Who doesn’t love an international spy thriller? And in Adam Oyebanji, we have an excellent addition to writers of that genre. We spoke to him about his forthcoming release, Two Times Murder.

Two Times Murder
By Adam Oyebanji
Published by Severn House

Hi Adam, welcome to BooksfromScotland and congratulations on the upcoming publication of Two Times Murder.  Could you start by telling us a wee bit about the book?

Absolutely!  You’ve caught me on a good day because some of the early reviews have just come in and they’ve been very kind.  And now I’m thinking I might not be absolutely terrible at this!  Anyhow . . .  the book:

Greg Abimbola is many things. He’s Black, British and fluent in Russian. He’s a snappy dresser, a reasonable teacher, and an unenthusiastic sports fan. But most of all, he’s exceptional at keeping secrets. Like, who he really is, and the things he’s done.

Determined to keep his head down after helping solve a murder in the school basement, Greg fears a trap when Sergeant Rachel Lev of the Pittsburgh police corners him in his apartment. Because his refusal to take credit isn’t modesty, it’s a survival tactic.

But Rachel is here on another matter entirely. She needs his help. She’s lead detective on the homicide of an unidentified man fished from the Allegheny River. With clues scant, and surrounded by colleagues who’d love to see her side-lined, Greg is her final roll of the dice.

Greg has no choice. He knows more than he’s saying about Rachel’s mysterious corpse. To add to his troubles, a school trustee plunges to his demise after a heated board meeting. Both deaths come with potentially lethal consequences. If he doesn’t find answers, and soon, Greg Abimbola might be the third man on the autopsy table.

The book is the second in the Quiet Teacher series, following 2022’s A Quiet Teacher.  How was the experience of writing a sequel? Did it come easily to return to the world of Greg Abimbola, or did you suffer from any of the usual second-book syndrome?

Hmmm.  It helps if you don’t know how to count.  Or, more accurately, if you don’t know where to count from.  Two Times Murder is my second Greg Abimbola book, but it’s my third published novel: A Quiet Teacher was my second, after Braking Day, my debut, which was, in turn, my fourth attempt at writing a novel.  I’m sure I must have had second book syndrome; it’s the when of it that I’m less sure about.

What I do know is that second-book syndrome was not a factor in Two Times Murder.  Once I’d plotted it out, it was a joy to write.  The plotting, admittedly, was a bit tricky.  There is some carry over from A Quiet Teacher but I wanted to write something that stood on its own two feet.  Writing something that would appeal to old and new readers alike took some noodling on my part, but I like to think I managed it.

As well as writing the Quiet Teacher series, you are also a science fiction author. Could you tell us a little bit about how you approach genre – do you consciously write within certain parameters, or do the novels emerge in these styles more naturally?

The secret to staying in the right genre lane is pretty simple: don’t write about Lorentz time dilation in a murder mystery.  Unless, of course, your murderer is fleeing the scene on a sub-light vessel travelling at relativistic velocity. . .

Truthfully, I just like to tell stories, usually with a mystery and some vivid characters at the heart of it.  Real world or deep space or somewhere in between, it’s all the same to me.  I just write.  What I’m really interested in is the people.  People are people.  If you go back in time and read Aristophanes, say, or Shakespeare, the characters they write about are instantly recognizable in the present day.  Given that past is prologue, it’s a fair bet that 24^th century homo sapiens will be just as messed up as we are.  So, if you’re focused on character, writing a present-day murder mystery or a warp-speed space opera feels pretty much the same.  Pretty much. The big differences, I think, are that in sci-fi the mystery doesn’t have to be a murder, and in a “proper” mystery, you begin at the end: everything thereafter is working backwards to figure out how the ending came to be.

But mostly it’s just telling stories and having a blast.

As part of your career, you have lived all over the world including the United States, Lagos and London. How much of a role has that experience played in the construction of the kaleidoscopic Greg Abimbola?

A lot!  I lived in Pittsburgh, where Greg teaches, for five years: my office was in the building on the extreme left of the book cover.  I’m bi-racial: Scottish and Nigerian, but I have an English accent, so people think I’m from there.  Greg is bi-racial: Russian and Nigerian, but speaks with an English accent, so.  On a deeper level, kaleidoscopic is a good word.  Moving around as much as I have gives you multiple perspectives on pretty much everything: the objectivity of the outsider, I suppose.  I leaned into that pretty heavily when writing Greg.  He’s a lot more ruthless than I am, though!

Are there any other authors of mystery novels, crime fiction or otherwise which you drew upon when writing the Quiet Teacher series?

Only in the sense that I love old fashioned whodunnits with a hint of the locked room about them.  Greg is my homage to Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr.  Two Times Murder is a genuinely fair play murder mystery.  If a reader solves it, I’m delighted.  And if they don’t, I want them to go back through the pages saying, ‘Aha, now I get it!’

Finally, what is one thing you hope readers gain from reading your work?

The most important thing is that they enjoy a good, brain-teasing whodunnit.  Beyond that, that diversity doesn’t mean having to eat your greens.  It’s an opportunity to stand in someone else’s shoes for a while and have some fun.  Like changing seats in a train just for the hell of it.  The journey’s the same but the view is subtly different.  And who knows?  Next time you buy a ticket, maybe that exact same seat will suit you even better.

Two Times Murder by Adam Oyebanji is published by Severn House, priced £21.99.