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WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWSfeature:
Thrillers Including Simon Khoury And Simon Kernick Jeremy Jehu gets all het up about the latest batch of thrillers news:
A Night Of Crime In Belgravia On Wednesday February 8th, come and hear three of the UK's finest crime writers discussing their work at Belgravia Books in the heart of London. review:
Bereft By Chris Womersley Just once in a while, a thriller comes along that is so good it takes your breath away news:
John Hawkes Takes The Lead In Jackie Brown Prequel The Switch Now, before anybody gets too excited it needs to be stated right up front that, no, Quentin Tarantino has no hand in this feature:
Mark Billingham And Paul Johnston In Conversation So what nudged you towards the genre? news:
Century Buys Chatterton Crime Debut Century has acquired two novels in a new procedural crime series by author Ed Chatterton, billing it as "gritty, dark, visceral and utterly gripping". William Landay On Defending Jacob DEFENDING JACOB takes up the question of the emerging science of "behavioral genetics", which suggests that physical factors — very specific genetic mutations or malfunctioning of the brain — may create a biological tendency toward violence. In the novel, the protagonist Andy Barber is haunted by the idea that he has passed a "murder gene" to his teenage son. Is it possible? Hi folks. I have two new books on Amazon Kindle: CAMDEN CALLING and MISSING IN ACTON. The first one is a sequel to 'Some Like it Cold' (also on Kindle) and the other one has a new character called Vincent Company Where no-one will hear you scream... My first thought exactly, once I'd left the main road past the small Carmarthenshire village of Rhandirmyn and in the overwhelming silence, trekked up towards the bleak landscape of what had to be a disused lead mine. Encircled by dark forestry and the constant airborne flow of rooks, my second thought was how long would it take me to escape? David Dickinson: Reviving Mycroft Holmes When Richard Foreman of Endeavour Press asked me to write a short story about the Adventures of Mycroft Holmes, I was reluctant at first. True, I had been writing detective stories set in roughly the same period about my own fictional investigator called Lord Francis Powerscourt. True, I had always been a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. But something I remembered about Mycroft in the stories made me feel he would be a difficult character to write about. Mycroft never goes anywhere, unless in very exceptional circumstances... Vengeance In Mind: Up To Date With NJ Cooper Vengeance in Mind successfully went into production just before Christmas, after an excellent edit by Simon & Schuster's Emma Lowth. The proposed jacket looks great. Publication is due in the summer of 2012, in time (I hope) for The Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, which is always a highlight of my year. The 2011 Harrogate festival, chaired by Dreda Say Mitchell, was a wow with more tickets sold than ever before. As a member of the committee, I'm always immensely cheered to see people coming back year after year, as well as meeting first-timers. In 2012, Mark Billingham will chair again, so I'm looking forward to fireworks (metaphorical) and great fun. Tom Harper Talks To Crime Time My latest novel, Secrets of the Dead, was published in September by Arrow. It's a multi-stranded thriller that slips between the career of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, and the criminal chaos of the modern Balkans. Crime Time's own Barry Forshaw picked it as one of his dozen best crime and thriller books of 2011 in The Independent. - In June, I attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace, in recognition for my work chairing the Crime Writers' Association. Being a thriller writer, I spent half the time stuffing my face with cake, and the other half storing up details in case I ever have to write a scene of someone breaking in. I still don't know if the guys in baseball caps on the roof were armed... The paperback of the latest Jim Stringer novel, The Somme Stations (winner of the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award), is published by Faber in February. Jim Stringer remains abroad – it has been remarked that he is turning into a sort of dour Tintin – for the next book in the series, The Baghdad Railway Club, which is published by Faber in June 2012. The story concerns the FIRST British invasion of Iraq (we called it Mesopotamia then), in 1917... Robert Ryan Talks To Crime Time The main event for me of 2011 was a move to a new publisher, Simon & Schuster. A Happy Christmas From Andrew Taylor A happy Christmas to all our readers! The best news is that I have just delivered my latest book, a dark and as-yet untitled crime novel set in eighteenth-century British New York during the American Revolution. HarperCollins will publish in the UK, probably in Spring 2013. In the meantime, I'm sorting out the ebook versions of some of my earliest books, the Blaines novels, which deal with a forgotten world of Cold War espionage and the private lives of spies... Per Wahloo's Murder On The Thirty-first Floor And The Steel Spring
contributor: Sarah Death Not So Impossible: Ian Rankin Talks To Jim Napier As part of a cross-country tour launching his latest book The Impossible Dead, Ian Rankin visited Quebec recently, and crime fiction reviewer Jim Napier caught up with him in Montreal. Over a pie and a pint they discussed Rankin's phenomenal career as the biggest-selling crime writer in Britain, the craft of writing, his latest work, and his views on the origins of crime. Where to start? I said. With all the honours and accolades — Five honorary degrees, published in thirty-five languages, I asked, do you ever get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say "Who is that guy?"
Most of us, I think, are familiar with a particular old myth about photography. Certain Primitive Tribes, it claims, in Certain Quaint-Yet-Backward Places, refuse to go before the lens for fear of the camera stealing their souls. It's a hokey and faintly condescending sort of mistake to assume of anyone (and a quick wallow in the ever-reliable mire of Google isn't rich in verifiable examples), but I confess it feels plausible. I wouldn't be the first to suggest, after all, that frequently-photographed individuals can indeed wind-up lacking in Personal Depth, with that dead-eyed expression of the terminally over-admired. (While we're about it, even the language of photography drips criminal aggression: one doesn't offer to "record a likeness" after all, but to "take a picture." Flashlight robbery?) Loving History: Linda Stratmann On The Poisonous Seed Re-creating the past in my first detective novel The Poisonous Seed has been both a challenge and a real pleasure. Writers of history have to be a little bit in love with a place and a time even if, for practical reasons (just think dentistry and go from there) they might prefer not to live there. I am fascinated by the Victorians and spend much of my time with them - learning about their daily lives, trying to understand how they thought, and getting the feel for their conversation... There is no great mystery in the difference between writing for TV and writing digital fiction. It's really the same process; it's the way it's read that's different. The 'viewer' sees the pictures on a TV screen in one; they see them in their head in the other. Digital is like all good fiction that is non-visual; the writing should be of a standard that makes the reader imagine what they are reading. The idea with Boxfiction was to take the best of a popular TV show and combine it with the best of the written word. The result of this was the eSeries – new, written episodes of TV. What you end up with is like a TV show without the visual images – the reader gets to enjoy what's familiar, but still needs to call on their imagination to bring it to life... Heroic Villains: Simon Kernick On The Payback A new novel by Simon Kernick is always an event; Crime Time persuaded him to talk about Payback... I was always going to bring Dennis Milne back for another book. He's a great character to write, but then heroic villains so often are (although I'll never be entirely sure why that is). The reason for his long hiatus between A GOOD DAY TO DIE and THE PAYBACK was because I couldn't come up with a plot idea that worked for him. The fact that I made him a fugitive from justice at the end of THE BUSINESS OF DYING, always limited my options for bringing him back... Claire McGowan: Keeping Crime Writers In Line Which is harder... being the Director of the Crime Writers' Association or penning a debut novel? Claire McGowan knows the answer to that... Icelight: Aly Monroe Talks To Crime Time Aly Monroe is the author of a series involving an Intelligence Agent called Peter Cotton. The background to the stories is Britain's Imperial decline post-war. She suspects she is making some of the points Jeremy Paxman is making in his latest book about the lasting effects of empire on Britain, but is doing so with more detail and within the context of thrillers. Here she talks about reality meeting, and possibly informing, fiction. She speaks to Crime Time about her latest book, Icelight Real life has always heavily influenced my writing. For me, stories come out of experience. For me, it's what makes them feel real... John Dean tells the story behind his new novel The Secrets Man, published by Hale The Deadly Touch Of The Tigress: Ian Hamilton I had a name: Ava Lee. I had one sentence: "They always seemed to call her at that time of night, either ignorant of the time difference or too desperate to care." I was in my second day of recuperation at home after a major bit of surgery when I sat down at the computer to write. In my first career I was a journalist, and even when I veered off into government and business I kept a hand in writing. I wrote, successfully, for several magazines, and produced a non-fiction work that was a Canadian Book of the Month Club main selection when it was published. But my attempts at writing a novel always fell short of my own expectations, and the resulting manuscripts were put into a drawer, seen by no one but me, and were certainly no loss to readers. This time was different though... Gregg Olsen: Writing Young Adult (for The First Time) I wrote a novel for Young Adult readers and in turn they gave me something that I haven't felt in a long time. I've been thinking about that a lot. Let's dissect it a little. There's something very freeing about writing for a teen or young adult audience. In a very real way, teens are unencumbered by the restrictions that we adopt over time. They still dream. They still hope. They haven't had the blood sucked out of their world the way many adults have (you can say you haven't and I hope that's true, but get real). Young adult readers embrace books as a conduit to their dreams. They look for the reasons in its pages why something could be so. Not the contrary...
contributor: Tom Harper The Things We Cherished Pam Jenoff Pam Jenoff writes: The inspiration for The Things We Cherished came from a unique timepiece, known as an anniversary clock, which my husband gave me for our first wedding anniversary. I was captivated by the question of where the hundred year-old clock had been and the lives it had touched. As I imagined its history a tale unfolded of a couple at the turn of the century in Bavaria yearning for a better life, two brothers in Weimar Berlin wrestling with issues of Zionism and assimilation, the desperate quest of a young girl trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and of course Roger's own story of love and sacrifice during the war. Taking Over The Reins: Felix Francis Talks To Crime Time The Dick Francis novels have been the family business ever since the first one, Dead Cert, hit the bookshelves back in January 1962. Not only my father but my mother too was involved, especially with the research. My brother assisted with Driving Force and my uncle, who was a wine importer, was a great help with Proof. Over the years, many friends and family have been used as sources of information. Gamble, out this week, is the forty-fifth 'Dick Francis', and I already have a contract for the next two. But why do I write Dick Francis novels? 88 Killer: Oliver Stark Talks To Crime Time 88 Killer is the story of a vicious and unrepentant killer who uses hatred to sustain his anger and focus his violence. NYPD Detective, Tom Harper and Police Psychologist, Dr Denise Levene are called upon to hunt this new killer and begin to find disturbing resonances within each of the murders. 88 Killer is about a haunting search for a missing teenager, a thrilling hunt for a ruthless killer, and a mystery about the killer's background and motivation. This mixture of missing person search, thriller, mystery and police procedural keeps the plot twisting and moving quickly and with, I hope, enough excitement to keep the reader turning the pages... Viva La Madness: J.J. Connolly Talks To Crime Time
contributor: Barry Forshaw 'I saw a lot of fiction portraying London criminals as thugs and not very bright. I had seen, and met, many guys who were involved in criminality who were far from stupid and to whom violence was very much a last resort. Their reasons for being in the crime business were not to enhance any make-believe reputation but to make a great deal of money: they were genuinely able to rise far and rapidly so. Prohibition – making drugs illegal – had paved the way... |
