By: Mark Ellis
I write a historical crime series set in World War Two London which features DCI Frank Merlin, a Scotland Yard detective. I grew up in the Welsh town of Swansea, whose most famous literary product is the poet Dylan Thomas. After school in Wales and university in Cambridge, I have spent most of my adult life to date living in London. However I have enjoyed three extended stays in America. In 1972 I spent six months as an English Speaking Union exchange student at an American school in Pittsburgh. The school was called Shady Side Academy. My second spell in America was in the late eighties when I was in charge of the US office of a British company located in New York. My third extended visit was in the mid 90s when I had lot of business in America with the UK computer business I had started with a partner. This stay was not full time but I spent almost six months a year in Los Angeles for a few years. In Pittsburgh I lived in the home of a wonderful local family, in New York in an apartment on the East Side, and, in Los Angeles in a flat in Century City.
All three stays were very different experiences. In the first I was a school student, in the second a corporate employee, and in the 3rd an entrepreneur but I had a brilliant time on all of them. I was not writing at all when I lived in America, but maintained my childhood ambition to become an author one day. I travelled a great deal on all my visits. When my stay at Shady Side Academy finished, I bought a Greyhound Bus Pass for $200. This enabled me to travel anywhere I wanted for a month. The journey was memorable. I travelled in one go across America to Vancouver, sitting next to a friendly and fascinating Indigenous American for a good part of the journey. Then I went down to California. In San Francisco, the father of the family I stayed with pointed out his bearded next door neighbour. ‘He’s a film director. Just finished some gangster movie with Marlon Brando I believe.’ I then travelled across the South via Grand Canyon, Houston and New Orleans to Washington. There I happened to spend, I later found out, the night of the Watergate burglary. On my 80s stay in New York I travelled a lot on business, mostly to Florida, Texas and California. I travelled a little on my final stay in the nineties, but mostly on the West Coast or to New York, where my company was eventually taken public.
What impact did my time in America have on my writing? Well the overwhelming impact has come from reading American writers. At school in Pittsburgh, I first became acquainted with great noir masters from the thirties and forties like Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M Cain and Jim Thompson. When I was working in New York, I got to know another batch of great crime writers including Patricia Highsmith, Elmore Leonard, and John Grisham. Then when I was based in Los Angeles in the 90s I discovered Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, James Ellroy and Walter Mosley. Of course all of these great writers have their own styles, but collectively they all know how to keep the reader gripped from the outset, and generally write great dialogue which helps the story zip along. They also write superb plots. The British and Continental crime writers I was reading at the time had many merits but I definitely think this American punchiness stood apart. One favourite European author of mine who does match this American literary characteristic is Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector Maigret. Simenon has much in common with many of the best Americans – short, pithy dialogue and a lean writing style.
So to the question posed: how has my time in America versus my time in England shaped my writing? The answer must be in the positive influence of those various writers listed above. I doubt I would have read anything like as many if I had not lived in the USA. In addition I have been much affected my experience of living in such a vibrant, exciting country. I think my time in America has made me much more daring in life than I might otherwise have been. I dared to write a book after all!
Mark Ellis is a thriller writer from Swansea and a former barrister and entrepreneur. He is the creator of DCI Frank Merlin, an Anglo-Spanish police detective operating in World War 2 London. His books treat the reader to a vivid portrait of London during the war skilfully blended with gripping plots, political intrigue and a charismatic protagonist.
