SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL

Jim Kelly at Death's Door

2012-01-28T16:36:00.007Z

Today’s guest blogger is Jim Kelly. Jim is the author of the Philip Dryden series which is set in Ely in the Fens. His latest series features Detective Inspector Peter Shaw, is based on the North Norfolk coast and in the port of Lynn. In 2006 he won the CWA Dagger in the Library.

I rarely get the thrill of actually committing a crime. I’m reminded of an exception to this by an item of stolen goods, which sits on my desk. I thought I’d tell you all about this on the basis that I appear – according to legal advice - to be protected by the Statute of Limitations, and by the fact that the object itself is of a value which is unlikely to inspire the interest of barristers. So look upon this as a confession. This is just between you and me.

It’s a key and key fob. For those of you who like detail – and hey, we’re all crime geeks, so that’s all of us – the key was made by PAPAIZ of Brazil. (For those of you with busy lives, that’s a red herring) But it’s the fob that I was after. It is black Bakelite, that kind of brittle heavy plastic that is so resonant of the post-War era in which I grew up. (We had a Bakelite phone at home, which so rang so infrequently that we all jumped when it did. My mother would instantly cover her mouth with both hands on the basis that if it was ringing there must have been a death in the family). Anyway, the point is the black fob carries a single name in stencil: CHRISTIE.

The scene of my crime is Burgh Island off the south Devon coast. The time is 1997 – five years before the publication of my first novel, The Water Clock. I was forty years old and my wife had booked a room at the island’s art deco hotel. It’s a strange place – a tidal island, reached by a causeway at low water and for several hours on either side of low tide by a peculiar sea tractor – a kind of box-car on stilts, which drives out into the water. It’s all very exciting, so much so I had to repair to the Pilchard Inn – the island’s only other building – for several pints to get over the ordeal.

It was here, sitting outside watching the tide finally close off the island from the distant beach that we learnt that this was a very famous island if you are a student of crime writing. In 1939 Agatha Christie published And Then There Were None, a whodunnit not only conceived on the island but set on it – albeit half-heartedly disguised. (The original title was the reprehensible Ten Little Niggers) It sold for 7/6 and has – to date – shifted 100m copies, making it one of the best selling books of all time. The plot is one of adamantine beauty: eight people who have previously committed crimes for which they were not punished are summoned to the island. Their hosts, they are then told, are away, but they will be looked after by two servants. Each of the ten dies – in a fashion mirroring the original nursery rhyme now known as Ten Little Soldiers, until there are none left. The police arrive to find the ten bodies. Who dunnit – who could possibly have done it ? The last death – by the way – is clearly not suicide.

I was taken by this story. I loved the notion of the island as a ‘locked room’, and the notion of the ‘impossible crime’ – the two central pillars of what became known – perhaps unfortunately given the board-game rigidity of the premise – as the Golden Age of British crime fiction. But Christie could plot like no other. So imagine my delight on discovering that we had been allocated the Christie suite ! The very room in which she had devised her masterpiece. On leaving I contrived to discover the key fob in my luggage as the sea tractor groaned its way through the water towards the mainland. I seem to recall my wife making me promise to return it by post. Whoops.

CUT to the early winter of 2009. Fearlessly I have decided to do some research so that I can write a new Shaw and Valentine mystery based on an island. Norfolk is not a very helpful county in this regard – there are only a few sandy islets on its endlessly smooth, littoral coast. I have a ruck-sack, a map, and am wearing a wet suit. (A half one – for summer – but I still look like a tadpole.) The beach is at Wells, a mile from the town, a glorious sweep of sand and dunes looked over by the most complete terrace of beach huts in Britain. Across the sands wanders the channel which links the North Sea to Wells harbour. It is deep and treacherous. On the far side of this channel – so dangerous that in summer a wartime siren wails an hour before the tide turns – lies my destination – the islet of East Hills, a thin spine of sand, topped with pines, surrounded by reed marsh.

The only problem is I have to walk there, a prospect not lightened by the knowledge that I am a very poor swimmer. Even at low tide this involves wading through several feet of fast-running current across a fifty yard channel to ribbed sea-sand, then picking a way to the island itself, about a mile distant. I have used tide tables to compute the exact moment when it is best to cross. I pick my spot and begin to wade out, the water quickly rising to my chest, so that I have to hold the rucksack over my head. The water is icy. I have an audience of bemused walkers, and up in the dunes, I sense the eyes of the coastguards in their hut, and the crew of the full-time lifeboat in their second-floor rest-room – which boasts a picture window giving a perfect view of my impending death. Because I’m more scared of looking like a coward than death itself I wade on. I’m now in big trouble. My bones ache with cold, the water is so deep I am now bouyant and my toes are clinging to the sand, and the rucksack is soaking wet. I drift off for a few seconds (seawards – because the wind and tides are still pushing water out of Wells harbour) By pure chance I am deposited on a thin sand bar. My feet grip the sand in a prehensile miracle and I waver there, a inch from being taken out into the North Sea. My heart crashing around in my rib-cage like a fairground dodgem I begin to edge back to dry land.

Defeated, I still don’t want to give up. I yearn to sit on East Hills and think through the plot of the new book I’m planning. So I take advice: wandering up to the Coastguard Hut I ask them if it is safe to cross the channel. (This is typical isn’t it? As if being told by someone in authority it is the right time will in some way make me three foot taller.) They consult various tables and tell me it is the right moment – and exactly where I have just failed to cross. (Let this be a lesson to us all. Never trust someone who has to consult a table). I then go to the lifeboat house. I’m invited up to the restroom with its view north towards the unseen pole. The sea looks Arctic blue from here, and I guess they think I’m an idiot. I ask them the same question. Two crewmen think about an answer. They don’t consult a table, they walk to the window and look at the sea. Give it an hour is their advice. The wind is from the north and it’s bottled up the tide in the vast expanse of Wells harbour, so the water is running out late. And if I want to wade then do it right in front of the lifeboat house – not up the channel where I tried.

An hour later I’m sitting on East Hills. The trip was hair-raising and I’m really not looking forward to going back, but at least I’m here. It’s spooky. In the lee of the island – the seaward side – there’s a kind of petrified forest, and an old pillbox, and evidence of camp fires but no sight of anyone. There’s a solitary trainer hanging from its laces in a stone pine. I find myself looking behind me along the sandy paths as I explore. I sit down with flask, sandwiches, and binoculars and think about my plot: will it work?

The premise is simple – if not as rigid or puzzle-like as Christie’s. A summer boat trip takes 76 people out to East Hills in 1994: tickets are sold, so we know the numbers. The boat returns six hours later to pick up the trippers. As it approaches the floating dock there is a scream – a woman, wading out to swim, encounters the body of a young man, shrouded in a cloud of blood. He dies on the sand from a knife wound. The police evacuate the remaining 75 people from the island. The crime is unsolved. A blood soaked towel is recovered from the island – discovered in the pine woods behind the beach. Forensic analysis confirms two blood types – one of which is the victim’s. But it is not possible to extract a DNA sample given the rudimentary state of the science at that time.

CUT forward to now. West Norfolk police have decided to spend a Home Office grant on re-opening the case. A DNA trace is extracted from the towel which does not match the victim and is from a man. Thirty of the 66 people evacuated from East Hills are still alive and are men. They have been summoned to King’s Lynn police headquarters for a DNA test. Five of the eight who have died are male, and the recovered DNA – Sample X – will be compared to familial samples from their relatives. Given that 76 went out, and 75 came back – plus the body of the victim – the DNA sweep will give them the identity of the killer.

Except that now I sit here on the sand it is clear it might not. The killer could have waded over, or swum, and then got away. So I walk to the northern point of East Hills and look out to sea. I need to create my own island – just like East Hills but a few miles off the coast, isolated by a lethal rip-tide, and inaccessible. It’s a fateful decision because it marks the real beginning of the story of Death’s Door – the moment when I left reality behind and started to build the fiction. I’ve just paused for a moment in writing this BLOG to go downstairs and answer the front door. It’s the postman with a box of copies of the new book – the first time I’ve seen or held it. It’s handsome. I put one copy up on the shelf, and put my CHRISTIE key fob on top.

2012 Dilys Award nominations

2012-01-27T20:59:00.004Z

The 2012 Dilys Award nominees have been announced by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The Dilys Award has been given annually since 1992 by IMBA to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling. The Dilys Award is named in honor of Dilys Winn, the founder of the first specialty bookseller of mystery books in the United States.

The nominees are:-

Faithful Place by Tana French (Penguin)

Wicked Autumn by G M Malliet (Minotaur)

Tag Man by Archer Mayor (Minotaur)

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Ghost Hero by S J Rozan (Minotaur)

Louise Penny won the Dilys Award in 2011 with her novel Bury your Dead and again in 2007 for her novel Still Life. Both Louise Penny and S J Rozan were nominated in 2010 for their novels The Brutal Telling and Shanghai Moon respectively.

The winner will be announced March 31 at Mining for Murder, the 2012 Left Coast Crime Convention in Sacramento.

Congratulations to all the nominated authors!

News from Pan Macmillan and Orion

2012-01-27T05:52:00.009Z

Pan Macmillan Publishing Director, Wayne Brookes has acquired two brand new psychological thrillers by Hilary Bonner from Tony Peake.

Brookes secured world rights for The Cruellest Game and one as yet untitled novel. The Cruellest Game is scheduled for publication in 2013.

Hilary Bonner says,

“I am absolutely thrilled to have joined Pan Macmillan and been given this wonderful opportunity to write stand-alone psychological thrillers. This without doubt marks a return to my roots and what I feel I do best. It also gives me the chance to work with Wayne Brookes, whom I have known and admired for many years. And I am pleased to be able to report that the first book, The Cruellest Game, is already well under way. It traces the calamitous sequence of events which befall an apparently near perfect family following unexpected revelations of lies and duplicity.”

Wayne Brookes comments,

“When I heard that Hilary wanted to write another thriller, I couldn’t have been happier. She’s the queen of the twist in the tale and The Cruellest Game is a fabulous example of expert plotting. Hilary is a wonderful storyteller and is the perfect fit for Pan Mac.”

Tony Peake says,

‘'In these uncertain times, it's doubly rewarding and hugely exciting for an agent to see an editor and a writer click like Hilary and Wayne have done. Their shared vision and enthusiasm will, I am sure, bring forth spectacular results.”

Hilary Bonner is the former Show Business Editor of the Daily Mirror and the Mail on Sunday. A former Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, she is the author of nine novels and five works of non-fiction and now lives in the West Country, where she was born and raised.

For more information, please contact Liz Sich at Colman Getty on 020 7631 2666; liz@colmangetty.co.uk

According to Katie Allen at the Bookseller, Orion is to publish a new novel by George Pelecanos, a writer on TV show "The Wire", as a late addition to its spring schedules.

What It Was, a noir thriller set in 1970s Washington DC, will be published as a £25 signed and numbered hardback collectors edition and a £9.99 trade paperback on 9th February. Orion will also simultaneously publish the title as a £5.99 e-book [pictured] price-promoting it for 99p for the first month.

Editor Bill Massey bought UK and Commonwealth rights in the title in October 2011 directly from Little, Brown US. He said: "George delivered this novel unexpectedly, so we’re really publishing it as a one-off, as a treat for his fans, with spectacular-looking print editions alongside a low-priced e-book to attract new readers.

"This may be a publishing first, because even the e-book looks cool." The novel follows private investigator Derek Strange who becomes embroiled in the chase of ruthless killer "Red Fury". The publisher saying: "this is Pelecanos writing in the hard-boiled noir style that won him his earliest fans". Pelecanos was an Emmy-nominated writer on the hit crime series "The Wire" and is a writer on US drama "Treme".

Ethan Cross talks about his love of stories

2012-01-26T02:55:00.007Z

Today's guest blogger is Ethan Cross whose debut novel The Shepherd is published today. Ethan talks about his love of writing stories, his book The Shepherd and getting published.

Telling stories on a grand scale has been my dream for as long as I can remember. When a fireman or a policeman would come visit my school, most of my classmates’ heads would swim with aspirations of growing up and catching bad guys or saving someone from a blazing inferno. When these moments came for me, however, my dreams weren’t to someday be a cop or put out fires; I just wanted to make a movie or write a book about it. And my dream has come to fruition with the release of my first novel, The Shepherd.

But to what can I attribute my undying love of stories?

It started as early as I can remember. I wasn’t an only child, but since my three sisters are so much older than I am, it felt that way growing up. I’ve always been an introvert and my favorite pastime as a young boy was playing pretend with my action figures and my imaginary friends (as my parents called them). But I’m not sure if they were truly the imaginary friends that we traditionally think of. I say this because they were more like characters in my own little movies. At the time, it was a boy playing with his imaginary friends, but I still do basically the same thing as an adult, only my imaginary friends find life on the pages of my books.

I’ve also been an enormous fan of movies since I was very young. How many ten-year-olds do you know that had a calendar hanging on their wall marking the release dates of every major Hollywood production? I would convince my parents to take me to sometimes two or three movies in a single weekend. We would often hit the 4:30 matinee at the theater, walk out, and drive straight over to get a good spot at the drive-in or turn around and walk back into a 7:00 o’clock showing at the same theater. In high school, I would rent a couple of movies every night from our local video store, although I did still find time to date, sing and play guitar in a rock band, play sports, and serve as our senior class president and valedictorian.

Not much has changed since then; my wife and I still take in a movie every weekend. Shortly after college, I also discovered a great love for reading, sometimes consuming three to four books a week. For me, movies and books have always been and always will be magical experiences.

Today’s guest blog is by Ethan Cross whose debut novel The Shepherd has just been released in the UK today. Ethan talks about why he has always wanted to write stories, his road to writing The Shepherd and getting it published.

Telling stories on a grand scale has been my dream for as long as I can remember. When a fireman or a policeman would come visit my school, most of my classmates’ heads would swim with aspirations of growing up and catching bad guys or saving someone from a blazing inferno. When these moments came for me, however, my dreams weren’t to someday be a cop or put out fires; I just wanted to make a movie or write a book about it. And my dream has come to fruition with the release of my first novel, The Shepherd.

But to what can I attribute my undying love of stories?

It started as early as I can remember. I wasn’t an only child, but since my three sisters are so much older than I am, it felt that way growing up. I’ve always been an introvert and my favorite pastime as a young boy was playing pretend with my action figures and my imaginary friends (as my parents called them). But I’m not sure if they were truly the imaginary friends that we traditionally think of. I say this because they were more like characters in my own little movies. At the time, it was a boy playing with his imaginary friends, but I still do basically the same thing as an adult, only my imaginary friends find life on the pages of my books.

I’ve also been an enormous fan of movies since I was very young. How many ten-year-olds do you know that had a calendar hanging on their wall marking the release dates of every major Hollywood production? I would convince my parents to take me to sometimes two or three movies in a single weekend. We would often hit the 4:30 matinee at the theater, walk out, and drive straight over to get a good spot at the drive-in or turn around and walk back into a 7:00 o’clock showing at the same theater. In high school, I would rent a couple of movies every night from our local video store, although I did still find time to date, sing and play guitar in a rock band, play sports, and serve as our senior class president and valedictorian.

Not much has changed since then; my wife and I still take in a movie every weekend. Shortly after college, I also discovered a great love for reading, sometimes consuming three to four books a week. For me, movies and books have always been and always will be magical experiences.

The original idea for The Shepherd started out years ago as a short 40-page story written for a college English class. I was watching a movie called Frailty (great movie, by the way), and it got me interested in the idea of turning the tables on who we saw as the villain and the "good guy". The short story asked the question, "Do the ends justify the means?" and dealt with the abuse of power. The serial killer in the short story (the character that later evolved into Ackerman) was actually not a character at all, since the story centered upon the finding of the killer's dead body. I originally intended to use the short story as a starting point for the novel, but the book took me in such different directions that there is basically nothing recognizable left from the short story. The class was a senior level English course, and I handed in the story on one of the last days before graduation. On the following day, the teacher asked me to stay after class and urged me not to stop writing. Her words meant a lot and really stuck with me.

But when I laid out the roadmap for the book version of The Shepherd, I didn’t just want to write a standard serial killer or murder mystery novel. I wanted to do something a little different. Without quoting another blurb or running through the standard book description, I would say that my goal with The Shepherd was to write a book that I would want to read. And I love books that are fast-paced with a lot of action. I tried to take the serial killer genre but put a slightly different spin on it (and the book also revolves around a larger conspiracy in which the killer plays a part). There are a lot of books out there that feature the hunt for serial killers; after all, these men are like aliens among us. They think and act in ways that most of us cannot begin to comprehend, which in turn makes them fascinating. But while most novels of this type take the police procedural approach and the following of clues to find the killer (and my book does have some of this), The Shepherd is designed to get the reader into the killer’s head and make them wonder how the other characters are going to escape. In other words, it’s not a “follow the clues to unmask the killer” type of book. It’s more a “oh my God, he’s in the next room…and he’s got a shotgun” type of book.

As I said, I’ve always had a deep love of stories and knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I had written a partially-finished screenplay in High School, and at one time in my life, I had considered moving to California and attempting to break into the film industry. But I knew that was an uphill battle, and much of my time was being consumed by another dream: music. While reaching for that dream, I was able to play all over the Midwest, record a few CDs, and open for national recording artists as a lead singer and guitar player. But I never gave up on my dream of telling stories, and I continued to develop the ideas in my head.

Up to this point, I had never been a truly big book reader, but then a friend introduced me to a series of Star Wars books that picks up where the original movies left off. I had always been a Star Wars fan, so I decided to give the books a shot. I loved them, but I also discovered a love for books. It wasn’t long before I was reading everything from suspense thrillers to action and adventure. I had always considered writing a novel, but it was at this point that I knew that was what I wanted to do. So I began development on The Shepherd, and after more work than I could’ve possibly imagined, I finished a first draft. However, the book was far from finished.

After doing a lot of research and knowing that I couldn’t get my book published without an agent, I decided to attend a writer’s conference in New York City called Thrillerfest. It included a period of time where you were able to pitch your novel to a group of agents, but you only had three minutes with each. I did well during my pitches and generated interest from all but a couple of the agents with whom I spoke. However, during Thrillerfest, I also attended three days of classes taught by some of biggest authors in the world. It was at this point that I realized my book wasn’t ready for primetime, and I still had a lot of work ahead of me. I also made a lot of new friends and contacts within the publishing industry, and one of them referred me onto a man named Lou Aronica.

The funny thing is that Lou had been the head of several of the big publishing houses, and while heading Bantam Spectra, he was the guy that came up with the idea of having Star Wars books (the same books that got me into reading). It all felt very serendipitous, so I began working with Lou to take my work to the next level. But Lou wasn’t finished with me yet. He also loved my book so much that he referred me onto my agent, Danny Baror—a man who represents some of the biggest authors in the world. Then, a few months later, Lou contacted me about a new undertaking. He had decided to start a new publishing imprint that was going to be invitation only. He asked if I would want to be one of the first authors to be published under this new imprint. I was, of course, excited to continue working with Lou and accepted.

Since then, the book has become an international bestseller described as “Silence of the Lambs meets the Bourne Identity” and “A fast paced, all-too-real thriller with a villain right out of James Patterson and Criminal Minds.” I’ve also signed on with Random House in the UK and have deals in other countries as well including Germany, Italy, Russia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

HARLAN COBEN'S STAY CLOSE TO BE FILMED

2012-01-25T19:37:00.000Z

News via Deadline.com reaches us that Lawrence Kasdan and bestselling author Harlan Coben are to team up on a feature adaptation of Stay Close, Coben’s latest thriller novel which Dutton will publish March 20. Lawrence Kasdan will direct the film. In Stay Close, a past crime returns to devastate the lives of a photojournalist, a suburban mother with a hidden past, and a homicide detective obsessed with a series of unsolved disappearances. The Hitchcockian thriller plunges all three into a dark world of sex, secrets and shocking violence.

The "team" expect to have a script ready by the time the book is published. So far, the only movie adaption of Coben’s work was 2006’s Tell No One, and that was a French film directed by Guillaume Canet. It wasn’t until after that film’s success that Warner Bros acquired remake rights, with Ben Affleck attached to direct, Chris Terrio writing and Kennedy/Marshall producing. All Coben’s books have been optioned repeatedly, only to languish in development hell.

“Everybody told me I was crazy to make that deal with Guillaume, but in hindsight I was enormously lucky,” Coben says. “That book was optioned first by Mike Ovitz’s AMG, which maybe was a kiss of death, and then Sony tried before the rights came back to me and this crazy young French guy came along with great ideas and a plan to set the film in France. Every one of my books has either been optioned or is under option, and it seems to me that this situation with Larry isn’t much different than an option deal where a producer gets somebody to acquire, then has a script written and then something goes wrong.”

Kasdan told Mike Fleming of Deadline.com that after he made Darling Companion, which was stylistically reminiscent of his film The Big Chill, he wanted a potboiler reminiscent of his earlier film Body Heat. “Harlan and I met at a conference organized by Jeff Bezos, and we just hit it off,” Kasdan said. “I’d read a couple of his books, and after asking him why they hadn’t been made into his movies, he told me his tale of woe, of having everything optioned and developed to death. We agreed to look through his stuff, and he said, I just finished a book today, do you want to read it? I think it’s the most adaptable of his books, with a tight plot and strong characters. We’ll have the script ready by March, and at that point we’ll see who salutes. When you boil Harlan’s fiction to its core, it’s intensity, momentum and tension and this will be a medium budget sexy and violent film.”

Published in the US March 20th 2012
UK March 29th 2012

#BROTH with Blasted Heath

2012-01-25T00:01:00.006Z

Over on Blasted Heath, they are about to launch a feature called #broth (Book Recommendations On The Heath). Every day, they intend to feature an ebook that #Heathens they know, respect and trust are being invited to recommend one great ebook to others everyday.

This excellent feature will be going live shortly so make sure to have a look at the Blasted Heath's website for a wide range of recommended ebooks that are bound to increase you taste in crime fiction.

Crime Fiction News

2012-01-24T17:15:00.009Z

City University London are establishing a dedicated MA course in Crime Writing. City University London's Creative Writing MA programmes are already unique - because they demand that students complete a full-length novel in order to graduate... So crime thriller students will be taken through the whole process, from start to finished manuscript and then maybe publication. They have a good track record with their existing Novel Writing MA. Further information about the course can be found on the website.

They regularly invite leading novelists to visit the University for informal Q&A sessions. In the last few years, this has included Lionel Shriver, Doris Lessing, Mohsin Hamid, Hilary Mantel, and Jonathan Coe; and in Crime Writing: Val McDermid, Sophie Hannah, Frances Fyfield and Jake Arnott. The course is due to start on 24 September 2012. The duration is two years part-time. (One year full-time for international students.)

Alison Hennessey, in her first signing as Senior Crime Editor at Harvill Secker, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) for two books in the critically acclaimed, award-winning Intercrime series by Swedish crime writer Arne Dahl, in a deal with Tor Jonasson at the Salomonsson agency. The first book in the series, which follows an elite team of detectives assembled to investigate international violent crime, The Blinded Man, will be published in Vintage paperback in July 2012 and Harvill Secker will publish Bad Blood, which revolves around an American serial killer on the loose in Sweden, in summer 2013.
Alison Hennessey at Harvill Secker says: 'I am delighted to be bringing Arne Dahl's critically acclaimed Intercrime series to Harvill Secker as my first acquisition; with clever plotting and brilliant characterisation that will appeal to readers of Henning Mankell and fans of The Wire alike, it makes a really exciting addition to the Harvill Secker crime list.'
For further information, please contact: Bethan Jones, Head of Crime Fiction, Vintage Publishing Publicity. bjones@randomhouse.co.uk, 020 7840 8543

The North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers is pleased to announce nominees for their annual Hammett Prize for a work of literary excellence in the field of crime writing by a US or Canadian author. The nominees are as follows:

Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart/Canada; Knopf/US)

The Informant by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/An Otto Penzler Book)

The Killer is Dying by James Sallis (Walker & Company)

The organization will name the Hammett Prize winner, during the Bloody Words Conference, in Toronto, June 1-3, 2012. The winner will receive a bronze trophy, designed by sculptor Peter Boiger.

The South African newspaper The Daily Maverick have an interesting feature on South African crime thrillers and the “genre snob” debate. Referencing Roger Smith who is riding high with his novel Dust Devils the author of the article Leon De Kock raises the query as to why those appointed to adjudge each year’s best published work for the country's major prizes do not seem to want to acknowledge the existence of crime novels and their popularity. He also claims tnat Reading Roger Smith raises difficult questions for example how much of it is “genre” and how much is socio-politically isomorphic? The full article can be read here.

Crime fiction review round up’s can be found here from the Telegraph. Jake Kerridge also reviews seperately Gerald O’Donovan’s new book Dublin Dead which is the sequel to his debut novel Priest. Laura Wilson’s recent crime round up in the Guardian is here. One of the books reviewed is The Lewis Man by Peter May. Peter kindly wrote a blog post about his return to Stornoway during his book launch and it can be read here.

So CBS are apparently making their own version of an updated Sherlock! They may of course in my opinion want to reconsider this. I mean what was wrong with the BBC version that has been shown on PBS America? I am not sure, but the BBC do not appear to be pleased about this. Adam Sherwin in the Independent writes about the possibility of this happening. The BBC article can be found here.

Of late there has also been another mystery surrounding Arthur Conan Doyle and his story The Hound of the Baskervilles. Who and what inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles? According to a feature on the BBC website, the owner of a hotel in Clyro, near Hay-on-Wye, Powys, claims his 19th Century property was the inspiration for Scottish author Conan Doyle's fictional Baskerville Hall.

With the 84th Annual Oscar nominations released today, it is pleasing to see Gary Oldman nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The film has also been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. Rooney Mara for Best Actress in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has also been nominated for Best Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Best Film Editing. The film Drive has also been nominated for Best Sound Editing.

Last year Simon Spurrier’s excellent book A Serpent Uncoiled was published by Headline. It was a brilliant book. I did in fact review it for Shots and my review can be found here. We also managed to persuade Simon to tell us a bit about himself which resulted in his feature for Shots Would I lie To You? Now the paperback issue of A Serpent Uncoiled has been published and Simon has done a mini trailer to go with it and here it is. Have fun watching it! I certainly did.

The Lewis Man returns to Stornoway

2012-01-23T11:03:00.009Z

Bestselling author Peter May was in London earlier this month for the publication launch of the second book in his Lewis Trilogy “The Lewis Man”. The write up for that event can be found on the Shotsblog. As most readers will be aware, The Lewis Trilogy is set in Stornoway. With very little persuasion and with extremely grateful thanks Peter agreed to do a guest blog for us about his return to Stornoway for the launch of The Lewis Man.

Just ten days ago I landed, in the aftermath of a storm, on the Isle of Lewis, the setting for my Lewis Trilogy of crime novels, to launch the second book in the series, “The Lewis Man”.

It was more than two decades since I had first set foot on this remote island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Then I had gone to assess the potential for making a TV drama serial in the Gaelic language and filming it all on the island.

It had been a shock to the system. A bleak, treeless landscape, ravaged by gale force winds that arrived uninterrupted across 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean. A place where people heated their homes by burning peat turfs dug from the bog. Where the Sabbath was inviolate. Everything closed - shops, restaurants, filling stations. No ferries, no planes, no Sunday papers. Children’s swings chained up. Public toilets locked.

Houses stood huddled together against the elements, villages strung along cliffs of black, obdurate gneiss rising sheer out of an angry sea. A sky as big as you will ever see, that changed every few minutes. From rain to sun, from sleet to rainbows, from the obscurity of low, impenetrable cloud, to stunning vistas opening out towards the mountains of the south.

I spent most of the next five years living on the island, filming in all weathers, producing a subtitled TV drama called “Machair”. It became the surprise hit of the nineties in Scotland. Shooting into the top ten, it grabbed a 33 percent audience share, when soaps like “Brookside” could only manage 16. A vibrant cast of talented young Gaelic speakers became household names.

But I was restless and wanted to pursue my first love - writing books. And so I quit the world of television in ’96 and embarked on the writing of my China Thrillers series. I could never have foreseen then that ten years later I would be back on the island researching the first book in what would become my Lewis Trilogy.

“The Blackhouse” was a departure for me from the world of thriller writing, a venture into what the French would call the roman noir - literally, the black novel. While the basis of the story was predicated upon a crime, the book itself owed more to the tradition of the novel. Which is why, perhaps, it was initially rejected by every crime editor in the UK.

It took my French publisher to spot its potential, and it was first published there in translation before being bought up around Europe - and finally by British publisher, Quercus. The rest is history. The book became a huge success in 2011, picked by Richard & Judy for their autumn selection, climbing into the top ten and selling more than 130,000 copies.

Persuaded to turn it into a trilogy, the second book in this mini-series, “The Lewis Man”, finally hit the UK bookshelves this month. Yes, I had returned to the island to research it, and yes, I had gone back again last year to research the third and final book. But what I didn’t know was how they would be received by the people of the island themselves.

I’d had an inkling from the emails and tweets and Facebook posts about “The Blackhouse” which had been sent to me by island residents and exiles alike. Despite my status as an “outsider”, islanders seemed to be embracing the book as an accurate reflection of their culture and way of life. In a strange way, it was almost a validation of their place in the dominant English-language culture of the British Isles. It is only too easy to feel marginalised when you live on the fringes of society, and in this case the furthest north and west you can go in Europe. Suddenly the Isle of Lewis was on the map, and the rest of the country was sitting up and taking notice.

When I received an email from the leader of the guga hunters - the group of men whose annual pilgrimage to a storm-lashed rock in the Atlantic to slaughter 2000 young ganners had provided the basis for the story of the book - I was almost afraid to open it. After all, I had penetrated the inner circle of this 400 year-old tradition, and exposed it to the world in a bloody and dramatic fiction. To my great relief, he told me that the book had been read by all the hunters - and they loved it.

But I had still to face the islanders myself. And so when a mini-tour of the UK was being planned to launch “The Lewis Man”, I suggested that we do an event in Stornoway, which is the only major town on the Isle of Lewis, and home to the Hebridean fishing fleet.

And so this month I found myself returning once more to the island, almost twenty-one years to the day that I had first sailed to it on a ferry from the Isle of Skye. This time I flew in with Quercus Key Account Director, Ron Beard, on a flight from Edinburgh.

We were both concerned. Flights to Lewis at any time of year can be subject to strong winds, but mid-January is never an ideal time to make the trip - and storm force winds were being forecast. In the event, it wasn’t too bad. Wind shear rocked the small aircraft as we flew in during the darkest hour just before dawn, but we landed safely and made the thirty-meter dash from the plane to the tiny terminal building with the wind and rain stinging our faces.

Safely inside we were met by the representative of an island car hire firm who was waiting for us with our rental car. The event wasn’t until 7.30 in the evening, and we had a whole day to kill. So since this was Ron’s first trip to the island, I took him on a drive across the desolate wilderness that is the Barvas moor to where the Atlantic was venting its fury all along the west coast.

We stopped at an old disused church, which had been bought and converted to a home by my old designer from “Machair”, David Wilson*. The island had got into his blood to the extent that he had decided to set up home there in his retirement. David, who now spends his time taking the most wonderful photographs of the Hebrides, had applied his artistic talent to the conversion of the building, creating a huge and spectacular room up amongst the rafters where once the voices of the faithful had been raised in Gaelic psalm-singing.

We drank coffee and talked about old times, and browsed through some of his spectacular photographs, before braving the elements once more and heading north.

Sunshine and sleet took turns to sweep across the peat bogs as we arrived, finally, at the most northerly harbour on the island, Port of Ness. It was there, in an old boatshed, that the murder victim in “The Blackhouse” was found. We followed the cliff road that winds up above the beach there, through the community that forms the basis of the book’s fictitious village of Crobost, to the tiny harbour at Skigersta, and the derelict house, which I had used as the model for the home where the book’s hero, Fin, had grown up following the death of his parents.

Sunlight washed across the landscape then, almost as if to say to Ron “see, I can smile too.”

We headed back to Stornoway. The wonderful seafood brought in to its harbour by the fishing fleet is processed there and sent off to markets around the world, leaving almost none of it for the locals. So we ate in an Indian restaurant! What could be more Hebridean than onion bhaji and chicken tikka? And there wasn’t a prawn in sight.

After lunch, we visited the only bookstore in town, the Baltic Book Shop. They had a huge display of “The Lewis Man” strategically placed just inside the door, and the owner told us that “The Blackhouse” was the best selling fiction on the island. She anticipated that “The Lewis Man” would follow in its footsteps. I signed all their stock, and we headed off for an interview with Iain X Maciver for the local radio station, Isles FM. That was followed by a telephone interview with the Sunday Post, a popular Scottish Sunday tabloid, and then we set off to visit the venue for that evening’s event.

The Woodlands Centre is a beautiful new building of wood and glass set amongst the trees in the grounds of Lews Castle, a mock-Tudor edifice built in the nineteenth century by the island’s then owner, Sir James Matheson. The castle looks out over the town and the inner harbour, and the hill that it sits upon provides shelter for the only mature trees on the island. The Woodlands Centre is a café/restaurant/art gallery run by a delightful lady, Maggie Mackenzie, who used to be one of the stars of my Gaelic drama serial. She discussed how the venue would be laid out for the event, and how she had arranged the installation of a public address system so that everyone could hear me. A full-page article about me in the Stornoway Gazette the previous week would, she was certain, provide the impetus for a good turn-out.

In the event, none of us was prepared for the crowds that poured into the Woodlands Centre that evening. More than a hundred people turned up on a bitterly cold night, and it was standing room only. I spoke for about forty-five minutes, and signed books for the next hour, working my way slowly through the long queue that wound its way through the centre. By the time I reached the end of it, we had sold out of the books which Quercus had had specially shipped to the island.

Three days and seven hundred miles away from the launch of the book in a London hotel, and twenty-one years after my first Hebridean footfall, I finally had the verdict of the islanders on my books. And it was a big thumbs up!

Phew!!

Peter May

*Hebridean Light by David Wilson is a book of photographs of the Hebrides, which provides a good glimpse of photos of the island

WHAT THE DICKENS?

2012-01-22T18:57:00.006Z

Celebrations in London to mark Dickens’s 200^th Birthday

Wreathlaying Ceremony at Westminster Abbey

Bicentenary Dinner at Mansion House

Photograph: London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens the Charles Dickens Museum and Dickens 2012 are pleased to announce two major events taking place on 7 February 2012, the date of Dickens’s actual birthday.

Wreathlaying Ceremony at Westminster Abbey at 11am. By kind permission of the Dean of Westminster Abbey, a Wreathlaying Ceremony to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens will take place on 7 February 2012. BAFTA® award-winning actor and director Ralph Fiennes (Great Expectations and The Invisible Woman, in production) and acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin(The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (1991), Charles Dickens: A Life (2011)) will be among the Readers who will gather in Poets' Corner where Dickens was buried in 1870. With well-wishers from the world of literature, film, theatre and media, the event will celebrate Dickens's lasting impact on the arts and his popularity with audiences around the globe.

This event will also mark the largest gathering of descendants of the great novelist, with over 200 family members attending including the head of the family, Mark Dickens, who will also read from his great-great-grandfather's work. Tickets for journalists can be requested from the Charles Dickens Museum. The Museum and Dickens 2012 are pleased to offer 100 free tickets to the general public for this event, which is part of the Museum's £3.1m Great Expectations redevelopment project, largely supported by just over £2.35million from theHeritage Lottery Fund (HLF). This event is organised in association with Film London and The Dickens Fellowship.

Ralph Fiennes said: “I am delighted to take part in the celebrations for Dickens's 200th birthday anniversary. It will be a great honour to read an excerpt from Dickens's work in Poets' Corner to commemorate one of the world's greatest writers, and a man whose imagination has a lasting impact on the creative industries, including film, theatre and media.”

Dr Florian Schweizer, Director of the Charles Dickens Museum and Dickens 2012, said: “On 7 February people around the globe will take part in the Dickens bicentennial celebrations, from Hong Kong to California. The wreathlaying ceremony at Westminster Abbey will bring together visitors from more than 60 countries, many representing the wide range of Dickens's own professions and interest groups including authors, actors, social campaigners, journalists, charity workers, fundraisers and the public sector. Poets' Corner, with its rich and unique heritage and literary associations, is the perfect site to honour one of the greatest creative minds this country has ever seen.”

The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, said: “Dickens's humanity and compassion made an extraordinary impact on Victorian England through his writings, which remain immensely popular. This bicentenary should help renew our commitment to improving the lot of the disadvantaged of our own day.”

Mark Dickens, Head of the Dickens Family and President of the Dickens Fellowship, said: “The service in Westminster Abbey is one of the central events of the bicentenary year and it will be a special occasion for more than 600 members of the congregation. Together with Dickensians from around the world, there will be nearly 200 members of Charles Dickens's family present, the largest ever gathering. These are descended from his sons, Charley and Henry and include the last surviving Great Grandchild and the first Great Great Great Great Great Grandchild.”

Sue Bowers, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for London said: “This is a very special year for Dickens’s legacy and we are delighted to have supported the Charles Dickens Museum project Great Expectations so that his Grade I listed former London home can be redeveloped for the bicentenary of his birth.”

Applications for tickets are available from Westminster Abbey from Matthew Arnoldi Matthew.arnoldi@westminster-abbey.org

Bicentenary fundraising dinner at Mansion House, 6.45pm. By kind permission of the Hon. Lord Mayor of the City of London, the official Dickens 2012 dinner will be held with Dickensian entertainment including readings by Sir Patrick Stewart (A Christmas Carol) and musical performances by West End Kids. In the heart of the City which Dickens immortalised in his works, visitors from around the world will celebrate 'The Inimitable' Dickens whose passion for convivial dining and drinking was legendary among his contemporaries and is well-observed in many of his stories. Proceeds of this event will be donated to the Great Expectations redevelopment fund of the Charles Dickens Museum (registered charity 212172). The event is supported by Royal Mint, who will present coins of the new £2 Dickens coin to all ticket holders, and by Bodegas Williams & Humbert, Jerez, Spain. Tickets at £120 include a three-course meal, sherry reception, entertainment, gift pack. Speakers: Lord Mayor David Wootton, Sir Patrick Stewart, Matthew Dent (designer of the £2 coin issued by The Royal Mint to commemorate Dickens’s bicentenary).

Lord Mayor David Wootton, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Charles Dickens Museum, said: “Dickens made many references to the Lord Mayor and Mansion House, particularly in relation to eating and drinking. Mansion House is therefore exactly the right location to celebrate the evening of the bicentenary and I am delighted to be hosting this magnificent event for the Dickens community.”

To purchase tickets contact: Events Department, Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LX,events@dickensmuseum.com

About the Charles Dickens Museum

The Charles Dickens Museum in London is the world's most important collection of material relating to the great Victorian novelist and social commentator. The only surviving London home of Dickens (from 1837 until 1839) was opened as a Museum in 1925 and is still welcoming visitors from all over the world in an authentic and inspiring surrounding. On four floors, visitors can see paintings, rare editions, manuscripts, original furniture and many items relating to the life of one of the most popular and beloved personalities of the Victorian age.

The Charles Dickens Museum is a coordinating partner of Dickens 2012, the international campaign to mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth.

Great Expectations is the Charles Dickens Museum's £3.1m redevelopment project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, to improve Dickens's only remaining London residence where he wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Great Expectations will establish the Charles Dickens Museum as Britain’s most accessible and inspirational literary house museum. The project will increase space for the interpretation and housing of the collections by 100%, introducing state-of-the-art facilities to preserve the collections for the enjoyment of future generations. In the adjacent property, which is owned by the Museum, a new visitor centre with study facilities and teaching rooms for the National Dickens Library and Archive will be created. The project also promotes Dickens’s cultural and social legacy through a comprehensive activity programme to mark the bicentenary of the author’s birth in 2012.

www.dickensmuseum.com

About Dickens 2012

Dickens 2012, co-ordinated by the Charles Dickens Museum and Film London in association with the Dickens Fellowship, is an international celebration of the cultural and educational significance of the life and work of Charles Dickens to mark the bicentenary of his birth. Dickens-related activity will take place all over the world under the Dickens 2012 banner to celebrate one of the world’s most inspiring authors and provide a legacy for future generations.

Dickens 2012 partners include the BBC (Dickens on the BBC: November 11-February 12), British Council (International Dickens 2012 Programme: Nov 11-June 12), BFI (Dickens on Screen: Dec 11- March 12), Museum of London (Dickens and London: Dec 11-June 12), Museum Strauhof, Zurich (Charles Dickens: Dec 11-Mar 12), Penguin (‘Charles Dickens, A Life’ by Claire Tomalin and Special 2012 editions) and the Royal Mint (Dickens £2 coin).

Dickens 2012 has an expanding list of supporters, which includes names such as Simon Callow CBE, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Miriam Margolyes OBE and Peter Ackroyd CBE, and is backed by the Mayor of London as a cultural highlight in 2012.

www.dickens2012.org

About Film London

Film London, as the capital’s film and media agency, aims to ensure London has a thriving film sector that enriches the city’s businesses and its people. The agency works with all the screen industries to sustain, promote and develop London as a major international production and film cultural capital, and it supports the development of the city’s new and emerging film-making talent. Film London is funded by the Mayor of London, the National Lottery through the BFI, and receives significant support from Arts Council England and Skillset.

Film London is a coordinating partner of Dickens 2012, the international campaign to mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth.

www.filmlondon.org.uk

About Heritage Lottery Fund

Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms a wide range of heritage for present and future generations to take part in, learn from and enjoy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported 30,000 projects, allocating £4.7billion across the UK, including just over £893million in London alone.

www.hlf.org.uk

About West End Kids

West End Kids is the UK's highest profile musical theatre song and dance troupe. The company comprises 15 talented young singers and dancers. The company is a ‘performance company’ and always performs to professional standards. In 2011 West End Kids performed for tens of thousands of people at high profile events and venues including the London 2012 One Year to Go Ceremony in Trafalgar Square.

www.westendkids.co.uk

ELMORE LEONARD WRITING CHALLENGE

2012-01-21T16:30:00.001Z

You might enjoy this Elmore Leonard writing challenge. CBC Radio's Day 6 is asking listeners to write a single sentence that breaks as many of Elmore Leonard's famous Ten Rules For Writing Fiction as possible. Here's a link:http://www.cbc.ca/day6/blog/2012/01/20/all-hell-breaks-loose-the-elmore-leonard-rule-breaking-contest/

The five finalists will be featured on Day 6, and have their sentences published in The National Post. They will also win a three-book set of Elmore Leonard's "Raylan Givens" novels: Riding The Rap, Pronto, and the brand-new Raylan.

We're hoping people will have some fun with this. We'd love it if you can help spread the word. Just get in touch if you have any questions.

Here's some more information about our show:

Day 6 is an award-winning news and arts magazine program that airs across Canada on the CBC Radio One on Saturday at 10 am, and on NPR in Chicago, Seattle, Washington, DC, Ocean City MD, Point Reyes, CA, and Louisville, KY. We are also available internationally on Sirius Satellite 159 and as a podcast.
Here is a link to our website: http://www.cbc.ca/day6/
FB: http://www.facebook.com/CBCDay6
and Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cbcday6

Past guests of Day 6 include Salman Rushdie, Oliver Sacks, Chris Hedges, Richard Dawkins, Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, Linden MacIntyre, Yann Martell, John Waters, and William Gibson.

2012 MWA Edgar Nominations

2012-01-19T18:37:00.008Z

The Staff at Shots Ezine would like to congratulate all the 2012 Edgar nominated authors and writers!

We present the press releases from the MWA -

Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce on the 203rd anniversary ofthe birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Nominees for the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television published or produced in 2011.

The Edgar Awards will be presented to the winners at our 66th Gala Banquet, April 26, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

BEST NOVEL

The Ranger by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons)

Gone by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic - Atlantic Monthly Press)

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books)

1222 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)

Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons - Marion Wood Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Red on Red by Edward Conlon (Random House Publishing Group - Spiegel & Grau)

Last to Fold by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books)

All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press)

Bent Road by Lori Roy (Penguin Group USA - Dutton)

Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur Books - Thomas Dunne Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Hachette Book Group - Orbit Books)

The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press)

The Dog Sox by Russell Hill (Pleasure Boat Studio - Caravel Mystery Books)

Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (HarperCollins Publishers - HarperPaperbacks)

Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

BEST FACT CRIME

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown Publishing)

The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English( HarperCollins - William Morrow)

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Random House - Doubleday)

Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender by Steve Miller (Penguin Group USA- Berkley)

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fallo f a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal (Penguin Group USA - Viking)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer & John-Henri Holmberg (St. Martin's Griffin)

Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making by John Curran (HarperCollins)

On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda (Princeton University Press)

Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film by Philippa Gates (SUNY Press)Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie by Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick (University of Illinois Press)

BEST SHORT STORY

"Marley's Revolution" - Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by John C. Boland (Dell Magazines)

"Tomorrow's Dead" - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Dean (Dell Magazines)

"The Adakian Eagle" - Down These Strange Streets by Bradley Denton (Penguin Group USA - Ace Books)

"Lord John and the Plague of Zombies" - Down These Strange Streets by Diana Gabaldon (Penguin Group USA - Ace Books)

"The Case of Death and Honey" - A Study in Sherlock by Neil Gaiman (Random House Publishing Group - Bantam Books)

"The Man Who Took His Hat Off to the Driver of the Train" - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Peter Turnbull (Dell Magazines)

BEST JUVENILE

Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger (Abrams - Amulet Books)

It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for YoungReaders)

Vanished by Sheela Chari (Disney Book Group - Disney Hyperion)

Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press)

The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Shelter by Harlan Coben (Penguin Young Readers Group - G.P. Putnam's Sons)

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Penguin Young Readers Group - G.P.Putnam's Sons)

The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall (Random House Children's Books- Knopf BFYR)The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group - Roaring Creek Press)

Kill You Last by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA)

BEST PLAY

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club by Jeffrey Hatcher (Arizona Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ)

The Game's Afoot by Ken Ludwig (Cleveland Playhouse, Cleveland, OH)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY

"Innocence" - Blue Bloods, Teleplay by Siobhan Byrne O'Connor (CBS Productions)

"The Life Inside" - Justified, Teleplay by Benjamin Cavell (FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television)

"Part 1" - Whitechapel, Teleplay by Ben Court & Caroline Ip (BBC America)

"Pilot" - Homeland, Teleplay by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon & Gideon Raff (Showtime)

"Mask" - Law & Order: SVU, Teleplay by Speed Weed (Wolf Films/Universal Media Studios)

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD

"A Good Man of Business" - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by David Ingram (Dell Magazines)

MWA GRAND MASTER

Martha Grimes

RAVEN AWARDS

M is for Mystery Bookstore, San Mateo, CA / Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD

Joe Meyers of the Connecticut Post/Hearst Media News Group

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

To be presented at MWA's Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)

Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins Publishers - WilliamMorrow)

Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur Books)

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown Publishing Group)

Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely (Minotaur Books - Thomas Dunne Books)

The full list of nominations / MWA Press Release can be downloaded as a .pdf file here

"R J Ellory standing in the shadow of the last resting place of Edgar Allan Poe taken at Westminster Hall Baltimore at Bouchercon 2008"

Laurence O'Bryan asks himself - Why the Hell Do I Do This?

2012-01-19T06:13:00.008Z

Today’s guest blogger is debut author Laurence O’Bryan whose first novel in the Sean Ryan and Isabel Sharp series The Istanbul Puzzle is published today. The Istanbul Puzzle starts when Sean discovers a friend and colleague has been beheaded in Istanbul. Laurence worked his way up from being a plate scraper in a gentleman’s club in the City to winning a three-book deal with Harper Collins UK. On the way he got lost in the fleshpots of London, got rescued by his wife and straightened out after the birth of his daughter. But why does he write?

That’s a good question. I always had it at the back of my mind that I would write novels. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s true for me. I had a hole inside me for many years, one that I tried to fill up with alcohol and lots of other stuff, but I never succeeded in filling the hole until I began to write.

Some people talk about an emptiness deep inside as a reason for finding religion. I think it’s an emptiness at the heart of modern western culture. We consume so much, only to find out that there’s something better just about to arrive, which we must get our hands on. The consumption wheel never ends. It can’t. We are mostly hamsters on the wheel of life.

Until we start to create. When I create words and stories, and sometime the pictures that are linked to them in my imagination, I feel sated, not guilty. I feel proud, not fooled by empty promises.

The reason I write is also to do with my personal history. I spent many happy hours in the company of Rider Haggard, Asimov and Tolkien and I want to recreate that happiness. I need to create something of value too and writing suits that purpose. When I was a boy I created my own Dr Who stories for my neighbours. My imagination was often remarked on. Perhaps I imagined too much.

But I enjoy writing more than almost anything else. It allows me to spin words, to test theories, and to find out what’s going to happen to the characters I create. It also allows me to work at home, to see my children a little more than if I had to pursue a 9 to 5 existence, as I spent many years doing in the past.

The life of a writer is everything you thought it might be, but with added anxiety, especially at the point I’m at, with my first novel hitting the bookshelves on the 19^th January. You see, I still don’t know whether the world will like my baby. And it’s taken me years to get to this point! I decided to write my first novel back in 2000. And only now am I making some money from it. I think I’m just a slow learner. If you want to see what all that work has produced, and you like an adventure story with romance and mystery thrown in, come over to lpobryan.wordpress.com or pick up The Istanbul Puzzle in your local bookshop.

I hope you have a great 2012 pursuing whatever dreams you want to pursue. Mine are on the cusp of becoming real. And if they don’t, I can always go back to cleaning dishes!

UK Launch of The Boy in The Suitcase

2012-01-18T01:45:00.009Z

(L-R Barry Forshaw, Dr Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnette Friis (© Ayo Onatade))

I first met authors Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnette Friis at Bouchercon that took place in St Louis in 2011. At the time they were with promoting the first English translation of their book The Boy in the Suitcase.

Our second meeting took place when I attended the UK launch of The Boy in the Suitcase, which took place yesterday evening (17 January) in the Gallery at Foyles Bookshop, which is based along Charing Cross Road in London. Crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw, author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction and editor of Crime Time chaired the event and they were joined by Scandinavian Crime enthusiast and founder of the legendary Nordic Noir Book Club Dr. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (UCL).

The event started off with a brief introduction by Dr Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen who introduced Barry Forshaw. The two authors Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnette Friis where then introduced by Barry Forshaw before he started to talk/ interview them about their book.

One of the first things that was commented on was that aside from the fact that The Boy in The Suitcase was a brilliant multi-stranded book, it was also quite complex. Barry was interested in finding out from them both why this was the case as they had more than 3 voices in the book. They explained that what they wanted to do was to ensure that all the important characters were not only seen from the inside but were also able to view the world. This of course meant that they needed to have 5 different voices, which included that of the villain and Nina’s husband.

They also expressed the view that the villain was not only filled with rage but also still human but when asked how they felt about such a character for example Hannibal Lecter they expressed the view that whilst they felt he was an interesting character he was also seen as a psychopath. Their villain on the other hand (they explained) was a person who had a very ordinary life/dreams that anyone could relate to. They could not go down the route of what Steig Larsson did with his villains. The hardest part is actually making the villain believable.

But what about Nina their heroine and why is she so irritating? They explained that they did not feel the need to make her a perfect person and thus annoying but they did need to find a delicate balance. They did not want readers to lose sympathy with her entirely but people did find her annoying and sometimes found her behaviour a barrier to them finishing the book. It seems that women were mainly the ones as they found it difficult to forgive her for being such a bad mother. Nevertheless, they felt that she did try very hard.

The authors also revealed that whilst doing their research they found out that there were a lot of unaccompanied children going missing in Denmark. Over 600 have gone missing in the last 10 years. Some had in fact moved on but others had been sold for prostitution etc. The difficult was that hardly anything was being done about this because they were immigrants but it would be a different matter if the missing children were from Denmark. There were different rules for immigrants as opposed to Danes.

One of the other questions that was raised was whether or not there was a legacy of Russia hanging on the Danes? They felt that there was not and they did not just want to write a Danish novel but wanted to ensure that Nina came into contact with all sorts of people.

With journalists currently being in the news they were also asked how journalists were currently being viewed in Denmark. It was explained that unlike in the UK they did not really have tabloid newspapers and thus they were not seen to be as bad as UK journalists but that the quality of journalism was indeed going down what with the internet and the failure to properly check sources.

They authors were also asked how did they work together. They pointed out that they wrote separate chapters before going through each other’s chapters and commenting on them. It did (they agreed) sometimes lead to the odd argument but this was something that they got over very easily. They both had a basic mutual respect for each other’s work and were thus able to point out where they saw problems.

It was also agreed that not only were Scandinavian writers likeable but there was a sense that writing crime fiction was a good way of communicating ideas.

The topic of titles was discussed. It is well known the Eva Gabrielson was not happy about the fact that the title to the first Stieg Larsson book was changed from Men Who Hated Women (Män som hatar kvinnor) to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The title of the second book in the series is (in English translation) A Quiet Unfelt Killing, which is a line from the book. However they explained that the titled worked better in Danish and that they did not believe that once it had been translated into English that it would still have that title. The third book is set in Ukraine with references to Stalin.

One of the things they made clear was that they wanted to avoid clichés. They explained that they were not so much interested in corruption for example but more interested in the complacency surrounding it.

The success of such television programmes as The Killing and Borgen was also commented on. Both authors were bemused by the phenomenon and wide spread acclaim both programmes had received as Danes were less overwhelmed by them. There were as they explained others, some that were good and some that were bad. The fact that so many people were prepared to sit through programmes with English subtitles amazed them. They could to a certain extent understand The Killing but could not understand Borgen since it is about Danish politics.

Dr Stougaard-Nielsen commented that well crafted writing and art was very much appreciated by anybody who came into contact with it as they saw it for what it was.

The Boy in The Suitcase won two major awards and was also nominated for The Glass Key they were asked whether or not this had raised their profile. Both authors agreed that it had. They had thought that they would win Best First Novel as the book has only been published three to four months earlier but they had surprisingly won Thriller of the Year. Sadly however, The Glass Key is not so well known outside Scandinavia and usually it is accompanied by the comment that it is the award that Steig Larsson won twice”.

Boundaries were also discussed with the authors and whether or not they had boundaries that they would not cross. The reason for the question was because Barry Forshaw had just finished reading Hans Koppel’s She’s Never Going Back which he found to be a very dispiriting read with humiliating sex scenes. They agreed that the did have boundaries which hey would not cross. They indicated that they would not write about anything that they were uncomfortable with themselves and that there was a fine line between titillation and showing things for what they were. Real crime is as far as they were concerned bad enough and they did not feel the need to go overboard. Their book is from their point of view not really a howdunnit or a whodunit but a whydunnit.

The audience were also informed that the film rights for the books were under discussion but they could not really talk about it. They also confirmed that Lene Kaaberbøl had in fact done the English translation of the book.

The authors were also asked questions one of which was whether or not they felt it was right that authors should use their books for social commentary or should they be seen as pure entertainment. Both authors agreed that they should but that the books should also entertain. It was as they explained supposed to do both.

The event at Foyles was extremely well attended. It was a testament this evening to how much Nordic crime is read by the full room. The Galley was full and the authors had an extremely receptive audience. At the end of the evening the authors joined the attendees for drinks and signed books as well.

My thanks go to Lene Kaaberbøl, Agnette Friis, Barry Forshaw and Dr. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen for such an enjoyable evening and Foyles Bookshop for hosting it. If you have not yet read The Boy in The Suitcase then I urge you to do so. It will in my opinion be one of the best crime novels this year.

Crime Fiction News

2012-01-17T17:17:00.004Z

Excellent article by Ian Rankin who would like the Government to introduce tax incentives to help new authors. The full article can be read in the Guardian.

Lots of viewers must have heaved a massive sigh of relief when the BBC revealed that there will indeed be a third series of Sherlock. On Sunday night there was a dramatic conclusion to the second series which was only belied by the tweet subsequently sent out by the co-creator Steven Moffat on Twitter "Of course there's going to be a third series - it was commissioned at the same time as the second. Gotcha!" Those of you wondering who on earth Professor Moriarty is might want to read the Blagger’s Guide To …. Professor Moriarty in the Independent. An excellent review of the final episode of series 2 can be found at The Arts Desk by Adam Sweeting.

Congratulations go to Peter Temple for winning the 2012 German International Crime Novel (International Deutscher Krimipreis) with his novel 'Truth'. The 28th German Crime Prize 2012 (National Deutscher Krimipreis) was awarded to 'Wer das Schweigen bricht' (Anyone who Breaks the Silence) (Pendragon) by Mechtild Borrmann.

Having just managed to have a look at the Guardian’s bestselling books of 2011, it is pleasing to note that out of the top 100, 34 were crime novels. Out of the 34, Jo Nesbo and James Patterson are joint top with five books each whilst all three of the late Steig Larsson once again made the list and John Grisham, John Le Carre and Harlan Coben round up the list with two each. All the other crime writers out of the 34 had one book each on the list. The full list (top 100) can be read here.

With the award season up and running the BAFTA nominations were announced this morning. It was in my opinion very pleasing to see the brilliant cold war thriller Tinker, Tailor Solider Spy nominated for 11 awards. They include nominations for Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director for Tomas Alfredson and Best Leading Actor for Gary Oldman. Drive, which starred Ryan Gosling, has received a Best Director nomination for Nicolas Winding Refn as well as Best Film and Best Editing. Philip Seymour Hoffmann has also received a best supporting actor nomination for his turn in the American Political drama thriller The Ides of March. The film also received a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Irish Film The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle has been nominated for Original Screenplay. . The Orange British Academy Film Awards take place on February 12. Read the full list of nominations here.

According to the Bookseller, Waterstones have launched a “book club” promotion under the tagline "Books you will love or your money back". All the books bar one are fiction books. The only crime novel to make the list is of course Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson (Transworld) each week a book will be chosen as a book of the week.

Orion has acquired a debut speculative thriller novel by A K Benedict, called The Beauty of Murder, which features a time-travelling serial killer. Editorial director Genevieve Pegg bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from a partial on submission from Rupert Heath, and said: "Macabre, suspenseful and hugely inventive, I was spellbound from the start. Once I'd met its compelling characters, I knew I couldn't let go of them." Orion plans to publish in late 2012. German rights have been sold to Droemer.

The Independent’s Invisible Ink: No 106 is on Leslie Charteris the author of the Saint novels and is by Christopher Fowler. The full article can be read here.

Now that we have lost what was essentially Sunday night viewing on television with the last episode of the current series of Sherlock being shown how are we to replace it? BBC 1 have adapted Sebastian Faulks novel Birdsong into a 2 part drama and it is set to be shown on BBC1 on Sunday 22 January. An article in the Guardian can be found here. One of the very first reviews (a preview of it was apparently shown at the BAFTA’s can be found here.

The Face through the Key Hole

2012-01-16T16:31:00.003Z

Following Stephen King’s remarkable 11 / 22 / 63 the great folks at Hodder and Stoughton have organized a rather surreal competition to celebrate the upcoming Dark Tower novel -

To celebrate the publication of The Wind through the Keyhole, the hotly anticipated new episode in Stephen King’s fantasy series The Dark Tower, we’re inviting you to help make literary history; lucky entrants will have their faces featured on the back of the jacket artwork.

Using mosaic design technologies, thousands of readers’ images will be incorporated in the illustration on the back cover of The Wind through the Keyhole.

One winner will also be selected at random to receive the entire STEPHEN KING backlist published by Hodder in the UK.

For your chance to be a part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, all you have to do is upload your photo via this facebook app

Or click > https://www.facebook.com/stephenkingbooks.

We can’t guarantee that everyone’s photo will make it on – but we’ll contact you when the jacket is ready so you can see if your face is featured, and if you’ve been lucky, you can share your pixels of fame with friends and family!

The closing date for entries is 23rd January 2012. Terms and conditions apply, click here for more details.

The Wind through the Keyhole is published in April 2012

In Memoriam - Reginald Hill

2012-01-13T22:14:00.003Z

In Memoriam

3 April 1936 - 12 January 2012

Reginald Hill author of the bestselling series Dalziel and Pascoe has died at the age of 75 after a brain tumour. He was regarded as one of Britain's most consistently successful crime writers and had a huge loyal following. He was best known for his Dalziel and Pascoe (Supt Andrew Dalziel and Sgt Peter Pascoe) series the first of which was entitled A Clubbable Woman (1970). In the original pilot they were portrayed by the comedians Hale and Pace but when the television series was finally commissioned the characters were subsequently played to perfection by Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan and were adapted for television by the BBC between 1996 to 2007.

Reginald Hill was also the author of five books featuring Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned amiable private detective in a fictional version of Luton. The first book in the series was Blood Sympathy (1993) and the last book to be written featuring Joe Sixsmith was The Roar of Butterflies (2008).

Sadly it was to take twenty years before he won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger with his novel Bones and Silence in 1990. Bones and Silence was also nominated for an Edgar Award® for Best Novel. In 1995 he was awarded the Crime Writer's Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. In 1999 On Beulah Heights was nominated for an Anthony Award for Best Novel. In 2004 his novel Good Morning, Midnight won The Mystery Thriller Book Club People's Choice Award. His novel A Cure for All Diseases was shortlisted for the 2009 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel. His short story On the Psychiatrist's Couch won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 1997.

Hill also wrote more than 30 other novels under the names Dick Morland, Patrick Ruell and Charles Underhill. Many of these books have been republished under his name Hill.

His last Dalziel Pascoe novel Midnight Fugue appeared in 2009. His last published novel The Woodcutter was published in 2010.

Richard Lea’s article in the Guardian can be found here. Mike Ripley’s obituary in the Guardian can be found here.

The Telegraph obituary can be read here, whilst the Independent obituary is available here.

A tribute from Martin Edwards can be read here.

Mike Ripley’s appreciation of Reginald Hill can be found here. Reginald Hill’s Deconstruction of Dalziel which he wrote for Shotsmag can be found here.

The death of Reginald Hill is a blow to the crime writing community and he will be sorely missed by not only his fellow crime writers but also his fans. Our condolences go to his family.

Win a chance to become a Mulholland Driver

2012-01-12T20:50:00.001Z

Do you love suspense fiction? Crime novels, thrillers, police procedurals and supernatural suspense? If you love these books then Mulholland Books is the imprint for you, bringing exciting American thriller writers to the UK alongside British crime authors who deliver what thrill-hungry fans demand. If you are interested then hop on over to the Mulholland website where you can find all the information about how to join the team.

Books to look forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

2012-01-11T12:34:00.012Z

During the period known as the Days of Awe that lead up to Yom Kippur, Ariel Kafka, inspector in the Violent Crime Unit of the Helsinki police and one of two Jewish policemen in Finland, is confronted with the most difficult case of his career. Two Arabs are killed near the capital and, shortly after, Kafka discovers two more bodies at an Iraqi-owned garage. Are these deaths evidence of gang warfare or international terrorism? When it transpires that an Israeli Minister will make an unofficial visit to Helsinki, matters become truly complicated. The Finnish Security Police and Mossad all have a role to play and Kafka is on a trail that leads back to his youth. Nights of Awe is by Harri Nykanen and is due to be published in February 2012. He has twice won the Finnish Crime Fiction Award “The Clue” (Johtolanka) in 1990 and 2001.

The Tyrant by Jacques Chessex is a haunting work, reminiscent of Albert Camus, which portrays, with exquisite psychological detail, the emotional crisis in the life of Jean Calmet, a young Swiss schoolteacher. As we watch the father’s cremation in the opening chapter, we sense that, even though his father’s body has been reduced to ashes, his spirit survives to haunt Jean. His father’s prodigious vitality and virility had crushed his family and ruined his son’s childhood. Even after his father’s death, Jean cannot be free. The parental ogre’s actions continue to suck Jean into a vortex of despair. The Tyrant is due to be published in March 2012.

In Lagos operatives of the Norwegian secret service extract Nwankwo, head of financial investigations for the Nigerian government, and deliver him to London. Felix, a junior prosecutor in Nice, is called to investigate the violent death of the wife of a powerful banker based in the Faroe Islands. His investigation takes him to London. In St. Petersburg, Lira Kazan, a journalist famed for her anti-corruption investigative work decides to go to London to report on an oligarch involved in arms deals. An investigation too far for all three as Lira, Felix and Nwankwo become allies and witness a series of killings, obviously linked by financial and political interests. They are isolated, terrified, and end up pursued by the oligarch’s men, the Western secret services and goons sent by Nigerian oil magnates. It ends wonderfully at a dinner at Versailles, honouring the oligarch and attended by the British Prime Minister and the French President, which ends in chaos triggered by a series of tweets disclosing the foul play all have entered into. The Eyes of Lira Kazan is by Eva Joly who is a member of the European Parliament for France and Judith Perrignon a French thriller writer. The Eyes of Lira Kazan is due to be published in April 2012

No Sale is by Patrick Conrad and is due to be published in June 2012. Must each man kill the thing he loves? For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are more real than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in their hotel room are the words “No Sale”, the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote on a mirror in Butterfield 8 (she won her first Oscar in that film). Subsequently, a series of gruesome killings of young women, all modeled on violent deaths in films that he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox, who starts to doubt his own sanity and innocence. With its stylish writing, pointed references to cinema classics, and blend of horror and humor, this is a powerful psychological thriller. No Sale won the Diamond Bullet Award, the Dagger award for Belgium.

Liar Moon is by Ben Pastor and is due to be published in January 2012. Italy, autumn 1943, the Italian government has switched sides and declared war on Germany. Italy is divided, the North controlled by the fascists, the South liberated by Allied forces slowly fighting their way up the peninsula. Having survived hell on the Russian Front, Wehrmacht Major and aristocrat Martin Bora is sent to Verona. He is ordered to investigate the murder of a prominent local fascist: a bizarre death, threatening to discredit the regime’s public image. The prime suspect is the victim’s twenty-eight year old widow Clara. Not far from Bora’s headquarters, Italian police inspector Sandro Guidi, is facing a difficult case, involving an elusive serial killer. The two join forces but, haunted by his record of opposition to SS policies in Russia, Bora must watch his step. Against the backdrop of relentless anti-partisan warfare and the tragedy of the Holocaust, a breathless chase begins.

The Lewis Man comes to London

2012-01-10T15:27:00.004Z

Quercus Publishing are rather busy currently, with the David Fincher version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO on world-wide release currently. The Publicity Team of Lucy and Nicci have barely time to breathe, now with the second of Peter May’s Scottish Trilogy hitting the Bookstores this week THE LEWIS MAN.

The Shots Team of Mike Stotter, Ayo Onatade and I were delighted to join Peter May last night in North London for the launch of this hypnotic thriller. The Quercus team had invited many of the London Critics to meet Peter over wine and canapés, including Laura Wilson of the Guardian, Chris Simmons of Crimesquad, Jake Kerridge of The Telegraph, John Dugdale of The Guardian and The Sunday Times, and many others.

Shots have been impressed by Peter May’s new series as the review from our man Calum MacLeod indicated, when reviewing The Black House –

If our crime writers are to be believed our apparently placid Scottish islands are hot beds of crime. Ann Cleeves has won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for her tales of murder in Shetland and Louise Welsh has delved into mystery and intrigue on little Lismore.Now Peter May has turned to Lewis, though with a murder rate currently running at one a century, as the author notes, it is hardly seems likely to offer fertile ground for a crime series, even if it is first of a planned trilogy.However, May knows his Lewis. Though he comes to the setting as an outsider, he spent six years on the island working on STV’s Gaelic language soap "Machair", obviously filing away the details of island life.

These feeds into a story which, remarkably in 21st century Britain, could not have worked anywhere else, from the stark Calvinism which ensures the island Sabbath remains very much the Lord’s Day, to the annual guga hunt of baby gannets conducted by the men of Ness on an inhospitable islet, recently the subject of a BBC2 documentary, which provides the meaty climax to the tale.

Read the Full Review of THE BLACK HOUSE here

And Crime Writer Jim Kelly’s verdict on THE LEWIS MAN, the second in the planned trilogy is equally enthusiastic –

May is very clever here, writing from inside Tormod’s head, because he limits his diction and pallete, so that he tells a brilliant story but with the sparest of language, so that the old man’s inner voice sounds genuine. He’s also managed to inveigle a more conventional crime novel into the package as well – and that provides us with a satisfying climax spiked with genuine fear, as violence – Glasgow-style – tracks Fin and Tormod down to their clifftop hamlet. The book’s a delight: bringing people and place alive in equal measure.

Read the Full Review of THE LEWIS MAN here

And if those snippets haven’t got you reaching for these two remarkable books, then this atmospheric video should chill you into grabbing copies -

Peter May is a member of International Thriller Writers and an accomplished and prolific novelist, as well as spending much time in the TV industry.

Peter’s breakthrough came with THE BLACK HOUSE, the first in his ‘Lewis Trilogy’, which became a Richard and Judy Selection, but wait till your read THE LEWIS MAN, but ensure you have a free evening, because once the spine’s cracked, you will be captured by this wintery tale.

Buy Your Copy Here

Photos (c) 2011 A Karim & Jacket Covers (c) 2010 and (c) 2012 Quercus Publishing

The Belgian and the Beekeeper

2012-01-09T21:24:00.006Z

So there I was sitting on the Sussex Downs, looking down on the giddy seaside resort of Brighton and across at a cremation site for Indian soldiers wounded in the Great War. I imagined that Sherlock Holmes might have retired right here to raise his bees. I was also thinking about the fact that, during World War One, Brighton's Royal Pavilion, a weird 19th century Indo-Chinese confection that Walt Disney would have wished he had created, was converted into a hospital for those soldiers of the Indian army who were wounded on the Western Front. The idea was that they would feel at home there. Yeah, right.

How I came up with the next bit eludes me. I was aware that Agatha Christie's first Hercule Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles, was written and set in 1916 (though not published until 1920). That was just two years after Holmes and Watson had foiled a German spy's nefarious plans in His Last Bow. Poirot and Holmes were, for a few years, contemporaries.

Wouldn't it be great if they encountered each other? Well, yes, it would, but when I checked I found only a couple of short stories by the late, great Julian Symons, in which such a meeting had happened. Why had nobody else thought to put those two great, eccentric egos together?

I discovered the main reason, in recent years, was probably copyright. Sherlock Holmes is fair game but Poirot is tenaciously protected by the Agatha Christie Estate. Hmm. I dug a little further and discovered that before Christie created Poirot there had been a fictional French policeman called Jules Poiret. And contemporaneously with the first appearance of Poirot there was an Hercules Popeau.

Meanwhile, back on those beautiful South Downs I'd been thinking about Indian soldiers recuperating in Brighton (or being cremated on the Downs) and then about The Sign of The Four. Three of the four were Indians, although Arthur Conan Doyle's grasp of Indian culture was rudimentary so their names suggested they had dual religions, both Sikh and Muslim.

In Conan Doyle's novel we never find out what happened to them.

I found out what happened to them writing The Belgian and The Beekeeper. It covers the Sikh Wars and the Indian Mutiny and the battle of Maiwand where Watson got that pesky Jezail bullet wound that moved around a lot in the course of Conan Doyle's short stories. There is Sherlock Holmes at the flickers and an unlikely partnership between two great detectives and much, much more.

I avoided copyright issues with a little sleight of hand. I put the novella up on Kindle with some other goodies as a Kindle Original. It's the first of three Holmes adventures I'm bringing out over the next twelve months. It was fun to write. I hope it's fun to read. Click here to buy.

UK Launch of The Boy In The Suitcase At Foyles

2012-01-09T12:39:00.005Z

The Boy in the Suitcase (Drengen i kufferten) by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnette Friis is being launched at Foyles, on 17th January at The Gallery, Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0EB; TIME: 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Celebrate with the authors the English language release of the award-winning Danish thriller The Boy in the Suitcase. The evening will feature a lively discussion with the authors chaired by crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw, author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction and editor of Crime Time. It will include compelling insights from Scandinavian Crime enthusiast and founder of the legendary Nordic Noir Book Club Dr. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (UCL).

Lene Kaaberbøl has sold more than two million books worldwide as a fantasy writer. Her collaborator, Agnete Friis, is a children's writer. The bestselling Nina Borg series has been translated into nine languages and was a finalist for the coveted Scandinavian Glass Key Crime Fiction Award in 2009. It received the 2008 Harald Mogensen award for best crime novel.

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.

Crime fiction news

2012-01-08T22:29:00.004Z

With Sherlock Holmes currently riding high in the charts the Observer sets out whom they
consider the most brilliant detective minds. Of course, one can expect Sherlock Holmes to be on the list, but who else is on it. To find out read here.

The long awaited film version of Susan Hill’s excellent gothic supernatural thriller The Woman in Black is finally being released on 10 February staring Daniel Radcliffe as a haunted lawyer.

March is also the 20th anniversary of the death of Philip K Dick and to celebrate BBC 1 is set to screen a Ridley Scott mini-series adapting (with Dick's own title, unusually) The Man in the High Castle.

Those of you that attended Theakston’s Crime Festival in Harrogate 2011 will remember the
interview that took place with Lee Child. Of course, at the same time there was the furor (still ongoing) over the fact that it became known that Tom Cruise’s production company had bought the rights to One Shot and that he would be playing the main character Jack Reacher. The World Street Journal online has the scoop on the long and tortious route to it being made into a film. The article can be read here.

For those of you that missed the Twitter announcement by Don Winslow announcing the prequel
title to the novel Savages it is of course The King of Cool. According to Deadline News, to coincide with this the Oliver Stone directed film of Savages will also be released. Savages stars Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro and Oscar nominee’s Uma Thurman, John Travolta and Salma
Hayek.

More 4 TV Book Club have announced the books for the book club. The have started with the award winning novel Before I go to Sleep by S J Watson. The other books on the list can be found here.

The Spring 2012 reading list for the Richard and Judy Club has also been released. The full list is here and once again S J Wastson makes the list along with Mons Kallentoft’s Midwinter Sacrifice.

Not sure how I managed to miss this but lovely people at Bitter Lemon Press have just launched the internet's first collaborative crime fiction map and they are looking for additions for the map. Contact them at map@bitterlemonpress.com or tweet the relevant details by using the hashtag #intcrimeficmap.

Eoin McNamee has written an excellent article in the Guardian about Adrian McKinty’s novel The Cold Cold Ground. McNamee talks about how he uses the tools of the crimewriter's trade to examine and reshape the recent past. Certainly well worth reading.

With Borgen the new Danish political thriller currently being shown on BBC 4, Gerald Gilbert discusses the new thriller and the similarities with The Killing. They are both as he comments not only political thrillers but also police procedurals. The full article which is in the Independent can be read here.

With the recent publication of Barry Forshaw’s Death in a Cold Climate Time Out have managed to persuade Mr Forshaw to explain to readers how to write a Nordic bestseller like The Killing.

The shortlist for the 2011 Independent Literary Awards have been announced and thanks to Elizabeth A White’s blog Musings of an All Purpose Monkey for the information. The following
have made the mystery shortlist –

Missing Daughter, Shattered Family by Liz Strange (MLR Press)
The Cut by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown)
A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (St.Martin’s Press)
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton)
Fun & Games by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown)

Want to become an Authority on Scandinavian Crime Fiction? No, you don’t...

2012-01-06T09:51:00.006Z

Today’s guest blogger is from crime fiction critic Barry Forshaw. A former Vice-Chair of the Crime Writer’s Association Barry is a writer and journalist whose books include British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction. He was the first author to publish a biography on Stieg Larsson with his book The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Biography of Stieg Larsson in April 2010. He is also the editor of the crime fiction website Crime Time. His booklet which gives you a brief introduction to all things Scandinavian crime fiction can be found here and should be read in conjunction with his book Death in a Cold Climate, A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction which is published by Palgrave Macmillan today!

Never become an expert – it’s a heavy load to carry, believe me. Being asked to write Death in a Cold Climate, a guide to Scandinavian crime fiction for Palgrave Macmillan was further proof that I seemed to have become (without really trying) the default go-to guy for the massively popular genre of Nordic crime fiction. I’m not necessarily a Nordic authority by choice – those I’ve shared a glass of wine with will know I have an equal enthusiasm for criminous writing of the British, American and Italian varieties – murderous fare from all points of the compass, in fact. But as pigeon-holing goes – well, I suppose there could be worse fates.

As “The Scandi Man”, all the standard authors from Northern Europe are under my belt – as are most of the rest (because I read into the wee small hours, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir or Camilla Läckberg positioned on my chest). I’ve also met and broken bread with a great many of them – which is definitely a pleasant corollary of writing so much about these Nordic talents. I’m now on the guest list of all the Scandi embassies, not necessarily for my amiable personality – the cultural attachés like Brits who proselytise on behalf of their nationals.

But I now spend my life nervously looking over my shoulder. Hardly a week passes when a Norwegian – or a Finn – or a Swede – or an Icelander) doesn’t say to me: ‘You may have read X, but are you familiar with Y?’ They then proceed to name someone who I may have heard of but who isn’t yet translated into English. In such cases, I’m already feeling guilty -- why isn’t my Finnish or Swedish good enough to read this new name in the original language?

Scandinavian crime fiction, while increasingly popular, has happily embraced the literary gravitas that scholarship and newspaper critics (such as myself!) have dressed it with, and the fact that there are few Nordic writers who attempt to present themselves as mere catchpenny entertainers is perhaps proof that such a respectable literary cachet does their sales absolutely no harm.

Apart from the sheer pleasure of reading a good crime novel, the ‘added value’ in many of the best examples has long been the implicit (or sometimes explicit) element of social criticism freighted in by the more challenging writers. Of popular literary genres, only science fiction has rivalled the crime novel in ‘holding the mirror up to nature’ (or society). Best-selling Scandinavian writers such as Henning Mankell and Arnaldur Indridason have kept alive (and nurtured) the tradition of social commentary that was always a key element in the genre – though rarely at the expense of sheer storytelling skill, the area in which the crime field virtually demolishes all its rivals – and when (in the early 21st Century) crime fiction became quantifiably the most popular of popular genres (comprehensively seeing off such rivals as romance fiction), it was only the inevitable coda to a process that had been long underway. And Scandinavian crime fiction, more than most genres, combines narrative grip with social insights.

Mapping this Nordic territory is a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. And, frankly, I don’t mind being one of the cartographers...

THE ALPHABET IS NOT ENOUGH

2012-01-05T06:04:00.006Z

Today’s guest blog and the first blog of the year is from Belinda Bauer. Belinda’s first novel Blacklands was nominated for the CWA debut dagger and won the CWA Gold Dagger in 2010. She is the first author since 1973 to win the Dagger with a debut novel. A former journalist and screenwriter her script the Locker Room earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screen Writers. Her latest novel is Finders Keepers – The eight year-old boy has vanished from the car and – as if by slick, sick magic – had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel. …. You don’t love him. Finders Keepers is published today.

Why not be a writer?

We’ve all seen the ads. Back of the Sunday newspapers, or in magazines aimed at those of us in love with reading who nonetheless dream – fantasize – of cheating on reading with the dirty little whore that is writing. Of doing it for money. In public!

Most people never dare. Most people might scribble a few lines; a poem. They may keep a teenaged short story in the back of a bottom drawer and take it out when everyone else is asleep and think ‘this is good; I was good’ – and wonder: Could I do it? Should I?

Most people don’t do it. And – to be brutally honest – most people are right. Some people could and should be writers. Most people can’t and shouldn’t and never will be.

I’m not being mean. I want you to be a writer. I want everyone to be a writer. Basically I think it’s nice when people are happy so, naturally, I want everyone in the world to write books and to own puppies and to zip up size 10 jeans without having to roll around on the floor, moaning.

But writing for fun and writing professionally are two different animals. In a few years time I sincerely hope to have forgotten what it was ever like not to write professionally, and so I thought I’d get this down while the memory of wanting to succeed, and yet failing, is still nice and raw. Still hurts. Still feels uncomfortably close behind me, like a big, scary dog following me home from the park, panting on my ankles.

Writing is like anything else in life and like nothing else at all. There’s something about writing that makes otherwise rational people think they can do it, when they would shrink from feats that require similar innate talent. Learning to be a writer is like learning to be Usain Bolt. It can’t be done. You might train hard enough to run, and run well. But having legs and a dream doesn’t win Olympic gold. Writing is not a career to be embarked upon on a whim. Yet for some curious reason, there are people out there who seem to believe that once they’ve mastered the alphabet, they’re equipped with all they need to write a bestseller.

And, even more worryingly, there are other people out there who are happy to indulge them – for a price. Thus, why not be a writer?

Of course, it’s tempting to think that all we need is a bit of practise and a few tips, for our fledgling talent to grow feathers and soar away on the wings of literary recognition. Luckily for me, it was left to a friend of mine to dip her toe into the water of a correspondence course that promised just such results – not to mention a virtual guarantee of a career at the end of a pen. What happened next convinced me that mine was money well saved.

My friend – let’s call her Jamie – was a keen reader but she was no writer. I could tell that halfway through her first paragraph. Her prose was wooden and dull – as if English was her second language. Even worse, she had no grasp of how to tell a story – or even of what a story was. However, she was buoyed by what looked suspiciously like an economy with the truth in the notes she was being given. Oh, there was plenty of red pen, but embarrassing holes in her style and content were overlooked in favour of schoolroom comments about semi-colons and formatting. Now and then the ‘tutors’ would suggest sensible improvements but at no point did they tell Jamie the obvious truth – that she was never going to make it as a decent writer of anything more than a shopping list.

It shocked me and depressed me. Jamie wasn’t in this for the fun; Jamie was paying hard-earned money in the hopes of moving out of a dead-end job and up in the world. She believed the brochure’s claims of thousands of pounds to be made from magazine short stories, editing from your bedroom, and rocketing up the fiction charts. Instead of that, her destiny was to be misled by the people who were being paid to help her improve her writing.

I blushed at my own naiveté and pitied Jamie’s. Of course, these organisations are in it for the money, and who am I to stifle free trade? And it certainly made Jamie a happier person – for a while. But something inside me balked at the idea of deceiving a writer. Isn’t writing about truth? Isn’t misleading someone who is seeking the truth – however deluded they may be – a cruel trick? Isn’t there something about writing – of all creative endeavours – that requires honesty? Professional writing is not singing in the shower – it needs an audience to fulfil its destiny, and must therefore satisfy more than just the perpetrator. It has to take its chances in the competitive world of editors and agents and publishers if it is to find a market, however small and meanly paid.

I admit that I could not be honest with Jamie. At the time I had less than no writing credentials, and the idea of bursting her bubble of happiness with what may well have seemed churlish criticism, made a coward out of me. But had I enjoyed the distance of an envelope and a red pen, it would have been a carefully worded different story. At the end of the first year, Jamie got glowing marks – and encouragement to sign up for a second. No job, no change in circumstances, only confusion, disappointment and a hole in her pocket. And I got a bad taste in my mouth.

Writing is not something you can be taught like times tables. It’s not a logical or quantifiable. If the ad said: Why not be a millionaire? we would all find it laughable. But I guess some people would still sign up for the correspondence course…

That’s not to say that you can’t improve your writing and, for a few people, improvement is all they need to make it a viable career. But you have to have enough self-awareness to know whether you’re that kind of person.

So, if you want to be a writer, first be honest with yourself. Give your writing to someone who doesn’t love you. Then listen to their opinion with an ear primed for bullshit. If someone tells you your work is ‘interesting’; if they look at the kettle when they say that it’s great; if they never speak of it again, then I will be honest with you, if not with Jamie, and tell your that it’s back to the drawing board. If you see this pattern repeated over the years, then do yourself a favour and quit. Or at least quit showing your writing to other human beings. There’s no shame in failing when you’ve done your best. No shame in trailing in behind Usain Bolt. Sometimes your best is never going to be good enough. If that’s the case then enjoy it for what it is – a pastime that brings you pleasure, but is unlikely to pay the milkman, let alone the mortgage. You are a fun-runner, not a medallist. Learn to let it go.

On the other hand, if people get excited talking about your work; if they are moved; if they pester you for more – but if they are also not your mother, or someone who would like to have sex with you – then you’re probably doing something right. You are the person who would benefit from a writing course – a real life workshop, class or retreat, where you can see the whites of people’s eyes. It really doesn’t matter what it’s about – they are all inspirational. They push you to do your best work, and are an immediate measure of it. They offer support and encouragement and funny anecdotes about rejection letters that make you know you are not alone. Just being around the creativity of others is a joy that can last for months. Not a bad investment in a job where you have to be your own slave driver and motivational speaker.

And if you want unfettered honesty, then post your writing online and invite the slings and arrows of random, real and – most importantly – anonymous people. There are myriad writing and fan sites where you can test your mettle and get a reality check without laying out a single penny. Even when their identities are veiled, people are usually generous with their praise for a job well done, and cavernously silent if your work has not impressed.

If you’re still in one piece after all the honesty, then enter competitions. Good, industry-related competitions guarantee you at least one professional read, which is above rubies to most new writers. Winning, or even being shortlisted for, a respected contest – as my first novel Blacklands was for the CWA Debut Dagger – can be life-changing. One week I was unpublished and about to default on the mortgage, the next I had an agent and a two-book deal. My agent warned me not to buy a Ferrari; I told her that just using my central heating was going to be luxury enough for a long time to come.

So, why not be a writer?

Well, when it’s good, it’s very very good but – like the little girl with the little curl – when it’s bad it’s horrid. Heartbreak beckons on every corner – even for the most talented and the most dogged. Luck is a wild card that can make you or break you, regardless of your skill and dedication. And, even if you’re fortunate enough and good enough to get a book or story published, that’s only a foot in the door of your future. That’s when the real work starts, when you have to consolidate your position and build a career to a remit, a deadline and a marketing model. It’s a rollercoaster, where the ups are slow and difficult and the downs are dizzying drops – and where only a lucky few avoid the ravages of self-doubt, writer’s block and haemorrhoids.

I wouldn’t want to face that kind of attrition armed only with an ego bloated by the false praise of people who have a vested interest in my failure.

Would you?

More information about Belinda and her work can be found on her website.

Books that I am looking forward to reading in 2012

2011-12-30T23:37:00.008Z

Around this time of the year lots of “best of lists” can be currently found online. I do have a list of my favourite books that I read this year along with some honourable mentions, which can currently be found here in my response to the Guardian’s readers books of the year. I also have my eye on a number of books that are due out the first half of 2012 that I am not only looking forward to getting my hands on but also reading.

The first book that comes to mind is Master and God by Lindsey Davis (Hodder and Stoughton). For you Falco fans out there, I must stress that this is not a Falco novel. Master and God does feature Domitian – son of Vespasian and brother to Titus. It is the story of three people and their intertwining lives. Domitian an unstable Emperor, Flavia Lucillia a wilful determined single daughter of an imperial freedwoman and Gaius Vinius Clodianus a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Lindsey Davis is known for her attention to detail and historical insight and whilst this is not a Falco novel I am fairly certain that Master and God will no doubt find favour with her longstanding fans.

The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal (Bloomsbury). The Golden Scales is the first in a new series by Bilal set in Cairo featuring an exiled Sudanese private investigator who is attempting to escape his own troubled past. Books set in foreign countries often work or they do not. I am hoping that this will work. The premise sounds good and it will be interesting to see how the author manages to marry the two different cultures (Egyptian and Sudanese) together.

Ever since I read Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips, I have loved the books published by Hard Case Crime. In this case, Lawrence Block’s Getting Off, which I know has already been published in the US, is another book that I am looking forward to reading next year. It is the tale of a beautiful and deadly female serial killer who is working her way across the country tracking down every man she has ever slept with and ruthlessly murdering them.

The Glovemaker by Stacia Brown (Random House) which tells the story of glovemaker Rachel Lockyer during the time of Oliver Cromwell. Lockyer finds herself arrested and accused of murder when the body of a child is found buried. Under a law that presumes that anyone who conceals the death of an illegitimate child is guilty of murder.

The Contract by David Levien (Transworld). Troubled former cop Frank Behr is working for an exclusive Indianapolis investigation when he finds himself on protection duty for Bernard “Cool” Kolodnik. An attempt is made on his client’s life and Behr must get to the bottom of the attempt.

The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Transworld). A man wakes up naked unsure of who he is and whilst he is trying to work out himself whom he is there are also others on his trail as well.

The English Monster by Lloyd Shepherd (Simon and Schuster) John Harriott Magistrate of the newly formed Thames River Police Office finds himself investigating a brutal murder. Based on the real life story of the Ratcliffe Highways Murders.

Holy City by Guillermo Orsi (Quercus) Buenos Aires, Argentina. A passenger liner runs aground on the muddy banks of the nearby Rio de la Plata. The passengers are reduced to sleeping in the corridors of hotels and fall easy prey to the city's criminal class, who are always willing to take a wealthy tourist hostage. The first to go missing are a Colombian drug baron and his girlfriend, apprehended by Federal Police who may or may not be all they claim to be. But criminal celebrities of this calibre are a valuable commodity, and their abductor soon finds that the couple has been lifted from under his nose. Into the confusion steps Walter Carroza, a weary but honest cop. With his sidekick and confidante, Veronica Berutti, a policeman's widow and crusading lawyer, he embarks on an investigation that will lead him from the shanty markets of Buenos Aires' Bolivian quarter through layer upon layer of corruption towards the 'Holy Land', a theme park based on ancient Palestine, where a killer with a grisly taste for memorabilia lurks.

Some Other Body (Random House) the second novel in the series by Jason Webster to feature Max Cámara with his love of flamenco and brandy, and occasional doped out high. This time around he stumbles into a web of corruption and violence, uncovering deep animosities and hidden secrets, which also forces him to question his own doubts and desires.

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye (Headline) August 1845 in New York; enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points...After a fire decimated a swathe of lower Manhattan, and following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last formed an official Police Department. That same summer, the great potato famine hit Ireland. These events would change the city of New York for ever. Timothy Wilde hadn't wanted to be a copper star. Timothy soon finds himself on the trail of a brutal killer, seemingly hell bent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment and threatening chaos in a city already in the midst of social upheaval. But his fight for justice could cost him the woman he loves, his brother and ultimately his life...

All I Did Was Shoot My Man (Orion) which is the fourth instalment in Mosley’s soon-to-be classic Leonid McGill series In the shadow worlds of New York, PI Leonid McGill is still struggling to ‘go from crooked to slightly bent’. When Zelda Grisham, a woman falsely imprisoned by evidence McGill had planted, reappears in his life, the detective hires a hotshot attorney to help clear her name. Little does he know that powerful enemies are still watching Zelda’s every move.

Taken by Robert Crais (Orion) When the police tell a wealthy industrialist that her missing son has faked his own kidnapping, she hires Elvis and Joe, who find out the boy and his secret girlfriend have been taken. When Cole goes undercover to try to return them, he himself is taken. Now it is up to Pike to retrace Cole’s steps, through the murderous world of human traffickers…

The Namesake by Conor Fitgerald (Bloomsbury) which is the third book in the series featuring Commissioner Alec Blume. When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he's so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he's too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant Mafioso out of his hiding place...

Point and Shoot by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books) which is the final book in the Charlie Hardie trilogy. On a day like any other day, Kendra Hardie picks up the phone. A voice says, 'leave the house and you're dead'. Then the line is cut. Kendra hasn't seen her husband Charlie for nearly a decade. He hasn't forgotten about her - but neither have his enemies. And he has a lot of enemies. Charlie thought he could protect her by staying away. But now he has access to secrets his enemies will kill to keep hidden, and they're planning to start with his family. After years in exile, Charlie's arming up...and heading home.

Alpha by Greg Rucka (Mulholland Books)ALPHA Jonathan 'Jad' Bell has spent a lifetime in the US army. He can be relied on to get the job done, whatever happens, whatever the cost. So when someone needs to go undercover at the nation's biggest amusement park, Jad is the obvious choice. Aside from dealing with fights and missing children, his main responsibility is to prevent the nightmare scenario from coming to pass. This is the nightmare scenario: A group of well-trained, highly motivated terrorists infiltrate the park. They cut off all escape routes. They take hostages. They ensure every camera in the world is trained on Wilsonville...and then they turn it into a bloodbath. And on the day the nightmare becomes real, Jad and his team are all that stands between a band of ruthless killers and thousands of innocent people...including Jad's estranged wife and daughter.

Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd (Constable and Robinson) London, 1850. Fog in the air and filth in the streets, from the rat-infested graveyard of Tom-All-Alone's to the elegant chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where the formidable lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn has powerful clients to protect, and a deadly secret to hide. Only that secret is now under threat from a shadowy and unseen adversary - an adversary who must be tracked down at all costs, before it's too late. Who better for such a task than young Charles Maddox? Unfairly dismissed from the police force, Charles is struggling to establish himself as a private detective.

Ibrahim Al-Brehm is a respectable husband and a police inspector on Jeddah’s murder squad. But for the past year, he has been having an affair with a woman named Maria. Until one day she disappears. Terrified and with nowhere else to turn, Ibrahim goes to Katya, one of the few women on the force. As she ventures into Saudi Arabia’s underworld, Katya uncovers a murder that connects Maria to a human trafficking ring. Soon Ibrahim realises that the killer is closer to home than he had ever imagined. Kingdom of Strangers by Zoë Ferraris (Little Brown) is a suspenseful story of murder and deception among Saudi Arabia’s shaded alleys, gleaming compounds and vast lonely deserts.

Celebrity in Death by JD Robb (Piaktus) Lieutenant Eve Dallas is no party girl, but she’s managing to have a reasonably good time at the celebrity- packed bash celebrating a new movie based on one of her famous cases. It’s a little spooky seeing the actress playing her, who looks almost like her long-lost twin. Not as unsettling, though, as seeing the actress who plays her partner Peabody – drowned in the pool on the roof of the director’s luxury building. It’s up to Eve, Roarke and the real Peabody to find the killer in their midst.

An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer (Corvus) Milo Weaver is still haunted by his last job. As an expert assassin for the Department of Tourism, an ultra-secret group of super-spooks buried deep in the corridors of the CIA, he fought to keep himself sane in a paranoid and amoral profession. Now, the Department has been destroyed, and with it Weaver's livelihood. Finally he can spend time with his family - without constantly looking over his shoulder and fixing one eye on the exits. Weaver's former boss is not so settled. Soon, Weaver is sifting through what secrets, lies and misinformation he can extract from the sources he still has on the ground. If his time as a Tourist has taught him anything, it's that nothing and no-one can be trusted - even within the CIA itself...

There are of course others but the above are the ones that initially come to mind.

The Resurrection of Alex Mavros - Paul Johnston

2011-12-29T10:46:00.008Z

Today's guest blog is from Scottish crime writer Paul Johnston. He studied Greek at Fettes College and went on to study ancient and modern Greek at the University of Oxford. He currently spends most of his time in Greece where he moved to in 1987. His debut novel Body Politic won the Crime Writer's association John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award (for best first novel) in 1997. His latest novel in the Alex Mavros series The Silver Stain is published today.

Unless you’re Ian Rankin – which I, though a fellow Scot and Edinburgh denizen, am clearly not –the idea of writing twenty or so novels in the same series is daunting. In my experience, series have their own inbuilt life spans. At least, that’s what I thought until earlier this year. For my sins, I am the author of three series.When each one ended, I had no clear conception of ever going back. Until earlier in 2011……

Let’s do this in reverse chronological order. My most recent series featured crime writer turned investigator Matt Wells (wish fulfillment, moi?) and consisted of The Death List (2007), The Soul Collector (2008), Maps of Hell (2010) and The Nameless Dead (2011), all published by MIRA Books. They did pretty well in the UK, US and globally, but there was a basic problem for me – although the novels can be read as straight crime thrillers, they all have substantial undertones of genre-bending and satire. They’re partly in the first person and, frankly, who would trust a crime writer? Wells may not seem to be a classic unreliable narrator, but… I also had a go at several scared cows and genre conventions – among them, publishers and agents in the first book; Golden Age puzzle clues and – erk – crime writers in the second; Jason Bourne, Nazis and Satanism in the third; and that old chestnut of the hitperson on his/ her last job (spoiler non-alert) in the fourth. Anyone who’s read The Nameless Dead can see that the series reaches a natural end - or at least hiatus. Never say never…..

The situation with my second series was different. Alex Mavros, a half Greek half Scots missing person specialist based in Athens, first appeared in A Deeper Shade of Blue (2002). In the last decade, there has been a huge increase in crime fiction set abroad, written both by locals and by foreign interlopers like me. A decade ago, there was much less. One of my favourite writers was Michael Dibdin, whose Italy-set series featuring Aurelio Zen, eventually ran to eleven novels and was cut short by the author’s untimely death. I particularly admired Dibdin’s decision to set each novel in a different part of the country, increasing reader stimulation substantially, though making the author’s job harder as regards research. I ambitiously (foolishly?) resolved to follow this model.

A Deeper Shade of Blue (now available as Crying Blue Murder, a title change requested by my publishers, which at least removed the danger of being linked with the execrable pop group Steps) found Mavros on an Aegean island, where the white houses conceal some very noir goings-on. I actually invented the island of Trigono(‘Triangle’), as I didn’t want a knife in the back from an enraged inhabitant of the real island I lived on for several years – I wasn’t hugely complimentary about certain aspects of island society. If you write novels set in a country with a history and culture as rich as Greece’s, you have to be prepared to take account of those, so Mavros follows clues to black market ancient statues as well as coming to understand the effects of more modern events like the Second World War and drug smuggling.

Mavros 2, The Last Red Death (2003) remains a very special book for me. For a start, it won the now defunct Sherlock Award for best detective novel of 2004, a real thrill for a lifelong Conan Doyle fan – one who as a child owned a stick insect named Sherlock (I say that up front before the likes of Mark Billingham mention it). More seriously, I wrote the book under sentence of death. Between finishing it and doing the final edits, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive and advanced cancer, which needed heavy-duty surgery and a bucket-load of chemotherapy to sort it out. I honestly believe that my subconscious was whispering, ‘Write the best book you can as this might be your last chance’. Weird, huh? Anyway, the book got some really flattering reviews, not least from writers I greatly admire. Set mainly in the Peloponnese and using elements of the Hercules myth, it attempts to explain the phenomenon of terrorism in Greece, linking it to the Axis occupation during the Second World War and the subsequent soul-destroying civil war. The novel was later published in Greece, which caused me a lot of angst beforehand, but it received a hearty welcome – as well as a degree of surprise that a foreign writer was so interested in the country. Well, Britain doesn’t have a glorious record in Greece and I was attempting to redress that in a small way.

The third Mavros book, The Golden Silence (2004), was my take on the gangster novel and was set mainly in Athens. I had Greek friends who said to me, ‘Greek mafia, what Greek mafia?’ Suffice to say, there is one, or at least several warring families and groups, these days in conflict with Albanian, Serbian and Russian gangs. Mavros – who is haunted throughout the series by the disappearance of his brother, Andonis, during the Colonels’ dictatorship of 1967-74 – comes up against a pair of enforcers whose roots are in that repressive period. As in all the books, he thinks he’s finally on Andonis’s trail, but the leads take him nowhere. This reflects the importance of family in Greek life, though Mavros himself is the classic liminal PI, standing at the edge of a society which he understands but does not feel wholly part of. His dual nationality is a crucial part of his character.

My excellent editor Philippa Pride left Hodder and Stoughton before The Golden Silence was published and it soon became clear that the company wasn’t interested in more Mavros books. I turned to Matt Wells and forgot about my fictional renderings of Greece, although I married a Greek in 2005 and have been spending even more time in the country. MIRA Books, who published the Matt Wells novels, decided to reprint the Mavros novels in the UK in 2009. That was good of them, not just because it kept in print the old warhorse with the strange eye (one brown, one flecked with blue). I had another bout of cancer in 2008 and lost a lot of writing time. I’ve since discovered that I have a rare gene malformation, which makes me susceptible to several otherwise unrelated cancers – so if I don’t make it to the end of this blog, you’ll know what’s happened…nah, I’m OK. I just get tested more than the average mortal, which will probably mean I eventually have to change my name to Methuselah. Hang on, that might be a good nom de plume…

Anyway, there was no talk of more Mavros, so I got on with Matt Wells’s increasingly surreal adventures - until the perspicacious Kate Lyall Grant at Crème de la Crime spotted the potential and commissioned two more Mavros novels. I’d written quite an extensive synopsis (not something I normally do) for Mavros 4, but Hodder turned it down. Digging it out and reading it seven years on was a distinctly strange experience. So much had happened in my life (including the arrival of two children) that Mavros was a blast from a different past. Technically, I had to recalibrate as the Wells novels were first person/ third person hybrids, while I had always written Mavros in the third person as if I were perched on his shoulder, though there were scenes without him too. Messing with point of view is one of the great joys of writing.

So, I revamped the synopsis – keeping the basic ideas of Crete as a location and a Hollywood movie about the German invasion in 1941 being shot there - and started writing. I was apprehensive before I wrote the first sentence, but Mavros and his sidekicks – the Fat Man, now without his café, and Niki, the PI’s volatile lover – came back to life with amazing rapidity. The analogy of vampires waiting in their coffins for twilight struck me as apposite more than once. Authors, beware! Your characters suck your blood, at the same time as leading you a merry and, one hopes, profitable dance.

So was born The Silver Stain, in which Mavros comes up against slimy Hollywood types, a starlet nicknamed ‘Twin Peaks’, a mountain village devoted to marijuana production (there is one in reality), and a link, not to Andonis, but to another close family member. I had fun with the locations, as Crete, the ‘Great Island’, is very definitely Greek but is equally very different from the rest of the country. The book is a shorter, less diverse investigation of Greek history and customs, but I think it’s stronger for that. And there are Nazi paratroopers fighting Cretan villagers and Maoris – drama in spades. As in all the Mavros novels, my main interest is the effect of the past on the present. In Crete, the weight of history is very heavy, despite the surface-level pandering to tourism.

And now, to end where I began. My first series (Body Politic, The Bone Yard, Water of Death, The Blood Tree and The House of Dust), set in an independent Edinburgh in the 2020s and featuring Quint (Quintilian) Dalrymple, has recently been republished in digital format by Severn Select. There will also be a sixth Quint novel at some stage in the near future. Truly, never kill off your protagonists and always be prepared for their coffin lids to creak open when the sun disappears over the western horizon…

Paul Johnston’s The Silver Stain is available as a hardback from Crème de la Crime (December 2011 in the UK and April 2012 in the US). There will be a paperback edition later in 2012. For more information, consult his website www.paul-johnston.co.uk

Crime Fiction News

2011-12-28T17:47:00.019Z

Congratulations go to Quercus Publishers and author Peter May whose book The Blackhouse has been chosen as the winner of the Richard and Judy Autumn Book Club after an online vote by the public on the WH Smith website. The sequel The Lewis Man is due to be published in January 2012.

For those of you waiting with anticipation for the new Batman film, you will be pleased to know that the full The Dark Knight Rises trailer has been released.

The Dark Knight Rises is due for release on 20 July 2012.

According to The Bookseller Little, Brown Book Group UK is launching a new imprint focusing on commercial crime, suspense and thriller titles in translation, in a joint venture with fellow Hachette Livre company, Grand Central Publishing in New York. The two houses will jointly acquired and publish up to six titles a year under the Trapdoor imprint in the UK, and under the Grand Central name in the US. Sphere associate publisher Dan Mallory will head up Trapdoor in the UK, with the US programme to be directed by Grand Central executive editor Mitch Hoffman. The first title will be Dark Secrets by Hjorth-Rosenfeldt, a Swedish bestseller featuring psychological profiler Sebastian Bergman. BBC4 have picked up Sebastian Bergman as one of the two Scandinavian crime dramas that they are due to show in 2012.

According to Booktrade Info, Corvus has acquired the rights to a three new books by Robert Fabbri in his epic 'sword-and'sandals' saga charting the rise of Vespasian to become imperial throne of Rome. It has acquired the rights to two new Vespasian titles, and an e-book only novella, based on the story of Magnus, one of the supporting characters in the Vespasian sequence of novels. The e-book novella, entitled The Crossroads Brotherhood, will be published on Christmas day 2011. The third new Vespasian book, False God of Rome will be published in spring 2013; the fourth, currently untitled, Vespasian novel, will be published in spring 2014. Toby Mundy, CEO and Publisher at Atlantic Books and Nic Cheetham, Corvus's publishing director, bought World English Language rights from Ian Drury at the Sheil Land agency. Robert Fabbri's first volume in the series, Tribune of Rome, has sold more than 50,000 copies to date; the second volume Rome's Executioner will be published in May 2012 and Atlantic anticipate increasing Fabbri's sales. Toby Mundy commented: 'Robert Fabbri's seven-volume series on the incredible rise of Vespasian from humble donkey herd to Emperor of Rome is an epic piece of world building. Judging from the responses we have had from Robert's legions of readers they are hungry for more, and I am delighted we will be publishing the next volumes in this exhilarating series.

The Library of Congress have announced the list of films to be Preserved for All Time as part of the National Film Registry. One of the films to make the list is Jonathan Demme's 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs. Also on the list Disney's 1942 tearjerker film Bambi.

According to The Bookseller Anthony Cheetham's new venture Head of Zeus have acquired their first fiction buy. The novel The Babylon Gene is a thriller by an established author under a pseudonym. It will be published as an e-book in January 2012 before being published in print form in the autumn.

Want to know a good place where to start with Scandinavian crime fiction? If so then have a look at the following. A brief introduction to all things Scandinavian crime. Barry Forshaw's book Death in a Cold Climate is due to be published in early January 2012. Watch this space for a guest blog from Barry around publication day.

There are a number of good crime dramas to look forward to in 2012. These include BBC 4's adaptation of Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw, The Bridge and Sebastian Bergman two scandinavian crime series also on BBC4. Falcon a four episode drama based on Robert Wilson's bestselling Javier Falcon novels. One can also not forget the new series of Sherlock which is due to be shown on Sunday 1 January 2012. More information about these dramas and others can be found on the Crimetimepreviewwebsite –

Interesting article in The Telegraph about The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie which is about to enter its 60th year. Laura Thompson Christie's biographer comments on the fact that whilst The Mousetrap is steeped in gentility, it also has its dark side.

Books to look forward to by John Murray

2011-12-26T02:05:00.005Z

The Elizabethan navy has a secret weapon: an optical instrument so powerful it gives England unassailable superiority at sea. Spain will stop at nothing to steal it and seize the two men who understand its secrets - its operative William Ivory, known as the 'Queen's Eye', and its inventor, the maverick magician Dr Dee. With a second Armada threatened, intelligencer John Shakespeare is sent north to escort Dr Dee to safety. But his mission is far from straightforward. Dee's host, the Earl of Derby, cousin to Elizabeth, is dying in agony, apparently poisoned. Who wants him dead and why? What lies behind the lynching of the recusant priest Father Matthew Lamb? And what exactly is the connection between these events and the mysterious and beautiful Lady Eliska? While Shakespeare attempts to untangle a plot that points to treachery at the very highest reaches of government, he also faces serious accusations far closer to home. With so much at stake, must he choose between family and his duty to Queen and country? Traitors moves from the Catholic heartlands of Lancashire to a vagabond camp in the heart of England, and from the deck of Admiral Frobisher's flagship off the Brittany coast to the secret meetings of Elizabeth's closest associates. Traitors is by Rory Clements and is due to be published in April 2012.

The Poison Tide is by Andrew Williams and is due to be published in June 2012. It is 1915. German guns are on their way to Ireland. The British government faces its worst nightmare; insurrection at home while it struggles with bloody stalemate on the Western Front. A British spy, Sebastian Wolff of the new Secret Service Bureau, is given the task of hunting down its enemies: one a traitor reviled by the society that honoured him as a national hero; the other a German-American doctor who, instead of healing the sick, is developing a terrifying new weapon that he will use in the country of his birth. Wolff's mission will take him undercover into the corridors of power in Berlin, then across the Atlantic in a race against time to prevent the destruction of the ships and supplies Britain so desperately needs to stave off defeat.

Jane Logan is six months pregnant and has moved to Berlin to live with her long-term lover, rich banker, Petra. The women's chic new apartment is in a trendy part of the city but Jane finds herself increasingly uneasy there. She conceives a dread of the derelict backhouse across the courtyard and begins to suspect something sinister is happening in the flat next door, where gynaecologist Alban Mann lives with his teenage daughter Anna. Petra believes her lover's pregnancy is affecting her judgement, but Jane is increasingly convinced that all is not well. Her decision to turn detective has devastating results when her own past collides with the past of the building and its inhabitants. The Girl on the Stairs is by Louise Welsh and is due to be published in August 2012.

It is 1897, Dieppe, Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, novelist, raconteur and ex-convict, has fled the country after his release from Reading Goal. Tonight he is sharing a drink and the story of his cruel imprisonment with a mysterious stranger. He has endured a harsh regime: the treadmill, solitary confinement, censored letters, no writing materials. Yet even in the midst of depravation, Oscar's astonishing detective powers remain undiminished - and when first a brutal warder and then the prison chaplain are found murdered, who else should the prison governor turn to for help other than Reading Goal's most celebrated inmate! Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Goal is by Gyles Brandreth and is due to be published in September 2012.

Thriller Novel to Thriller Film

2011-12-15T13:38:00.006Z

With all the excitement in London with the World Premiere of David Fincher’s US version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO held at the Leicester Square Odeon on Monday [with world-wide release on 26 December 2012] – I discussed the “old chesnut” of Film Adaptations of thrillers with Elaine Hirsch. She provided an interesting insight, selecting her top 5 thriller adaptations. Elaine’s list will provide controversy, so feel free to comment [below] on your own favourites, as an Ian Fleming advocate I was surprised to see that ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE did not make the list.

Nothing stops the cinematic heart like a well-constructed thriller. Even the best thrill-makers, however—from Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg—have faltered without the right source material. Developing a great movie based on a book requires a bit of luck, good casting, and an intriguing story, which is a much different task than say, completing a master’s degree program. A great novel-to-film thriller adaptation, thanks to the often difficult-to-distill layers of plotting, makes for one tense night at the movies. Let’s take a moment to look back at some literary adaptations that have stood the test of time. Classics beyond repute—and often adapted from long-forgotten novels—these five films are heart-stoppers to cherish.

The Bourne Identity – The first film of the last decade’s action masterpiece trilogy may or may not stand out as your favorite in the trilogy. However, it stands as the cornerstone of a trilogy of literary adaptations that’s left action fans salivating since 2002. Like most of the films on this list, The Bourne Identity runs buck wild from—even ignoring—its source material. The result, however, is a throwback espionage film for the ages. Matt Damon’s underplayed, sometimes robotic performance may be the best in a suspense film since Gary Cooper rocked High Noon.

The Silence of the Lambs – The finest horror film in the American canon, The Silence of the Lambs gets under your skin within minutes. One of the few films to take home the “Big Five” Oscars—for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Adapted Screenplay, Silence used its literary roots to heady advantage. The horror lies less on disgusting violence (though there’s plenty of than) than airtight close-ups of leads Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins as they play a massively complex game of psychological chess. Hopkins, as Hannibal Lecter, has the most terrifying eyes in the canon of world cinema.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Crime novels have made for stellar adaptation material over the years, but The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo stands out as a worldwide cultural phenomenon. On paper, the twist and turns of Steig Larsson’s novel read simply and clearly. On film, those plot mechanics become a grandiose, entrancing mystery, and an indictment of Sweden’s structure.

The Manchurian Candidate – Action master John Frankenheimer boiled Richard Condon’s satirical novel down to its trippiest, weirdest essentials and turned the pulp story into a suspense classic. Frank Sinatra’s perfect performance, the greatest fistfight ever put on film, Angela Lansbury’s Oedipal nightmare of a villainess, and the gut-churning climax make for an unforgettable viewing experience.

The French Connection – Gene Hackman embodied the most hard-boiled detective in film history—forget Humphrey Bogart—in William Friedkin’s adaptation of the true crime novel. The differences between the book and film are profound—there’s no one in the novel called “Popeye Doyle,” and the heart-in-throat elevated railway chase never happened—but the film still stands as a benchmark for action filmmaking.A great thriller often has fine source material. These five thrillers—all suspense classics—are in most cases better remembered than the source material. Not only will these five book-to-movie thrillers provide for ample nostalgic material, they all bring additional layers to their respective stories which will please any thriller fan.

Elaine Hirsch is a freelance journalist with interests in education, history, medicine and videogames. She can be contacted at elainehi86@gmail.com

Reed who? Moe who?

2011-12-14T12:21:00.006Z

He’s been called a hard boiled poet and the noir poet laureate. He has won the Shamus Award for best detective novel thrice, he has also won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards and has been nominated twice for an Edgar Award. I am of course talking about Reed Farrel Coleman!

If you want to get the lowdown on all things Reed and Moe Prager, (for example what would you find in Moe’s fridge) then hop on over to the Shots ezine and have a read of the brilliant answers I managed to prize out of Reed to the questions that I asked him.

His latest book to feature Moe Prager - Hurt Machine has just been published!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Worldwide Premier

2011-12-13T10:18:00.006Z

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Worldwide Premier took place yesterday evening at the Odeon Leicester Square, London and I was lucky enough to have been invited to attend alongside my fellow Shots members Ali Karim, Mike Stotter and Chris Simmons of Crime Squad. One must give thanks to Lucy Ramsay of Quercus Books (his UK publishers) for inviting us.

There are of course remakes that work well and remakes that do not. One also sometimes wonders why they bother to make remakes. In the case of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it is clear that some people will like it and some will not. I am going to say from the start that I enjoyed it. Nevertheless, I did have problems with it.

From the start, one can see that no expense has been spared, from the opening credits and scenes, which I admit reminded me of a sci-fi film was dark, metallic and full of flourishes. The score at the start was also just as powerful. The cinematography was wonderful. The excellent sharp visuals, the faultless design, the instinctive ability for melding sound and music, the chill and menace is what one has come to expect from a Fincher film. If you have seen the original films then you will be able to follow the film quite easily. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is stylishly filmed and the photography is outstanding, it is at times especially at the start quite bleak. The film does not however hold back. Compared to the original the blood and gore is not as graphic. The violent sex scenes are still there but they are in my opinion done a lot more subtly. They are still there but unlike in the Swedish version I did not feel the need to want to cover my eyes as some of it took place. Rooney Mara is good as Elisabeth Salander. Hollywood seemed to have used Noomi Rapace as a template. My only gripe is that the hairstyle that they gave her was awful. It did not suit her at all and in fact detracted from the rather good acting. She may not have replaced the original actor as well as she could have but she did a very good job. In my opinion, she came across as a lot harder than Noomi Rapace. But this is her film. Daniel Craig on the other hand was for me a disappointment. He was not Mikael Blomkvist. The original actor who played the character in the Swedish version was much better. Rather sadly, I kept on seeing Bond in his actions and his demeanour all the way through the film. Whilst he was not brash, arrogant or over the top as he sometimes comes across in the Bond films this time around he is diffident, understated, even back pedaling. Nevertheless, one could not dismiss that Bondish attitude especially at a critical moment in the film towards the end. There was a seediness about the original actor that was missing from Craig. He doesn't divulge much that's going on inside him beyond what's already called for on the outside. Christopher Plummer who plays Henrick was good. Unpretentious but well played. There are various bits of the film that have been changed but they certainly do not detract from what is the essence of the film from the book and the original Swedish version. One big change is the ending. No, I am not going to say what it is. Go and see it instead.

My opinion is if you have seen the Swedish version and enjoyed them then please do go and see the Hollywood remake. I was (and still am) a big fan of the original films as it was thus with a slight sense of trepidation and anticipation that I attended the premier. Would I go and see the other two remakes if they are done? Yes, I would if only to compare them to the original Swedish version. Would I get them on DVD? No but I would get the original Swedish versions instead notwithstanding the subtitles.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Random House Group

2011-12-09T18:16:00.027Z

Private Games is by James Patterson and is due to be published in January 2012. The world is watching - July 2012: The Games have arrived in London. Preparations have gone flawlessly and the stage is set for one of the greatest ever showcases of sporting excellence. But one man has a devastating plan. Having waited years for this chance, he is now ready for vengeance. A killer is plotting. When Sir Denton Marshall, a key member of the London Olympic organising committee, is found decapitated in his garden, Peter Knight, head of Private London, is called to the scene. Private are working with the organising committee on the security for the Games, so Denton Marshall was a valuable client. But there is a more personal link: Marshall was also the fiancé of Knight's mother. The time for vengeance has come. Having only recently lost close friends and colleagues at Private London in a fatal plane crash, this is another torturous blow for Knight and threatens to push him over the edge. But it soon becomes clear that Denton Marshall's murder is no isolated incident, and that the killer's number one target is the Games itself. As the most talented athletes in the world gather in London, Knight knows he must find Sir Denton's killer. Thousands of lives are at stake...

When she disappeared from her rural hometown, Wendy White was a sweet, family-oriented girl, a late bloomer who'd recently moved out on her own, with her first real boyfriend and a job waiting tables at the local tavern. It happens all the time--a woman goes missing, a family mourns, and the case remains unsolved. Stacy Flynn is a reporter looking for her big break. She moved east from Cleveland, a city known for its violent crime, but that's the last thing she expected to cover in Haeden. This small, upstate New York town counts a dairy farm as its main employer and is home to families who've set down roots and never left--people who don't take kindly to outsiders. Flynn is researching the environmental impact of the dairy, and the way money flows outward like the chemical runoff, eventually poisoning those who live at the edges of its reach.
Five months after she disappeared, Wendy's body is found in a ditch just off one of Haeden's main roads. Suddenly, Flynn has a big story, but no one wants to talk to her. No one seems to think that Wendy's killer could still be among them. A drifter, they say. Someone “not from here." Fifteen-year-old Alice Piper is an imaginative student with a genius IQ and strong ideals. The precocious, confident girl has stood out in Haeden since the day her eccentric hippie parents moved there from New York City, seeking a better life for their only child. When Alice reads Flynn's passionate article in the Haeden Free Press about violence against women--about the staggering number of women who are killed each day by people they know--she begins to connect the dots of Wendy's disappearance and death, leading her to make a choice: join the rest in turning a blind eye, or risk getting involved. As Flynn and Alice separately observe the locals' failure to acknowledge a murderer in their midst, Alice's fate is forever entwined with Wendy's when a second crime rocks the town to its core. So Much Pretty is the debut novel by Cara Hoffman and is due to be published in February 2012.

11th Hour is by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro. Lindsay Boxer is pregnant at last! But her work doesn't slow for a second. When millionaire Chaz Smith is mercilessly gunned down, she discovers that the murder weapon is linked to the deaths of four of San Francisco's most untouchable criminals. And it was taken from her own department's evidence locker. Anyone could be the killer - even her closest friends. Lindsay is called next to the most bizarre crime scene she's ever witnessed: two bodiless heads elaborately displayed in the garden of a world-famous actor. Another head is unearthed in the garden, and Lindsay realises that the ground could hide hundreds of victims. A reporter launches a series of malicious articles about the cases and Lindsay's personal life is laid bare. But this time she has no one to turn to - especially not Joe. 11th Hour is due to be published in March 2012.

In a cold, windswept field on the outskirts of Edinburgh, lies the brutally mutilated body of a young woman. As DI Rob Brennan looks at the tangled mass of limbs and blood, he feels his heart freeze. Like Fiona Gow five years earlier, this girl has been strangled with her own stockings, sexually mutilated and her eyes have been gouged out. Is this the work of an Edinburgh Ripper? The press certainly think so. Rob Brennan is determined to uncover the truth - however painful that might be. But truth is hard to come by in a world of police rivalries, media hysteria and copycat crime. Murder Mile is the second book by Tony Black to feature Detective Inspector Rob Brennan. Murder Mile is due to be published in April 2012.

Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot is on sick leave recovering from gunshot wounds when Isabelle Cassier, an old friend and sometime lover, pays him a visit. After working for the Judiciaire in Paris following the end of their brief affair, Isabelle has returned to Marseilles and rejoined the homicide squad. And her visit, she tells him, is official. Jacquot's name has appeared in connection with an unsolved murder she's investigating and she wants some answers. What does he know about a dead cop called Gilles Barsin? And just how friendly was he with Jean-Louis Lombard, a notorious dockland villain also known as The Seahorse? The two names spin Jacquot back to his days as a rookie cop, a distant time when the lines between law and disorder were often blurred, when silly mistakes were sometimes made, and friendship came at a heavy price. Now, years later, it looks like someone is spilling the beans. The Dying Minutes is by Martin O’Brien and is due to be published in April 2012.

Meet Francis Ackerman, America's most terrifying serial killer. What excites him most is the game of chance. He likes to play with ordinary people. Innocent people. Someone just like you. If you take part in Ackerman's game, he'll stalk you, then take you prisoner. Will he let you live? Or will you die? There are so many different ways to die, and Ackerman knows them all. It's part of his game. Do you wanna play? Francis Ackerman does. And he's found you... The Shepherd is the debut novel by Ethan Cross and is due to be published in January 2012.

Good Bait is by Cartier Diamond Dagger winner John Harvey and is due to be published in January 2012. When a seventeen-year-old Moldovan boy is found dead on Hampstead Heath, the case falls to DCI Karen Shields and her overstretched Homicide & Serious Crime team. Karen knows she needs a result. What she doesn't know is that her new case is tied inextricably to a much larger web of gang warfare and organised crime, which infiltrates almost every aspect of London society, from the back streets and high rises of Tottenham to the multi-million pound hideaways of the new international entrepreneurs. Several hundred miles away in Cornwall, DI Trevor Cordon is stirred from his day-to-day duties by another tragic London fatality. Travelling to the capital, determined to establish the cause of death and trace the deceased's daughter - an old acquaintance from Penzance - Cordon becomes entangled in a lethally complex situation of his own. A situation much closer to Karen's case than either of them can imagine ...

When a man is found stabbed to death floating in the canal, Commissario Brunetti is convinced he recognises him from somewhere. But with no identification on the body and no reports of people missing from the Venice area, it seems as if he has appeared from nowhere, and the case is at a dead end. It does not take long for Brunetti to realise why he remembers the dead man – he saw him at a demonstration a couple of years ago, where farmers were protesting about European milk quotas. But what was his involvement with the protest, and could it have anything to do with his murder? Having nothing to go on but the distinctive shoes the man was wearing, and a disease that had left his body strangely deformed, Brunetti and Inspector Vianello set out to try and discover the man’s identity. Their investigation eventually takes them to the slaughterhouse at Preganziol, on the mainland. It is there that Brunetti discovers the dead man’s connection with the slaughterhouse, and the world of blackmail and corruption that surrounds it. Beastly Things is by Donna Leon and is due to be published in April 2012.

Private: No.1 Suspect is by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro and is due to be published in April 2012. Since former US Marine Jack Morgan started Private, it has become the world's most effective investigation firm - sought out by the famous and the powerful to discreetly handle their most intimate problems. Private's investigators are the smartest, the fastest, and the most technologically advanced in the world - and they always uncover the truth. When his former lover is found murdered in Jack's bed, he is instantly the number one suspect. While Jack is under police investigation and fighting to clear his name, the mob strong-arms him into recovering $30 million in stolen pharmaceuticals for them. And the beautiful owner of a chain of luxury hotels persuades him to quietly investigate a string of murders at her high-class establishments. With Jack and his team stretched to breaking point, one of his most trusted colleagues threatens to leave Private, and Jack realises he is facing his biggest challenge yet. With more action, more intrigue, and more twists than ever before.

Nothing will ever be the same again...In the heart of Philadelphia's badlands, Homicide Detectives Byrne and Balzano are called out to a particularly chilling crime scene. Once the pillar of the neighbourhood, an abandoned church has become a killing room. At first, it looks like a random act of violence. But then a second body is found, and a third. Each crime scene more disturbing than the last, each murder more brutal. And it soon becomes horrifyingly clear that a cold, calculating and terrifyingly precise mind is at work. With very few leads, and a mastermind who always seems to be one-step ahead, Byrne and Balzano are faced with challenges they could never have imagined as they race against time to hunt down their killer, before it's too late... The Killing Room is by Richard Montanari and is due to be published in February 2012.

Following the shocking events of the previous weeks when Tory Brennan, niece of forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, and her group of disparate friends discovered that they had somehow been struck down with a canine disease that had changed their DNA, and given them powers that they could neither control nor understand, they have lain low. But with their home under threat and the prospect of separation all too real, they need to find a way to preserve their group. But only one thing will save them: money. And lots of it. And as far as Tory can see, there is only one way they can get enough money quickly: they must find she-pirate Anne Bonny’s legendary treasure. Rumour has it that she hid it in Charleston, but in over 200 years, no one has been able to find it. But with the help of their new-found powers. Tory is amazed to find that they might actually be on the right track. The problem is they aren’t the only ones looking for it, and if that wasn’t dangerous enough, Anne Bonny booby-trapped the trail every step of the way, and there are bodies to prove it. One way or another, the path ahead is fraught with danger. And this time, their special powers may not be enough to get them out of trouble. Seizure is by Kathy Reichs and is due to be published in January 2012.

It was the most renowned and respected shrine in the Roman Empire, sought after for generations, the object of veneration by Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Caligula, Hadrian and the world over. It stood for centuries within a sacred precinct the size of a large town at the heart of the greatest Greek city in the world. Yet at the end of the fourth century AD, it disappeared without a trace, creating the greatest archaeological enigma of the ancient world. What became of the tomb of Alexander the Great. The Tomb of Alexander is the debut novel by Sean Hemingway (grandson of Ernest Hemingway) and introduces readers to hero Tom Carr. The Tomb of Alexander is due to be published in March 2012.

The Fear Index is by Robert Harris and is due to be published in March 2012. His name is carefully guarded from the general public but within the secretive inner circles of the ultra-rich. Dr Alex Hoffmann is a legend - a visionary scientist whose computer software turns everything it touches into gold. Together with his partner, an investment banker, Hoffmann has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that tracks human emotions, enabling it to predict movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy. His hedge fund, based in Geneva, makes billions. But then in the early hours of the morning, while he lies asleep with his wife, a sinister intruder breaches the elaborate security of their lakeside house. So begins a waking nightmare of paranoia and violence as Hoffmann attempts, with increasing desperation, to discover who is trying to destroy him. His quest forces him to confront the deepest questions of what it is to be human. By the time night falls over Geneva, the financial markets will be in turmoil and Hoffmann's world - and ours - transformed forever.

Welcome to heartland America circa right about now, when the union jobs and family farms that kept the white on the picket fences of towns like Winesburg, Ohio have given way to meth labs, backwoods gunrunners and bare knuckle brawling. The results are, at least, never, ever, boring. Bill’s people are pressed to the brink—and beyond. There is Scoot McCutchen, whose beloved wife falls terminally ill, leaving him with nothing to live for—, which doesn’t quite explain why he brutally murders her and her doctor and flees, or why, after years of running, he decides to turn himself in. In the title story, a man who has devolved from breeding hounds for hunting to training them for dog-fighting crosses paths with a Salvadoran gangbanger tasked with taking over the rural drug trade, but who mostly wants to grow old in peace. As Crimes in Southern Indiana unfolds, we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved. Crimes in Southern Indiana is the debut novel by Frank Bill and is due to be published in January 2012.

Detective Inspector January David is on the hunt for an elusive serial killer but the leads are drying up. The first victim was taken on Halloween and as the months develop more ritualistic murders are discovered. So far, five innocents, each struck down in a public place, have been left dead. Brooke Derry should have been the sixth but she miraculously survives. Meanwhile, January's personal life is in turmoil as he battles the demons which have haunted him all his life. He's desperately seeking his missing sister and his private hell is only intensified by the corruption within his own team. When the killer's picture is leaked to the press, hysteria grips London as the public sees the face of evil and fears they will be next. But no one, including DI David, realises that an unknown vigilante has also seen the front pages and has tracked down the killer and is now holding them captive. January is in pursuit of not just one lost soul, but two... The 2 is the second book to feature Detective Inspector January David by Will Carver and is due to be published in April 2012.

Angelmaker is by Nick Harkaway the acclaimed author of "The Gone-Away World" - A new riveting action spy thriller, blistering gangster noir, and howling absurdist comedy: a propulsively entertaining tale about a mobster's son and a retired secret agent who are forced to team up to save the world. All Joe Spork wants is a quiet life. He repairs clockwork and lives above his shop in a wet, unknown bit of London. The bills don't always get paid and he's single and has no prospects of improving his lot, but at least he's not trying to compete with the reputation of Mathew "Tommy Gun" Spork, his infamous criminal dad. Edie Banister lives quietly and wishes she didn't. She's nearly ninety and remembers when she wasn't. She's a former superspy and now she's...well...old. Worse yet, the things she fought to save don't seem to exist anymore, and she's beginning to wonder if they ever did. When Joe fixes one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. The client? Unknown. And the device? It's a 1950s doomsday machine. And having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis. With Joe's once-quiet world now populated with mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realises that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she gave up years ago, and pick up his father's old gun... Angelmaker is due to be published in February 2012.

In Her Blood is the first in a series of crime novels starring Catherine Berlin, a civilian investigator whose longstanding heroin addiction is only party of her story. On a bone-chilling February morning, Catherine Berlin, investigator with the Financial Services Agency, finds the almost-headless body of her informant ‘Juliet Bravo’, rolling in a shallow reach of the Thames. That Juliet Bravo’s death is linked to an investigation of local loan shark Archie Doyle is no surprise to Berlin, but when Berlin’s own unorthodox methods are blamed for the murder, she realises bigger predators are circling. To start with, it looks as though Berlin, will pay only with her job. And then, on a routine trip to her GP (on of a dying breed who will still prescribe heroin to long-term addicts) she stumbles across a second body. Suspended, incriminated, and then blackmailed into cooperation by the detective leading the investigation, Catherine Berlin has seven stolen days of clarity within which to solve the crime – and find a new supplier. In Her Blood is by Annie Hauxwell and is due to be published in May 2012.

London, 1649. Oliver Cromwell is running the country, and a law targeting unmarried mothers threatens the life of glovemaker Rachel Lockyer. This is her story.
It is 1649. Charles I has been beheaded, Cromwell is running the country, and a new law targeting unwed mothers and lewd women has been passed. A law that presumes that anyone who conceals the death of her illegitimate child is guilty of murder. When a dead infant is found buried behind the Smithfield slaughterhouse, all fingers point to thirty-nine year old glover's assistant Rachel Lockyer. A fiercely independent woman, Rachel has been carrying on an affair with a married man, a one-time political agitator with a radical group known as The Levelers. Though no one knows for certain that Rachel was even pregnant, she is arrested. So comes an investigation, public trial, and unforgettable characters: gouty investigator Thomas Bartwain, fiery Elizabeth Lillburne and her revolution-chasing husband, Huguenot glover Mary Du Gard, and others. Spinning within are Rachel and William, their remarkable love story, and the miracles that come to even the commonest lives. The Glovemaker is the debut novel by Stacia M Brown and is due to be published in February 2012.

It's summer. A boy is lying on the floor of an Oslo apartment. He is bleeding to death. Outside, the church bells toll, and he begins to tell his story. Autumn. Former police inspector Harry Hole returns to Oslo after three years away. He seeks out his old boss at Police Headquarters to request permission to investigate a homicide. But the case is already closed: the young junkie was shot dead by a fellow addict. Yet Harry is allowed to visit the boy's alleged killer in jail. There, he meets himself and his own history, and he takes on the first impossible case of his career. While Harry tries to uncover the truth, the murdered boy continues his tale. A man walks the dark streets of Oslo. The streets are his and he has always been there. He is a phantom. Phantom is by Jo Nesbo and is due to be published in March 2012.

Bloodman is the debut novel by Robert Pobi and is due to be published in March 2012. For the first time in thirty years, FBI consultant Jake Cole must return to his childhood home in Long Island to look after his estranged and elderly father. But, within hours of being home, Jake is pulled into a double homicide investigation at the request of local sheriff, Mike Hauser. A mother and her young son have been brutally murdered and the local police need Jake – with his photographic memory and ability to recognise killers’ artistic signatures – to help them with this gruesome and baffling case. For Jake, though, this case is personal. He may not know the victims but he is horrified to recognise the killer’s signature as that which was left behind on his own mother, brutally murdered when Jake was just a child and whose murder has never been solved. In a race against time, Jake and Hauser are on the hunt to find this monster – a serial killer who skins his victims alive. Could the ‘bloodman’ of Jake’s nightmares be back?

Black Skies is by Arnaldur Indridason and is due to be published in June 2012. A man is making a crude leather mask with slits for eyes and mouth, and an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a 'death mask', once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves. He has revenge in mind. Meanwhile, with Detective Erlendur absent, his colleague Sigurdur Oli is in the spotlight. A school reunion has left Sigurdur Oli dissatisfied with life in the police force. Iceland is enjoying an economic boom and young tycoons are busy partying with the international jet set. In contrast, Sigurdur Oli's relationship is on the rocks and soon even his position in the CID is compromised: when he agrees to visit a couple of blackmailers as a favour to a friend he walks in just as a woman is beaten unconscious. When she dies, Sigurdur Oli has a murder investigation on his hands. The evidence leads to debt collectors, extortionists, swinging parties. But when a chance link connects these enquiries to the activities of a group of young bankers, Sigurdur Oli finds himself investigating the very elite he had envied. Moving from the villas of Reykjavik's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, "Black Skies" is a superb story of greed, pride and murder.

It’s the weekend of Halloween, and PI John Craine has temporarily closed down his business and gone to stay in a run-down hotel on Hale Island – a small, bleak island just off the coast of Essex. He’s come to hale to get away from it all – the memories and the guilt, and a past that just won’t let go. All too soon Craine stumbles across the dead body of a young girl on the beach. He calls the police, but when they arrive the body has inexplicably disappeared – or did Craine imagine it in the first place? Determined to get to the truth, Craine starts to ask questions. And once more he finds himself tangled up in a deadly network of corruption, fear and violence. But it seems no one on the island is talking. Until the Darkness Comes is by Kevin Brooks and is due to be published by May 2012

It’s Detective Nick Belsey’s summer of trying to behave, and London has decided to go lawless. A stolen vehicle is abandoned, mid-riot, in the shadows of Centrepoint, leading to the discovery of a homeless man bludgeoned to death in his hostel. It seems at first just the nasty edge of a general breakdown, but it leads into the secrets of another age. Under the cover of chaos someone’s been doing historical research, visiting ‘Deep Shelters’, still littered with the remains of 1980s exercises in apocalypse. The trail leads Belsey to a home papered floor to ceiling with photographs of cold-war architecture, maps of the underground tunnels, declassified designs. It’s soon made clear that his own curiosity is unwanted. He is happy to let state secrets lie. Until it becomes personal. With the police force stretched to nothing. Belsey embarks on a chase through a London on edge deep into the strange, paranoid world of JIGSAW, the government’s Joint Inter-Services group for the Study of All-Out Warfare: Doomsday Departure, as it was known. And finally to the core of its secrets. Deep Shelter is the second book by Oliver Harris to feature Detective Nick Belsey. Deep Shelter is due to be published in May 2012.

It is snowing, she's barefoot, but Galya runs. Her captors are close behind her, and she won't go back there, no matter what. Tricked into coming to Belfast with the offer of a good job, all she wants now is to get back home. Her only hope is a man who gave her a cross and a phone number, telling her to call if she escaped. She puts herself at his mercy, knowing she has nowhere else to turn. Detective Inspector Jack Lennon wants a quiet Christmas with his daughter. When an apparent turf war between rival gangs leaves a string of bodies across the city, he knows he won't get it. As Lennon digs deeper he discovers the truth is far more threatening. Soon he is locked in a deadly race with two very different killers. Stolen Souls is by Stuart Neville and is due to be published by January 2012.
The Technologists is by Matthew Pearl and is due to be published in February 2012. Spring 1868, and the population of Boston is being terrorised by technological attacks: first a magnetic storm causes ships in the harbour to collide in flames, then in another bizarre catastrophe every piece of glass in the financial district spontaneously melts - clocks, windows, eyeglasses. Nothing in nature can do this: these are man-made disasters. Someone has unleashed the destructive potential of science on an innocent population. The city's fate relies on four young students of the recently founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Marcus Mansfield, a Civil War veteran determined to repay MIT's founder for taking a chance on him, brash Bob Richards, meticulous Edwin Hoyt and the eccentric but brilliant Ellen Swallow, the first woman at MIT, who experiments secretly in a basement laboratory. Together, they are "The Technologists". In a climate of rising hysteria, these four courageous individuals must unite against the forces of darkness to uncover the mastermind before he can stage his greatest outrage.

Max Cámara is feeling low. Ominous cracks have appeared in the walls of his flat; the body of a well-known paella chef has been washed up on the beach; there are rows and threats about abortion clinics; the town hall are set on demolishing El Cabanyal, the colourful fisherman’s quarter on Valencia’s seafront. As Cámara untangles these threads, he stumbles into a web of corruption and violence, uncovering deep animosities and hidden secrets, and forcing him to question his own doubts and desires. Some Other Body is the second novel in the series by Jason Webster to feature Max Cámara with his love of flamenco and brandy, and occasional doped out high. It is due to be published in June 2012.

'If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don't know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did...' So speaks Alex, the narrator of this unforgettable literary thriller. Alex is in his thirties, a solitary man who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful and vivacious wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one midsummer night by the lake in the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College, Oxford, Alex's life as he knew it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter, and through the shroud of his shock and grief, begins to try to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife's death. Playing host to Alex's winter visit is Harry, Rachel's former tutor and trusted mentor, who turns out to have been involved in some way in almost every significant development of their relationship throughout their undergraduate years. In his exploration of Rachel's history, Alex also turns to Evie, Rachel's self-centered and difficult godmother, whose jealousy of her charge has waxed and waned over the years. And then there are her university friends, Anthony and Cissy, who shared with Rachel her love of Browning and a taste for the illicit. As Alex delves deep into the past to uncover shocking secrets and constantly shifting versions of the truth, it is with these virtual strangers as his guides that he begins to confront the terrifying reality that neither his life, nor his love, are the things he thought them to be. Part love story, part murder-mystery, this is an extraordinary debut from a powerful new voice in fiction, guaranteed to make your heart beat faster and faster... Every Contact Leaves a Trace is by Elanor Dymott and is due to be published in May 2012

It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the "Evening News" is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page there's a photograph of a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in the basement of a block of flats. It would appear that she has been the subject of a sexual attack. In the back pages of the same paper there is a fifty-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute whose body has been found dumped on a roadside near the McVitie's factory. For Bane - fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords - it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart, he searches through the tribes and estates of his bombed city for answers. It soon becomes clear that the two newspaper stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others - those willing to profit from gun arsenals, human trafficking and a Manchester in decay."The Doll Princess" introduces the mesmeric narrator, Henry Bane, a conflicted man caught up in a mire of evil. The Doll Princess is by Tom Bane and is due to be published in January 2012.

Robert Knightly - Turning A Life Into Crime Fiction

2011-12-08T15:48:00.011Z

Our guest blogger today is Robert Knightly. Robert is a former police officer with NYPD with over 20 years’ service. He retired from the police force in 1987 with the rank of Lieutenant. He is now a trial lawyer practising in the criminal and family courts. His short stories can be found in Brooklyn Noir, Manhattan Noir, Brooklyn Noir 3, Best American Mystery Stories 2007 and Queens Noir which he also edited. His first novel Bodies in Winter introduced readers to his protagonist Det Harry Corbin

When I was 12 years old, away at a religious boarding school among the potato fields on the North Shore of Long Island, I read (under the covers, after lights out) the novels of Leslie Charteris, detailing the adventures of Simon Templar, The Saint. Fifty-plus years later, I don’t remember the plots, but do remember that the Saint’s right hand man was Hoppy Uniatz, and that it was okay (not a mortal sin) to kill bad men, as the Saint did regularly to those who needed it.

Was that an early obsession with crime and its uses? Don’t know, but should report that I left the body count behind and devoted my remaining teen years and twenties to ‘literary fiction’, where few died if ever. Although, in the interest of completeness, I must say there was a period there when I referred often to friends and acquaintances as “Old Son” (as the Saint was forever doing). But I never murdered anyone, even in a good cause.

Although I did join the New York City Police Department as a rookie Patrolman in 1967. I trace that event---in a somewhat roundabout way—to what happened to me in a Creative Writing Class in college years earlier. My first ever short story was a murder which I set against the background of the City Room of a large daily newspaper, and it was viciously panned by a student in class as “lacking in verisimilitude” (in fact, she laughed as she said it). I still remember the cutting words, the laughter, her name (which I won’t reveal to protect the guilty). True, I had never been in the City Room, or any room, of a large daily newspaper even though in those days there were seven in New York City, which was my home and the college’s. So, five years later, upon discharge from the U.S. Army, I got a job as copyboy on the New York Journal-American, the Hearst afternoon daily. This was the Fall of 1963. So, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I stood amidst the reporters, rewrite men and editors on the wood-planked floor of the City Room of the Journal-American, disbelieving as Walter Cronkite, on TV, competed with the roar of the linotype machines next door to report the death of President Kennedy. The following year. The Journal-American’s machines fell silent as the paper quit publishing. That left me adrift until I landed a job as Editor and sole staff-member of the sister publications, Contract Cleaning and Maintenance Supplies Magazines. Not my cup of tea, however. So…the NYPD.

Truth is, the blue-collar Greenpoint, Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up and swam in the East River off the docks opposite the Manhattan shoreline primarily produced longshoremen, bartenders, roofers, bookies, numbers runners, and civil servants, especially fire, sanitation and policemen. I went through the six-month-long Police Academy training with other young men whose life’s goal had been to become cops. That wasn’t me. But like them, I saw police work as exciting, an adventure, not to mention the good pay, steady work and benefits. Yet, when a college friend, shocked at my new employment, asked me why, I replied as thoughtfully as I could that ‘The Job’ (as we call it) enabled me to go everywhere, even into people’s homes and see how they lived. That reason I gave forty-five years ago for my becoming a cop still holds, I have no greater insight. In a twenty-year police career, I worked the streets as Patrol Officer and Sergeant, instructed detectives-in-training at the Police Academy, wrote speeches for a Police Commissioner, and, as a lawyer in the Police Legal Bureau, counseled units in the field on whether to search, seize and arrest.

I now see a couple of threads running through all that life experience: First , ‘Write what you know,’ the old saw counsels, but the converse of that---Know what you attempt to write about---makes sense to me as more realistic. Second, Get A Life to Write About: yours and/or others’. Find your material and you’ll find your voice.

I began again to think of myself as a serious writer in 1982-83 while I was the Sergeant-supervisor of a team of plainclothes policemen assigned to thwart unlicensed peddling on the streets of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Hot dog vendors, clothing, books, art, bootleg CDs, rugs (yes, room sized, allegedly ‘Persian’) and the Cuban ‘3-card Monte’ men. The 3-card Monte sharks (a dealer, a shill or two, and lookouts on the fringe) operated off a cardboard box set up on the sidewalk waist-high. Three cards lie face down on the box, the dealer then picks up one, an Ace of Diamonds, shows it around, ostentatiously replaces it face down on the box, then in a blur of practiced hands shifts the 3 cards’ positions at the speed of light for less than 30 seconds under the gaze of prospective pigeons. They have already watched as shill-players have guessed the location of the Ace of Diamonds and won money often enough to give them confidence they, too, can beat the dealer. They step up, make a bet, watch the cards move, guess wrong as the dealer turns up one of the other two cars that is the Ace. I don’t know how he does it, either. The team is all men and always Cuban. I know this because my team had been sufficiently stealthy to get close enough to grab the dealer, cards in hand, often enough for me to question one old man. He admitted in workmanlike English to being from the Bronx by way of the Cuban Boatlift. When I asked if all the 3-card Monte men were Cuban, he replied with an elegantly slight lift of the shoulders. A female Judge brand new to the Criminal Court Bench had recently ruled the game of 3-Card Monte to be a game of skill, not a confidence scam, and therefore not illegal. I asked my prisoner if he agreed and his response was a smile enigmatic as the Mona Lisa. (Someday I’ll write the 3-card Monte story; meanwhile, I’ll keep filling notebooks.)

Greenwich Village on Manhattan’s Lower West Side was home then to the well-to-do and professionals in their town houses alongside artists and ordinary folk entrenched in Rent-Controlled apartments handed-down generation to generation (Still is). And colleges, one of which was The New School for Social Research (‘The New School’) where nights I took Creative Writing Courses taught by professional novelists, non-fiction and short story authors. I went there for three years, reading to my teachers the short stories that had started to bubble up in my mind as if from a compost heap. Those men and women, God bless them, assured me that I was a writer and had stories to tell. And they were always short stories. I kept them all, continuing to work on them over the years.

I sold my first story in 2004 to ‘Brooklyn Noir’, an anthology of original crime stories set in Brooklyn, (publisher, Akashic Books). I titled the story, “One More for the Road”, set it in the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods where I’d grown up and worked as a young Patrolman. The inspiration was a young cop I’d known (call him Danny) who’d marched this year in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade up 5th Avenue, in uniformed ranks to the cadenced command of the Pipes (as all we Irish cops did), and then fell out at its end on East 86th Street—and into all the Irish Bars along Third Avenue, north and south (also, traditional). Somehow, Danny ended the night in a car in Brooklyn with his Sergeant whom he’d shot to death but had no recollection of the event. What happens now, I asked myself?

I sold other cop tales to ‘Manhattan Noir’, ‘Best American Mystery Stories 2007’, and edited ‘Queens Noir’. Danny’s story stuck with me over the years and became the seed of my first novel, “Bodies in Winter,” (publisher, Severn House, 2009). The real Danny had put up no defense at his murder trial, been convicted and sentenced to 15-years-to-life in one of New York State’s maximum-security prisons. Danny’s prison experience and fateful meeting with the real life Joseph ‘Mad Dog’ Sullivan provided the grist for my only non-fiction piece, “Getting to Know Mad Dog” in Akashic’s ‘Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing But the Truth’.

In the novel, “Bodies in Winter”, the Danny-character is an alcoholic, violent cop who is accused of beating to death a prisoner in the Precinct cell-block, remembers nothing, takes a plea rather than face trial and is sent away to Attica for seven years. While serving his sentence, David Lodge regains his memory. I asked myself: What happens when a disgraced ex-cop gets out, believing he was set up by his fellow cops? Another impetus to the novel was the case of Abner Louima, a prisoner sodomized with a broom handle by a cop in the washroom of a Brooklyn Precinct in 1997. During the subsequent trial in Federal Court, the guilty cop confessed and was sentenced to 30 years. According to the victim, there was another cop standing watch in the bathroom while the assault took place. He was never positively identified but prosecutors focused on Police Officer Charles Schwarz, and when he swore he was not the lookout in the bathroom, he was indicted and tried for perjury--- twice. Schwarz had many defenders in the legal community who were convinced of his innocence. Ultimately, he served five years in prison. I asked myself: what would a tough cop like Schwarz do when released if he knew the identity of the lookout who had not come forward to save him?

The underlying theme of “Bodies In Winter” is Loyalty: one cop for another, one partner for another. To deepen the theme, I recast the protagonists as Detectives Harry Corbin and Adele Bentibi, partners in a Queens Precinct Detective Squad, investigating a murder that none of the police brass seems to care about solving. Det. Harry Corbin is the best-liked cop in his Precinct—“everyone’s go-to guy”—while Det. Adele Bentibi is aloof, principled, a seeker of justice. A Sophie’s Choice for Harry: his partner or ‘The Job’ (his family)? In pursuit of the killer, the pair cover a lot of ground in the varied neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

My second novel, “The Cold Room,” (Severn House, Dec. 1, 2011), a sequel, starts on a sweltering July morning in a vacant lot underneath the Williamsburg Bridge with Det. Harry Corbin baby-sitting the dumped body of a young woman, mutilated and seemingly unidentifiable. Harry is awaiting the arrival of the City Medical Examiner, having had to process the crime scene by himself (except for an old derelict on the scene whom he pressed into service). Harry is persona non grata, shunned by his fellow cops of Brooklyn’s 92nd Precinct. The grapevine says he’s a rat, an informer for Internal Affairs. According to Harry, his transfer is in the works the day after he arrives at his new Command. As for Harry, he could care less. He’s finally got a homicide he can work. Det. Harry Corbin knows that he “speaks for the dead.”

“The Cold Room” was sparked in my imagination by a news account I read a few years back and kept the clipping. A domestic, a maid in the Manhattan home of an Iranian diplomat, jumped from a second floor window to escape her employers. Investigation showed her “job” to be, in reality, an indentured servitude she’d been lured into by false promises. All that remained for me to do was dump a corpse in Brooklyn, invent the back-story and a worthy opponent for Harry—in this case, Aslan Khalid, a very bad actor from Chechnya.

More information on Robert Knightly can be found here.

Crime fiction news!

2011-12-07T21:25:00.014Z

December’s Edition of Getting Away With Murder (GAWM) includes: Shots of the Year

And now the moment the world of crime fiction has been waiting for…the awards which come with no ceremony, no prize money, little accolade and no celebration (unless you happen to be in the Four Ale Bar of The Carpenter’s Arms on Tuesday night). The Shots of the Year awards (often misheard) are made based on careful consideration of the 550 or so crime novels and thrillers published for the first time in the UK in 2011 by a panel of at least one democratically-elected judge. (And I use the term ‘democratically’ in its loosest, North Korean sense.)

The categories are for best crime novel (Crime Shot) and best thriller (Thriller Shot), funniest novel (Comic Shot), best crime novel/thriller in translation (Shot In Translation), best first novel (First Shot) and best historical mystery or thriller (Historical Shot).

Crime Shot of the Year, after much deliberation, goes to Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith (Mantle), the new Renko novel which chillingly invokes the underside of modern Moscow and made us all remember what an important figure in crime fiction Renko is and has been for, incredibly, thirty years now.

The Thriller Shot of the Year title goes to South African Deon Meyer for his superb tour-de-force Trackers (Hodder) which combines a spy plot worthy of Le Carre (“spy the beloved country”) with several tense and violent criminal sub-plots and a complex and stunningly impressive narrative structure. All in all, a masterpiece of South African crime writing; which is rapidly proving to be the bench-mark of international crime fiction.

The 2011 Historical Shot goes, without question, to the disgracefully overlooked A Lily of the Field by John Lawton (Grove Atlantic). An immaculately researched thriller set in pre-war Europe and post-war London which takes in the Nazi Holocaust, Russian espionage and the development of the atomic bomb, but at heart it shows off what Lawton does best, which is to cast a worldly-wise, left-leaning, eye of the foibles of English society. This is a wonderful addition to the Detective Inspector Troy canon (Lawton’s Troy family novels have spanned the period 1930s-1960s though not necessarily in chronological order), and Troy, who has been on the scene for 16 years now, is one of the major characters of British crime fiction; and one of the most unsung.

The Shot in Translation goes to a new name in the UK, Domingo Villar for his Death on a Galician Shore (Little, Brown) which introduces a new detective duo, some memorable minor characters and some delightful insights into provincial Spanish life which are worth the price of admission alone. A translated crime novel with warmth and heart? Who’d have thought it?

First Shot, in a year which saw fewer than usual debut novels, has to go to the widely-applauded Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (Doubleday), which is an outrageous “high concept” thriller brought off with confidence and élan, even if the dramatic conclusion is slightly confusing.

Comic Shot of 2011 is Carl Hiaasen’s Star Island (Sphere). It might not have the frenetic energy and hysterical set-pieces of his early work such as Tourist Season or the blissful Double Whammy, but then what could? Still, this is Hiaasen back on top form and picking his targets (pop stars and, as usual, property developers) with gleeful malice.

Faber and Spitalfields Life mark the bicentenary of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders -

The 7th December marks the bicentenary of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders, documented by P. D. James and T. A. Critchley in The Maul and the Pear Tree. Faber and Faber are working with influential lifestyle blog, Spitalfields Life on a series of events that trace the case as it unfolded between 7th December to 31st December 200 years ago. Please see the attached press release below for details of the events, which conclude with a murder mystery walk around the sites of this notorious case on the 28th December.

This Christmas, Spitalfields Life and Faber and Faber commemorate the bicentenary of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders – Britain’s first murder sensation - as retold by P.D. James in her classic of true crime, The Maul and the Pear Tree.

For release on 6th December 2011

On the 7th December 1811, a young linen draper and his family were cruelly murdered at night in their home at 29 Ratcliffe Highway in Wapping. Twelve days later, a publican and members of his household were slaughtered in similar fashion, just half a mile away.

The slaying of these innocent families created public hysteria amongst Londoners - whipped up by newspapers revelling in the gruesome details of the atrocities. Ill-equipped to investigate, on Christmas Eve the police hastily arrested the first suspect they could find, John Williams, and when he hung himself in prison on Boxing Day, it was taken as confirmation of his guilt.

180,000 people turned out to see Williams’ body paraded through Wapping, before he was buried with a stake through his heart at the crossroads of Cable Street and Cannon Street Road on New Year’s Eve. Yet it is now acknowledged that he was - in all likelihood - an innocent man.

At the birth of the British press, the Ratcliffe Highway Murders case was both the first national crime sensation and an early example of “tabloid justice” - engendering a widespread terror that led subsequently to the formation of the Metropolitan Police.

Between 7th -31st December, East End Culture Blog Spitalfields Life and Faber and Faber are collaborating on a series of events to keep everyone gripped:

MAPPING THE MURDERS

www.spitalfieldslife.com and Faber and Faber have commissioned illustrator, Paul Bommer, to create a map of the murders that will update, revealing key events in the case on the exact anniversaries of their occurrence. This beautiful creation can be downloaded as a screensaver or used as a handy guide to set out through the streets of Wapping yourself.

TELLING THE STORY

An extract from The Maul and the Pear Tree, the definitive account of the murders, by bestselling crime writer P. D. James and her former Home office colleague T. A Critchley, will be published on Faber and Faber’s blog www.thethoughtfox.co.uk, whilst www.spitalfieldslife.com will be reporting these momentous events day by day.

EXAMINING THE CRIME SCENES

Spitalfields Life will be hosting a dusk walk on Wednesday 28th December at 3pm from St Georges in the East, visiting the key locations and telling the bone-chilling story of Britain's first crime sensation. The walk will take approximately an hour and a half and conclude at the historic riverside pub The Prospect of Whitby. Please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to sign up. Tickets are £10.

For further information please contact:

The Gentle Author, Spitalfields Life: spitalfieldslife@gmail.com

Joanna Ellis, Faber and Faber: joannae@faber.co.uk

Orion sculpts 20th anniversary releases -
According to Charlotte Williams at Book2Book, Orion will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2012, marking the milestone by re-releasing 20 of its most distinctive titles with a united cover look using specially commissioned sculptures.

The books will be released on 20th February 2012, priced between £4.99 and £9.99. The 20 titles are:

The Copper Beach by Maeve Binchy,

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser,
The Black Ice by Michael Connelly,

Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon,

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder,

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin,

The Reader by Benhard Schlink,

A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer,

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds,
Tell No One by Harlan Coben,

Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore,

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón,

Himalaya by Michael Palin,

Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver,

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse,

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday,

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay,
DeadUntil Dark by Charlaine Harris,

Life by Keith Richards, and

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht.

The publisher took inspiration from china, which is the traditional 20th anniversary gift, with the team—including designer Loulou Clark and creative director Lucie Stericker—working with sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies to create physical sculptures of a central motif or character for each of the titles. Each sculpture was then photographed to provide the cover image for the books. Stand-out covers include sculptures of an open copy of War and Peace, with real German text inscribed into it, for Schlink's title; a jumping salmon for Paul Torday's novel; and a topographically accurate mountain for Palin's Himalaya. The Roman numerals XX will be embossed on the inside front covers, alongside the cover images from the entire 20 titles.

Orion m.d. Susan Lamb promised the titles would be collectable, and said of the list: "It had to be quite balanced, but it was the books we think defined this company over 20 years, whether they've been with us since their first publication, like Maeve Binchy and Antonia Fraser, or not. The Tiger's Wife, which was only published this year, was very defining for us, because we hadn't had an Orange Prize winner before."

As impressive as this list is and one is quite pleased to see a number of crime writers on the list as well, could someone please explain why George Pelecanos and James Lee Burke are not on the list?

The Random House Group UK is delighted to announce the publication of Jo Nesbø's eagerly-awaited sequel to his #1 bestseller The Leopard. Phantom will be published in English on 15th March 2012. The Norwegian edition went straight to the top of the bestseller list in Norway and was shortlisted for the 2011 Norwegian Booksellers' Prize.

In 2011 Jo Nesbø was one of the UK's biggest selling fiction authors of the year. The Leopard was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller in hardback and spent eight weeks in the top ten. The Harry Hole novels have sold over 11 million copies worldwide, 2.4 million of those in the UK. They are published in many countries.

Jo Nesbø's The Snowman is being made into a major film directed by Martin Scorsese and produced by Working Title. The Snowman, published by Harvill Secker in 2010, went to number 2 in the Sunday Times paperback charts, and was a top ten New York Times hardcover bestseller.

For more information please contact:
Bethan Jones at Harvill Secker
Tel: 020 7840 8543 / email: bjones@randomhouse.co.uk

According to book2book Little, Brown Book Group are growing their Sphere fiction commissioning team with the appointment of Jade Chandler from Orion. Chandler joins Sphere as Commissioning Editor focussing on crime and thriller fiction and will also take a lead in backlist reissues for the imprint. She will report to Editorial Director, Catherine Burke. Chandler said, 'Working at Orion has been a brilliant experience and while I will be sad to leave an excellent and supportive group of colleagues, the opportunity to take on a new commissioning role at Little, Brown was just too tempting to pass up. I am really thrilled to be joining the Sphere team in the New Year and can't wait to get involved in building on their first-rate crime and thriller list.'

Caffeine Nights Publishing have announced their title list for 2012.

The titles will be released from March 2012 and include a strong line-up of crime fiction titles including the second in the series of books by Nick Quantrill. The Late Greats follows his debut novel in the Joe Geraghty series, Broken Dreams. Quantrill's books follow private eye Joe Geraghty in a series of tough crime fiction stories set in Quantrill's home town of Hull.

Another series title is Consequences by RC Bridgestock, following 'Deadly Focus’ the first DI Jack Dylan novel. RC Bridgestock is the pen name for Yorkshire born but Isle of Wight based husband and wife writing team Bob and Carol Bridgestock. The Bridgestock's bring 47 years of crime fighting experience to the page, with both having served with West Yorkshire police. Bob retired as Detective Superintendent of the squad.

Two other spring releases dominate Caffeine Nights planned books for 2012.

Frank's Wild Years by Nick Triplow is already being hailed as a crime classic.

Mike Hodges director of the urban classic gangster movie 'Get Carter' describes Frank's Wild Years as ''An urban masterpiece; riveting from first to last. Nick Triplow is the true successor to Ted Lewis."

Set in south London 'Frank' is a story of betrayal and last chances at the frayed and fading edges of the south London underworld.

Abide with Me by Ian Ayris is already setting the chat rooms and fan forums of West Ham supporters alight with his debut novel. Set against the backdrop of West Ham winning the FA Cup in 1975, the story follows two boys growing up in a tough East End environment where love and pain are often blurred by poverty and confusion. Abide With Me is a powerful and moving tale with more heart than transplant bank and butchers window put together.

For more information contact Darren on 07777 640795
info@caffeinenights.com/www.caffeine-nights.com

According to the Bookseller, the CWA are to launch a reader’s initiative under the guise of the Crime Readers Association (CRA). The full Press Release can be read below -

PRESS RELEASE

Date: 7.12.2o11

CWA launches two major new initiatives to connect writers with readers

The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced two major new initiatives, an association to put readers in touch with writers and the expansion of the successful Crime Writing Week to an entire month next year.

Due to launch in February 2012 with a new website, the Crime Readers’ Association (CRA) will offer readers information about forthcoming books, exclusive interviews, and articles from CWA member authors. Readers will be invited to sign up to receive regular enewsletters featuring events, exclusive content, and news. In future, it’s planned that the CWA will also organise events for readers to meet authors.

National Crime Writing Week, which has run for two years, has seen members of the CWA taking part in readings, discussions, readers’ group events and workshops in bookshops, libraries, arts centres and other venues all over the country. The CWA has now decided to expand it to Crime Writing Month, beginning at the Crimefest event which runs between May 24-27 in Bristol and features some of the planet’s most successful crime writers. In a new initiative, Crime Month will wrap up with a black-tie event, where the CWA Dagger Awards will be announced. The event will incorporate all of the CWA’s non-TV awards, including for the first time the Diamond Dagger and Ellis Peters Award for historical crime.

CWA Chair Peter James said: “We’re very excited about launching these new initiatives. The idea behind the CRA is to bring readers and writers closer together. The CRA will create a bond between fans and writers and promote further the crime writing genre.

“In an age when crime writing is so popular it made sense to find a way of helping writers and readers connect. Authors could not survive without readers and the CRA acknowledges the fact and celebrates the role of the reader in the burgeoning success of the genre. The CWA has showcased members’ events and books on our website for several years now– wee see the CRA is an extension of this and we hope it will help our members to grow their careers.

“Crime Writing Month further underlines the point. Running it over a month will allow members to take part in more events than ever, getting out to meet their readers and support their local libraries. The CWA has long been concerned about the threat to libraries and Crime Writing Month will allow us to champion them as they face cutbacks. The month should be a really exciting event.”

More details of both initiatives will be announced over the coming months.

NOTES TO MEDIA
Bestselling crime author Peter James is the current Chair of the CWA. Peter James is available for quotes and interview. Please contact Claire McGowan on 07792 214508 or info@thecwa.co.uk for more information, or visit www.thecwa.co.uk
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Congratulations also go to Canadian author Louise Penny whose novel Bury Your Dead was awarded the Nero Award on Saturday 3 December 2012. The award was presented by the Wolfe Pack at the Black Orchid Banquet in New York.

The other nominees were -

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen

The Book of Spies by Gayle Lynds

The Midnight Show Murders by Al Roker
Think of a Number by John Verdon

The "Nero" is an annual award presented to an author for literary excellence in the mystery genre

Crime Time Best Crime Novel of the Year
According to Barry Forshaw the editor of Crime Time, Crime Time is running a seasonal Best Crime Books of 2011 feature, and he would be delighted if authors would care to contribute – with an opportunity to mention your latest book. He does not need an essay; in fact his plan is to drag CT kicking and screaming into the 21st century so is aiming for Twitter sized soundbites (tweets?) -- 140 characters or less. You can pick one book, or as many as you’d care to fit into that count.

At present Crime Time reaches around 45,000 dedicated crime fiction enthusiasts a year at crimetime.co.uk, so this is a chance for authors to promote yourselves (and your books!) by adding your selection for Best Crime Book of 2011.

Go to the Crime Time website: and just fill in the form on the right. Note that your email will not be visible to anyone on the site. The ISBN is optional – don’t worry about this unless you have it.
And don’t forget to mention your latest book under ‘shameless plug’!

Those of you that are looking forward to the Hollywood remake of the Steig Larsson book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will not be surprised to learn that rather unfortunately the embargo has been broken by the New Yorker film critic David Denby. The film that gets its world premiere in London on Monday 12 December 2012 features Daniel Craig in the role of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist.

A new eight minute trailer has been released.

The Somme Stations wins the Ellis Peters Historical Award

2011-12-03T21:54:00.008Z

This year the CWA Ellis Peters Award ceremony took place in the Smoking Room of the elegant Athenaeum club. A large number of crime writers, reviewers and bloggers turned up to find out who won this year’s Ellis Peters Historical Award. Amongst those present included former Chairs of the CWA Natasha Cooper, Janet Laurence and Michael Ridpath. Also present were critics Michael Carlson, Mike Ripley, Mike Stotter. Some others present included Chris Simmonds (Crimesquad), Myles Allfrey (Crimefest) and David Headley (Goldsboro Books), Thalia Proctor, Peter Guttridge to name a few. The ceremony was organised once again by publicist Sam Eades from Headline.

The award which is sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Group and Little, Brown Book Group is given to the best historical crime novel set in any period up to 35 years prior to the year in which the award will be made.

This year the shortlist was:-
Prince by Rory Clements (John Murray)
The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland (Faber & Faber)
The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin (Faber & Faber)
The Cleansing Flame by R N Morris (Faber & Faber)
Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson (Headline)

After a brief introduction by Jane Morpeth from Headline and Claire McGowan a Director at the CWA the Chair of the panel Eileen Roberts gave a short speech before announcing the winner. She noted that whilst every year it gets harder and harder to choose a winner as the standard keeps on getting better and better, this year the winner had stood out.

The judging panel consisted of –
Eileen Roberts (Chair)
Geoffrey Bailey
Barry Forshaw
Sir Bernard Ingham
Jake Kerridge

This year the winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Award was “Andrew Martin with his novel The Somme Stations. The judging panel said of The Somme Stations: Andrew Martin’s novels featuring railway detective Jim Stringer reveal their treasures in subtle fashion with a winning synthesis of period atmosphere, intriguing plotting and a passion for steam railways.

On accepting the award, Andrew Martin said that he was very pleased to win the award and the recognition that it gave. He was extremely pleased to win as it had been an extremely strong list.

The Somme Stations is set during the horrors of World War One and the trenches. Stringer and his unit find themselves undertaking dangerous night assignments which included taking munitions to the front by train late at night. Death is still everywhere and Stringer finds himself investigating a killing before the departure for France.

Congratulations go to Andrew Martin for winning the Ellis Peters Historical Award and also to the other shortlisted authors.