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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 InterviewsReal 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... But They Seem Like Such Nice Kids
contributor: Sean Olin From Corpsing To Corpses: From Comedy To Crime
contributor: Nev Fountain If it seems odd for me to want to write grisly murders, then I can tell you I appreciate comedy and crime for exactly the same reasons. I love the fact that structure is king in both genres. Just as there is a 'three act tragedy' in crime, there is also a rule of three in joke-telling. Any gag that contains three individuals from various parts of the United Kingdom entering a pub is an excellent example of a thriller in microcosm - trust me! When I wrote Spartan I wanted to capture the essence of what it feels like to be an MI6 field operative – the loneliness, the requirement for rifle-shot decisions, the mistakes that can be made, the intensity and complexities of a mission, and the casualties that can occur in an operation. I have been there and know exactly what it feels like. My story has a constant microscopic focus on my protagonist, Will Cochrane. There are no "cut scenes" to others' points of view; nothing shared with the reader that excludes Will, meaning the reader and Will are taking the journey together and have exactly the same amount of information. You are not completely in his head – I wrote the story in the third rather than first person – but you are constantly by his side....
contributor: Julian Maynard-Smith "Hanging Hill is an actual place," explains Mo. "It has an important history in terms of the Civil War. Also, it seems to have attracted villains, such as the Brink's-MAT gold bullion robbers. There's something about the geography of that area... Mark Sanderson: The Whispering Gallery As The Whispering Gallery, Mark Sanderson's splendid follow-up to Snow Hill appears, he talks about his inspiration...
As the film of Drive is about to hit our cinema screens (and James Sallis likes the movie!), we ask one of Crime Time's favorite authors about his new novel, The Kiler is Dying... here's What I Did on My Summer Vacation by James Sallis, age 66 Martin Edwards: The Hanging Wood The Hanging Wood is the fifth in my series of Lake District Mysteries featuring Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett and the historian Daniel Kind. I was working on the plot synopsis when the fourth book in the series, The Serpent Pool, was due for publication, and it was around that time that I first visited St Deiniol's Residential Library, also known as Gladstone's Library... James Becker On The Nosferatu Scroll For some writers, inspiration strikes in the middle of the night, and can be an elusive and fading memory by morning if notes are not taken. For others, ideas strike as the subconscious mind mulls over plots and difficulties, producing answers to problems as the story unfolds. In my case, inspiration arrived in the form of an email from Selina Walker, my editor at Transworld, who'd just had a Great Idea... The Wreckage: Michael Robotham Talks To Crime Time THE WRECKAGE is a major departure for me. Instead of being tense psychological mystery, it's a big international conspiracy thriller set amid the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the Iraq War. The story is told through the eyes of several people – the first of them, Luca Terracini, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who is living 'outside the wire' in Baghdad, investigating a series of violent bank robberies... My second novel, Snapshot was published on June 9. A series of high-profile shootings by a lone sniper is terrorising Glasgow and police photographer Tony Winter finds himself, reluctantly, at the centre of it. Tony is a complex character with a tragic hidden past and an unhealthy obsession with the macabre subjects he photographs in the line of his work. As the body count of the city's notorious drug lords continues to rise, Tony investigates a link between the victims and a badly beaten schoolboy. Matt Rees On Mozart's Last Aria It might seem a long way from a machine-gun rattling in Ramallah to my new novel about the death of the great composer Mozart, but in my mind it's a straight line. I've been based in Jerusalem, mostly as a foreign correspondent, for 15 years. During the Palestinian intifada of the last decade, I soothed my traumatized mind with Mozart's compositions...
contributor: Barry Forshaw The Nightmare Thief And Designer Thrills
contributor: Meg Gardiner Talks to Crime Time Silas Quinn - A New Character For R.n. Morris. As well as my Porfiry Petrovich novels (the latest of which is out in May), I'm also developing some stories around a character called Silas Quinn. The first, called The Exsanguinist, was published in 2010 by the French publisher Editions Didier... R N Morris talks to Crime Time Wendy Robertson: An Englishwoman In France An Englishwoman in France is based on a connection through the centuries, of two crimes: the murder of a girl of twelve by two boys in a London suburb in 2008 and the judicial murder of a boy about the same age in 304 AD. The connection between these two murders is Stella – sometimes called Starr - whose happy-go-lucky attitude to her gift of seeing the dead screeches to a halt when her daughter Siri is savagely murdered and Stella cannot see her in this world or the next...
Write what you know. Immerse yourself in the genre you want to write in. That's always the first advice given to new authors. Girl 4 is my debut novel and the first in a series featuring Detective Inspector January David, a London detective specialising in violent crime, investigating an elusive serial killer who has already taken the lives of three women. I do not live in London. The last time I was in a police station was to earn £10 for taking part in a police line-up. And I've never really read any crime fiction. So what prompted an unpublished theatre graduate, working in computer software, to write a book in a genre he knew very little about? The Hollow Man: Oliver Harris Talks To Crime Time I wanted The Hollow Man to be a space where I could explore what really excited me about crime writing and police investigation. I was fascinated with the detective mindset: isolated from mainstream society, unable to swallow its moral platitudes, having to approach each situation clinically; breaking the world down to significant details. Yet I wanted clarity of sight that wasn't just bleak or cynical but slightly awe struck. It would be cold, certainly, and unflinching, but also obsessively, irresponsibly curious... |
