I always try to help lost people here if I can. We’ve all lost our way in this city. It still happens to me after fifteen years or so of coming here. It’s part of the fun usually. You never know what you’ll find.

So I say, ‘Can I help?’

They want a vaporetto. Any vaporetto it seems. Which is a bit odd but there you go. And as I would on some occasions point out central Venice is actually quite small and very walkable. It’s often quicker to get somewhere on foot than stand on a packed number one boat as it stops everywhere along the way.

Anyway they’re a short way away from San Toma, not the easiest of stops to find unless you find the right way in (and yes the signs can be confusing). So I start to offer some directions.

And then the man taps at his phone angrily and snaps, ‘I’ve got satnav, thank you.’

There’s a brief pause, then an argument along the lines of ‘the man’s trying to help’.

I offer one more time. He taps again on his phone and doesn’t take any notice. It’s technology, you see. Much more reliable than a stranger in the street.

And then I leave them to the delights of Apple Maps or Google or Nokia or whatever. For the record… Google is actually very good in Venice, though you may eat up your data allowance using it. Apple Maps will probably land you in the canal. The Nokia maps you get with Windows Phone 8 are excellent and on my phone can be downloaded so you don’t need data to use them.

But honestly… if you’ve got a human being offering to show you the way… I’d suggest that’s the best bet of all.

I couldn’t stop myself looking back as I left. They were still there, him tapping at his phone. She had her hands on her hips. Then they moved off. The wrong way.

Here by meagre way of recompense is a salutary story I was reminded of during my travels and talks the other week. It’s this: nothing is more likely to get readers crying ‘That’s unbelievable’ than something ‘real’.

The seventh Costa book, Dante’s Numbers, is partly set in San Francisco. When I sat down with my then New York editor to talk about the book she raved about the whole thing, declaring it to be one of the best manuscripts she’d read that year.

Then came the kicker.

‘The one thing you’ve got to change is the name of this district where you set most of it. I mean… Cow Hollow? That’s just the sort of ridiculous thing a Brit would dream up if he tried to invent a name for somewhere in America. I mean…’

I sat there, said nothing, smiled. There was a long silence. Then she said, meekly, ‘It’s real, isn’t it?’

Yep. Cow Hollow is near the better-known Marina district. That’s a picture of it above. Very real. I stayed there while researching the book so I got to know it well.

The lesson being… never shrink from making something up. Because it’s often the things you steal from the real world that seem implausible.

There’ll be a new edition of Dante’s Numbers out in the UK later this year by the way, with a snazzy fresh cover. My next public event is at King’s Place in London on June 23, with Barbara Nadel and Michael Ridpath.

Broadchurch seems to be catching the national mood and getting its basic facts horribly wrong. No one applies for the job of ‘junior reporter’ on the Daily Mail because the Mail doesn’t employ junior reporters. Also if you work on a local paper and apply for a new job the last thing you do is advertise the fact and then whine to your boss when you don’t even get an interview.

And the slimy tabloid reporter who wanted to bag a free desk in the office of a local rag? She’d be staying in a decent hotel, with a data-enabled laptop. Yes she might pick the brains of a local lad but pleading for a desk alongside a junior on a town rag? No…

Not that  TV drama is the only place the press get a kicking. We now have a vote in the Commons on Monday which is being portrayed as a showdown that could spell the end of the coalition.

The politics bore me frankly. Nor is this a plea for the public to be nice to hacks. I was a journalist for a large part of my working life, on everything from local papers to national ones like The Times, Independent and Sunday Times. I didn’t expect to be popular. The press isn’t there for that. It exists to tell you want you need to hear, nor what you’d like to. If some of that makes for uncomfortable reading then great… it means newspapers are doing their job.

True, that job shouldn’t involve phone hacking, harassment and intrusion into privacy. But these reprehensible activities are rare. They’re also illegal which is why a growing number of the few hacks who carried them out are now facing prosecution. Get that? There are laws to stop those things already. So why do we need more?

Let me tell you. It’s because a number of people with axes to grind have decided this is the perfect opportunity to stop all that awkward publicity they’d rather the public didn’t get to read. Quite a lot of them are MPs. You know, the people who were so embarrassed when the Telegraph revealed their dubious and on occasion illegal habits when it came to creaming the public purse for expenses.

Would that story have run if Leveson were in place? I don’t know. It involved paying for information, so perhaps not. The phone hacking saga was broken by the Guardian with some splendid investigative reporting that involved getting leaks from people, seemingly police officers among them, who told journalists things they shouldn’t have done.

So would the stories that prompted Leveson have been impossible to print if Leveson’s recommendations had been in print? Very likely. I know it’s become trendy to pillory the press. But think about this for a moment. Is it OK for Wikileaks to release information that, along the way, imperils the lives of some of those it exposes? But wrong for a national newspaper to lift a lid on the Mother of Parliaments and show us that actually there’s a lot that’s rotten beneath the surface? You’d think so in some quarters.

I don’t know about the law. But this isn’t just about lawyers. Mood and climate matter. Newspapers are very conscious of public opinion. It’s part of their job, and one reason why there’s a lot less celeb-chasing and scandal-busting than there used to be. They know the public will kick them for it in sales, as people in Liverpool did when the Sun wrote that scandalous ‘The Truth’ story back in 1989, a gross libel on an entire community for which it’s still paying today.

Self-regulation isn’t perfect. No system is. But it seems to be working, probably too well if I’m honest. Papers are more nervous about printing risky stories than ever. Can you remember the last time Private Eye printed an exclusive? In a way Leveson’s won already.

I’m all for respecting privacy, even that of celebs who seem to want to turn the publicity tap on and off at will and  vet every word written about them (believe me there’s lots that hasn’t been written on that subject too). Page 3 is a monstrous anachronism that ought to be killed today. Phone hacking and paying public servants for private information are wrong, illegal, and deserve to be punished — and that seems to be about to happen.

But to shackle the whole of the press on the basis of the misdeeds of a tiny minority of bad apples, working for just a few tabloid titles?

No.

This isn’t about the press cleaning up their act. They’ve done that already, and the police are sweeping up the rest. It’s about silencing a vital counterbalance to a democracy that is increasingly starting to fail.

The Killing III follows Lund into the world of politics and big business as she hunts for the kidnapped daughter of a shipping tycoon. As the pursuit turns personal and vicious it becomes clear that the real answer lies in a solution to an older case, the murder of a young girl in West Jutland two years before during an election campaign.

The creator of The Killing Søren Sveistrup has, of course, said this is the last we’ll see of Lund on TV, and provides a fittingly moving ending in the last episode. In the book… expect some surprises, just as with the earlier adaptations. As I’ve said before, these are works of fiction in their own right, not photo copies of the TV. The Killing III is a fascinating piece of work with, for me, distinct echoes of the first in the series. So there’s much  to think about there as I write.

In April Macmillan will launch my first new crime series since the appearance of the Costa books a decade ago. This sees a change of location, and a bit of a change of style too since writing The Killing has influenced me somewhat.

The location is the fascinating city of Amsterdam, and the principal protagonists a former city detective, Pieter Vos, and a novice police officer from the provinces, Laura Bakker. At the opening of the first book, The House of Dolls, we find Vos wasting away his life in a rundown boat on the Prinsengracht canal.

Bakker, about to be dumped from the police for failing to make the grade, inadvertently offers a way back into the world through an investigation that takes in the world of organised crime and bickering Dutch politics. It’s a lean, fast-moving book, very visual in the style of The Killing but not so bleak, I think, and with a little humour. And there’s another Vos adventure on the way.

Closer to publication I’ll bring you some more details. As you may imagine I have a busy year ahead of me so I’m afraid the amount of time I’ll be spending on the blog and other webby places will be severely limited.

Below in full is the press release from Macmillan about these books. There will be more news of another project shortly… one based in Italy I’m pleased to say.

Release, 5 March

PAN MACMILLAN ACQUIRE THE KILLING III AND TWO BOOK CRIME SERIES BY DAVID HEWSON

Pan Macmillan Editorial Director Trisha Jackson has acquired world novelisation rights to THE KILLING III from the Danish Broadcasting Company DR, to be written again by David Hewson. She has also bought UK and Commonwealth rights to The House of Dolls and a second title in a new crime series set in Amsterdam to feature police brigadier Pieter Vos. The deal was negotiated with Camilla Wray of Darley Anderson Literary Agency.

THE KILLING III will publish in hardback in February 2014 and paperback in Autumn 2014.

THE KILLING III is the last in the BAFTA award-winning series to feature Sarah Lund, who has been quoted as ‘the world’s best detective’, and is thought by many to be the finest story of the series.  In just eight months, sales of THE KILLING I were in six figures and Macmillan hope to replicate this success.

Trisha Jackson says,

“I am delighted to be publishing both KILLING III and David’s new Dutch series . He’s an extremely talented writer who has not only taken the wonderful script by Søren Sveistrup and his co-writers at DR and successfully developed it for the page, but he has also written this fabulous new Dutch crime series which takes the reader to the canals of Amsterdam and its underworld.”

David Hewson says,

”It’s a delight to be working with Trisha and the team at Macmillan again, both writing Sarah Lund’s last case and developing an exciting new series based in Amsterdam. Pieter Vos and his world represent a new departure for me, one greatly influenced by my work adapting THE KILLING series from screen to page.”

David Hewson is well-known for his crime-thriller fiction set in European cities. He is the author of nine novels in the highly acclaimed Detective Nic Costa series, set in Rome and Venice.  David spent time in Copenhagen researching and writing the novel of THE KILLING, which was created by Søren Sveistrup and produced by DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. THE KILLING has won prestigious awards throughout Europe including a BAFTA, Best European Production at Monte Carlo TV Festival and numerous International Emmy nominations. It was highly acclaimed in the UK and became a cult phenomenon when it was shown on BBC4.

Denise, of course, in addition to her many other talents is currently adapting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as a graphic novel. So there’s going to be lots to talk about.

More details here.

What do we discover about those places when we see them through the eyes of a local detective?

I’ll be in the company of some fine writers to talk about these subjects at King’s Place in London on June 23. More details here. 

My fellow speakers are…

Barbara Nadel loves Istanbul and her shabby, middle-aged cop, Çetin Ikmen, is equally popular among English and Turkish readers.

Michael Ridpath’s series Fire and Ice is set in Iceland and has been translated into 20 languages, including Icelandic.

Chaired by Barry Forshaw. In association with the Crime Writers Association.

How do they do this? Read the piece and sit back in wonder.

It’s dead simple. They get authors to use their own money to buy a lot of advance copies so the book in question turns up in the lists from day one.

Wow. Who would have thunk it? How real are these sales? Take a look at the graph the WSJ put together below.

Oh no! They’re not real at all. Except the people who paid for these phoney sales can call themselves ‘best-selling authors’ afterwards. Since a number appear to be in the business book sector they can then use the fake plaudits to get well-paid speaking engagements.

As the fixers in this nasty business ResultSource say on their website, ‘Publishing a book builds credibility, but having a Bestseller initiates incredible growth—exponentially increasing the demand for your thought leadership, skyrocketing your speaking itinerary and value.’

Note the capital letter for ‘Bestseller’. Though to be accurate they should surely be writing it as I did just now: in quote marks.

How much does it cost to become a ResultSource ‘bestseller’? One of the company’s customers reveals all in the piece.

Mr. Kaplan purchased about 2,500 books through ResultSource, paying about $22 a book, including shipping, for a total of about $55,000.

Mr. Kaplan says he also paid ResultSource a fee in the range of $20,000 to $30,000.

With 3,000 copies sold in its first week, “Leapfrogging” hit No. 3 on the Journal’s hardcover business best-seller list. It hit No. 1 on BarnesandNoble.com on Aug. 7. By Nielsen BookScan’s count, about 1,000 print copies have been sold in the six months since.

That’s $75K to $85K for a book that in the real world sells naff all. Hope the speaking fees are healthy.

The good news: the piece says Amazon will no longer do business with ResultSource and Nielsen, who produce some of the key book ‘sales’ listings, are looking for ways to stop this nonsense appearing in their figures.

If you want to know why I suggest you turn on to BBC 4 at 10 pm on Tuesday to watch Good Italy, Bad Italy: Girlfriend in a Coma. This is an acclaimed documentary on the state of modern Italy fronted by the former Economist editor Bill Emmott. You can read more about the background here.

It’s one of the Sunday Times picks for the day, and includes Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano, Umberto Eco and Mario Monti among the interviewees.

I also have to declare a personal interest: son Tom Hewson wrote the music and played quite a lot of it too.

As well as going general bar-lurking you can also find me on two panels. On Friday at 4 pm discussing adaptations with Neville Fountain, Alison Joseph and Denise Mina, moderated by Peter Guttridge.

Then on Saturday at 4.30 pm talking about foreign perspectives with Thomas Enger (Norway), Derek B. Miller (Norway), and Valerio Varesi (Italy). Moderator: Barry Forshaw.

Crimefest’s a great event. If you’re going do say hello.

More details from Cromarty Arts Trust.