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Last week the new London Film Museum in Covent Garden played host to an exclusive The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo exhibition of film, book and graphic novel memorabilia to celebrate the film's release on Blu-ray and DVD this week. EF's Jason was kindly invited along to see it and among those in attendance were Steven Berkoff (who plays the lawyer Dirch Frode), Barry Forshaw (the UK's leading expert on Scandinavian film and TV) and renowned tattooist Nikole Lowe (as seen on TV's London Ink). Nils Nordberg On Nordic Noir, Circa 2005 We are very pleased to have Nils Nordberg, the leading Scandinavian crime fiction authority, contribute to Crime Time. His analysis of Nordic Noir was written in 2005 and describes the world as it looked then, before the current surge in interest The Scandicrime Trans-Europe Express Just back from my exhilarating but exhausting round-Europe train trip for Death in a Cold Climate: four countries and multiple cities in seven days (Copenhagen, Malmö, Ystad, Lund Cologne), ending at the 'Danish Harrogate', Krimimessen in Horsens Dreda Say Mitchell: Teaching A Crime Writing Course I was very excited when the good people at the Faber Academy invited me to create and run a crime-writing course for them. Of course I said yes, but then had to step back and ask myself what are the ingredients that make a great crime-writing course? Crime Thriller Novels Course Teaching Staff Announced City University London is inaugurating a Crime Thriller Novels MA. The teaching staff will boast as much teaching experience and as many published works as the teaching staff for the Literary Novels MA. So far, on the team are such writers as Mark Billingham, Laura Wilson and Barry Forshaw The 1890s witnessed the birth of a new character who was intelligent, a master of disguise, who worked with a faithful accomplice (that also wrote about their adventures) – and who was not Sherlock Holmes. E. W. Hornung's Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman was a literary bolt of lightning too, which flashed continuously from the pen of Hornung for the next decade DRIVE: My Little Book Grows Up - James Sallis So one day my agent Vicky calls to say the studio's asking if there might be a sequel to Drive. Of course not, I say. Please. I am after all, harumph, harumph, an artiste With European police dramas Spiral and The Killing the cult TV successes of 2011, and translated crime fiction enjoying a post-Larsson boom, noir may just be the new black A Pound Of Flesh: Alex Gray Talks To Crime Time You know I shouldn't say this... but I honestly think "A Pound of Flesh" is the best book I have written so far! It has such a lot going on... The world of prostitution in Glasgow plus the workings of the Scottish government and fictional machinations therein and even the Monte Carlo Rally! The British Library Publishes The First Detective Novel... The Notting Hill Mystery The British Library has today published The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix, widely considered to be the first detective novel ever published. Originally serialised between 1862 and 1863 in the magazine Once a Week and then published as a single volume in 1863, The Notting Hill Mystery has not been commercially available since the turn of the century, until now. Martin Edwards On Death In A Cold Climate From Malcom Edwards' Do You Write Under Your Own Name?'...Death in a Cold Climate is a new guide to Scandinavian crime fiction published by Barry Forshaw, a highly experienced journalist who is one of our most prolific commentators on contemporary crime fiction. The inspiration for Pantheon came from the unlikeliest source – a chance remark from a former cabinet minister, who in a throwaway line had no idea what he had started. I never intended to write a series but halfway through the writing of A Dark Redemption I realised that there was much more to my main characters, DI Jack Carrigan and DS Geneva Miller, than I could possibly hope to contain within one book Iceland's Talent To Watch Out For: Quentin Bates' Second Rundown On the first of November every year, that year's Arnaldur Indriðason novel is published. It's something that has become a significant, eagerly anticipated event and during the first week or two of every November the talk around the water coolers and in workshop canteens turns to the 'latest Arnaldur' as people dissect and discuss Iceland's top author's newest book. A book tends to be the fallback option for a Christmas gift in Iceland, so the pre-Christmas market is crucial to Iceland's publishers with the bulk of the year's sales taking place in a matter of a few weeks... Stockholm Noir: Jens Lapidus talks To Barry Forshaw For We Love This book, Barry Forshaw talks to Jens Lapidus about his Stockholm Noir trilogy - the side-earner to his day profession as a criminal lawyer that has earnt him the respect of the greats Quentin Bates On Iceland's Crimewriting Legacy, Part 1 It may be news to the post-Larsson generation, but Scandinavian crime fiction (or, more accurately, Nordic crime fiction) is nothing new. It's just a new phenomenon to English-language readers. Many of those who are hitting the bookshop shelves these days are established writers who have a strong record behind them already. A fine example is writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, who made his English-language debut only last year, but for years has been regularly selling books by the truckload in his native Denmark as well as to a great many discerning and demanding crime readers in Germany... Absolute Zero Cool (Liberties Press) was an attempt to side-step that absurdity, essentially by writing a crime novel unlike anything else I was reading. And so the author of Eightball Boogie and The Big O - unnamed in the novel, but to all intents and purposes Declan Burke - is approached by a character called Karlsson, a hospital porter languishing in the limbo of an unpublished manuscript written by one Declan Burke... How Difficult Is It To Write A Crime Novel? How difficult is it to write a crime novel? Is a 'novel of crime' novel different from a novel of crime? Are they aimed at different readerships? Do publishers resist genre novels that don't fit their niche market? In a crowded market, at a time when every writer is turning to writing historical, fantasy and crime novels, first-time novelists looking for a publisher need patience and perseverance. There are eight million stories out there in the naked literary city - this is just one of them... Mons Kallentoft In The Financial Times On Barry Forshaw's Death In A Cold Climate I met Barry Forshaw briefly at a dinner for crime fiction aficionados in London some time ago. He was the obvious authority in the room; I could see people straining to hear, weighing his words carefully. That evening, Forshaw came across as humble, intelligent and perceptive.
His new book Death in a Cold Climate is both intelligent and perceptive. Humble it is not. It is, to my knowledge, the most complete guide to Scandinavian crime fiction yet written in any language, an invaluable companion for anyone interested in the genre... Graham Hurley Talks to Crime Time... More than decade ago, thanks to an invitation from Orion, I became a crime writer. This wasn't a corner of commercial fiction I'd ever regarded with much enthusiasm but the fridge was getting emptier and – to be frank – I couldn't afford to say no to a three-book contract. But where to start? One answer would have been the crime shelves of my local library but that would have been a short cut to pastiche fiction and so I fenced off a couple of precious months and set about getting alongside working detectives. Tough call... All Crime Authors Depend On Expert Guidance Although I don't base the plots for my novels on real cases, my details are thoroughly researched as I'm keen to make my fictional cases as plausible as I can. It's possible to do a lot of research on the internet, but I prefer to talk to real people, so in my quest for information, I generally like to approach an expert in the subject. Someone who has spent a lifetime studying a subject can instantly supply information that could take me months to unearth – and even after weeks of research I might not find the right answer. The Times On Death In A Cold Climate In The Times of January 7 2012, Iain Finlayson comments on Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction: 'Barry Forshaw's forensic feeling for snow is coloured by the quantity and quality of blood spilled on it in recent years by Nordic crime writers. This overview of a literary phenomenon is as definitive as any aficionado could hope for.' Mark Edwards: Catch Your Death Catch Your Death started life as something very different to its final draft. My writing partner, Louise Voss, wanted to set a novel at the Common Cold Research Unit, a place near her hometown of Salisbury that for four decades had attracted volunteers who fancied a free holiday in the English countryside, doing their bit for Britain, the catch being that you were likely to be given a cold while you were there. I think Louise wanted to write a gentle love story about a summer romance in an unusual setting, but I immediately saw potential for a conspiracy thriller... Making Stuff Up With Stuart MacBride Most writers would agree that the best bit about writing is the hanging about in the bar at conventions. Second best is the bit where we get to make shit up for a living. Normally my books are set in Aberdeen, and as it's a real place with real streets and real businesses and real people there's a limit as to how much I can pull out of the fluff-infested tunnels of my imagination. I have to be at least reasonably true to the place. And I have to be careful what I say about certain institutions if I don't want to get ostracised or sued. Which is why I've gone "all made up, all of the time" for the new book, BIRTHDAYS FOR THE DEAD, setting it in the fictional town of Oldcastle – halfway between the shiny metropolises of Aberdeen and Dundee 12 Days Of Kindle: Crime, Thrillers & Mystery - The Winners & Losers 40 titles have so far made it to the 12 Days of Kindle: Crime, Thrillers & Mystery list and Harper Collins, Corvus (part of Atlantic) and Constable Robinson are the clear winners. A few more books are added daily throughout the 12 Days of Kindle but the battle of the 99p ebooks is shaping up into a 3 (or maybe 4) way battle Next 25 |
