Slayground
With Strip Jack Naked safely off to the publishers, I began to cast around for ideas for a new book.
Moss Side and crack cocaine were in the headlines at the time, so this seemed a fairly interesting arena in which to set a novel. It bugged me that in the books and films that had already flirted with this subject, the protagonists were generally depicted as being well into their twenties; but everybody knew that most of them were much younger than that, kids as young as 12 years old. I read that in many cases, the parents of these kids are addicts and I started wondering, what happens to a kid when he has to become the adult in the family, because his parents are, to all intents and purposes, irresponsible children? Out of these thought processes, emerged the character of Finn, the young gang leader fighting to control his turf in the face of older, more equipped gangsters.
Also around this time, the James Bulger case was in everyone's face and there are definite echoes of that awful incident in the scene where the little girl is abducted by Finn and his gang in a shopping mall. Called the Westway centre in the book, it's quite obviously based on Manchester's Arndale Centre (pre-IRA bomb blast). When it came out, some of my friends were appalled that I would want to allude to something so hideous. Maybe it was just my way of trying to understand what had happened.
I was heavily criticised at the time by a young black writer who said that a middle class white male like myself had no business writing about Moss Side; but to be fair, the story is seen from the point of view of a middle class PR man, who has previously lived in the area (as I had when I first went to Manchester), has since moved on to a leafy suburb and is asked to go back to do (of all things) a fashion shoot.
The third element was the introduction of a 'gangsta rap' film star. If this was ever a movie, it would be a role tailor-made for Ice Cube or Ice T or one of those icey-monickered gentlemen. I wanted to contrast the phoney aggressiveness of the gangsta rap genre with the genuine violence of Finn's world. It was inevitable then, that at the book's conclusion, Finn would have to come face to face with his idol, rap star, Bobby C. Cooper.
FACT: The Merton Estate where most of the action is based is a fictional location, created because I didn't want to be seen to be pointing the finger at any particular area within Moss Side. At the book's conclusion, much of the area is being demolished and that's exactly what has happened since. After much urban renewal, Moss Side is barely recognisable as the place it once was.