Watch Simon Kernick talking about his books Relentless and Severed

“WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU know” is usually the advice to first-time authors. But what if you write crime thrillers? Most people are lucky enough never to be exposed to the realities of violent crime, and it wasn’t until my fifth thriller, Relentless, that I felt that I could genuinely make this claim.

I wanted it to be about an ordinary man living an ordinary life; a man who suddenly, in one terrifying moment, and through no fault of his own, finds himself in a situation from which there is no escape.

The influence that drove this story forward was something that happened to me when I was 16. It was a warm summer night and I was hitch-hiking with two friends when we got a lift from three older guys. It was a bit of a crush in the back of their car – a two-door Escort – but it was only a short journey to town, and the conversation was friendly enough as we made small talk.

Then the car stopped on a quiet stretch of the road beside the river. And it happened. Just like that. Six words delivered matter-of-factly by the man in the front passenger seat. “All right, lads, empty your pockets.” I was still wondering if I’d heard him right when the driver leaned round in his seat and punched me twice in the face, harder than I’ve been punched before or since. Amazingly, there was no pain. Just numb shock.

Then the punches started coming thick and fast, aimed at all of us from all directions.

Crushed into a tiny corner in the back of the car, we were helpless as they beat us into submission. As the car pulled away, the man in the front seat once again told us to empty our pockets, his voice calm and unthreatening, a stark contrast to the driver who kept up a steady stream of abuse, occasionally taking his eye off the road to send a wild punch into the back.

We did what we were told but we were kids, we hardly had a thing – a few quid in change, some cigarettes. It wasn’t enough for our attackers.

So they told us to take our clothes off.

Even now I can remember how terrified I was. I wanted to argue, to plead – but I knew there was no point. As the car passed through the silent streets of my home town – a place where I’d grown up, but which now felt totally alien to me – we began to undress slowly under the watchful gaze of our attackers.

“And the rest,” the man in the front seat said, when we got down to our underwear.

By this time we were in the country again. The car pulled off the main road and headed down a track into woodland.

I remember that slow drive into the darkness; the long, interminable drag of the seconds; and the total, incapacitating fear I felt as I waited for what was going to happen next.

The waiting was the worst. The not knowing. Then the car stopped.

“Out, out, out!” screamed the driver, as they herded us, naked and disorientated from the car, lining us up in a row. Which was when all my worst fears were confirmed.

“Let’s do ’em,” said the front-seat passenger. I remember how matter-of-fact his voice was; how much more frightening it was than the driver’s vitriol. “Where’s the shotgun?” “I’ll get it,” replied the driver, going back to the car and reaching under the seat.

This was it, I thought. The end. My life really did flash before me, too.

I thought of all the things I wished I could have done; the places I could have seen; my girlfriend who’d never know now how much I liked her . . .

Then, as the driver turned, one of my friends made a break for it, and disappeared into the woods. I started running too but the driver caught me in seconds, dragging me in a head-lock back towards the car.

I steeled myself for the inevitable, but no shot came. I never even saw a gun. For our attackers, the fun was over. With one of our number loose and able to identify them, they let us both go with a last few punches, and we too disappeared, running off into the night, never daring to look back. Three 16-year-olds who’d just experienced what the big, bad world can really throw at you when you’re not looking.

Looking back on it, the strange thing was what a nonevent the whole thing was afterwards. The police caught the guys quickly enough. They’d known who they were pretty much as soon as they’d heard our story. Apparently they were well-known faces. Two were convicted armed robbers.

But there was a problem. Lack of evidence. All three denied any involvement and the police never located the car they’d been driving. So it became our word against theirs, and in the end that wasn’t enough even for charges, let alone a court case.

They walked free and we just got on with things.

So I know what it’s like to experience that cold, awful feeling when your life changes in an instant, and you suddenly realise that you’ve crossed paths with the kind of people who belong in your nightmares. It’s something I never want to repeat.

But for the characters in my books, it’s a different story. They’re the unlucky ones. Because they go through what I went through. And sometimes they don’t survive.

Relentless has been selected as a Richard & Judy Summer Read 2007

RELENTLESS by Simon Kernick

Corgi, £6.99; 464pp

Buy the book here for the offer price of £6.64 (free p&p)

SEVERED by Simon Kernick

Bantam, £12.99; 352pp

Buy the book here for £11.69 (free p&p)

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