
You are.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
I mean, how many novels you got?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Twelve twelve crime and thriller novels and the latest couple
under the pseudonym Morgan cry It's funny because I was
thought Gordon Brown was the pseudonym.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
It was for years and years. It was.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I just decided I wanted the same name as the
ex Prime minister. I thought it was a better fun because.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Before that you were your real name. Is Barbara that right?
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Yes it is? It is. It's funny. You don't know
many Well, let.
Speaker 6 (01:04):
Me tell the audience a wee bit about you, right,
So you are a founding director of Bloody Scotland, where
I think a lot of people will have seen you
either on stage or propping up the bar.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
And you also run.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
A strategic planning consultancy, but we don't need to talk
about that right now.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And in a former life, you delivered pizzas in Toronto,
sold non alcoholic beer in the Middle East, launched a
creativity training business, floated at a high tech company on
the Stock Exchange, and compared the main stage at a
two day music festival. And I mean this last one,
(01:42):
vissim will sort of relate to. It was once booed
by forty nine thousand people while on the pitch a
major football cup final. Tell us about that one. O.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The last thing was back a while, but I used
to be involved. A brewery in Scotland called Tenants used
to sponsor what was the Scottish Up and back in
those days when the Scottish Cup Final was on, the
brand director which I was in charge, along with the
head of the Scottish i FA, had to walk onto
the pitch two minutes before kickoff and shake hands with
all the players. But the guy that was with the SFA,
(02:15):
a guy called Jim Farry who's no longer with us
was one of the less popular people, shall I say,
with the football fraterality, because he was the head of
the Scottis Football Association. So Julie three minutes to three
o'clock comar versus Full Cup playing at Ibrocks.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
We announced Stacy, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Welcome on the pitch to say hello to the players
and good luck. Mister Gordon Brown from the Bruels tenants
and mister Jim Farry from the SFA. And to a person,
forty nine thousand people bowed right and they're being like crazy.
And as we're walking out to the pitch, Jim Farry
turns around and says, don't like you.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
Much, Gordon? Do that well?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I be hinted that the same experience had happened to me,
and he's absolutely right, because I'd gathered in front of
this crowd of forty nine thousand and then I tried
to read them from Abbey's book and I was lucky
to make it out. But gets let's find you back
in time. Gordon, tell us a bit about growing up.
Where did you grow up? What did you do once
you got to the stage where you had to make
a decision about your life?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
So I grew up. I was born in well.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I was actually born in a place called Leonarx Castle,
just outside Glasgow, which was famous for the fact that
half of it was back then what they termed the
mental institution. Only I didn't know this at the time,
and I used to tell people I was born in
a castle, thinking it was really poorsh Yeah, then I
would say Leonarx Castle and they be a silence for years.
Speaker 5 (03:34):
And it was only when I was about.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Maybe thirteen or fourteen my mother actually told me, you
do realize that half of Lenarx Castle is for people
with mental issues.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
The other half is the Mentality Ward.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So I didn't know that, so I still say I
was born in a castle, just not sure what half.
Brought up and born and bred in Glasgow, first in
East End, then the South Side. So my dad was
a police so he was Glasgow Paula, which is important
because my new book.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Has got to do with Glasgow Police.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
My mother was a secretary and I had three brothers,
but there was six of us in a house that
was big enough for about two roughly. Kind of that's
to kind of grow up South side of Glasgow in
the seventies, late sixties early seventies, so kind of the
gang time at Glasgow, if that makes sense. So no
mean city time and the rest of it. So, but
we were quite lucky. Where we stayed was a place
(04:26):
called Sims Hill, which is actually quite famous because Willie
mckelvanny said laid Law who wrote laid Law Laidlaw lived
in Sim's Hill. And I asked Willie one day, why
did it, of all the places, it's a kind of
relatively new scheme in between a massive place called Castle Milk,
which was one of the kind of new town not
new towns, but the area is the built in Glasgow
to move everybody out to. And Willie said, because he'd
(04:48):
heard lots.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
Of police live there. And it's true.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
When they closed down the says they closed the police
houses in the sixties, the policeman had to find somewhere
to stay. My dad's friend moved out next door went
to Sim's Hell. My dad then went to Sim's Hill.
And by the time I was about ten, you couldn't
go two or three doors without hitting police. And that's
not a joke. It really was two or three doors.
So we had more policeman per square range than anywhere
(05:13):
else in Glasgow.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
It's that cop land right, it was.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Do you know what?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
We had Castle Milk, which is fine, but Castle Milks
knowing in Glasgow is shadowy delay. Castle Milk was one
of the more deprived areas and because of the way
Castle Milk was, there was a lot of the needge
would hang around at the edge of Castle Milk, which
is the edge of where we were, but they never
came in. And the reason they didn't come in they
walked up the street. Within two minutes a panda car
(05:39):
would appear and lift them because there was just there
was place everywhere. I mean, we had even now I've
got I know sons and sons who are all police.
So I get brought up in this world of strange
world of police where everyone around you knew every day
around you, but they were all police. So that's that's
where I get brought up. And then when I finished there,
(06:00):
I went to university, which was just kind of not
what you did back then. To be fair, most people
won in ten they said, went to university. So my
mom and dad, you didn't really have the money for it,
let me go anyway, which is a bit strange of them.
And then I rewarded them by paying them back. Because
as soon as I finished the university, I went to London.
I worked for six months, didn't like it, jacked in
(06:22):
the job and flew out to Canada to follow my
now wife. So there's a romantic tale there, and stayed
out in Canada for a while. I never put any
money back in the house.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
So let's let's get this right. You went off to UNI,
which your parents paid for. What did you study.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
I studied marketing, business administration and marketing.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
Studied marketing, which is basically a noddy degree. Wasted your
parents cash, and then you went and stopped some women
to the other side of the world.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
That's exactly That's exactly I stopped. I know, although stalking.
She still married me.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
We're together.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
We were now forty one years together, so she's still
not she's not quite figured out yet.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Happy endings.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
It's nice when there's a happy ending.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I like that delivering pizza in So.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
When I got to carry that, I had no job,
I had no money, I had no car to work,
so I had to find some way of earning cash.
My wife was working for Sony at the time, or
my girlfriend, so the only way I could get money.
Was my next door neighbor. Sadly, when he was young,
kid had polio. There's a reason I say this because
both his legs were in calipers and he was always
(07:34):
shot at cash. He worked during the day and never
had any money. And he figured out that if he
drove and I delivered, we could do pizzas at night.
We had to do twice as many as anyone else
because you get paid by delivery. But he reckoned we
could make enough money in a week to support the
two of us, him because he needed extra cash and
me because I just needed any money. So from about
(07:54):
eight o'clock at night till about four in the morning,
four or five nights a week, we deliver pizza across Toronto,
and that in itself does it so much. But it
was thirty minutes for free. So if if you got
thirty minutes to deliver the pizza, but actually you didn't
get the pizza because they had to phone it through
in those days, then they had to send the order
to the shop, the shop would make it. We would
(08:17):
get about ten minutes to deliver a pizza, and if
we didn't deliver it, pretty oh wait, came off your
wages the second pizza, so the rest of the working
for minus money.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So my Atom, whose lovely guy came from Yugoslavia, used
to drive like a complete idiot across the whole of
the North of Toronto and North ort to deliver pizzas.
And the best thing about that was because he was disabled.
He would stop and all the places you were meant
to and he just played the disabled card. They would
(08:48):
they would, they would suff a car. I would leaf
out the car with a pizza, run into the building
and grab the money. No cars, no pre cash. You
had to get cash, run back and we'd be doing
like three orders in a row. So that's I ended
up doing it. And the weirdest thing is I was
talking to Linwood Barklay not that long ago, and I
said to lindwiod, I have one number you will remember
(09:10):
now Lindwood comes from Toronto. Yeah, that's that's where he's from.
And I just said nine six seven eleven eleven. That's
the number you dial in Toronto for pizza. And I
was there in nineteen eighty five and it's still that number.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
So you are responsible for the obesity crisis in Toronto.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
Is what we're hearing.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's impressive. That's a story in itself. You should write.
Have you written that?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No, I've never written that, but it's it's my I
kind of have to include it in somewhere at some
point down the line.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
You're true.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's a neat segue into writing. I guess let's talk
about your debut. Let's talk about your debut novel, Falling.
So tell us, tell us about this book, give us
the thirty second page and how it came to be.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So the book itself about an accountant who say that
with careful because it wasn't meant to be a bit
accountant who is handed a set of papers that belonged
to a criminal gang in Glasgow and then they want
them back, and in effect, when he finds out what
they're doing, he has three choices. He can run away,
(10:19):
he can decide to fight back, or they're going to
kill him. So it's the story of an everyday person
falling into the crime world in Glasgow, having to team
up with some friends and having to fight back. Sat
in Glasgow, and it wasn't meant to be an accountant.
It was started off life as nothing more than buggering
(10:39):
around with a first line. Pardon the French playing around
with a first line, because I'd heard this story about
a guy in nineteen twenties during the Depression who had
lost all his money, he lost his house, lost everything,
decided to kill himself, threw himself off a building. Don't
know how high it was, but only fell one floor right,
(11:00):
managed not.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
To do it. So twenty odd years later, he says
to his wife, he said, what if.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I had died that day, you know what difference would
it have made to the world, And she, she said, ask.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
Some people other than me.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So he asked his brother, and his brother said, well,
you introduced me to my wife, and my son is
now studying to be a surgeon or with a doctor.
Think of the lies he'll save. And before you know what,
he talked, I don't know loads of people who all
said the same thing. This is the difference you made
to my life. It's very, very small things, and that
really interested me. So at the beginning of the book,
(11:35):
Charlie gets thrown off a building and at the last
second gets saved. And that's that's all I had was
one line when I started writing the book.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
I like that and what was that first line?
Speaker 5 (11:47):
The Falling is the last thing I wanted to do.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
I like that, and I especially like the idea of
an accountant in Glasgow.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
I thought the wrong royalties to make police Gordon.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So that wasn't a crime novel. That's more of a
sort of sliding dose exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
And it kind of started off as that and other land.
I had to figure who was throwing them off the building,
and the way I write, I don't plan. I'm one
of those ones where I just start with a line
and enges go, and therefore it kind of became obvious
if you were throwing off a building, the people didn't
like you much, and then I had to figure out
why they didn't like him much, and why would they
be doing that in the first place. Then I had
(12:29):
to figure why they would rescue them, why would they
stop it happening, And that's when it turned into a
crime novel. But I'm not one to write from the
police side, so it kind of then became about him
falling into this world, which is where Falling came from,
and trying to survive. So that's that's where it became
a crime novel. But it didn't start off as one.
It very much started off as actually I have no
(12:51):
idea what it started off, as most of my novels
start that way, some of them even finished that way.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Well must be made of rubbicks. He gets chapped off
buildings all the time by people who don't like him.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
I'm tift on me before we get onto your your reincarnation,
because you reinvented yourself.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Is that because you owe people money? Is that what
it is in your right?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
And Barbara also is the money? So I needed a
third name.
Speaker 6 (13:20):
Well you know that money.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
You did well with it.
Speaker 6 (13:22):
But before we get to that, I want to hear
this story about you selling alcohol in the non alcoholic
beer in the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
How did that come about?
Speaker 5 (13:32):
So I came back from Canada.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We had the chance of staying there and decided me
and my wife Lesley decided to come back. So I
needed a job back in the UK and as a connection,
there was a company in Canada I was working for
called Carling O'Keefe. So if you know Carling Lagger, they're
the original owners of it. And they had a connection
with a brewery in the UK called Bass which doesn't
exist now, but in the old day's own carling and tenants,
(13:55):
and they needed a promotions person for the export division.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Now, the export of a bass was weird.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
It sold beer all over the world, but it also
sold whiskey. It also sold wine and also sold a
thing called barbicane, which.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
If you don't know, barbicane.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Was one of the first non alcoholic laggers back in
the eighties, and our biggest market at that time was
Saudi Arabia. So when I was in the export division
and I got sent to Saudi Arabia for two weeks,
one time to go and see where they were selling
barbicane in Saudi Arabia, which involved me in the yemen
(14:35):
E's Hills, sitting with gunman one day, involved me at
the Jadanium border, sitting with a family who were feeding
me out of an open port because that's how they ate,
and also involved in me not being allowed into Mecca
because not being of the right religion. They were delivering Mecca.
I was in the truck and when we got close enough,
(14:55):
they bumped me out a petrol station and they said
you need to wait there until we've and the delivery,
and then we picked you back up. So I spent
I spent more time than that. I spent a couple
of years working with the guys in Saudi selling non
alcoholic beer.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
And that was the only thing I always said.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Was if you walked into some of the supermarkets, you
could find the non alcoholic beer very close to the sugar,
very close to.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
The yeast, and very close to the week on jars.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Like suspiciously, the three the three things you need.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
To get it back to alcohol were very close to
each other in the supermarket.
Speaker 6 (15:33):
It's a deconstructed alcoholic beverages there.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I can't say for certain, but so I did that
for a few years. We sold boozer the world. So
I had one of the best jobs when I was young,
which was going to like places like Portugal, spending two
weeks in the Algarve selling basil into bars. Hey, what's
not to like?
Speaker 4 (15:54):
How do you even remember what occurred?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I don't remember all of them. I just remember the
stories that really stick in my mind.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
I've they found a way into your novels, any of
these hairy stories.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Some of them have.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Funnily enough, the Spanish novels I wrote under Morgan Cry,
which are set out out in Spain, are set in
a bar in expatriates bar which doesn't exist. It actually
sits in a town that I actually me and my
wife own a flat a place called Havier which a
beer has been to which in the books.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I called Eldescarrow.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
But the bar inside is one of those bars if
you described to anyone that's gone to Spain and being
on any of the costas, it's a sort of bar
where there's currency pin to the ceiling. They're selling British sale.
It's sky Sports on TV. Is the Daily Mail sitting
in the corner, It's Golden Wonder Crisp.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
It's that sort of bar.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Weirdly, where we are there are none of those bars.
But when I went round the Algarve there was one
that was almost a dead ringer for that. It was
a guy from England who moved out. I think he
would do with three of them, and they were almost
carving copies of that sort of bar, even down to
the fact they had no windows. He boarded the windows
up because he wanted the place to be inside, you know,
(17:07):
Little Britain was the best way to look at it.
But that's that bar sticks in my head when I
was writing my books.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
All right, So you.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Mentioned Megan Chips so Chips egg and you can.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Have all that.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
You you mentioned Morgan cry there, so tell us about
this this transformation. So the latest book that you're talking
about today is it The Fracture.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
It's The Cost.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So The Cost came out in April, the paperbacks out
of September, and the sequel called The Fracture comes out
on November of the fourth. The reason I changed my
name was I actually changed it before I got a
deal with Berlin with Polygon to do these Spanish books,
and at the time, Gordon Brown, it's problematic as a name, right, Okay,
(17:49):
so you still get the X Prime Minister kicking around.
But the Spanish books are quite different to what I'd
written before, and Polygon asked me would I consider writing
under another name? And then you have to find a name, which,
to be fair, is quite difficult. So I had to
then try and find a name. And the where the
name comes from, or it did then, was My father
(18:09):
was called Morgan, my grandmother's maiden name was Morgan, my
youngest brother is called Morgan, and my second youngest brother's
middle name was Morgan. So I decided I'll just borrow
Morgan because it's quite good. And then Cry. That was
just because I quite liked it from a crime point
of view. The only thing I had to do was
when I took Morgan, I had to phone my youngest
(18:30):
brother just to make sure he was happy the fact
that I was using his first name, to which he
laughed a lot. And it felt a bit like that
scene in Rocketman with Elton John Wheen Elton John tells
the drummer that he's no longer going to be called
Red Dlight and he's going to take the drummer's name on.
My brother reminded me of that the other day. Is
you just stole my name? I said, well, not all
of it, only half of it. So because because of
(18:53):
the name, when I got the new deal for the
new series with Severn House, they were as keen on
Gordon Brown because and it's practical. Morgan Cry with Polygon
sold some copies in the US.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Seven House I got a big market in the US.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
It had some traction, and they said to me, would
you mind doing Morgan Cry again? So that that's why
I end up with Morgan Cry for the new book.
It's it's it's all to do with sales and all
to do with America, although the launch.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Can you can you give us some pen names that
Vasa I could maybe have.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Oh yeah, well, I've always worked to the basis you're
going to get together. I've said that. I talked to
Douglas Skelt of this.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I said, you know, Abint, Costello, Laurel and Hardy, all
the old names for comedians that are no longer around.
I think that should be free range for authors writing together,
is you can use the second names and then put
something in front of it.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
I think, because then you would I did, you would
be well, you're not exactly wise.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So that's a tough one, isn't That's a good start.
Canon and Ball we could be Canon and Ball.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I think they should all be freely a reaal about you.
You'd have a certain audience would instantly know you.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Well, you're both Steven and Jeremy Ball.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Well you're both scot So I was going to suggest
the crankies.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
But oh they're still around though, No, you can't have that.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
You can't have that they're around.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, because apparently yea, all right, give us give us
the plot. Because we had to talk about your books.
We had to plug your books. Let's talk about the cost.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
Tell us to talk about the the Blake Glover is
in the police for thirty years, retires at sixties, retires
bit is disgraced and that he tries to fit up
a criminal in Glasgow in these last few days when
he's there, he plants drugs on him, gets caught and
is quietly asked to leave.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
After thirty years, Blake comes from a town called freezer
Ber which is on the northeast shore.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Of Scotland, and Blake decides to leave Glasgow because of
what happened to go back home. But he hasn't been
back in forty years because when he was a kid,
he was convinced that he had a lot to do
with the death of his mother. He's fairly well convinced
it was him, his responsible. He did it in one
way or the other, you can read about it. So
he has to go back. So in essence, it was
(21:14):
a story about going back home. What they always say,
don't go back. And what happens is he's approached by
a friend of his mother's whose daughter has a friend
who's gone missing, and Blake decides to him or he's
kind of blackmailed into investigating it because he doesn't want
to do that. He was never a detective. He was
a police constably his whole life, so he's not like
a time SAEF detective. But he does it as a
(21:34):
favor and then what happens is he reveals a far
bigger crime to do with drugs that's going on in
Phraser br and it kind of comes down to Blake
to rescue the day. That's the kind of number of
the story. But setting phraser aout in the northeast of Scotland.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Now, Vissima and I've both read this and it's brilliant,
I have to say. But one of the things that's
surprising me now is your knowledge of fraser bra is
so intimate. But I'm understanding now you've grown up, were
born and raised in Glasgow, so how do you know fraserb.
Speaker 5 (22:05):
Us so well? So let me take you back.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And my dad is from fraser bur right, so there's
a lot of similarities.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
My dad was from fraser By that.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
My dad left Fraserburgh when he was after school or
after he worked engineering firm, did a National service, came
back to Glasgow, met my mother, married, had us, then
he retired from the police after spending twenty five years
as a constable.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
So same as Blake in my book.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Sadly my father died when he was forty eight, and
the way the story was was I kept wondering what
had happened if he'd gone home. And actually, funnily enough,
in Glasgow he drove taxes. But when we were younger,
my father would take us back to fraser By at
the drop of a hat. Like, we spent a northern
amount of times wandering around the town.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
So the knowledge in there is me when I from
the age.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Of like two to the age of like eighteen or nineteen,
we didn't go on Holligaine else when we didn't go abroad,
we didn't go we didn't go down to the Client Coast.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
We went to fraserbur So my.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Knowledge of fraserber It is born of years and years
as a child wandering around the town.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
And you're not because it's extremely authentic.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Some of the details, you know, the kids playing there,
you could sell. You know, these aren't things that your
average writer makes up. There seem to be memories there.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
There is, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff
about you know, there's places in there. You wouldn't recognize,
I know, names like you know links or Salt the Square.
There's a whole bunch of things in Fraser. When I
was a kid, there was things that happened, and you.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Were asking earlier what I put in my books.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
There is a ton of my childhood and fraserb but
it and the things that happened when I was a kid,
things we used to do because Blake grew up there,
and in fearness, Blakes about ages with me. So actually
it's been quite easy because I've just nicked my childhood.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And your and your knowledge of Dodgy cups. Yes, obviously
comes from your your time in Cupland.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Well it also comes to the fact that, well, let's
be artist. We lived in Sim's Hill. There wasn't a
lot of money, but we were the first people I
ever knew that had a VHS video recorder. In fact,
so much so that I'd be meeting up at school
because people didn't.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Believe I had one.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
We were the first people we knew had a color television.
We were the first people I knew that had a
stereo or a decent stereo.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
We had an Afghan.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Hound, like like the best we had local to us
was much and we had in afghan There was stuff.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Come through our door that made you wonder where it
was coming from. My father.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
My father obviously had a root into things in Glasgow
and the police. That meant stuff made its way into
our house that absolutely no way we should have had.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
No based was based at mary Hill.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
No, he was based. Funnily enough, he's based, but Blake
was which was central. Only Central moved so he did
do mary Hell because I moved Blake around. But funnily enough,
my dad actually was based out of the office Blake
would have been then had he been a bit young Blake.
Blake's got to be quite a bit younger because it
doesn't work otherwise. But even that, my memories of some
of the stuff that Blake does, there's a mary Hill.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Scene in Blake. It's actually not far off.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
One of the stories that I heard that came from
one of my dad's friends about a guy that more
or less ran mary Hill just from a gangster point
of view, it was just he was the guy and
I think in the scene as a Ferrari sitting outside
the tenement house. Yeah, the guy that head the Ferrari
and nobody unless you were a gangster, could park a
(25:25):
Ferrari and Mary Hill in the eighties and expected to
be there.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Or now I would imagine ieah, probably now.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Now you and now the cost is out. Now the Fracture,
which is the follow up to the Cost, is coming
out later this year. Is anything you can tell us
about that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
It's interesting because there's a guy in the course called
Mitch Campbell, who's the kind of criminal that Blake tried
to fit up.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
But I always heard when.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
I was younger that a number of the corps had
this on off relationship with the criminals. The way they
kind of always painted it was there was a kind
of line. If you cross the line, then all bets
were off. But there was kind of acceptance, especially back
in Glasgow, that to keep the peace, there was certain
things you could do in certain things you couldn't do.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
And therefore some of.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
The police actually had relationships with some of the criminals,
not necessarily the worst or the worst, but some of them.
And therefore the fracture is much more about him and
Mitch on the basis that Mitch threatens to reveal what
happened when Blake was a police officer I some of
the things that maybe he shouldn't have been doing. To
(26:35):
bring him down. He blackmails him to come down to Glasgow. Right,
So Blake has to go to Glasgow, and Mitch has
a reason. I'll not tell you the reason because that's
in the story, but he's more or less Mitch drags
them back to Glasgow because he has something he wants
to do. So the kind of story, the dynamic between
the two of them is based on that sort of
classic you know, you've got a criminal one side, the
(26:56):
policemen on the other side.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
But to be fair, sometimes the line's a bit gray
in the middle as to who's who.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Like signs the same coin.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Although Blake would always say that he never did anything bad,
but then I really met anyone police officer that would
have said opposite of that. I have to be careful
here because I'm painting the police for a very bad
picture or not that sometimes you need to.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
But yeah, but I actually find it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's quite hard to do because my dad didn't really
talk about the police that much. The police were very
much about talking within themselves. They weren't big on telling
I mean, he told the odd story, but I wish
I had more time with my dad because some of
the stories I did here were so tantalizing you almost
felt like, please tell me more.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Like a good corrupt cop story. And presumably you're working
on a third.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I've got a third and a fourth in the works,
so it depends on how currently it goes with these two.
So to talk to seven House, but at the moment
the deals for two of them, but there is a
third in the fourth as it stands at the moment,
again just taking partly taking that relationship, but also taking
the phraser a setting a bit further because I kind
(28:10):
of like it. The only person I know that I
think sets anything near Fraser on a regular basis crime
world is Stuart McBride, who's in Aberdeen. And Stuart actually
did a short story for an anthology that I was
involved in called Bloody Scotland, and he set it at
Canear Lighthouse in fraser Bur And therefore, when I said
to Stuart I was setting a book in fraser Bur,
(28:30):
he said, how dare you stand in my territory?
Speaker 6 (28:35):
Lon was right, He's quite right. Now you mentioned Bloody Scotland,
and you know, in a few minutes we've got left
tell us a wee bit firstly about how Bloody Scotland
started and what's coming up this year.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, so the origin story goes back to twenty ten
and my initial involvement was at a Crime Writer's Association
lunch dinner in the Millennium Hotel in Glasgow where there
was Alex Gray and Lynn Anderson and various other writers
having lunch and Lynn and Alex had been taught been
down at Harrogate, so they've been at Harrogate at late
night at the bar, and as the way things were,
(29:10):
most of the people at the bar were Scottish authors,
crime authors, so there was Chris boot myerther was Ian Rankin,
there was Viole mcdavi, et cetera. And they had this
talk about why wasn't there a crime festival in Scotland
And I uttered the words which fatally I remember uttering,
which is how hard can it be to a festival?
And I was kind of being about arrogant because Tenants,
(29:32):
although we never Teen Apart, which is a massive music festival,
Tennants were just a sponsor, so I never had anything
to do with sett it up, but we had had
been involved with the festival two weeks later, I met
Lynn at Princess Gardens and we tried to work out
what we could do. And then somehow amazingly a year
and a half later, the first of the Bloody Scotland's
turned up and startling and that's how.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
We got going, and we way overreached the first year.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Instead of having one day with you know, one little
venue and you know, a few authors, we decided, well,
we'll have three days or two and a half days,
and we'll have three venues at the same time, and
Buddy Scotland took off and it's kind of just.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Growing from there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I mean last year, I think we did sixteen thousand
tickets over the weekend. This year we've got one hundred
and thirty authors, fifty four events, and some of the
biggest names in crime writing. You know Ian Rankin this
year brilliant at him. He actually stepped in to say
he would be the kind of programming chair. And as
part of that, some of the names we're able to
(30:35):
get Kathy right, you know, some of the elements. We've got,
Richard Cole's it's there, but we've also got people from
all over the place. Judy Muddy's in, We've got Steph mcgovernor.
We've got Jeremy Vine, We've got a huge range of
authors this year, probably one of the best lineups we've had,
from the twelfth to the fourteenth of September.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
And I have to.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Remember to get those dates right because last year I
had to close the festival and so I had to
stand stage and I'd written it really quickly at the
back of the stage to go thank you very much
to volunteers, to everybody else, and I said, and next
year we're on from the tenth to the twelfth of September.
And there was a huge sign up behind telling me
I was wrong. So the biggest I didn't even get
(31:16):
a cheer. All I got was abuse for getting the dates.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
For all.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
That's that's that's Scotland.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Abuse is how you know that people love you exactly exactly, Yeah,
I know exactly.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Here's a man who's no stranger to abuse vast any
any final words before I do the.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Outro, not at all.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It is a lovely jamboree each year, and it's always
lovely to come back to Scotland and meet my Scottish friends.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Yes you are many many Scottish friends.
Speaker 6 (31:45):
Remember that one of my One of my abiding memories
is the seen doing it reciting to a mouse sterling Castle. Yes, yes,
if you've never seen, if you've never seen forsm do burns.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
You don't know what you're missing.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
Third degree burns by the same and it's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Just Gordon, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
Coming on.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
We've had a great time talking to you. The times
just flown by and we can see you up.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
In bloody Scotland.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
And the cost is out now, ladies and gentlemen, and
it is a fantastic book, so please do go out
and buy it, the new one, the fracture he set
us out in November.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Remember the fourth on the cost is the cost has
just been dropped to two pound fifty one kindle, given
it was twelve pound ninety nine.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
I think that's a significant deal.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
By five of them, ladies and gentlemen, by five.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
And that brings us to the close of another episode
once again. If you'd like the show, can we ask
you to leave a review, sign up for regular episodes
using your favorite podcast app, and please do spread the
word so vast do you think we could sell non
alcoholic beer in the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
May I think we could sell ice to the Inuit, Sandy,
the Arabs, and condoms to the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
There you are, ladies and gentlemen, canon and ball condoms.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
On that note, we've been your friends. The Red Hot
Chiley Writers on murder Junction
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