Spy thriller proves forte

Press, 8 March 1989, Page 21

Spy thriller proves forte

By

GARRY ARTHUR

For some successful writers, the seeds of their craft are sown early in life. John Trenhaile, author of two trilogies of espionage thrillers, remembers choosing to be a writer at the tender of nine. His teacher had read Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” to the class, but had admitted leaving out one chapter. When the boy went home, he found the book and read the .. chapter — and was moved to tears. "I knew that hitting in the playground could make me cry, - but this was a new experience,” says Trenhaile, who is in New Zealand promoting his latest novel. “I realised that being able to write like that was a great gift.” He decided to become a writer one day. But first, he spent 13 years of his adult life as a barrister in London’s Chancery Court — the court which Charles Dickens satirised in “Bleak House.” John Trenhaile says that he too was involved in countless estate distribution cases like Dickens’ “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce,” which ran for six years before the legal costs ate up all the money. He ( did not find the vyork very

satisfying and amused himself by trying to write novels about middle-class English people and their love affairs.

“I was aspiring to be a top novelist, whereas I should have been cutting my teeth at the lower end of the ladder.”

After five of his manuscripts were rejected, he lowered his sights and tried his hand at a spy thriller while holidaying in the Greek Islands. His first thriller was unsuccessful too, but his literary agent praised a car chase in the story, and an editor at Sphere Books said that because his writing was good, if he came up with a plot they believed in, they would pay him to write.

“I was prepared to listen after five unsuccessful manuscripts,” he says. He prepared an outline of the story, listed chapter headings and contents, and detailed the principal characters. The publishers gave him a £2OOO advance on the strength of that, and the resulting book, “A Man Called Kyril,” proved to be such a success that it led to two more which complete his Povin trilogy. He has followed that proce-

dure with each of his books. He sends his story outline, chapter headings and character biographies to the publishers who distribute them to their editors in Britain, Canada and the United States. They all make suggestions — such as that a particular character does not ring true, or that a sub-plot should be dropped — and he pays attention.

John Trenhaile is not concerned that this committee work might infringe on his integrity or freedom as a writer. “I tend to listen to the voice of experience,” he says. “I know that these editors have produced good work in the past. It’s worked extremely well for me as a method of doing it. Most publishers are now insisting on it. They don’t want authors to waste their time.” His new book, “The Scroll of Benevolence,” is the third in a Chinese trilogy (they come in threes, he says, because some characters demand more paper) and deals with what he images could happen if Hong Kong’s commercial barons try to spirit their enormous fortunes out of the colony in anticipation of

Chinese rule. John Trenhaile has been fascinated by Asia and Asians ever since he went job hunting to Singapore in 1982. “I didn’t get a job,” he says, “but I fell totally in love with the place. We had a stroke of luck because we met a Chinese family who took us around to see what the tourists don’t see. Beneath the surface, I have found that there is much more uniting us than dividing us.” In Taiwan, he found that English is not widely spoken, so he started to learn Mandarin. Now he has memorised 1600 characters and is aiming for the 2000, which is the required standard in China itself although an educated Chinese will know 5000 or 6000 characters. “I became absolutely riveted by it,” he says. Many of his fictional characters are based on people he has met on his many visits to Asia. One agent of the Chinese secret service is modelled on a Chinese friend in London who is a harmless accountant.

He says the financial machinations of his first Asian thriller. “The Mahjong Spies” came

what he learned about an actual attempt by the Narodny Bank of Moscow to take over 66 million square feet of land on Lantau Island, Hong Kong, in the early 1970 s through pressure on one of its customers, Eddie Wang, who had used the land as security for a loan.

Trenhaile says the authorities in Hong Kong and Peking joined forces to rescue Wang by covering the debt and thwarting the Soviet bank’s plan. “Narodny came within a whisker of getting the land,” he says, “and I think the K.G.B. would then have moved in very quickly." Trenhaile’s books are written with a foreground plot about people and a background plot about the affairs of nations. “I have layers of plots because I find that life itself is like that.” When he returns to Britain, he has to read the proofs of his seventh novel, another spy story, set in England, Greece and New York. This time it is more concerned with a three-sided relationship between a woman barrister, her husband who is high up in N.A.T.0., and her psychiatrist who is in fact an East German spy. Its title is “Krysalis,” and it is to be published next year.