The Word Is Murder(33)

‘A title?’

‘For the book!’ So he’d been thinking about it too.

‘It’s much too early,’ I told him. ‘First of all, you’ve got to solve the crime. Then I’ll have a better idea what I’m writing about.’

‘Don’t you think of the title first?’

‘Not really. No.’

I’ve never found it easy coming up with titles. Almost two hundred thousand books are published in the UK every year and although some of them will have the advantage of a well-known author attached, the vast majority have just two or three words on a surface measuring no more than six by nine inches to sell themselves. Titles have to be short, smart and meaningful, easy to read, easy to remember and original. That’s asking a lot.

Many of the best titles are simply borrowed from elsewhere. Brave New World, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Vanity Fair … all of these were drawn from other works. Agatha Christie used the Bible, Shakespeare, Tennyson and even The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam for many of her eighty-two titles. For my money, nobody has beaten Ian Fleming: From Russia, with Love, You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die. His titles have passed into the English language although even he didn’t find it easy. Live and Let Die was almost published as ‘The Undertaker’s Wind’. Moonraker was ‘The Moonraker Secret’, ‘The Moonraker Plot’, ‘The Moonraker Plan’ and even, for a short time, ‘Mondays Are Hell’, while Goldfinger began life as ‘The Richest Man in the World’.

I didn’t have a title for my new book. I wasn’t even sure I had a book.

Hawthorne and I didn’t speak for a long while. I let my thoughts wander as I watched the various stations rush past: Wembley Park, South Hampstead and then Baker Street, its tiled walls picking out the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes. Now there was another master of the title, although Conan Doyle often had second thoughts too. Would A Study in Scarlet have struck such a chord if it had remained as ‘A Tangled Skein’?

‘I was thinking of “Hawthorne Investigates”,’ Hawthorne said, suddenly.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘For the book.’ The carriage had got more crowded. He crossed over and sat next to me. ‘The first one anyway. I think all of them should have my name on the cover.’

It had never occurred to me that he was thinking of a series. I have to say, my blood ran cold.

‘I don’t like it,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

I searched for a reason. ‘It’s a bit old-fashioned.’

‘Is it?’

‘Parker Pyne Investigates. That’s Agatha Christie. Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. It’s been done before.’

‘Yeah. Well.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll come up with something.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I said. ‘It’s my book. I’ll think of the title.’

‘It’s got to be a good one,’ he said. ‘To be honest with you, I don’t much like The House of Silk.’

I’d forgotten I’d even mentioned it to him. ‘The House of Silk is a great title,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s a perfect title. It sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story and it’s what the whole plot is about. The publisher likes it so much, he’s even going to put a white ribbon in the book.’ I’d been shouting above the roar of the train but I suddenly realised we’d stopped. We were sitting in Euston Square. The other passengers were looking at me.

‘No need to be touchy, mate. I’m just trying to help.’

The doors slid shut and we were carried once again into the darkness.

In fact, I already knew quite a bit about Damian Cowper. I’d googled him the night before. Generally, I avoid Wikipedia. It’s very helpful if you know what you’re looking for but it contains so much misinformation that a writer, trying to appear authoritative, can all too easily fall flat on his face. More than that, I could imagine a successful actor doctoring his own entry, so preferred to look elsewhere. Fortunately, Damian had been the subject of quite a few newspaper articles, allowing me to stitch together his history.

He left the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art – RADA – in 1999 and had been snapped up by Hamilton Hodell, one of the major talent agencies, whose clients include Tilda Swinton, Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. For the next two years, he played a series of parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company: Ariel in The Tempest, Malcolm in Macbeth, the title role in Henry V. After that he moved into television, starting with the BBC conspiracy thriller State of Play, which aired in 2003. He won his first BAFTA nomination for his role in Bleak House, another BBC drama, and in the same year picked up the Emerging Talent Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his performance as Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest. It was rumoured that he turned down the opportunity to play Doctor Who (David Tennant was cast instead) but by now his career was taking off in films. He had been directed by Woody Allen in Match Point and followed this with Prince Caspian, two of the Harry Potter films, The Social Network and, in 2009, the reboot of Star Trek. He moved to Hollywood that year and was cast in two seasons of Mad Men. There was also a pilot that wasn’t picked up. Finally he’d been given the lead role in a new series, Homeland, with Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, which had been about to start shooting when his mother died.