Ben Sanders: Young gun
By Mark Broatch - Sunday Star Times- 01/08/2010

Photo: Michael Bradley
Crime pays: Young North Shore writer Ben Sanders has a two-book deal.

North Shore writer Ben Sanders' first gritty crime novel hits bookshop shelves this week. It's the first of a two-book deal with HarperCollins – not bad for a 20-year-old engineering student who still lives at home. He spoke to Mark Broatch.

SEAN DEVEREAUX is a 30-something Auckland cop, a little rough around the edges, but dogged in his pursuit of those who killed a 16-year-old private school girl and dumped her body in a city park. He's the creation of Ben Sanders, 20, an engineering student.

Sanders, speaking from the North Shore home he shares with his family, says Devereaux, the lead in The Fallen, and a sequel due out next year, made it into print the old-fashioned way: the slush pile. Sanders said he submitted the manuscript to HarperCollins "at the height of the recession", but the cream always rises to the top, and Devereaux subsequently proved too good a character for just one book, he says. Commissioning editor Tracey Wogan calls Sanders' writing "sophisticated and edgy".

Sanders, a fan of Michael Connelly, Pete Dexter and, of late, the likes of Cormac McCarthy, says the character of Devereaux "came quite quickly". His writing template was the short and snappy style of Lee Child, whose assured and irreverent hero Jack Reacher proved a good model. The 12-year age gap between author and lead man wasn't a bridge too far. Devereaux is young at heart, says Sanders, and he listened to "older music" – the likes of Neil Young, Echo and the Bunnymen and Radiohead are namechecked in the book – while he was writing it, mostly in the evenings after university. Anyway, it all comes down to how well you observe and how hard you work on the writing, he says, with a level-headed maturity that belies his looks.
Mark Broatch's full piece can be read here.
And to read Carig Sisterson's review from last Saturday's NZ Herald's Canvas magaziune link here.