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Saturday 31st July | |||||||||||
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Reviews and Articles listed A-Z by author >> ProfilesMarion Beaton started to write Regency romances. Encouraged by her husband, she wrote over 100 of these books under her maiden name of Marion Chesney. But Marion eventually found herself fed up with setting every story within the years of 1811 to 1820, so she began to write detective stories. On a holiday trip from the USA to Sutherland in the UK, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Hamish Macbeth. Marion returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where her husband, Harry, reared a flock of black sheep. When Charles finished school in London, he also moved to the Costwolds, where Marion created the Agatha Raisin series. In the 'Man out of prison' Noir Trilogy by Dave Zeltserman, the reader is presented with three dangerous men released from prison and the three distinct noir journeys which follow. Dave Zeltserman in Profile... 'It's not easy, cutting off a head.' The first line of 'The Rotting Spot', from the Skull Hunter's blog, came to me early on, and I, as a semi-lapsed skull collector myself, know it's true... Is writing the sixth book in a series easier than the first, the third, the fifth? Not for me. It's harder, much harder. Your professional bench mark is higher, readers' expectations raised. Writing a series is an on-going challenge and that's absolutely how it should be. There's a degree of comfort, of course, in knowing lead characters so well. But I see it like this: comfort can be a tad too close to complacent. And that's deadly to creativity. As is what I think of as, SWR. Not a killer virus or a dodgy dance step: series writers' rut On his way to dinner in a Palm Beach restaurant, the crime writer Donald Westlake dropped down dead. As abruptly as in one of the plot twists in his books, Westlake's death halted one of the most fertile careers in American literature. For over half a century Westlake had pumped out - under his own name and a wide variety of pseudonyms - over ninety books (no-one, including Westlake, seemed sure of the exact total): mysteries, comedy thrillers, spy stories, screenplays, science fiction, pornography, even a children's book... Speaking to Scott Turow is a salutary experience for the jaded crime fiction journo (who has perhaps spoken to too many none-too-bright American authors). It's a refreshing change to encounter a writer — doyen of the legal thriller alongside John Grisham — whose personal qualities are matched by a sharp intelligence What is it about snow that fascinates the British? As we struggle to deal with the worst snow for twenty years, for crime author Jim Kelly, whose latest novel published today DEATH WORE WHITE set on a snow-choked country lane, it's a particularly pertinent question. Michael Carlson on the Man Behind Sharky's Machine Biographer Julia Jones on Margery Allingham Brief profile and synopsis of the key works of Edgar Wallace Brief profile and synopsis of Cath Staincliffe's work, posted 2002 Profile of Anne Perry, posted 2001 An overview of Sallis' early work by Woody Haut Profile of Peter May, posted 2001 Profile of Natasha Cooper posted 2001 Profile of Ann Cleeves, with thanks to Naomi Berwin at Macmillan for the content Brief profile of James Hadley Chase and a synopsis of his work Profile of John Baker from 2002 Brief profile of Henry Cecil and a synopsis of his work Brief profile of Desmond Bagley and a synopsis of his work Profile of Steve Aylett from 2000 Profile of Lisa Appignanesi dating from 2001 |
