THE CHAIR MAN - ALEX PEARL

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Michael Hollinghurst is a successful corporate lawyer living a comfortable, suburban life in leafy North West London. But on 7 July 2005, his life is transformed when he steps on a London underground train targeted by Islamist suicide bombers. While most passengers in his carriage are killed, Michael survives the explosion but is confined to a wheelchair as a result. Coming to terms with his predicament and controlling his own feelings of guilt as a survivor conspire to push him in a direction that is out of character and a tad reckless. In a quest to seek retribution, he resorts to embracing the internet and posing as a radical Islamist in order to snare potential perpetrators. Much to his surprise, his shambolic scheme yields results and is brought to the attention of both GCHQ and a terrorist cell. But before long, dark forces begin to gather and close in on him. There is seemingly no way out for Michael Hollinghurst. He has become, quite literally, a sitting target.

This week, we’re talking with author Alex Pearl. Alex, welcome to Martin Matthews Writes!

Thank you Martin for the opportunity to talk about my book.

Great to have you, tell us a little about yourself, Alex!

My name is Alex Pearl, and I was very tempted to write under the pen name Bertram Bolzwinick, which was the name of my grandfather who died before I was born. He was from Russia or Poland; I'm not sure which. Sadly, when he arrived on these shores he changed his name by deed poll to Bertram Davis, which doesn't quite have the same cachet. However, having toyed with the idea, I finally decide to stick with my own name simply because everyone I'm linked to online knows me as Alex Pearl, so I'd be missing out on a sizeable audience from day one. 


I live in NW London and I have always lived in London. The area I live in is known as Hampstead Garden Suburb, which was set up in 1906 as part of the garden suburb movement. And we are very close to a large heathland known as Hampstead Heath.


I have retired from work now. I used to be an advertising copywriter, so writing has been something I did professionally for around 35 years. 


I was born in Wanstead, east London, which used to be Winston Churchill's constituency. and I was brought up in an area called Ilford. Ilford is a large sprawling suburban conurbation on the eastern outskirts of Greater London. Its most attractive feature is a well-tended park, Valentines Park.


My first attempt at writing fiction was towards the end of my copywriting career in 2011. I was working at the time for a large agency called Draft Worldwide and during my last year with them they announced a massive merger with New York's third oldest agency Foote Cone and Belding (FCB). The merger was a complete nightmare. Can you imagine the logistics of merging all these worldwide offices? the whole thing was surreal. My boss was ostracised and shoved to one side; clients decided to jump ship; and work dried up. Some bright spark described the merger as being tantamount to the Hindenberg coming to the rescue of the Titanic. So anyway, I decided to do something useful with my time. I started writing a book, primarily for my kids. By the time they made me redundant, all I had to remove from my office was a bunch of laminated ads, a Collins English dictionary, and a tatty manuscript entitled 'Sleeping with the Blackbirds', which made it into print the following year.

Tell us a little about the book, Alex

My thriller 'The Chair Man' is a thriller whose protagonist is a tetraplegic in a wheelchair having been the victim of an Islamist suicide bombing. I wanted to write a thriller featuring a disabled main character for two reasons. Firstly, I just feel that there aren't enough books out there that feature disability and have disabled characters as protagonists. And secondly, I know a fair amount about the subject, as my wife became a tetraplegic seven years ago. I also wanted to delve into the reasons why certain individuals might turn to terrorism. So one of my other main characters George Caxton is a complex character. Having been sexually abused as a child, Caxton as a young man murders his father and serves time in prison, and it's here that he is befriended by a group of Muslims; embraces Islam; converts; and adopts a new name: Qssim El-Ghzzawy.
The book explores themes of friendship, loyalty and betrayal from points of view of both terrorist and victim; and the havoc and mayhem that both parties are capable of creating.

Can you introduce about some of your main characters

Michael Hollinghurst is a perfectly affable and likable character. He is a successful corporate lawyer; lives a comfortable life in leafy NW London; and has two children, both in their early 20s who he adores. His marriage isn't in the best of shape though. Louise his wife is a very successful advertising executive. As a senior planner and founding partner of one of London's trendiest ad agencies, she's hardly around. When Michael becomes a victim of the terrorist attack, she divorces him. The transition to becoming a wheelchair user is one that Michael finds difficult to come to terms with, and he becomes obsessed with seeking retribution. In this respect, I am put in mind of the author Jean Dominique Bauby who said, following his awful accident and resulting Locked-In Syndrome: "Does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person's true nature?" 
George Caxton who is one of the terrorists is as I have already mentioned, a complex character who clearly has major issues around identity and trust. But he is fascinating, and deep down, one senses that he's not all bad; and certainly, no one's fool.


Mohamed Farik is one of the other terrorists, and much of his ideology is formed by the death of his older brother Salah who he clearly worshipped. Salah was a brilliant young man who studied Mechanical Engineering and went out to Iraq just before the Iraq war. He sadly becomes collateral damage when America starts bombing the city.


Hugo Manningtree is Michael's best friend. He is one of life's polymaths and is a brilliant self-taught engineer among other things; and one of his passions is building and flying microlights. With Maningtree's assistance, Michael's hair-brained scheme might just come to fruition.

Where did the idea for this book come from?

The seed of the idea came from my wife's condition. She has had to adapt her life following the diagnosis of a benign tumour on the spinal cord. Consequently, I know a lot about spinal injuries and the challenges they present; as well as the impact the condition can have on family dynamics. So I wanted to write a thriller whose protagonist is in this situation simply because you don't see many if any books of this kind. The idea of a survivor of a terror attack wanting to gain retribution online seemed like a good idea having read a book that was written anonymously by a Jewish Iraqi woman whose father had been murdered by Sadam Husain. She had escaped Iraq and ended up working undercover for American intelligence. I had to read several books for research purposes. Among these was 'The Islamist' by Ed Husain, which is an insightful account of one man's radicalisation in the UK, and his journey from the fringes of extremism all the way back to Western democracy and liberalism.

Is there a message behind your book? What is it?

First and foremost, I wanted the book to be an engaging read. Inevitably, there are themes in the book that I wanted to explore from both the terrorist and the victim's point of view. These include friendship, loyalty, betrayal, and identity.

Who or what are some of your biggest influences?

Strangely enough, I haven't read masses of thrillers and crime novels. But certain books from my past have no doubt had an influence. Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather' would certainly have been one of those books. Another would have been Frederick Forsyth's 'Day of the Jackal' and 'The Odessa File.' All these are very filmic and have, of course, made it onto the big screen. Then, of course, there are brilliant TV adaptations like John le Carre's 'The Night Manager', which was brilliant; and 'Homeland.' All of which have certainly been hugely influential.

What are you currently reading?

 I have just finished reading ‘The Last Lemming’ by my good friend Chris Chalmers who, like me, used to be an advertising copywriter. This is his fifth book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s an engaging yarn that combines mystery, humour and a dash of romance to great effect. In Mr Chalmers’ inimitable style, we are introduced to the lives of two disparate central characters: in the form of TV naturalist, Prof Leo Saunders and Claire Webster, a young Personal Trainer with aspirations to become an investigative journalist.

There are two distinct threads to the narrative: one set in the mid 1980s and the other in the present-day narrated by our amateur female journalist. The plot involves Saunders admitting on Youtube just before dying that his one claim to fame – the discovery of the Potley Hill lemming – was in fact a hoax, and that a certain advertising luminary had ‘blood on his hands.’ While the stunt is eventually written off as nothing more than unreliable ramblings of a sick man, Webster decides to investigate and use her findings for her dissertation on her journalism course.

This entertaining and deftly plotted tale involves a cast of colourful characters including some of the furry variety. It’s a skilfully woven yarn with some lovely descriptive passages that establish time and place. And in the best tradition, there are, of course, dead bodies.

Are you working on another novel? Can you tell us anything about it?

I want to write a sequel to 'The Chair Man'. I have the first half of the book in my head, but I am currently struggling to formulate the second half. Plotting is by far the most challenging part of writing fiction. For me, it's crucial to set out a road map. I need to know exactly where the story is going. With 'The Chair Man' I knew how it was going to end before I'd worked out all the details. A lot of the details inevitably evolve as you write, but the overall structure will stay pretty much as I conceived it.

Are any of your characters in the book based on real people?

Good question. Yes, one of my characters is actually based on a character in real life. The character in my book is Damien Lowry-Johnson who has a helicopter hire business on the Isle of Man as well as a criminal history, and he is based on a real person named Darius Guppy who went to Eton with Boris Johnson. Guppy and a friend ended up going to prison for an insurance scam.

Thanks for stopping by and chatting with me today, Alex, I hope to talk again soon!

It's my pleasure. I really enjoyed the chance to chat with you.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Back in the distant mists of time, Alex spent three years at art college in Maidstone; a college that David Hockney once taught at, and later described in a piece for The Sunday Times as the 'most miserable' episode of his life. Here, Alex was responsible for producing - among other things - the college's first theatrical production in which the lead character accidentally caught fire. Following college, he found employment in the advertising industry as a copywriter. He has turned to writing fiction in the twilight years of his writing career.


His novella, 'Sleeping with the Blackbirds' - a black, comic urban fantasy, was initially written for his children in 2011 and published by PenPress. It has since become a Kindle bestseller in the US.


In 2014 his short story, 'Scared to Death' - the fictionalised account of the first British serviceman to be executed for cowardice during the First World War, was published in an anthology ('The Clock Struck War') by Mardibooks along with 22 other short stories to mark the centenary of the Great War.


Alex's psychological thriller, 'The Chair Man' set in London following the terrorist attack in 2005 was published as an e-book by Fizgig Press in 2019 and as a paperback in 2020. It is his first full-length novel.
Alex's claim to fame is that he is quite possibly the only person on this planet to have been inadvertently locked in a record shop on Christmas Eve.

Martin MatthewsComment