Crime Fiction News

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.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Headline in August

88 Killer is the exciting second serial killer thriller from Oliver Stark - featuring series characters NYPD detective, Tom Harper, and police psychologist, Denise Levene.
Three unconnected crimes are about to be linked in the most chilling way imaginable. The abduction of a teenage girl, heading towards a bus stop. A woman shot, point-blank during a brutal robbery. A young man tortured, his body found wrapped in barbed wire. With nothing to indicate that the three are connected, NYPD detective Tom Harper and psychologist Denise Levene must look beyond the s urface to find a killer ’s true motivation. And they believe that they have found a murderer conditioned to hate and willing to go to any lengths to make his victims suffer. The killer has nothing to lose. Harper and Levene have one chance
to catch him. Sometimes hate is just the beginning . . .

You Belong to me by Karen Rose
When forensic pathologist Lucy Trask stumbles across a mutilated body by the chess tables in her local Baltimore park, its face so badly damaged it is unrecognisable, her sole concern is that it might be her old school teacher Mr Pugh. When the corpse is identified, Lucy is shocked to discover that the victim is actually another man from her past. Who killed him and why his skin is burnt with the number ‘1’ is unclear but it’s evident that someone is demanding Lucy’ s attention. The discovery of a second branded body raises worrying questions: how many more lives may be at r isk before the killer ’s final message is revealed? And can Lucy solve the killer’s gruesome puzzle before their thirst for revenge is complete?

Simon’s Spurrier's first novel, Contract, was published in 2007, and in A Serpent Uncoiled he returns with a bang with a wry, witty, utterly unique take on the classic private eye novel.
Dan Shaper’s sins are a sickness. Sharper is a former underworld enforcer who now scrapes a living as a private detective. So far, so conventional. He needs to straighten-up and rebuild his life however an emotional breakdown has left him with a tenuous grip on reality and his life is about to get a whole lot stranger… Razor sharp, dark and delusional, he’s tasked to prevent the murder of George Glass, an eccentric old man who knows he’s going to be killed but can’t remember why. Normally Sharper would recoil from Glass’s senile brand of New Age salvation, but the case is as tantalizing as it is lucrative. Adrift amidst liars and thugs, Sharper must push his capsizing mind beyond its limits: stalked not only by a unique and terrifying murderer, but by the ghosts of his own brutal past.

The Stranger you Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams

Keye Street is small, tough and a brilliant FBI agent – but she can’t handle her life. She’s a superb criminal profiler, with two university degrees and has been a rising star with the organization. She’s also attractive, tough and has brilliant instincts when it comes to reading criminal minds. Now Keye Street has set up on her own. She’ s a recovering alcoholic, an obsessive adrenalin junkie who surrounds herself with oddballs, who wants to sleep with her best friend but still sleeps with her ex-husband. She’ s potentially violent - and quite possibly dangerous. But in Atlanta, Georgia, there’s a serial killer on the loose, and the local police department need her to play their game!

Nine Inches by Bateman is one to look forward to in October!
Dan Starkey, the ducking and diving hapless investigator, takes centre stage again in this brilliant new novel by the award-winning master of comic crime. Radio shock-jock and self-styled people’s champion Jack Caramac is used to courting controversy – but when his four-year-old son is kidnapped for just one hour, and then sent back with a warning note, he knows he may have finally gone too far. Jack has no choice but to turn to Dan Starkey for help. Recently chucked by his long-suffering wife Patricia, Dan has finally given up on journalism and is now providing a boutique, bespoke service for important people with difficult problems. Dan resolves to catch whoever kidnapped Jack’s son - and very soon finds himself in the middle of a violent feud between rival drug gangs, pursued by jealous husbands, unscrupulous property developers and vicious killers as the case spirals ever more out of his control.

Couple of Highlights from Headline Publishers

The brilliant new Elizabethan thriller from the highly acclaimed author of Sacred Treason. 1564: Catholic herald William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, is the custodian of a highly dangerous document. When it is stolen, Clarenceux immediately suspects a group of Catholic sympathisers, the self-styled Knights of the Round Table. Francis Walsingham, the ruthless protege of the queen's Principal Secretary, Sir William Cecil, intercepts a coded message from the Knights to a Countess known to have Catholic leanings. He is convinced that Clarenceux is trying to use the document to advance the cause of the Catholic Queen. And soon Clarenceux enters a nightmare of suspicion, deception and conspiracy. Conflict and fear, compounded by the religious doubts of the time, conceal a persistent mystery. Where has the document gone? Who has it and who really took it? And why? The roots of betrayal are deep and shocking: and Clarenceux's journey towards the truth entails not just the discovery of clues and signs, but also the discovery of himself. The Roots of Betrayal is due to be published in July and is by James Forrester the pen-name of Dr Ian Mortimer.


Joseph Finder's first Nick Heller novel, Vanished, was published to widespread acclaim. Now Nick Heller returns in an explosive new thriller Buried Secrets. When private investigator Nick Heller returns home to Boston to set up his own agency, he soon gets an urgent case closer to home than expected. Alexandra Marcus - teenage daughter of hedge fund titan and Heller family friend Marshall Marcus - has been kidnapped. But it's no ordinary kidnapping - she has been abducted by professionals, buried alive in an underground casket, a video camera streaming her desperate pleas live over the internet. With a limited supply of food and water, time is quickly running out. Nick is determined to catch the perpetrators but when Marcus is arrested by the FBI for fraud, accused of operating a Ponzi scheme, Nick realises that he has some powerful enemies who may have the motivation to go after his daughter and a conspiracy that reaches up to the very highest levels of government. Nick must play a dangerous game if he hopes to flush out those responsible before Alexa is buried for good...

Both James Forrester and Joseph Finder will be at Theakston’s Old Peculair Crime Writing Festival in July.

For those of you that missed reading Dr Yes by Bateman when it came out in hardback then you can have a second chance. The paperback version is due out just before the end of June.




One to look forward to in August is A Serpent Uncoiled by Simon Spurrier.

A missing mobster. A bizarre spiritualist society. And three deaths, linked by a chilling forensic detail. Working as an enforcer in London's criminal underworld brought Dan Shaper to the edge of breakdown. Now he's a private investigator, kept perilously afloat by a growing cocktail of drugs. He needs to straighten up and rebuild his life, but instead gets the attention of his old gangland masters and a job offer from George Glass. The elderly eccentric claims to be a New Age Messiah, but now needs a saviour of his own. He has been marked for murder. Adrift amidst liars and thugs, Shaper must push his capsizing mind to its limits: stalked not only by a unique and terrifying killer, but by the ghosts of his own brutal past.