From Glastonbury to Bute Noir: "Crime writers know how to have a good time," says writer Mark Billingham

The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, from left: Chris Brookmyre; Doug Johnstone, Mark Billingham, Luca Veste, Val McDermid and Stuart Neville

A tired Victorian façade echoing the ghost of holiday decadence past is the backdrop to crime’s latest detective anti-hero, and a link to a bright spot on Scotland’s criminally good cultural calendar.

He’s a pretty unusual book cop, is Dec Miller; he doesn’t have a drink problem, loves ballroom dancing, adores his pet rats Fred and Ginger, and has everyday conversations with his dead wife. Mark Billingham’s first new lead since Tom Thorne more than 20 years ago, took the crime fiction world by storm when he published The Last Dance last May. Dec Miller works the streets of Blackpool, pootling along on a moped, cracking inappropriate jokes, metaphorically giving the top brass the finger and thinking jarringly odd thoughts. He usually manages to solve a murder or two along the way.

As he launches the second in the series, The Wrong Hands, this month, we speak to the Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame nominee and multiple award winner Billingham, on why an island off the west coast of Scotland has won his heart, and why its book festival in August – Bute Noir – is guaranteed a place in his busy calendar every year.

You set The Last Dance in Blackpool and are a huge supporter of Bute Noir … what is it you love about faded seaside glory?It’s hard to say, but I’ve always loved towns like this, especially out of season. It’s about the atmosphere, I think. You look at the peeling paint and the rusted up machinery and you can’t help but imagine what it was like when that glory wasn’t quite as faded. There’s something that’s a little desperate, but also something wonderfully hopeful. What’s important is that these places are still there, still battling to in the face of competition from places that are a lot flashier, but simply don’t have the…soul.

I hear Bute Noir is always in your calendar. What makes it special?It’s a truly unique festival. There are festivals that are far bigger, but very few that give authors the kind of experience they can get on Bute. The fact that it is…boutique, means that almost everyone knows one another (or soon will) and for that weekend you’re all on the same team. It’s a festival that, despite the serious things that are often discussed (it’s a crime festival, after all) never forgets to have fun and that goes for the readers and the writers.

You’re a Theakston nominee this year. How much attention do readers and authors pay to awards?Well, I can’t really say how much attention is paid by readers, but for authors it’s always a big deal. If you meet one that says it isn’t, they’re almost certainly lying. Most awards are decided by a small panel of judges, so it can often come down to a couple of people having strong opinions about one book or another, but when the public are involved – as they are with the Theakstons – it feels that little bit more special. As a writer of commercial fiction, what readers think is and always will be, hugely important. It’s a validation. It’s telling you that you got this one right. Or, on a day when the impostor syndrome kicks in, that you just about managed to get away with it again.

Crime is an incredibly saturated market, yet doesn’t seem to be losing ground – why is crime fiction so popular? And if you weren’t an author in this sector, what would be your second choice?

I think the simple answer is that crime fiction is an enormous umbrella – from cosy as crumpets to serial killers, with almost anything you can think of in between. You want a book where a cat solves the crime? No worries. You want a kick-ass espionage romp? Not a problem. There really is something for everyone within the crime fiction genre, but what all crime novels have in common is that – with the exception of those that go slightly avant-garde/pretentious/up themselves – they will tell you a story. Those crime novels that more accurately reflect the world and its harsher realities might not tie up every loose end, but by and large a crime reader knows that they won’t be left unsatisfied. As for a second choice…I would probably try to write something that was just for laughs. I hope that there are plenty of laughs in the Miller books, but if I had to take out the crime and just write jokes…I could probably live with that.

You often swap your laptop for a microphone, as you sing with covers band Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers alongside Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre and a moveable feast of other authors. Tell me, honestly, why did you pick Glastonbury over Rothesay this year?

Well, I didn’t have to pick, because I get to do them both! Sharing a stage with Val, Chris, Stuart, Luca and Doug and getting to live out rock star fantasies has been one of the major joys of my life over the last few years. It started as a bit of fun, but we’ve done shows all over the UK as well as in Canada and Iceland and now we get to play at the biggest music festival in the world. Writing is obviously a solitary business, so getting to collaborate with five of your mates is a major treat. Yes, we have enormous fun for the hour and a half we’re on stage together, but the time we spend sitting around yakking in pubs and restaurants is equally enjoyable and often comes far closer to what people might think of as rock and roll shenanigans.

And what’s your favourite song on the set list and why?Well, as an enormous show-off, I love the ones where I get to do exactly that. I love channelling my inner Paul Weller on Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, wearing a silly hat to mess around during Stand And Deliver and trying not to laugh at Val’s wig as we sing about the heartbreaking death of our love affair in Abba’s mighty SOS.

Literary festivals take a huge amount of money and co-ordination –how hard should we work to protect them? And what obligation do authors have to make book festivals a success?

We should do whatever we can to protect those festivals that are already well-established and to nurture the newer ones. Readers and writers very rarely get to interact in person and that’s a very special experience. Any writer who attends a festival should do whatever they can to entertain their audience. If they don’t want to do that, they simply should not go. That’s how a festival is a success – by providing readers with a series of entertaining and thought-provoking events. There are those festivals that are very much ‘us and them’, where there is a metaphorical (and sometimes actual) velvet rope. Where writers stay in one place and readers in another. My favourite festivals – and Bute Noir is definitely one of them – do not do that and those festivals are much the better for it.

Writing is a solitary affair, yet at Bute Noir the authors seem like best pals meeting up and having a right laugh – how do you form bonds like that?It’s all a pretence, of course. The truth is that we all hate one another. To be serious…crime-writers have a gang mentality. We tend to stick together because we’re not really in competition with one another and that’s down to the fact that crime readers are utterly voracious. Because they read my latest novel (God bless them) does not mean they won’t immediately sit down and read Val McDermid’s or Chris Brookmyre’s. Unlike some other areas of the literary community, crime writers don’t subscribe to the idea that in order to do well, someone else has to do badly. There’s also the sense that we’re outsiders to some degree, that we’re slightly…naughty. What I do know is that crime writers know how to have a good time. Maybe it’s because we get all our badness out on the page but, whatever the reason, a crime-writing festival is usually a non-stop party.

What might we expect from Bute Noir this year? And give me your three favourite things to do/places to visit on the island.There will plenty of heartfelt discussion, dark revelations and a good deal of silliness. There will probably be singing. This year I will certainly be doing the things I do every year. I will eat fish and chips, I will pay a visit to the amazing Victorian toilets by the harbour and I will attempt to win the annual crime-writers putting competition and get my hands on what has become known as The Brookmyre Cup. I can’t wait to get back there…

The Wrong Hands by Mark Billingham is out now (£22, Little, Brown)

This year’s Bute Noir runs from August 2-4. Tickets are on sale at butenoir.co.uk