Why I wrote Still Midnight

Because I’m scared of my cousin Gerry.

Gerry’s a criminal lawyer, twelve hours younger than me and we grew up like brother and sister. He was always a ferocious wee boy. Decades of conditioning meant that when he told me to look at the real case this novel was based on I had to. I was blown away.

A violent home invasion by white thugs on an intensely Glaswegian Muslim family, right in the heart of the most aspiring, sleepy suburb in the city. I knew that a lot of Asian people Anglify their names to by-pass casual racism, but the whole story hung on that fact. Also, I was struck by the parallels between my own Irish Catholic extended family and this generation of largely assimilated Asian Brits. Like us, many of them face prejudice because of a tiny number of terrorists and a lot of people turn back to their heritage for an identity, only to find that they are very deeply British. Everyone in the book is trying to fuse conflicting identities: DI Alex Morrow came from the same idea: how does an outsider join a group like the police and make sense of that?

Writers like themes, they make us feel important, but ultimately I tried to write a thumping tale which ends with an uplifting love story, because with these big social splits, love and acceptance are the only redemption there is. I have sixty cousins and only two of them married Catholics, for the first few marrying out was a mortal crime and now it isn’t even commented upon.