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IN COLD

BLOOD

The dark underbelly of

Christchurch is flayed open
in crime writer Paul Cleaves
grisly serial-killer thrillers,
which have sold almost half
a million copies overseas.
Joanna Wane pays a visit
to the Cleave universe.

ou know youre working in

a pretty sick industry when
the highest praise you could
get from a fellow professional is that what you wrote
made him vomit.
Jack Heath, a hot young Australian writer,
was on a plane reading Paul Cleaves debut
novel The Cleaner when he fainted. I awoke
seeing stars, hearing a ringing in my ears,
and too dizzy to speak or move.
It was when he came to and remembered
exactly what had made him pass out in the
first place a deserted park at dawn, a pair
of pliers and a left testicle flattened like road
kill that he threw up.
I would not normally describe myself
as squeamish, he wrote in an email that
still counts as one of Cleaves favourite
fan letters. It has been a long time since

something horrified me so much that I was

knocked out by it, and I have never been
so mortified that I felt the urge to vomit
upon waking.
Your ability to make me identify with the
protagonist so much that I actually felt his
pain was what impressed me most. If you
ever need an advance quote, something like,
Made me vomit seriously, its that good,
let me know.
Cleave responded by sending Heath an
airsick bag and a signed copy of his book
to replace the puke-spattered one hed left
on the plane.
If it had been a woman devouring that
graphically depicted scene, she may have
felt more inclined to cheer. (Joe, a serial
rapist and killer known as the Christchurch
Carver, is de-knackered by a potential victim
who turns out to be as seriously twisted

as he is.) Unless she actually lived in the

Garden City. Then she might have decided
to pack up and leave.
Christchurch itself is the most enduring
character in Cleaves books as the population
is killed off at breathtaking pace. A bleak
backdrop to each subtly interconnected story,
the city is depicted as a decaying, forsaken
place where rundown neighbourhoods are

joanna wane is North & Souths deputy editor. photography by guy frederick.

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In Germany, Cleaves
book went straight
to number two on
Amazons bestseller
list before being
ousted by a new
Harry Potter.

spreading like a virus and the Avon is full of

ducks, beer cans and Friday nights urine.
Even the lushness of its gardens is somehow complicit. You cant go there at night
without getting stabbed or shot and having
your body helping them to grow, narrates
Joe, in The Cleaner.
Cleave, 34, knows his territory. A homeboy
whos spent his whole life in the flatlands,
he lives just a couple of blocks from his
parents, who are still in the same modest
house they moved into on Pauls fifth birthday. (The younger of their two sons, he pops
round to mow their lawns and spends every
Sunday with his dad playing snooker at the
Riccarton Club.)
With international sales of his first three
books expected to reach the half-million mark
by the end of this year, its one way of putting
Christchurch on the map. The only reason
he hasnt been lynched by a mob of outraged
Cantabrians is that apart from family and
friends, only a handful have read anything hes
written although one local girl did email his
website to ask him out on a date.
Since its release three years ago, The Cleaner
has sold barely 2000 copies in New Zealand,
although thats considered a reasonable take
in such a small market. Overseas, when sales
were at their peak, it was selling that many
a day. In Germany, where the crime-fiction
genre is something of a national obsession,
the book went straight to number two on
Amazons bestseller list holding its place
for several weeks before being ousted by a
new Harry Potter.
Cleave has a three-book contract in Germany his third, Cemetery Lake, which comes
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Cleaves first three books have sold as far afield as Japan and Europe.

out there in October, has already pre-sold

25,000 copies and so far hes been signed in
Australia, the UK, France, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Russia and Japan. In Australia, The
Cleaner made the shortlist for the Ned Kelly
Award for Best Fiction. But when Random
House New Zealand talent-spotted him back
in 2005, it was Cleaves first pay cheque in
almost six years.
Local writers submit about 600 unsolicited manuscripts to Random House every
year; only half a per cent make it into print.
Last year, fiction publisher Harriet Allan
released three new writers. This year she
published only one. But the opening two
pages of The Cleaner had her hooked.
That first chapter was so scary I had to
put [the manuscript] away for a week before
I could go back to it, she recalls. When
something does that to you, its powerful
writing. It immediately stops being words
on a page and becomes real.
That you might need to be some kind of
psycho to produce such chilling work did
cross her mind, so she arranged to meet her
new protg with a degree of apprehension.
He wasnt what she expected. Paul is so
surprising. You dont think this really sweet,
lovely young chap could write about serial
killers and get inside their heads. Theres

something very disarming about him. Its

his sense of humour you have to watch out
for. Its wicked.

o goldfish bleed? Some

fish from the pet shop and
five minutes with a cheese
grater gave Cleave the answer to that. At least thats
what he told the audience
at the Christchurch Writers Festival last September, explaining the research hed done for
a scene where Joes goldfish are mauled to
death by a cat. There was absolute silence.
Then I said, No, thats not true... Actually it
took 10 minutes.
Picture the nervous laughter and uncomfortable shifting in seats; theyre probably
still not sure whether he was joking or not.
If only Id called Harriet Allan before
I went to Christchurch. Cleave and I are
sitting in sunshine at a picnic table in his
suburban backyard talking about the dark
territory he navigates when I ask him how
a normal guy could have such a warped
imagination. He runs one hand through
cropped black hair, and the blue eyes that
are his most startling feature cloud with
emotion. Dad was an alcoholic; he used

to beat us, he says, quietly. Hes in jail

now...
Poor bugger, I think. But hang on a minute. Id phoned his father at home just that
morning and he sounded like a perfectly
nice man.
I later discover Cleave and his girlfriend
had talked about arranging her bloodied
body in the living room and leaving the front
door ajar so Id come knocking and stumble
across a murder scene. (For the record, his
dad Ray takes credit for the black sense of
humour that leavens the gruesome nature of
the books: A lot of it comes from me.)
A small, geeky kid who wore glasses and
was a bit of a ghost at high school, Cleave
failed sixth-form English and couldnt see
the point of Macbeth. But he loved horror
movies and Stephen King. When he was 15,
he wrote a story about Santa Claus shooting
up heroin at the North Pole, where elves
were put into a grinder and came out as
ponies and racing cars. Paul needs to learn
that there is a time and place for his style
of writing, the teacher wrote in his school
report. This isnt it.
At a loose end after leaving school, he agreed
to help out a friend for a few months at a
pawnshop and stayed seven years, harvesting material that would come to flavour his
novels. It gave me a different insight into
Christchurch, he says. There are a lot of
desperate people who do what it takes to get
through the day.
He finally quit after one threat too many
from a particularly nasty customer whod
been caught peddling stolen gear. By then
hed already begun writing in his spare time,
switching from horror to crime. Lee Childs
first book [Killing Floor] totally changed my
life, he says. It was a whole new world.
When the hugely successful UK writer
came to Christchurch to promote a later
novel, Cleave went to his book signing and
was almost the only one there. I made up
half the people who went to see him. He
certainly made me want to write crime, and
he certainly made me never want to have
book signings if I was ever published. He was
also a very cool guy. He made me want to be
a cool guy too and have a British accent.
You cant say Cleave didnt have fair warning that, in Christchurch at least, crime writers are never going to be rock stars.
Turned down for the dole because he wasnt
looking for a proper job, he sold his house
and moved back in with his parents when his
money ran out holing up in his bedroom and
writing into the early hours of the morning.
His mother Jill remembers the return of each

A menacing presence, Cleaves semi-fictional Christchurch is depicted as a city in decay.

Paul needs to learn that there is a time and

place for his style of writing, the teacher wrote
in his school report. This isnt it.

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There was a lot of rejection, heartache

and false hope, he says. But part of me
knows I needed that. Over time the book
evolved, and so did I. If it had been printed
[by Hazard Press], it would have sold 10
copies, never been picked up anywhere else
and Id be a heroin addict by now.
With his first royalty cheque, he bought
a flat-screen TV for his dad, a new vacuum
cleaner for his mum and got braces on his
teeth.

With his first royalty

cheque, he bought a
flat-screen TV for his
dad, a new vacuum
cleaner for his mum
and got braces on
his teeth.
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rejected manuscript. Sometimes you could

tell the envelope hadnt even been opened.
He got very disillusioned.
Cleave thought hed finally nailed it when
Auckland publishing consultant Cathie
Dunsford liked what she saw in The Cleaner
and agreed to market it. But nothing came
of that so he found himself an agent and
landed a contract with Hazard Press (a
small publishing company now in liquidation), who sat on the book for another three
frustrating years until Cleave called in a
lawyer to get back the rights.
On the verge of giving all up for lost, he
resubmitted the book to three major publishers in Auckland. Random House told him it
was the best manuscript theyd ever rejected
and after yet another rewrite introducing a
new character and altering the ending he
signed his first contract in April 2005.

Sometimes I think
Ch r i s t c h u rc h i s
broken, I say, and
nobody is ever going
to fix it.
Private investigator
Theodore Tate, Cemetery Lake.
Welcome to the Cleave universe. His books
are pure fiction Cleave considers it immoral
and insensitive to exploit real crimes for
commercial gain. But beneath the citys conservative, genteel veneer, theres a seedy side
to Christchurch with its skinheads and queer
bashings and underlying gang tension.
Three prostitutes have been killed there
in the past four years, two of them dumped
in the Avon River. This is where the devil
possessed crche worker Peter Ellis;
where disgraced sex offender Graham Capill
was brought to his knees; where Gay Oakes
killed her partner and buried his body in
the garden.
Perhaps its the very nature of the crimes
that creates a perception of menace. In April,
a Quality of Life survey showed Christchurch
residents felt the least safe in their city centre
after dark, despite police recording fewer
violent offences than in any of our other large
cities. In another local study, 71 per cent of
women said they felt less safe than they did
five years ago.
Cleave exploits that undercurrent of unease by setting his stories against a familiar
landscape the Port Hills, the cathedral,
the Strip. And not all of the dysfunctional
characters are his own creations. One of his
favourite scenes describes a cyclist he saw
biking along the footpath with a cardboard
tube running from his nose to the bag of
glue he was balancing on the handlebars.
Its not just flowers and puppies and rainbows; you only have to look a little closer to
see whats simmering below the surface,
says Cleave, who testicles aside doesnt
linger gratuitously over grisly scenes, leaving the readers imagination to flesh out the
horror. But I do really play it up for the

The language of murder (from left): Cemetery Lake (German edition), The Cleaner (in Japanese and
Russian), and a sneak preview of Cleaves new book, Blood Men, which goes on sale this October.

books. And the city keeps getting darker

in every one.
When Cleaves in the zone, he works 10
to 12 hours a day, living on instant meals
and pumping out up to 20,000 words in
a week. (To put that in perspective, The
Cleaner went through more than 15 rewrites
before it was published.) His second book,
The Killing Hour, was received more tepidly,
but Cemetery Lake, his third, was hailed as
a return to form although its a genre that
polarises opinion. The Age in Melbourne
called it z-grade trash, while the Australian
raved in a glowing review that referenced
Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe and a song
by Crowded House.
Despite his bestseller status overseas,
Cleaves still in a precarious position financially. His slice of the profits is less than
$1 a book and when he did hit pay dirt in
Germany, he paid a big chunk of it in income
tax at the highest rate. Spread over nine years
of fulltime writing, he reckons hes earned
below the minimum wage. But if I could
go back 15 years and tell myself not to start
writing, I wouldnt do it. All the frustration
disappears when Harriet posts me down the
first copy of my next book.
Last year, he put his fourth novel on hold
when he was approached by South Pacific
Pictures to develop ideas for a new crime series for TV3. That project foundered, but he
managed to finish the book in time to meet
the publishing deadline for this year.
Blood Men, which is about the son of a
serial killer, hits the market in October. The
book opens with Eddie remembering when
he was nine years old and witnessed his
father being arrested, and the monster that
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This is where the devil possessed crche

worker Peter Ellis; where disgraced sex
offender Graham Capill was brought to his
knees; where Gay Oakes killed her partner
and buried his body in the garden.

was inside my dad came to live with me.

Another of the authors trademark antiheroes, Eddie is essentially a good guy who
only does bad things to bad people. Even
Joe in The Cleaner, a true psychopath, is
humanised enough to extract some reader
empathy. In fact, Cleave rather likes him.
Absolutely! he says. I just dont agree
with what he does.
Cleave researched FBI files on serial killers
before writing The Cleaner and Joe fits the
classic profile, right down to his suffocating
mother. (Her obsession with jigsaw puzzles
is an affectionate nod to his own mum, Jill,
who used to check his manuscripts for spelling mistakes and underline any four-letter
words with red pen.)
In Blood Men, Eddie is convinced he has
the serial killer gene. Cleave doesnt buy
that. My belief is that [a predisposition
to violence] is environmental, not genetic.
Everyone knows whats right and wrong.
Some people just dont care.

The book cover splashes a ringing endorsement from UK crime novelist Mark Billingham, who met Cleave at the Christchurch
Writers Festival last year when they shared
a panel called Killing Time with Dunedins
rising star Vanda Symon.
Cleave doesnt plot out his novels; he was
halfway through writing Cemetery Lake
before hed worked out who the killer would
be. I wouldnt let him tell me the knockout twist when all is revealed at the end
of Blood Men so he wont kill me if the
secret somehow gets out. But his publisher,
Harriet Allan, cried when she read the final
chapter. Twice.
Cleave is excited about the new book,
which has already been sold to Australia.
He hopes it will help him attract a stronger local following and become at least a
little more famous in his own backyard.
Without New Zealand readers, Ill never
reach my goal of being asked to appear on
Dancing with the Stars.+