In Depth
Secrets of a sinister English village
20.11.07 Caroline Horn
Author "Will Peterson" is a pseudonym for two authors, adult crime writer Mark Billingham and screenwriter Peter Cocks. They are no strangers to working together, having spent 12 years in partnership writing children's television scripts, but this is the first novel that they have penned together.
Triskellion is the first of a trilogy in which two American children, twins Rachel and Josh, come to the UK to stay with their grandmother in the village of Triskellion, where their mother grew up. It is also home to an ancient chalk circle, from which the village gets its name. The villagers, however, are less than friendly to the new arrivals and, as the twins start to uncover the mystery behind the Triskellion amulet and chalk circle, events take a sinister turn.
The book was originally conceived as a television script, says Billingham, but the authors revisited it after Walker Books approached Billingham to write a novel for children. "An editor had seen an interview where I had talked about writing film scripts for children and they approached me to write a book. Peter and I had written a lot of comedy but wondered if we could write something that was thrilling and dark—a page-turner—for children."
They started by taking the major plot points from the story, breaking them down into smaller parts, and then into chapters, says co-author Cocks. "By the time it came to write it, we were agreed on the major points although the book developed way beyond the original television story. I would then write part of it and Mark the next bit, and then we'd go over it together.
"We deliberately started the book in an old-fashioned way with vicars, old ladies and commodores. Then we pull the rug from under it and it becomes a lot darker, more violent and more mysterious."
"There are some quite dark happenings in the book but the bar has been raised in terms of what children find scary and there are things that will always do so—like the idea that your closest relatives can betray you," adds Billingham. "In this book, you have a couple of streetwise 14-year-olds and we've put them into an insulated English setting—it could not be more alien to them, everything seems to be weird, but is it that everything is strange or it just seems strange to them? Even the ordinary can be scary—like the Morris Men beating wooden sticks, which becomes quite threatening.
"We temper the horror with humour, through characters like Jacob Honeyman and his fascination with bees. But the idea of death as taboo in children's books has been broken. People die, and children accept that.
"You're left with a lot of questions at the end of the book—such as the identity of the character Gabriel—but that is deliberate. You used to have to have a status quo in children's books and black and white resolutions, but now it just needs to be a satisfying ending— and there are a number of questions hanging over at the end which we approach in the second part of the trilogy."
Will Peterson (Mark Billingham and Peter Cocks) Triskellion (Walker Books, February 2008, p/b, £6.99, 9781406307092)
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