Three Englishmen Doing Rather Well Abroad

In these economically challenging times for publishing, we are very pleased to report that three top British crime / thriller writers are doing rather well overseas. It also comes as no surprise that these quintessential English gentleman have become Shots favourites, due to their generosity and supportive nature toward the crime / thriller genre so if you haven’t explored their work, you should do so poste-haste, and here’s why -

Andrew Taylor
I have been a huge follower of the work of Taylor's multi-award winning work for over a decade now. But it looks as if CWA Diamond Dagger winner Andrew Taylor will need to make more room on his display cabinet as his tremendous novel ‘Bleeding Heart Square’ has won Sweden's Martin Beck Award for best translated crime novel. The Swedish publisher is Forum, and the translator is Jan Malmsjö. ‘Bleeding Heart Square’ was also nominated for the Historical Dagger in the UK and Deadly Pleasures’ Barry Award in the US. I can’t recommend Taylor’s work highly enough; and Shots' passes congratulations for winning the highest award from Sweden for crime-fiction.

I learned today that the prolific Andrew Taylor has just finished a new novel, The Anatomy of Ghosts, which is set in 18th-century Cambridge. Penguin will publish in the UK in September 2010.

Peter James
It comes as no surprise that Peter James is one of Britain’s biggest crime writers, with his Roy Grace Police Procedural series. In Britain last week, James debuted with the Paperback release of Dead Tomorrow at #3 in the Sunday Times book charts. The popularity of Peter James’ work is not restricted to Britain as his agent Carole Blake reports that James is translated into well over 30 languages. Now we all know James has many strings to his bow, with his background in film production as well as working as an internet pioneer, so it comes as little surprise as to see him launching an iPhone App edition of Dead Tomorrow with special and exclusive content.

Meanwhile Dead Simple, the first of the Roy Grace series, is bundled in as a free ebook. The app will also have a coverflow feature allowing users to browse and buy the other titles in the Roy Grace series.

The Peter James app provides many extra features, including -

# A situation call from DS Roy Grace himself
# Peter James’s research notes and colour photographs
# An extensive author interview
# Previously unseen edited (by Maria Rejt) manuscript pages from Dead Tomorrow showing how the book has evolved from first draft

Coinciding with the paperback publication of Dead Tomorrow, advertising tagging the Peter James app is running on London buses, with posters across buses in the West End, the City and central London.

Produced in collaboration with Missing Ink Studios and Things Made Out of Other Things, the app will be updated with the new Peter James novel, Dead Like You, in 2010.

Charles Cumming
Charles Cumming is probably the tallest espionage writer working the field today, and he can literally hold his head high, following the US reception for his blistering novel Typhoon which the New York Times described as –

As a thriller, “Typhoon” is easy to like. The plot is tight and complex, and the local details are accurate about the three main cities where it is set: Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. The questions and tensions set up in the first 300 or so pages are resolved in a multifront action scene through the final 100 pages, as characters converge from around the country to create or thwart terrorist violence. I think of spy fiction set in Europe — by John le Carré, Alan Furst, Charles ­­McCarry — as being dark in ambiance and mood: twilight scenes, drizzle, disappointed chara­cters with their best years and opportunities behind them. Cumming’s tone is correspondingly bright, partly thanks to the pep of urban China, partly because the characters are young and on the make.

It therefoere comes as no surprise that Cumming’s Typhoon makes the New York Times 100 notable books of 2009 in their gift guide.

So congratulations Charlie – Typhoon is Tremendous! Even though you beat me at Chess

If your looking for Christmas Presents, then books from these three superlative writers would make anyone smile on Christmas morning.