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Saturday 31st July | |||||||||||
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Reviews and Articles listed A-Z by author >> InterviewsThe Unreliable Narrator In Unreliable Times: Henry Sutton On Get Me Out Of Here There are literary monsters and literary monsters. Depends where you put the emphasis. How you pronounce monster – with an appalled grimace or a sly wink. A cheeky grin, even. Whichever, invariably they're one hell of a lot more fun than the good guys... Henry Sutton on his remarkable new novel A writer of true crime has to strike a balance between detailing the circumstances of the crime, but avoiding sensationalism. Many of the crimes in this book were, of themselves, quite sensationalist. For example, the murder committed by Michael George Tatum, left his victim battered beyond recognition. Some of the pictures preserved at the National Archives might well be deemed much too graphic to include in this volume, so had to be omitted... First Contact: Patrick Woodrow On Shifting Goalposts For Grisham, it's the law. For Dick Francis, horse-racing. I'm basing mine on the great outdoors. My second thriller (FIRST CONTACT) is set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. And we're off to the Himalayas in Book 3. Other settings in the series will hopefully include the desert, the arctic, and the high-seas... Two months ago I signed off page-proofs for Confession, the fifth book in the Jacquot series, and returned them to my editor at Preface. After a year spent writing and editing, holed up in a drafty garden shed in the Cotswolds, suddenly the book's done, dusted, out of my hands. And after the usual post-partum low – a couple of lost, aimless days during which I think of all the things I could have written, should have written, but didn't – suddenly I'm free to pack my bag and head south again to research Jacquot's next adventure. It's as good a way as any to get rid of the blues and start afresh... Perspectives On Agatha Christie: From Proverbs To Poisons When I started researching my book Agatha Christie at Home, published the year that Agatha Christie's house Greenway was opened to the public for the first time, I hadn't realised just how many other people had written about the less obvious aspects of her life and works. As I ferreted through libraries in search of material on Agatha's enthusiasm for acquiring and decorating houses (at one point she owned eight) and on her home county of Devon which provided inspiration and backdrops for several of her novels, I came across all sorts of angles to the work of the crime novelist – her use of proverbs, an analysis of her poisons, cover designs... Not So Elementary: Daniel Smith On The Sherlock Holmes Companion There can be few people alive today who do not have at least some awareness of Holmes. But how many of those know him through the original stories? How many more instead know only the legendary image of the deer-stalker and curved piped (neither of which, incidentally, came from Conan Doyle's pen)? Would they be surprised to learn that Holmes was a cocaine-taking, bi-polar, martial arts expert? Or that staid old Watson was a boozer and gambler with "experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents". The Gigolo, The Heiress And The Blackmail Plot The Gigolo, the Heiress and the Blackmail Plot: Richard Shears Gives Crime Time Short Essay on True Crime Style: 'When I was asked to write a book about a Swiss gigolo who plotted to seduce the richest woman in Germany - and the 26th wealthiest in the world - before attempting to blackmail her with sex videos of them together, I eagerly took up the challenge...' Lost World is a road trip, a heady journey through contemporary Brazil which is a country of contrasts; provincial, miserable, rich, fertile, warm and violent all at the same time. Maiquel, a professional killer being hunted by the police, decides to go after his daughter who has been kidnapped by his former lover... My Tough Readership: Arnaldur Indridason Talks To Crime Time The new Indridason, 'Hypothermia', is regarded by many as his best book; it won Iceland's top crime prize and a nomination for Scandinavia's prestigious Glass Key award in 2008. It is his 6th novel to be translated into English, and he is published in over 30 different languages. All of the novels are set in Reykjavik, and give an insight into the idiosyncratic minds of the Icelanders – Indridason believes that crime stories are excellent arenas for writing about the society you live in, and draws on the capital's more sinister characteristics – the merciless climate, its high suicide rate (one of the highest in the world) and increasing numbers of missing persons. Cemetary Lake: Paul Cleave On A Distinctive Crime Novel 'Christchurch is a great setting for crime – it has two sides to it, there's the picture perfect setting you see on postcards everywhere, but there's also a dark, Gotham City feel here which has, sadly, turned this city into the murder capital of New Zealand....' Thomas H Cook: My Characters Are Fighting Inevitability Thomas H Cook is the crime writer's crime writer, someone who in the course of 24 novels and a couple of true crime books has visited most of the staples of the genre, but whose reputation, and high-standing among fellow-writers and critics, has been built by a series of unclassifiable suspense novels... an interview with 'the last of mid-list writers' by Michael Carlson Blindman's Bluff: Faye Kellerman On Her New Novel It is always a tragedy when anyone dies untimely and expectedly. But when the ultra wealthy die under unusual circumstances, their untimely demises often do not evoke pathos. Rather, their deaths elicit shock – how could that happen to someone so rich - followed by much speculation and gossip. Thrown into the mix is always a little Shadenfroid, the little something in the back of one's mind that says that the rich had it coming Spider Trap: Barry Maitland Talks To Crime Time Each of the Brock and Kolla novels is set in a different part of London, and that's really how I begin to develop a story, by searching out a corner of the city that intrigues me, and where I can begin to build up a cast of characters and think about the kind of stories and crimes they might be caught up in. I think the setting is very important in crime fiction especially, for establishing atmosphere and developing a tight plot...
Crime Time talks to Mehmet Murat Somer about the 3rd Hop-Çiki-Yaya thriller The Gigolo Murder:'Over the course of the series I've tried to reverse traditional perceptions of negatives and positives. The criminals in my stories come from mainstream society, and you'll find that the transgender people who are often marginalised in everyday life are mostly positive characters...' Ev Seymour On The Mephisto Threat I didn't want a one-dimensional action man, damaged by his past, who nobody cared about. I wanted someone credible, who possessed emotional drive. In exploring the Tallis/Kennedy connection, a dangerously vulnerable side of Tallis's personality emerges yet critically, in the final reckoning, proves no obstacle... In 2006, I started to research the world of high-end private security. At the time, I was writing for television, and here was a world which I thought would be a great precinct for a returnable drama series. I did the usual research, started to write a pilot, and quickly realised that I didn't properly understand my characters. Rather than give up, I decided to find out who they were by enrolling on a 24-day residential close protection training course...
People don't tend to think of Stepney as being romantic in the way they do Oxford or Venice. But then there's more than one sort of 'romantic'. The East End of London is a place steeped in history. It has always been grimy, smelly and a melting pot of different cultures, always will be. There's little one could call baroque about Whitechapel, but the gothic style of romance and its post-modern offspring more than compensate... Outsider Who Broke The Rules: Colin Cotterill CWA Dagger Winner Colin Cotterill interviewed in The Times by Barry Forshaw: Getting in touch with Cotterill before his visit to these shores has been nigh impossible. "Life isn't simple in Thailand. We have a phone system connected by a satellite dish to some distant planet, and the inhabitants give us access only during their version of Ramadan... Blood Law: Steven Hague On Gang Culture 70 youngsters died at the hands of gangs in the UK in 2008, and the police have identified more than a 170 street gangs in London alone. These gangs control their turf through the use of violence as they look to maximise their profits from the growing trade in crack cocaine, while their members carry knives as fashion accessories and a prison term is seen as a badge of honour. Gang culture is a growing problem in our inner cities and it's spreading here from the United States The Reaper: Steven Dunne On Breaking The Mould As an avid thriller reader (since discovering Silence of the Lambs in the eighties), I began to be aware around ten years ago that I was finding fewer interesting books and I began to drift away from the genre. I enjoyed books about crime and serial killers and it was frustrating to be offered novels with big reputations which bored me.... Looking Behind The Mask: N J Cooper Perception is an extraordinary thing. All too often we see what we think we're going to see, then hear and taste and feel what our eyes have told us we're going to experience... the enigmatic NJ Cooper(author Of No Escape) talks to Crime Time The Incendiary's Trail James Mccreet Published in July, The Incendiary's Trail is the first in a gruesome new Victorian crime series by James McCreet; Crime Time talks to the author Glen Peters On Mrs D'silva's Detective Instincts And The Shaitan Of Calcutta The memory of discovering the body of a young woman by the riverside as a child came to me like a bolt out of nowhere. Did the girl die from natural causes, was it suicide, or were dark deeds afoot? A Deadly Trade: Michael Stanley On Crime Time In South Africa South Africa has had its fair share (perhaps more than its fair share) of well known and lauded authors – including Andre Brink, Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, JM Coetzee, Bryce Courtney, and Wilbur Smith. Inevitably much of their work has explored the societal distortion produced by apartheid and the way in which apartheid affected the people involved... Billington: Victorian Executioner Billington: Victorian Executioner by Alison Bruce (History Press)is a fascinating read for lovers of historcial crime. It includes an interview with Nigel Preston, James Billington's great-great-grandson. Previous 25 Next 25 |
