ANDREW WILSON: MYTHS, MYSTERIES and MURDERS

For a man who's been cursed by a dead American novelist, Andrew Wilson appears remarkably carefree. It happened as he was rifling through the secret archive of novelist Patricia Highsmith, author of such best-sellers as 'The Talented Mr Ripley.' More of that later.

We met in a café to talk about his life and career. The award winning journalist and writer was born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, but has been living in Sorbas for the past two years. His debut novel 'The Lying Tongue' has attracted rave reviews from the national and international press. He was in a chatty mood while I sat there open-mouthed at some of his intriguing tales and revelations.

First, to the novel, and it's a cracker of a read. A richly dark crime thriller that will keep the hairs on the back of your neck standing firmly to attention. It's tense, chilling, and populated by a cast of strange and thoroughly unpleasant characters. I found the story so compelling that I couldn't bear to be parted from the pages; during a lunchtime reading session I inadvertently poured dressing over its pages, instead of the salad I was eating!

'The Lying Tongue' tells the story of a young graduate, Adam Woods, who wants to go to Venice to write a novel. A job offer to help tutor the 16-year old son of an Italian couple falls through, and he ends up becoming the personal assistant of a very reclusive author, Gordon Crace. The elderly man wrote one highly successful novel and then nothing more.

As the book progresses Adam becomes obsessed with Crace and abandons the idea of a novel, because he sees a much better book in writing Crace's biography. There are secrets, plot twists, and a truly surprising ending. Add to that a few disturbing scenes that will make your flesh creep, including a rather unpleasant conversation about scrambled eggs. In fact I'll never look at my breakfast in the same way again.

So we have a very talented writer whose imagination is capable of taking him to some extraordinarily dark places. Thankfully there wasn't a hint of the sinister or macabre about him as we drank our coffees and I munched my way through several donuts. I started the conversation by asking him to describe the essence of the novel.

"There's a mystery at the heart of the story. Why did Crace stop writing? What is his secret? And the more Adam is drawn into this strange man's life, the more he is curious to find out more about him. It all goes from there. It's a battle of wills between the two."

From the very beginning Andrew knew he wanted to set the story in Venice. I've never been to the city, but in my mind it's a romantic ideal, a lover's paradise: hundreds of honeymooners, oblivious to the world, gliding down canals on gondolas, bathed in the reddish glow of the setting sun. Of course there is another Venice, and it's the one Andrew picked up on.

"I wanted an environment that was very decrepit, decayed and decadent, and of course Venice has all these associations. There's a crumbling old palazzo where Crace lives, and this man is very much still a recluse; he doesn't go outside. I visualised this kind of an environment that hasn't changed for decades or centuries, and the smell of decay of the canals. The idea is that he was physically decaying, but also his environment was decaying as well."

Not only did I find this a gripping story, but Andrew manages to pull off a tricky feat: he avoids alienating the reader, even though the narrator is not a particularly nice person. You don't realise this at first, but slowly, the further you get into the book, the character's nastiness is revealed.

"I very much wanted to set myself the challenge of writing a book narrated in the first person, of someone who wasn't a particularly attractive character; and to see whether I could actually do that. There's a certain amount of reader identification you always need, even if there's an unpleasant character. Especially if that character is a first person narrator. That's why there's the kind of drip, drip approach of Adam's nastiness. It comes at a very slow pace."

Such a task is not without its hazards.

"I think it was a risk, but hopefully the strength of the story will carry people through."

By this stage of the interview I was beginning to wonder how this happy, extremely likeable man was capable of the seriously twisted thoughts that permeate the novel. A big clue comes from his first two books, highly acclaimed biographies of Patricia Highsmith and Harold Robbins, two authors who led very mysterious lives. In fact the idea for 'The Lying Tongue' came to him during the five years he spent researching Highsmith.

"I was finding myself in the situation where I was writing someone's biography. I never met her actually, and I just wanted to play with this idea of what's the best way to represent someone's life? Is it biography or fiction? What happens when you are in that situation? Who has possession of another person's life? Is it the person who lives it? Or is it a person who represents it in some kind of way."

The author of 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and 'Stranger on a Train' was a complex character who had a troubled life. Given permission by Highsmith's literary estate to write her life story, Wilson found a vast secret archive of letters and diaries in Switzerland. However, there was a little shock in store.

"I remember when I first turned over the page of one of her notebooks, and there was a little curse for anyone who opened them and read them. I remember feeling the hairs on the back of my neck rise and thought, actually, should I really go ahead with this?"

One deep breath later, and Andrew ploughed on, spending a year tackling the enormous volume of her personal papers. He's such a fan of her writing that there are subtle references to her work in 'The Lying Tongue,' including the curse.

A biographer wants to capture the essence of the person, and to accurately represent the narrative of their lives to the reader. In trying to understand Highsmith, Andrew was given an unusual gift that allowed him to get much closer to his subject than he thought possible.

"Her best friend gave me her dressing gown. I put it round my shoulders, and it had her hairs; she never washed it or dry cleaned it. It smelt of her, so I had a very tangible presence of this woman who was dead and gone."

His research found a woman who was definitely a few pages short of a chapter.

"She was very secretive. Her favourite creatures were snails, which can tell you a lot about a person. She carried them around in her bag, and she had them in her bra. She was obsessed with them in lots of different, very strange ways. I only discovered that in the course of writing the biography. She was a very obsessive, odd character, and I just wanted to get to the bottom of it."

After the publication of the biography Andrew set about probing the secret world of the notorious Harold Robbins. His racy reads such as 'The Carpetbaggers' and 'The Betsy' sold more than 750 million copies worldwide. His was a decadent life, and he squandered his multi-million dollar fortune on booze, drugs, and yachts, ending up a broken man.

"He was a larger than life personality. He was a cocaine addict into orgies, but he could also be very moralistic. He was a self-invention and as a symbol of modern America, he's perfect: The American dream of what that means and, how it could go wrong. So there are lots of interesting facets.

"He was someone who had secrets. He told his wife and family one thing, and actually his past was something very different. It was another work in detection to find out what the truth of it was.

"It would have been very easy to represent him as a cigar smoking tycoon. He was a bit of a vulgar man, with too much money on his yacht, who took too many drugs. But I wanted to humanise him, and tell the story of why he became like this, and to pick out the likeable aspects of somebody like this."

There are some sniffy literary types who regard biographers as nothing more than glorified snoopers, and Andrew did spend several years poking around the private lives of two major league talents. Is there any difference between this kind of writing and that of tabloid hacks, who pursue anyone who's had more than their 15 minutes of fame?

"When I was at university you'd never read a biography of someone's life because it wasn't considered important. There's the tradition in English Literature that you don't read anything else into work; the work should stand alone. But especially with my work on Highsmith, I could make all these kinds of links between a situation in her life and then a novel. I think it kind of illuminates the body of work.

"If someone was doing it to me, to nose around when I was alive, I think that's one thing. But after someone is dead, it's something else. Their reputation is up for grabs I think. The work exists. Nothing is going to happen to the work.

"Biography can have something to say if it's written in an appropriate way. Obviously if it's sensationalist then that's something rather different; it exists to despoil and to rubbish. But I think you can do it in a responsible way, which is what I have done."

The two biographies were written whilst Andrew was a busy and successful freelance journalist in London. His articles appeared in many publications, including the Daily Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, and the Guardian. Two years ago he decided to pack up his keyboard and head for the sunshine of Sorbas in southern Spain. The decision to leave the UK was unexpected, and is largely due to some organic vegetable seeds. A colleague of his partner was buying some over the internet, and there was a seed farm for sale. They came across one weekend and decided to buy it.

"It's kind of like an eco-village. We live completely off the grid. There's no mains electricity or water. It's got a river that flows all year, enough for all our domestic use, washing machine, showers, loos and everything. The easiest way to classify it is that it's the eco-green dream. It's an interesting place and I've learnt an awful lot about green living."

Whilst he's been over here, Andrew has also gone back to school to improve his Spanish, and is now nervously waiting for the results of his GCSE, which come out in August.

The Levante area has been a magnet for artists and writers for generations, who all draw inspiration from this beautiful corner of Spain. That's something Andrew is sure he'll get round to.

"I do want to write about it at some point. It might be fiction or non-fiction, I just haven't decided yet. I probably will write a novel, and I think maybe the English in Spain. It's so fascinating the whole concept. Or maybe a book about my experiences as well, particularly in an extreme place like where I live. There are a few different possibilities."

For the immediate future he's concentrating on the publication of the paperback version of 'The Lying Tongue.' He's also half-way through another crime novel. So I left him and his imagination to fill its pages with even more sinister, murky and warped tales. I can't wait for its release.