Working with The Mob

Sep 6 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Laura Davis meets the Liverpool-born author teaching Mafia criminals how to write

WRITE about what you know, the experienced author advises the novice.

Except, on this occasion, what they knew came from the darkest edges of humanity, where nightmares roam unshackled to a violent soundtrack.

Yet, believing in truth above all, the writer pressed home his point.

“If you’re going to write, you have to be honest, and they’re very nervous about the real truth about what they’ve done.

“It’s known within the prison who they are, but when they meet people from outside they’re very protective of their own history,” reveals Michael Jacob, an ex-pat Liverpudlian who is teaching jailed Mafiosi the art of creative writing.

“We discovered that there was a group of people in the local maximum security prison and they were all writing fables for kids and we said to them, ‘Look, boys, you have such a vast experience in murder, death and conspiracy, let’s get serious and write some real crime stories’.”

Listening to Michael’s description of these “delightful characters” who are studying philosophy and law degrees in their jail cells, it is easy to imagine him teaching a prison library full of charming Robert de Niros, but don’t be fooled.

These men are so dangerous that their life sentences truly mean life – one of them was convicted of 28 murders, and many of them are under a “41 bis” restriction – no contact with the outside world.

One of their short stories is about how you test a gun that you plan to use to kill somebody.

The solution is simple – shoot someone else, anyone else. Just pick a person at random and fire. That way, you can tell whether the bullet’s trajectory is straight.

“Some of them are actually very nice people and they are all very intelligent,” continues Michael, 60, who grew up in Toxteth.

“There’s really nothing to be frightened about because they want to impress us because they know we’re professional writers. They try very hard and we get on very well with them.”

This all came about when Michael and his wife, Daniella De Gregorio, 58, were invited to give a talk at the jail, near the Italian town of Spoleto where they live.

The prisoners had read the couple’s first joint novel, Critique of Criminal Reason, and were big fans.

They are now holding a crime literature festival close to their home, which one of the inmates will attend, and are hoping to entice a publisher to produce a book of the Mafiosi’s short stories.

Their second joint novel, Days of Atonement, has just been published and the couple – together named Michael Gregorio, as if they were one individual – will be visiting Liverpool on Tuesday, where they will be signing copies of their books at Waterstones, Bold Street, from 12.30pm.

Having worked as an English literature teacher at De La Salle, in Croxteth, where he had also been a pupil, Michael taught in Luton and Torquay before moving to Italy in 1980. He bears no trace of a Scouse accent.

“Everybody thinks I’m Dutch and actually that’s why I started writing because suddenly I realised I was speaking so much Italian that my English was getting very slipshod,” he explains.

“You get into the habit of living in another country.

“You eat, you drink, you sleep, you dream in Italian and suddenly I found it very difficult to remember English words.”

Although there are many author duos, there must be few who share the working practises of Michael and his wife – she sitting in the kitchen writing in her native tongue of Italian, he in the study next door writing in English.

“Then we shout at each other,” he laughs. “Then it’s a question of who wins. We can fight for hours about a word, and then somebody suddenly says ‘what are we going to have for dinner tonight?’ and we just switch off.

“We write the bits that we’re best at. Daniella says I’m good at describing things and she reckons she’s good on psychology, so she writes the conversation and explanation of characters.“

Once they have finished a chapter, Michael translates it into English and together they fine tune it.

The name “Michael Gregorio” came out of a three-week debate with their English and American publishers, who decided it sounded better than “Dan Jacob” and, by implying a male author, would help the novels sell better in the Far East.

“For a while, Michael Gregorio existed, but we didn’t, because we’d sold the book and people started asking us for photographs but we couldn’t send them one.

“In Poland, we sent them a picture of our cat and said ‘Michael Gregorio is very shy but this is his cat’ and they ran a prize competition to give it a Polish name.

“They had about 200 entries and came up with the Polish word for ‘lion’. Our cat is called Lionello.”

Days of Atonement is set in early 19th-century Prussia, where three children have been found massacred in an isolated cottage.

No Mafia links in this novel, but a crime just as vicious.

Michael insists: “If there isn’t a dead body in a book, it’s not worth reading.”

DAYS of Atonement, by Michael Gregorio, is published by Faber and Faber, priced £7.99. Michael and Daniella will be signing copies at Waterstones, Bold Street, Liverpool, from 12.30pm on Tuesday.

lauradavis