‘A sunny place for shady people’: Crime writer Liz Nugent on living in Monaco

It sounds like an unlikely twist in an airport blockbuster: a best-selling author travels to Monaco to work on a novel set on the French Riviera only to be almost mown down by a Ferrari.

But fact is stranger than fiction, and this is exactly what happened to an Irish crime-writing queen, Liz Nugent, when she accepted a bursary in one of the world richest countries, Monaco. “There’s extreme wealth,” says Nugent. “I stepped out on the road and a Ferrari nearly took the legs from under me.”

The Riviera was described by W Somerset Maugham as a “sunny place for shady people”, and Monaco, a playground of the super-wealthy squeezed between Nice and the Italian border, is certainly a place of contradictions, which makes it fertile ground for a crime writer seeking inspiration.

Courtesy of a bursary funded by the Irelands Fund Monaco, Nugent spent the month of September 2016 as writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Ireland Library. There in her office, sitting beneath a Jack B Yeats original painting, windows thrown wide in the heat, Nugent worked on her third novel, Skin Deep. And boy did she work.

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By the end of the month, she had written 30,000 words, one third of a novel that would go on to become an instant best-seller upon publication. She makes the point that a lot of this material had to be rewritten, but still, she had never achieved this level of wordage before. How did Monaco induce such astonishing creativity? “When you’re awarded a bursary, it makes you work harder than you normally would,” she says. “I’m not going to waste any time when I’ve got that concentrated period of time.”

The lifting of humdrum domestic duties also helps on these bursaries. “I don’t have to worry about the pile of ironing in the corner ... You have complete freedom to work there, and only work.”

“Plus like most couples, my husband and I fall into this thing every evening: what will we watch on Netflix? There’s a certain freedom in getting away from that – you can work the late shift.” At home in Dublin, Nugent stops work at 6pm, but when she’s away she fits in three writing sessions a day – morning, afternoon and evening.

“I really do love my husband. It’s not that I enjoy being away from him, but you can’t ignore the person that you live with.” When she’s away, she makes up for missing him by “making up other people”.

[ Liz Nugent: ‘Scotland was a revelation ... loads of places to dispose of a body’ ]

It wasn’t all nose-to-the-grindstone, though. As part of the residency, she was provided with a beautiful apartment just over the border in the French town of Beausoleil. She would have dinner there in the evenings, while enjoying the stunning view over the Mediterranean, or else meet up with newfound friends. “It was really good fun.” She made a great friend in Judith Gantley, who managed the library at the time. “She introduced me to a lot of her friends.”

Nugent also did a lot of people-watching in cafes and loved eating at Fredy’s restaurant on the Rock – the historic quarter of Monaco – where the Casiraghis, descendants of the royal Rainier family, were regular diners.

As well as the perks, the residency came with duties such as presenting a reading and a public interview. She also had to teach a class of teenagers at the local lycée: they were charming, but the experience was an eye-opener. “If I just mugged one of them, my life would be made,” she jokes. They were “splashing in wealth”, with Louis Vuitton handbags, Gucci sunglasses and Rolexes.

“I found that they were poor in one area. I asked, ‘What’s the last book you read?’ Not one of them had read a book, I think, for pleasure.” She has noticed the same drop-off in reading among Irish children once they hit about 13, but “Irish kids don’t have the Rolexes.”

She learned a lot about Monaco life during her residency, and describes the world’s second-smallest state as “kind of a strange place”. For instance, white-collar criminals are often allowed to serve their sentences at the weekends only, so that they don’t lose their jobs, whereas ordinary foreign criminals such as drug dealers and thieves are sent to the prison in Nice, which is said to be one of the worst prisons in France.

It doesn’t matter how big your yacht is. Some fecker is going to have a better one

Monaco is also becoming increasingly packed with high-rise apartment blocks as land continues to be reclaimed. “The Rock itself is very old and very distinguished, and the houses are very nice,” says Nugent. “Everywhere else in Monaco is a high-rise tower block.” Even Larvotto, the tiny strip of beach, has been pushed out a lot further so that building can take place on the original beach. “I don’t know if there’s a metaphor there about building your house on sand,” quips Nugent.

She has one regret about her time there: not exploring the Cote d’Azur to research settings for Skin Deep, the story of a woman who has been living on the Riviera for 25 years, passing herself off as an English socialite. Nugent ended up having to return to the area several times under her own steam to visit locations like Antibes, and the iconic Negresco Hotel in Nice. “Of course I had to sample a cocktail. It was research.”

Since those Riviera days, Nugent has made a habit of combining holidays and research. She decided to set part of her latest best-seller Strange Sally Diamond in the city of Rotorua in New Zealand, after she visited the country for the 2019 Celtic Crime Writing Festival. “I did a book tour of the whole country and at a talk in a library in Wellington, an audience member asked if I’d consider using New Zealand as a setting for one of my books.” She rose to the challenge.

[ Liz Nugent: ‘People have accused me of being brave, but what is brave about surviving?’ ]

She also spent some time in Rome researching lesser-known spots for her novel Lying in Wait. And back in 2004 her entire extended family rented Château Lagorce near Bordeaux, and it ended up serving as inspiration for the chateau in her debut, Unravelling Oliver.

More recently, she drove around Scotland for three weeks with her husband. “It was an absolute revelation, every bit as beautiful as New Zealand.” She says she might take inspiration from the trip for her next novel – after all, the sparsely populated areas they visited had lots of places to hide a body.

Interestingly, despite having travelled the world for research and enjoyed the luxury of a month in Monaco, she believes the Tyrone Guthrie artists’ retreat at Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan, is probably the best experience of its kind in the world. “You’re so looked after. You’re really minded. The food is to die for. They do everything to make you comfortable.”

However, the Monaco residency was “incredible” because of its location. It also delivered a life lesson that has stayed with her ever since: during her time there, the Yacht Show was on, “this incredible display of superyachts for the rich and famous, mostly owned by Russian or Arabic oligarchs”. All the regular yacht owners, who pay a million euro in mooring fees every year, had to take their “piddling little yachts”, and anchor them out in the bay to make room for the superyachts.

Nugent took a deeper meaning from the whole display: there’s no point comparing yourself to anybody else. “It doesn’t matter how big your yacht is. Some fecker is going to have a better one.”

Liz Nugent’s latest novel, Strange Sally Diamond, is out now