IT'S A NUMBERS GAME FOR INCY WINCY, AN INTERVIEW WITH RJ DARK

19/7/2022

Gingernuts of Horror: Welcome to the site! I’d like to start out by asking about the two leads, Mal and Jackie - where did they come from, and how much time did you put into mapping out their relationship before starting in on the series?

RJ Dark: It’s strange because I’ve actually been writing professionally for quite a while, but Mal and Jackie have existed right from the start, they were the first book I seriously tried to write and they’ve been through a few iterations before I hit upon them as they exist now. They come from a love of American crime novels which often do the detective who has a dangerous friend, we have Spenser and Hawk (Robert B Parker) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (Rober Crais) and Myron Bolitar and Windsor Lockwood (Harlen Coben) and I wanted to do a very British version. Something that was partly deadly serious and partly comical in the way that Joe Lansdale does so well in the Hap and Leonard books. So there’s that.

At the same time, I spent my youth and young adulthood as someone who was a bit too quick with a quip and was lucky enough to have friends who could look after themselves that saved me from a few unpleasant situations. More than a few, actually. So there’s quite a lot of that in them too.

GNoH: So there’s a bit of you in Mal?

RJD: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was never an addict or a medium. But there’s definitely my sense of humour and sense of fair play going on. And I suspect we share an ability to hide really well if violence is kicking off. Though Jackie doesn’t really give Mal the chance.

GNoH: Jackie is a complex character who we learn more about in the second book, though much of his backstory is still mysterious. Do you have a good sense of his past, and are you planning any future revelations?

RJD: I have a REALLY good sense of his past and yes. I tried writing Mal and Jackie books for ages and constantly failing because I was trying to write the book that dealt with how they became friends and I realised they needed to be more established for the reader first. So that knowledge has always been there, and I suspect that the more hidden facets of Jackie will surface in later books as well. At the same time, I never want to go too far, like where does he keep all those clothes? Nobody knows. He is a man of secrets.

GNoH: The estate of Blades Edge feels almost like a character itself, in the books. Is it based on a real location? And to what degree do you have it mapped out in your mind?

RJD: It doesn’t exist and it does. I grew up on the edge of an estate and we were constantly warned about what it was like. So it kind of became a bogeyman in my head and Blades Edge is very much the estate that existed in my head, as opposed to a real place. At the same time, I've spent plenty of time in places like Blades Edge, and known plenty of the sort of people who you run into in the book so there’s a lot of realism in it. I receive a surprising amount of emails from people who are sure it's the estate they grew up on, so it’s definitely hit something.

As to having it mapped out, not really, I have a vague idea of it. It's more of a feeling for it. How it feels to walk along certain streets, how there’s nowhere to hide. I know it, but I couldn't tell you where The Scar is in relation to Mick’s house or the Tower Blocks or the massive hill that is the Blade.

GNoH: In terms of that, then; how do you strike the balance between that ‘bogeyman’ version and realism? There must have been a fear of inadvertently veering into caricature (which I do think you avoided)...

RJD: I think it's the same as with all things, you write it with a sense of affection and the knowledge that people are people, and their actions are often driven by things beyond their control. There’s a bit in A Numbers Game when they go into the house of someone who clearly has undiagnosed mental issues. Though they’re quite open about how awful it is to be in that house, and how they don’t want to be there, at the same time the person has trouble rolling a cigarette so Jackie takes over, and by the time they leave he’s rolled a little tobacco tin full of cigarettes for them. I think that confirmation by a small act of kindness stops it from being a Jeremy Kyle style, ‘let’s laugh at the poor people.’ The acknowledgement of the struggle some people have just to live and not being overly judgemental about it.

GNoH: How about dealing with outright villains, though? Is there any difference in your approach when dealing with, for example, the racist organisation in Incy Wincy?

RJD: I don't write many outright villains so it was fun to write a proper scenery chewer. I've no doubt in their minds they're the heroes, well not in Dareth’s, he is clearly a monster and he knows it which should clue the rest of the organisation in, but they don’t care. That’s how you tell they are genuinely very wrong as opposed to being wildly misguided. That and the way they treat people, are people a tool or do they actually want to help them? I think that’s what divides Trolley Mick from some of the other bad guys. He has a sort of twisted sense of community. He’s not got my morals, but he does have some morals.

GNoH: Both novels contain a mystery. Did you have the solutions to those mysteries in place before you started writing, or did you work it out alongside the characters?

RJD: I always know who did it and why when I start. And probably one major connection going through. Like the realisation that is at the heart of Incy Wincy was always going to happen. How I get there is always a mystery and often the people that turn up are a surprise. The appearance of Mucky Jim in Incy Wincy came from nowhere but I feel like he is worth revisiting.

It's quite fun just to let it run though because I can hear Mal and Jackie so well, so they bounce backwards and forwards in my head and I can follow where they would go. I know they make bad decisions, and why they do them so it rolls along in quite a fun way.

GNoH: One thing I wanted to talk about in Incy Wincy was the autopsy scene; it’s a staple of crime fiction, but with Mal as the POV character, you brought something fresh to that sequence. Can you talk a bit about how you approached writing that sequence? And more generally, what are the things you most enjoy and most dislike about writing Crime fiction?

RJD: There wasn't really any clever plan to it, I’m sorry to say. I was really thinking about how much I would hate an autopsy and trying to write that.

GNoH: Fair enough. More generally, the books are interesting tonally, in that they contain both humour and darkness, with Mal being our window for both. How do you make decisions about when to drop in a gag line, and when to let the darkness or tension play out?

RJD: It’s a really odd thing and it’s almost entirely done by feel, I don’t think you can teach it or explain it. Mal and Jackie use humour as a tension release valve and I think a lot of the actual funny in the books comes from the fact Mal gets tense a lot more quickly than Jackie. That might also be why the autopsy scene works the way it does. You have two very different levels of acceptance for A) the way the world works and B) for the amount of violence they are happy to be involved with. So you scamper along that tightrope not trying to destroy the tension of the story with too many jokes. Though I’m not sure jokes is the right word, it’s very character dependant, they’re funny as opposed to it being set up - punchline.

GNoH: Finally, what’s next for Mal and Jackie? Are further adventures in the offing?

RJD: Yes! There’s another Novel and a Novella written. The novel moves away from the established location of Blades Edge to the seaside, and the novella happens before the events of A Numbers Game. But they are both great fun and I’m really pleased with them. I keep messing about with ideas for a fourth book and I’m pretty sure that will happen at some point. They are just so much fun to write.

Further Reading

Kit Power's Review of A Dark Game

Kit Power's Review of Incy Wincy

a numbers game by rj dark

One dead man and a missing lottery ticket.
Two family members who need that money to get away from the rundown Blades Edge estate.

Three local gangsters who want that money for themselves.

Meet Malachite Jones – the foremost (and only) psychic medium on the gritty Blades Edge estate. All he wants are two things: a name that isn’t ‘Malachite’, and a quiet life. And maybe some real psychic powers, but he’s making a living without them.

Janine Stanbeck wants to find her dead husband Larry’s winning ticket and escape Blades Edge with her son. And she thinks Mal can help her.

But Larry’s dad is the crime lord of the estate, and he wants that ticket for himself, and worse for Mal, he's not the only criminal with his eyes on it. Add in two coppers desperate to nick Mal's best, only, and admittedly quite dangerous, friend, Jackie Singh Kattar, and Blades Edge is getting pretty crowded.

Malachite Jones might not really be able to talk to the dead, but if he and his friend Jackie Singh Kattar can’t find that money and a solution that pleases everyone they’re likely to be in need of a psychic medium themselves.

The first Mal Jones and Jackie Singh Kattar adventure: a chaotic rollercoaster ride through a Yorkshire landscape full of double crossing friends, dogged police, psychotic gangster and voices from the other side.

INCY WINCY BY RJ DARK

Malachite Jones is a pretend psychic medium and an unwilling detective.

He certainly doesn't want anyone bringing him a missing persons case.

Definitely not two.

When the a body turns up he knows life is only going to get harder.

Blades Edge premier gangster, Trolley Mick, owes a favour to a family who’s son, Daniel Jerrings, has vanished. He wants Mal to pay it. Jackie’s friend from the military, Spider, is also missing. And though Jackie doesn’t really do friends, he does do loyalty and that means Mal does too.

But it seems that there are plenty of other people out there looking for Spider, and everything is spiralling down the drain in a wash of designer drugs, UFOs, racists, violent youth gangs and a group of evangelical Americans with their own agenda. Somehow, it all involves a missing teenager but nothing adds up, and violence lurks around every corner.

Discovering the truth means sinking deeper into the grimy world of organised crime where dangerous people have an awful lot to lose, and a way out for Mal and Jackie is getting harder and harder to see.

Incy Wincy picks up where A Numbers Game left off. Gritty, good hearted and laugh out loud funny. Mal and Jackie are back!