19th Roy Grace book from Peter James hits the book shelves

SussexWorld

The very real threat of rabies re-entering the UK looms large in the latest Roy Grace book Stop Them Dead, the 19th in the Brighton-based detective series from multi-million selling author Peter James.

Transcript

00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always a

00:06 fantastic pleasure to speak to Peter James, particularly when there's a new grace looming,

00:11 and it's Stop Them Dead, number 19. And Peter, I know I always say this, but it's such a

00:16 cracking read. It's just, it's thrilling, page turning writing, isn't it? You must be

00:22 particularly pleased with this one.

00:24 Oh, thanks, Phil. I am. I'm particularly happy with Stop Them Dead. I mean, I love all the

00:30 books that I've written, but Stop Them Dead is something that's very personal because

00:34 Lara, my wife, and I are massive dog lovers. And it's all about the black market trade

00:43 in dogs that exploded during lockdown and the price of dogs went up 10, 15 times.

00:52 And that was criminal market forces in effect, wasn't it?

00:55 Completely criminal market forces. I do want to emphasise that I have not harmed any dogs

01:04 in the novels. Any dog lover has not been harmed.

01:06 You've harmed a few humans, maybe.

01:08 I've harmed a few very nasty humans. As a dog lover myself, I could never write about

01:14 hurting a dog. So there's nothing for anybody to worry about. They might have fears. But

01:19 there's been a fascinating learning curve. If you wanted to buy a blue French bulldog,

01:26 breeding bitch and a particular shade of colour, I was told this by the RSPCA, it could cost

01:32 you £100,000. And if you want one of her puppies, £25,000. That's how valuable dogs

01:39 have become since lockdown.

01:42 And it's not just a question of the dogs being kept in appalling conditions and really abysmally

01:46 treated. Behind it all is the fear that they could, imported from Romania, as you're saying,

01:52 the highest instance in Europe of rabies, there could come a time when we have rabies

01:57 in this country.

01:58 Yeah, I mean, we've been free of rabies since 1920 in the UK. There was one instance in

02:06 Scotland in, I think, 2002, where that was somebody who had been bitten abroad, came

02:11 back. And the horrific thing with rabies is it spreads throughout the animal community

02:17 and anyone who's bitten by a rabid animal and isn't aware of it, it is 100% fatal. And

02:24 with very, very rare exceptions. I think 15 people have survived rabies after intense

02:36 medical treatment out of hundreds of thousands who've been bitten around the world.

02:41 And it's not giving away too much to say that there is rabies in this book, isn't there?

02:46 There is, no spoilers, but there is a character who I, quite a prominent character, who gets

02:56 bitten.

02:57 And that must have been incredibly grim research to reproduce those symptoms absolutely correctly.

03:04 Yeah, I was very lucky in that because rabies doesn't exist in the UK, doctors don't know

03:14 anything about it. And I talked to quite a number of doctors and research scientists

03:19 here in the UK, nobody knew anything about it. And I found this wonderful guy in America

03:24 called Rodney Willoughby. He's a pediatrician in Milwaukee. And he actually is in the book

03:31 as himself. He wanted to be in the book as himself. And he is probably the only person

03:37 known to save the life of a rabies victim. And it was a 14 year old girl who was bitten

03:44 in 2004 by a bat she was trying to free from her local church. And he managed to save her

03:51 life.

03:52 But just to give you a flavour of how horrible that disease is, he told me how it works.

03:57 He says, if you're bitten by a rabid animal, and assuming you're not vaccinated in advance,

04:06 the virus, let's say you're bitten on your arm, you have no other symptoms other than

04:11 the bite itself. The virus will then travel up your arm, but by stealth, you might get

04:18 the odd tingling sensation. And it makes your brain, once it gets into your brain, it populates

04:24 your brain, you still don't have any symptoms. And then it tortures you by shutting down

04:29 your ability to swallow, and giving you a raging thirst. It then just starts to shut

04:35 down all your other internal organs. And in the last 24 to 48 hours before it kills you,

04:42 it makes you absolutely desperate to bite another human being and pass it on. And I've

04:48 seen footage of rabies victims in hospitals in Pakistan and Colombia, and they are literally

04:53 strapped down with leather restraints, frothing up the mouth.

04:56 I think it's the word you use in the book, evil, isn't it?

05:00 Rodney Willoughby said to me, he said, I'm not a religious man, he said, but if I had

05:04 to say evil exists, that rabies virus is the embodiment of evil.

05:11 And that's what's at stake, isn't it?

05:14 It is. Criminals are bringing dogs from Romania, it's one of the largest incidents of rabies

05:24 in Europe, and they are bringing lorry loads of dogs smuggled in behind hay bales, smuggled

05:29 in behind agricultural equipment.

05:31 And that's what makes this one of the most sobering of your books, doesn't it? Are you

05:37 remotely optimistic that something can be done in time?

05:43 I am an optimist by nature. And I think that as the price now with through lockdown, the

05:51 price of dogs has started to come down, although for some rare breeds, I think it will remain

05:56 high. It'll become less attractive for criminals. I mean, the chief constable in Sussex, Joe

06:03 Shine, had told me about a year and a half ago that organized crime gangs were making

06:09 more money out of smuggling dogs, illegally breed dogs and stealing dogs than out of drugs.

06:17 And with the rediction of small sentences. You know, the head of rural crime for Sussex

06:24 or the sergeant in charge of rural crime, Tom Carter, again said the same thing. And

06:29 he was telling me about how if you want to buy a puppy, and you go online to one of the

06:36 regular sources like Gumtree, and you see this gorgeous puppy advertised and the breeders

06:43 says, Oh, yeah, come down and see it. And you turn up at a nice house, could be in Chichester,

06:50 anywhere, you turn up at the house, you know, this is a nice house, lovely people. And you're

06:55 focused on the puppy. What you're not looking at is the house. You're not noticing that

07:02 this is a family home, how come there are no photographs. And you'll be pushed to buying

07:08 the puppy that day and taking it home. Whereas in reality, you should just look at it, and

07:12 leave it with the breed until at least it's like 10 weeks old. And you take it home and

07:18 then if you're unlucky and you're charged, so you will be unlucky that dog gets sick.

07:23 You phone the breeder up and you discover that it was an Airbnb and they'd rented it

07:28 for a week. And talking of the stakes being particularly high, I gather you've just broken

07:35 it to that poor Mr. Sim. What you're going to have to have him do in this particular

07:41 programme?

07:42 Yes, without giving too many spoilers away, I have him wrestle with a villain in the slurry

07:51 of a pigsty.

07:52 Fantastic. And was he grateful for that opportunity?

07:58 John Sims wrote words when I told him, you're a big grim, was it you bastard?

08:05 The author is all powerful.

08:07 Yes.

08:08 Brilliant. Well, congratulations on another truly sensational read. Absolutely phenomenal

08:13 read. Really, really, truly gripping.

08:16 Well, thank you.

08:17 And being a TV adaptation before too long. Really lovely to speak to you again, Peter.

08:23 Thank you.

08:24 It's always great to speak to you, Phil. Thank you so much. You're a enthusiast. It's wonderful.

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