Inside a killer's head

When writing a thriller, there needs to be a sense of jeopardy for the protagonist. Perhaps a killer is after her, maybe more than one. The killer can be left vague, abstract, distant, and this allows the reader to imagine how terrifying they can be. [nice image by Jiceh, by the way]

Or...

The author can go inside the killer's head, show the reader what is in there. This approach is less followed, for several reasons.

(1) The writer is not a killer (well, usually, one hopes), and writers should 'write what they know'.

(2) In explaining what is inside the killer's head, the reader may actually begin to understand the killer, and so there is less fear.

(3) By showing what is in the killer's head there can be less suspense than when the protagonist is running from unknown motives and plans.

Two recent examples I read of both approaches are David Baldacci's Memory Man and Lee Child's... well, pretty much most Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. Baldacci's Memory Man is a masterpiece of suspense because it is actually pretty difficult to work out who the murderers are, and how and why the killings are happening. However, once the motives were revealed at the end, I felt a little short-changed, because so much trauma had been caused for what didn't seem quite enough pain to twist two minds so badly. Having said that, I'm going to read another one, because he's such a great writer and the suspense, plotting and sense of jeopardy are masterful.

With Child/Reacher, we get glimpses into the minds of the perpetrators, as in 61 Hours, and recognize how evil they are. Child keeps it brief. Short passages, usually a page here and there, to let us know that the baddies are after Jack and they are real bad. When payback finally arrives, it feels satisfying because the villains aren't abstract.

So, when I wrote 66 Metres (and yes, the title is partly a tribute to Child and 61 Hours), I wanted to go further. I wanted to climb into the heads of three villains and maintain the fear and suspense. One of the villains in particular is warped and twisted, and you wouldn't want to spend any time with him or get stuck in a lift with him or be alone in an underground parking lot with him. His name is Danton.

The first time we meet Danton, he's about to kill someone, so rather than give a spoiler, here's the second time we meet him when he's arrived in the Isles of Scilly to find Nadia and kill her. He's just a dude sitting in a beachside cafe watching some kids playing. Harmless. Unless you know what is going on in his head...

There was a ruckus outside, a couple of young kids, both with toy machine guns.

‘You’re dead!’ one of them yelled, the taller one, eyes full of fire.

‘I shot you first!’ the younger one pleaded.

The older one raised his gun as if to smash the other boy’s face with it. ‘I said you’re dead.’

The younger boy looked as if he might cry, then lowered his gun and lay on the floor. The older boy grinned and put his foot on the chest of the other boy, raising his own gun in the air, and yelled something Danton didn’t understand, maybe a reference to a video game or a movie. He saw the look in that boy’s eye, the feeling not only of triumph, but power through domination. Being able to make another person obey you, submit to your authority through fear. The kid probably didn’t understand it fully, nor the fact that he should relish it before life – society – would chisel it out of him or put him in prison, unless the kid became either a soldier or a boxer or a killer, like Danton.

The waiter shooed the kids away. The younger boy sprang up and both ran off, as if pals again, but Danton knew harm had been done, the younger kid had been made to eat shit. His spirit would remember it. If he was smart he’d have learned a lesson today, that rules don’t mean anything where raw power was involved. And if he was dumb, well, he’d just end up another sad loser like most people, and vent his frustration on anyone who was vulnerable later in life.

Danton remembered the second time he’d killed, after some punk had cheated him in a high-stakes poker game. Danton had lost a year’s wages, knew the fucker had cheated, but the entire game was rigged, and there were too many heavies around. He waited outside the backstreet gambling joint for two hours, hiding behind the rubbish bins, then followed the guy from a distance until he neared the deserted docks at 3am.

Surprising the guy and beating the crap out of him had been easy, but he’d only gotten a fifth of his money back – obviously the others had shared the winnings. Anger brewed in Danton like a firestorm. He tied the schmuck’s hands behind his back, using the guy’s own belt, and shoved a handkerchief in his bloodied mouth to stop him begging for mercy. That was when he spied a run of rusted chain nearby. At first, he did it just to scare the crap out of the guy, which worked, as Danton wrapped the heavy chain around the guy’s legs in a crude knot, and rolled him closer to the water’s edge. The pure terror in the guy’s eyes drove Danton on. It was like a kid’s game: see how much he could frighten the dolt. To top it all, Danton heaved the guy up, doing a deadlift with him, chain and all, and staggered over to the drop.

The guy and chain weighed a lot, easily two hundred and fifty. Danton thought about the weightlifting championships, how a shot at an Olympic title had been torn away from him a year earlier, and in that moment all the pent-up rage from being screwed over in life too many times surged through him, and he felt so good, holding this man’s life, writhing and squirming and whimpering in his bare hands, felt the absolute pure God-like power of life over death. He tossed the guy into the cold water below.

Never even knew his name.

Danton didn’t sleep that night, dizzy with elation, and ended up in a brothel in the red light district, taking one hooker after another till dawn, fucking like a lion. In a way, looking back now, he’d been like the smaller boy, but he’d managed to gain the upper hand and kill the older one. Would that younger boy have gone so far? Course not. Unless he’d been shafted by life again and again. Danton hadn’t had a great life, but after that first kill, word had got around once the bloated body was found and the local mafia put two and two together. Nobody messed with Danton any more. In fact they gave him work. Respect. That was what mattered.


The second killer is less frightening, perhaps more atypical. His name is Lazarus, because he died and was brought back by medics before brain death set in. Here's the second time we meet Lazarus. He's a really big guy, and while he's not scary the way Danton is, you wouldn't mess with him...

Lazarus crunched his way up the gravel pathway to Kadinsky’s dacha, aware there would be a marksman upstairs training cross-hairs on his face. Americans aimed for the heart, Russians for the head. The gravel was thick with pebbles, impossible to run on, and Lazarus’ significant weight left dimples in the circular path surrounding the empty clay-coloured fountain, a statue of Pan in its centre. The Greek god of mischief’s flute was bone dry.

Lazarus had to leave his car and the key with a guard down at the estate entrance, and trek the remaining three hundred metres alone. He didn’t mind the walk, but he detested the psychology. Everything about Kadinsky was a reminder of who was boss. As if on cue, two men in identical dark suits came down the stone steps from the front door, carrying a black body bag. Lazarus slowed. The bag was moving. Something – somebody – writhed inside. The end of the bag slipped from the front guy’s hands and fell with a sickening thud onto the gravel. The man at the front gave whoever was in there a good kick, yelled a few expletives and told him to lie still. Lazarus heard a man sobbing.

Someone who had let Kadinsky down, had almost certainly been beaten to a bloody pulp by Kadinsky himself, and was going to be taken into the woods and buried alive. Lazarus would have liked to put the victim out of his misery. But no doubt Kadinsky was watching. So instead he walked on, not meeting the eyes of the men carrying the bag. The body had stilled, at least.

A gruff man with designer stubble, wearing a suit stretched tight by muscles on top of muscles, held open the wine-red door. The goon inspected Lazarus, taking in his sheer size, probably wondering how much was lean, how much was fat, and where best to pop him with his .38 if necessary. The face, or the back of the head, as always. He patted Lazarus down while another watched from the upper landing, a Kalashnikov hanging from his shoulder. Lazarus wasn’t carrying a weapon. He didn’t need one. There were plenty around. And his hands could snap necks when required. Not that he enjoyed killing, but he preferred it to being killed.

Whenever he was in hostile terrain he made rapid assessments of opponents, putting them into one of three categories: commas, semicolons, and full stops. Commas could be scared off, they’d turn and run, and didn’t need a bullet. Semis, when wounded, would go crying to their mommas, no longer a threat. Full stops needed to be put down quickly, a head or neck shot so their finger couldn’t pull the trigger in that last second of shocked clarity. These two were semis. One shot, one bone broken, they’d call it a day. They weren’t in it for love or loyalty, just dreaming of an early pension. Lazarus never dreamed. He was saving that for when he was dead.

The search over, the goon jerked his thumb towards a set of double doors with frosted glass to the left on the ground floor. A golden Labrador intercepted him, and Lazarus squatted down, held his hand out, waiting while the dog hesitated then came over and sniffed his hand. Lazarus stroked him. The dog lapped it up. If only humanity were gone, just animals. The goon nudged Lazarus in the back with his knee. Lazarus rose and spun around on the spot, towering over him, making him step back in surprise. Lazarus heard the swish of the Kalashnikov being unshouldered and clicked into readiness, trained on his face, but he didn’t look up. Nor did he glare at the goon who had fumbled for his gun, he just loomed over him, the dog at his side sensing who was master.  

‘Lazarus,’ a voice came from the room, ‘stop shitting around and get in here.’

He turned to see Kadinsky – expensive baggy suit, chunky gold jewellery – in the doorway, before he turned and went back inside. Kadinsky was fixing the back of his collar over his tie. His shirt looked fresh. No doubt he’d just changed due to spattered bloodstains. Lazarus followed, the dog too.

In the scene above we also see another killer, Kadinsky, who's head we never go inside. There's no need, you already know it's pretty nasty in there. There's one other killer, but that would be a spoiler.

Of course the book is mainly inside the head of the protagonist, Nadia, the target of all these men. She has never killed, but will she have to in the end? And what will be in her head when she does so?

66 Metres is available from 25 August

Writers on the edge...(Genius)

Yesterday I watched the film Genius, in which Jude Law plays the utterly driven writer Tom Wolfe, and Colin Firth plays the (genius) editor Max Perkins, who also edited Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both portrayed admirably in the film.

I think writers should go watch (or rent) the movie. Here's why.

Wolfe has been rejected by every publishing house in town, until Max sees something in his work. Most writers, even successful ones, had a rough start, or have not yet even had that 'lucky break', which seems lucky when it happens to others, and hard-earned when it finally happens to them. There is a moment when Wolfe realizes he has been accepted for publication, and he practically screams. As a writer, I found this both satisfying and appropriate.

The mechanics of the editing process is both fascinating and funny. Funny when Max is handed the manuscript for the first time, and he says 'at least tell me it's double-spaced' (the answer is that it is not). Funny when Wolfe turns up with book 2, and its 5000 pages long. Fascinating when Max edits a long paragraph, which sounds beautiful the first time you hear it, and then he forces Wolfe to cut it back to the bare bones, a simple two lines, and you think, he's right, it is better.

One of the points of the film, however, is how destructive writing can be, often for those around the author, as excellently portrayed by Wolfe's muse Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman) as she slowly unravels, then turns stone cold against him. I've often wondered if all serious writers should indeed live alone in a garret in Paris or New York, occasionally venturing out for a coffee, but otherwise keeping away from the world and not harming those in it, or those they profess to care about. A bit harsh, but maybe not if you're like Tom Wolfe.

The counterpoint is given by Fitzgerald, who is the stable and professional writer, still very much in love with his wife and putting her first, and Hemingway, who puts life first.

But the film revolves around Wolfe and Perkins, and reminds us, as Bernstein states, that the people around us writers are not fictional, unlike the characters inside our heads and books.

One thing the film didn't bring out was the pure joy of writing that most writers experience, rather than the manic obsessional got-to-get-ths-done periods many writers go through, and where Wolfe seemed to live non-stop. This is also because the film largely focuses on editing rather than writing, and one is fun, and the other is hard and sometimes cruel.  

Because the film is set circa 1929, it did not deal with that other modern stressor that writers currently have to deal with, namely the jungle that is social marketing, wrestling with Twitter, Facebook, Websites, etc., trying to get their voice heard above millions of others. From that perspective, I sometimes think I might have preferred to have been around back then...

I had just finished a manuscript for publication, and going to see this film was my reward. But I came out in deep reflection. How many thousands of hours have I committed to writing when I could have been interacting with real people?

Of course it didn't last long, because I'm a writerholic, and this morning I disappeared for a few hours into a Parisian brasserie to write a chapter of the next book. And I really enjoyed myself. But I'm going to go off-grid for a few days and pay attention to the non-fictional world, and the non-fictional characters who really matter.

By the way, the title of the film refers to the editor, not the writer, which I found interesting. I now have an editor for the first time in my writing, and she has certainly helped me raise my game. All the words are mine, but without her insights it would be a lesser novel.

So, here's to editors everywhere, you help to make our words better.


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66 Metres will be Released 25th August by CarinaUK, HarperCollins

66 Metres - Opening

Sixty-Six Metres is the depth at which normal air starts to become toxic to divers. Stay at that depth or below, and you will die.

Nadia has never dived that deep, but to save her sister, she's going to have to.

Here's how it all starts...


Prologue

The only thing worth killing for is family.

Her father’s words to her, the day they’d come for him.

She’d been fourteen when two men in combat fatigues and balaclavas burst into the kitchen where she and her father were enjoying breakfast. The armed commandos hadn’t seen his pistol lying beneath a folded newspaper. While her father struggled with the men, his eyes flicked between her and the weapon. She could have darted for it, threatened them, helped him. But she hesitated. The moment slipped past. They threw a black hood over his head, cuffed him, and dragged him away... to be interrogated, tortured, executed and buried in the woods. A single thought haunted her ever since.

Had he known they would come?

Four years later, Nadia picked up his Beretta, its dark metal cool in her hands. She checked and re-loaded the magazine. She walked to the window, took one last look at the wild garden where her father had taught her to shoot, and the gravel path leading through the pine forest to the banks of the Volga. There, she’d learned first to swim, then to dive. Turning away, she stashed the pistol in her backpack and crept downstairs, hoping to escape unseen. But her mother was waiting for her on the doorstep, arms folded. 

‘You’ll end up a killer just like him, Nadia. Or a whore, like your sister.’

Nadia pushed by without replying. She passed through the creaking gate that had so often announced her father’s return, and breathed easier after the turn of the road. She waited an hour for the bus, partly hoping – but mainly dreading – that her mother would come running around the corner begging her to return.

Fifty miles from Moscow, where her sister Katya lived, everyone had to get off the bus at a security checkpoint to show papiren. Nadia left her backpack under the seat. When she reached the front of the line, a young soldier flicked noisily through her passport, then glanced up, surprise lighting his smile.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said. ‘Eighteen. A special day.’

Nadia moved into a grotty studio flat in Old Arbat, where each night she fell asleep exhausted from working in the local bakery from four a.m. until three p.m., then at a supermarket until nine at night.  She kept her hair cropped, dressed for comfort, and was often mistaken at first sight for a young man, which was fine with her. She liked boys well enough, but hated the unsubtle flirting, the vodka-fuelled race to unconsciousness, the lies. She’d loved her father, but he’d been one of the worst with women, and she’d seen the damage it had done to her mother.

She didn’t get enough time with Katya, but on Wednesdays they’d go to the Sevastopol Hotel, the rock-bottom market. They’d start on the sixteenth floor and work their way down, Katya usually buying her little sister Chinese or Afghan trinkets to brighten her dingy flat, seeing who could negotiate the hardest, laughing about it afterwards over ice cream. And every Sunday afternoon they’d head to Gorky Park, taking turns to push each other on the swings just like when they were younger, and ice skating as winter approached, always hand in hand. Sometimes they talked about their parents, but only back in the past, during those good, early years. But when they’d hug, Nadia remembered how they used to hold each other in bed during their parents’ screaming matches downstairs.

Katya never invited Nadia to her place, never spoke about what she did with the rest of her time. Nadia didn’t want to probe, didn’t want to break the spell. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Then the ever-gorgeous Katya invited her dark-haired kid sister to a party at a luxurious country dacha owned by a wealthy businessman, Kadinsky. Nadia was never formally introduced, though Katya clearly knew him very well. Nadia was mesmerised by the women with perfect skin in glittering, low-cut dresses, the handsome and not-so-handsome men, their jewellery and fancy cars and easy talk of big deals. Viktor, a man twice her age, who turned out to be someone in government, seduced her. He wasn’t bad-looking, took his time in bed, and left cash for her breakfast in the mornings.

She let things coast for six months, no demands or promises on either side. She presumed he was married. She never asked, and he never said. She gave up the early morning bakery job, and thought about getting a cat.

Then one day Viktor was on the news, handcuffed, being forced into a police van. She leapt off the sofa and began packing a bag, but within minutes a loud rapping sounded on the door. The Beretta was on the table, fully loaded. She hid it under a loose floorboard, then opened the door.

Receiving misappropriated funds. That’s what they told her at the station, though she was never formally charged, never saw a lawyer. Once inside Lubyanka prison, Nadia was informed she’d be their guest for twelve years, ten if she behaved. On the anniversary of her father’s death, she gazed through the prison bars, studied the sad faces staring back at her from the ugly block opposite. She turned away, took in the inside of her cell. The double bunk with rancid sheets under which she shivered each night, curled up in the foetal position. The iron toilet that stank of her own piss and shit – they wouldn’t give her the bucket of water to flush it until lunchtime. The cold grey bars, faded whitewashed brick walls, not even graffiti to lighten her mood. And the lone hook in the ceiling that her former cellmate had used to end everything while Nadia had been out in the exercise yard. The fourth suicide since her arrival.

Ten years? She wouldn’t make it.

Shouting erupted down the corridor. Wolf-whistles, tin mugs clanging against cell bars, lascivious remarks from several lesbian inmates, one of whom already had her eye on Nadia. And then a gruff man’s voice, more like a growl. Silence. Nadia stared at the bars. It couldn’t be anyone for her. No one had visited her since her incarceration. But she listened. A man’s shoes, heavy, impatient, and high heels clacking behind, almost running to keep up. Nadia smelled her sister’s perfume, and took a step forward as the footsteps approached. But Katya wasn’t alone. Nadia took a step back.

Kadinsky.  

Since being locked away, she’d heard on the grapevine that he was a gangster, not a businessman, and now she saw him close up for the first time, he fit the bill. He had a gleaming bald head, like he actually polished it every morning, and was fat without being flabby, as if his weight was there to throw around, to crush you if necessary. He wore an expensive, baggy beige suit, and gold jewellery dripped from his wrists and neck. Katya stood behind him in a skimpy red dress and high heels, tousled hair falling behind her shoulders, her large eyes hopeful and scared at the same time. There was no guard with them. Kadinsky held a ring of keys in his hand. He selected one that looked indistinguishable from the twenty others dangling from the ring, shoved it into the slot, turned it with a resounding clank, and stepped inside.

Nadia wanted to hug her sister, but Kadinsky stood between them. He turned his head to the side, not enough to see Katya, but just enough so she’d know he was talking to her.

‘One word, and I walk. Turn around. Give the other inmates a treat.’

Katya gave one last look at her sister, then dutifully turned around and faced the bars. There was silence outside. Everyone was listening. Especially Nadia.

Kadinsky glanced at his gold Rolex, as if bored, somewhere else he’d rather be. Anywhere. He glanced at Nadia, then folded his chubby arms, stretching the fabric of his suit.

‘I’ll ask you a single question, girl. You have three chances to give the right answer. If you do, you come with us. If not, you stay, and see your sister in twelve years.’ He glanced at the toilet bowl, grimaced, pulled out a silk handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, then stuffed it back into his pocket. ‘And be quick.’

Nadia tensed, stood almost to attention, and waited for the question.

‘What did you do wrong?’

Nadia’s reply was too fast, a prison reflex, what everyone here said when they first met someone new in the canteen or the yard.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Wrong answer,’ he said. ‘Second try.’

Of course it was the wrong bloody answer. He was a gangster, so in his mind everyone had done something wrong. She stared at the keys in his hands. The door was open. Soon, one way or another, it would be locked shut. Think! Maybe just the facts...

‘I met Viktor Romanovich at your dacha. We had an affair. It lasted six months. One day I saw him on TV, being taken away, arrested on corruption charges. While I was packing, they came for me, threw me in here.’ But what had she done wrong? She’d just enjoyed the ride, a little life, a little luxury, someone who’d looked after her. She pictured Viktor. A man twice her age. Old enough to be… She shuddered. ‘I should have found out what he was up to, asked where the money came from.’

Kadinsky made half-fists, turned them palm upwards, and studied the fingernails of one hand, then the other. He stared at her like she was a waste of skin. ‘One last try. What did you do wrong?’

Nadia looked at her sister’s outline; she was trembling. What had she done wrong? She didn’t know. Been born, maybe? So, she’d stay here, die here. Could she do that to Katya? If her father hadn’t got messed up in God-knew-what, if he’d still been around, things would have been different. What had he done wrong? She never knew. But then she realised what it was she’d done wrong, both times. She’d not picked up the gun for her father, that fateful day. And when they’d come for her, his Beretta – the only keepsake she had from him – had been right there, on the table.

She looked Kadinsky in the eye. She didn’t know if it was the answer he was looking for. Whichever side of those bars she ended up on, she had a feeling it would be her epitaph.

‘I let them take me.’

Kadinsky grunted. Looked at his watch again. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said.

Katya spun around and Nadia found herself wrapped in her sister’s arms, felt her sister’s hot tears on her cheeks. Nadia’s head tilted upwards, and while she succumbed to the embrace, she stared at the lone hook in the ceiling. Fuck you. 

66 Metres available for pre-order, will be released on 25th August

Is it worth paying for a copy-edit?

First, I'm an author, not a copy-editor, and I'm not selling any services. For my first four books I didn't use a copy-edit as it would have cost me around a thousand pounds to do so per book, and I didn't think it was worth it. Now I have a large publisher behind me, and have just had a copy-edit done for me (for free), I've basically changed my mind. 

The last stage before your words are locked in forever

When your manuscript is heading for publication, after you've done all you can to polish it, there are always two remaining items to consider. Copy-editing and proofing. Proofing can be done mostly automatically via grammar and spell-checking, and having careful readers go through your manuscript. Copy-editing is different, though. 

So, what is copy-editing, and why is it a good idea? 

Here's a formal definition:

The goal of copy editing is to ensure that content is accurate, easy to follow, fit for its purpose, and free of error, omission, inconsistency, and repetition.^[

Here's another way of saying it: A good copy-edit will:

1. Smooth out your prose, making it flow better and read easier, and remain fresh (e.g. by avoiding repetitions)
2. Ensure consistency throughout the book - not just names and places and timings, but what people know or should know at various points in the book
3. Making sure your character stays true to their nature (e.g. asking whether a particular character would really say such things?)
4. Pointing out (usually minor) plot holes. The reader can often bridge these gaps, but will be aware of them. 
5. Point out strange, antiquated or specialized usage of language that may jar with the reader. These things can stop a reader, making then think 'huh?', and either make them get out their smart-phones to try and work it out, or just stop them reading.
6. Identify where something should have been explained earlier in the text
7. Detect position or layout anomalies - e.g. someone stands up but we didn't know he was sitting down - or an action scene only the author can visualize
8. Cases where 'less is more', e.g. where the author had successfully made a point but then carried on, weakening it.
9. Noting where machinery or the environment seems to have been forgotten, e.g. I originally had the skipper of a boat try to seduce someone, and he (apparently, because I 'said' nothing) just left the controls with the engine in gear. No real skipper would do that.
10. Helping to isolate the best word, or as the French say, le mot juste. I'd said that someone had disappeared, when in fact they had been abducted. An important difference. 

Why can't authors do they down copy-editing? 

Of course we all do, to an extent. But we are too close to things. In our heads the characters and their motivations are perfectly clear, as are things like locations and what is going on around the characters. But this 20:20 vision of what the novel is supposed to say sometimes makes us blind to what we have actually committed to paper.

I belong to a writers group in Paris, and we all review each others' work. But an author is not usually a copy-editor, nor vice versa. These are different skill sets. Of course, the more people who read your novel, the better, but even so, a skilled copy-editor is likely to come up with new issues that do need to be fixed. My book had been read by nine people (four readers, four authors and an editor) before it was copy-edited. 

Copy-edit as an acid test - is your manuscript really ready?

Another important reason for a copy-edit is to gain feedback. Not whether they liked it or not, but just how many comments or queries did you get? For mine, which had already been reviewed and edited, I had around a dozen queries, for a 97000 word manuscript (I'm discounting the simple grammatical corrections, of which there were a couple of dozen). If I had received fifty queries, I would have realized it simply wasn't as ready as I'd thought. 

Eliminating reader potholes

Each of those dozen queries contained something that made me think - okay, I need to change this. A couple of times I replied to the copy-editor "good catch" (or 'nice save'). I want my thriller to be a page-turner, and it can't be if there are potholes scattered along the reader's pathway. It only took me 2.5 hours to go through the copy-edits for the entire manuscript, make the changes, and then send it back to the publisher. Probably the best 2.5 hours I spent on the book since I started it.

But it costs so much...

But what about the cost? If you have a medium or large-sized publisher they should do copy-editing for you, so just sit back and wait for those track changes. But for many writers, particularly those self-publishing, an extra 600-1000 pounds/dollars/euros seems a lot, given that you have to also pay for formatting, front cover, etc. So, is it worth it?

If you want to be serious/professional about your writing, I'd say 'yes'.  Either of two things will happen. One, you'll get comments and think, oh gosh, yes, I need to change that, or else you'll get very little, in which case you can be confident that your novel is in very good shape. 

Another way to think about it is to reflect on how long it takes to do a copy-edit. This is no speed-read with a glass of wine in your hand, but is a very careful reading, making notes, continually referring back to earlier sections for consistency checking, etc. Think about how many hours it must take to do a copy-edit.

Where do I find a good copy-editing service?

Okay, so this is where I have to say I don't know, as I've never paid for one. However, two literary services I trust in the UK are Writers Workshop and Cornerstones, but hey, shop around, find other authors who have had copy-editing done and ask them who they'd recommend. 

Final thought

Think what a sprinter would pay to shave off half a second. You've written the best novel you possibly can. Don't sell yourself or your novel short. Make it that little bit better.

Good luck!

Sixty-Six Metres is released 25th August