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The third novel in Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe sequence, Europe in Winter, has just been published by Solaris. The tale of an alternate Europe has become highly relevant in light of recent events, and here the author talks about how the sequence is continuing, even though he never expected it to…

I’m not sure how this works for other writers, but I never intended to write a multi-volume series. I can’t, in fact, imagine what it must be like to sit down and think, “Right, I have this idea and it’s going to spread over seven books.” What is now officially termed The Fractured Europe Sequence and I think of as ‘the Europe books’ really came about by accident.

I started writing the first book, Europe in Autumn, sometime back in the late 1990s. I was working full-time as a journalist back then, and writing short stories in my spare time while plotting novels that I didn’t have time to write. Autumn was, if anything, a hobby, and when it was published in 2014 I thought that like my other stuff it would have a reasonably good reception and a tiny readership. But it did rather better than that.

This presented me with something of an opportunity. I had a lot of stuff left over from Autumn, things that didn’t fit or would have interfered with the rhythm of the book – and in one case an entire chapter which I’d written sometime around 1999, put in a folder, and forgotten about. There was an opportunity to explore Autumnal Europe a little bit more. And if I’m honest, I’d enjoyed playing around in that world and I fancied going back to it. So, Europe at Midnight came along, and I was happy enough with that.

Thing is, two books is a bit of an awkward number. It’s not a one-off, and it’s not really a series. It’s a book and its sequel, and you look at them, and despite telling everyone to shoot you if you even look like writing another Europe book, late at night you find yourself looking at those two books and thinking, “You know, this’d look nice as a trilogy…”

I suppose it’s no secret now that Rudi, the protagonist of Autumn, doesn’t get a lot of airtime in Midnight, and I wanted to do more with him. And my head was still in the world of the Europe books, picking up bits and pieces of ideas, making connections, and before long I had the first and last chapters more or less straight in my mind.

So, Europe in Winter. Winter was a tough book to write, for lots of reasons. I only got a sense of what it was about two-thirds of the way through writing it, and I had to go back to the start and retool everything I’d done up to that point. I got to put Rudi through the mill again, the poor sod, which is always fun. As usual with these things, it sort of assembled itself, and when I finished I told everyone to shoot me if I even looked like writing another one.

But.

Trains have always been important in the Europe books, for reasons you’ll know if you’ve read them, but one night I was watching television and there was this long, wonderful programme where the film-makers had simply put a camera on the front of a narrow boat going down the Kennet and Avon Canal and filmed the journey. It was slow and slightly hypnotic and about halfway through I realised there were no canals in the Europe books, and there should be.

One thought leads to another, and here I am, today, looking at the first few paragraphs of what will be Europe at Dawn. I wouldn’t dare put myself in the same league as Martin Cruz Smith, but sometimes I imagine something similar happening to him after writing Gorky Park.

I can’t really say a lot about Dawn which wouldn’t be massively spoilery, even in terms of its relationship to the other books – and it will drift somewhat from its synopsis anyway, because they always do – but I will tell you that I’m planning for this to be the final Europe book. For one thing, the conspiracies that were only hinted at in Autumn have become so large that it’s getting hard to top them. I am, however, planning to throw the kitchen sink at this one, and if I don’t tie up all the loose ends, well, life’s like that.

And if I even look like writing another one, shoot me.

Europe in Winter is out now from Solaris Books