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WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWSfeature:
The Blaggers Guide To George Pelecanos The man Obama likes to take on holiday feature:
Altar Of Bones: A Literary Sensation But Who Dunnit? The publication of a crime thriller whose plot rests on a global conspiracy is fast inspiring its own, real-life literary conspiracy news:
New George Pelecanos Novel Lands In US Top 50 Publisher Little, Brown's limited-time e-book promotion of George Pelecanos' new crime novel, What It Was, is paying off feature:
Why Are Most Crime Novels Bad? Because they are part of a series. And books in a series eventually run of steam. news:
Denmark's latest TV hit attracts audiences worldwide 'Nordic Noir' builds on Stieg Larsson success, with internationally-popular TV feature:
Thrillers Including Simon Khoury And Simon Kernick Jeremy Jehu gets all het up about the latest batch of thrillers InterviewsGenerating Suspense: Nancy Bilyeau On The Crown When I came up with the idea for my first novel, I began with the time period: the reign of Henry VIII. I've always been fascinated with the Tudor age. I enjoy reading historical mysteries and thrillers, and wanted to try to write one myself... 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? Tom Glenn talks with with Juris Jurjevics, the author of Red Flags, a masterly novel of soldiers and spies Håkan Nesser discusses what moves him to write, how he approaches the writing process and what inspires his work When author Walter Mosley announced the beloved Easy Rawlins detective series was likely at an end, he got an immediate and powerful reaction 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 Toby Clements talks to crime author Philip Kerr about his detective Bernie Gunther and the pull of Berlin Q&A: SJ Watson on Before I Go to Sleep The novelist explains how he was inspired by an amnesiac's experience, and the challenges of writing in the first person 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? The Boy In The Suitcase By Lene Kaaberbøl And Agnete Friis: Interview Stieg Larsson isn't the only Scandinavian thriller with a message as Danish authors of The Boy in the Suitcase discuss their novel, which tackles the dark world of human trafficking 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 Denise Mina's Glaswegian crime novels eschew "everything's awful" endings, portray sex workers as full human beings and even let us know at the start whodunnit 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 |
