Nursery Crime
Nursery Crimes is the collective name given to a trilogy of novels published
between 1999-2001, which took as their inspiration classic British children`s
stories, but relocated them to the seamier side of American life.
While wrestling with the novel that would become EARLY ONE MORNING, I went on assignment for the Sunday Times to Seattle. One of the things that fascinated me about the city was that there had been a fire in 1889 and, instead of rebuilding the town as it was, the locals decided to start construction one storey up, and to seal-in the old downtown (they were having terrible flooding problems). Some of the Victorian streets are still down there, and I thought it would make a wonderful setting for a thriller.
A bungled heist, a little girl kidnapped, a plunge into a forgotten world, a SWAT team, an ex-Vietnam tunnel rat, and so on. It became UNDERDOGS, which I wrote in the evenings while on staff at The Sunday Times.
I decided to sample ideas from Alice in Wonderland. So the chief cop is called John Tenniel, the little girl who falls through is Ali, the villain is Hilton Badcock, part of the name of the girl who was the model for the drawings, and the Swat major is Milliner - as in hatter. I then applied the pace, and some references to, early John Carpenter. Hence, it turned into Alice in Wonderland meets Assault on Precinct 13.
I followed it up with NINE MIL (2000, Winnie the Pooh meets The Getaway, set in Atlantic City) and TRANS AM (2001, Peter Pan meets Taxi Driver, set in Arizona and NYC). They were critically well received (see below), and all were optioned for movies at some point, but by book three I thought I had squeezed all I wanted from the formula. The thought of doing The Railway Children meets Reservoir Dogs or Billy Bunter says Kill Bill didn't appeal.
By the time Trans Am was published, I was ready to finish Early One Morning.
They were originally published under the name "Rob Ryan".
'This novel has ''brilliant'' written through
it like a stick of rock. Rob Ryan's second novel just supports my reaction to
his first that here we have a superb crime writer... This is a book not to be
missed, half-way between THE SOPRANOS and a John Woo movie.' THE INDEPENDENT
ON SUNDAY
‘Fast, violent and a breathless delight.' THE GUARDIAN
‘Stylish, high-octane stuff, not for the faint-hearted.' ESQUIRE
‘Never less than compulsive.’ THE LIST, GLASGOW
‘Ryan invokes the spirits of Sinatra and Eliot Ness in another high-calibre
rush through American gun culture that's nigh-on untouchable.’ GQ
‘Don't start reading until you’ve got a clear run: this is a f***** to put down. Great plot, edge-of-the-seat suspense and intelligent writing. Read it.' TIME OUT
‘Thrills with twists you'll need a crystal ball to predict.’ DAILY MIRROR
‘Trans Am is an absolute cracker.’ MIKE RIPLEY
The Seattle mystery novel par excellence.' THE GUARDIAN
'Underdogs shows Ryan...utilising a fascinating setting with real aplomb and delivering something of a treat' THE IMES
"Brilliantly realised" GQ MAGAZINE
"A wonderfully exhilarating novel, combining a cinematic narrative drive with winning characters...and a brilliantly imagined dreamlike subterranean landscape" SUNDAY TIMES
"Fantastic, head-spinning, surreal and hilarious by turns" THE GUARDIAN
"A hardboiled tour-de-force" THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
"Cracking" DAILY TELEGRAPH
