Michael Joseph PenguinRandomHouse Crime Party 2025

 

The Shots Magazine team of Blogger Ayo Onatade accompanied by Editors Mike Stotter and Ali Karim were delighted to accept invitations to the 2025 Michael Joseph annual crime fiction party, hosted in The Crypt at St Martins-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square,. London.  

We have been attending for many years now, previewing the forthcoming crime fiction publications that would be released by this important imprint of the PenguinRandomHouse group.

Previous reports remain archived, here for 2019, and video footage from 2018 Joel Richardson's welcoming speech - 

....and  2017 as well as a video collage from 2008 -

The Michael Joseph 2024 Crime Fiction Catalogue & Publishing Schedules can be downloaded as a .pdf HERE OR click the link below >

https://www.penguin.co.uk/about/publishing-houses/penguin-michael-joseph

2025 marks the 90^th anniversary of the formation of Penguin Publishing.

Michael Joseph was a bestselling author before he turned publisher in 1935 – the same year Penguin paperbacks were launched. In 1985, exactly half a century after their mutual founding, Michael Joseph became the commercial imprint of Penguin Books.

So it was a delight to chat to Penguin’s Publishers Rowland White and Joel Richardson together with Deputy Publicity Director Gaby Young and her colleagues – who we thanked for throwing a wonderful party as ever – a far cry from the days of The Union Club in Soho, where Rowland would stand precariously on a rickety chair to welcome the guests to the Penguin Michael Joseph annual soiree.

We were delighted to learn that Steve Mosby’s alter ego is coming to film featuring Robert De Niro and directed by James Ashcroft –

What is The Whisper Man about?

Based on the New York Times bestselling novel by North: When his 8-year-old son is abducted, a widowed crime writer looks to his estranged father, a retired former police detective, for help, only to discover a connection with the decades-old case of a convicted serial killer known as “The Whisper Man.”

Read More HERE

We feature and array of photos for the event as we mingled with the Penguin authors and their Editorial and Publicity teams – and many colleagues from the London Literary scene.

To plan your own crime and thriller reading, download the Penguin schedule HERE

Shots Magazine would like to thank Rowland White, Joel Richardson and Gaby Young for inviting us to the 2025 Penguin MJ Crime Party.

 

The Michael Joseph 2024 Crime Fiction Catalogue & Publishing Schedules can be downloaded as a .pdf HERE

Chris Simmons's Book To Die For - Asta's Book by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

Chris Simmons started Crimesquad.com over seven years ago on his own and now has a team of seven dedicated reviewers to highlight the best in current crime fiction.  In such a short time Crimesquad.com has become one of the most popular crime review websites garnering respect and praise from publishers, authors and readers.  Due to his pioneering for debut crime authors, Chris Simmons was a judge for the John Creasey/New Blood CWA Dagger four years running.  Now his judging has recently ended, Chris will soon be bringing out his own collection of short stories on e-book, whilst also trying desperately to catch up with four year’s worth of crime novels!

‘Asta’s Book’ has been number one of my Top Ten for nearly twenty years.  Personally, for me Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) has produced some of the most ground breaking novels of our time. Having read all her books I prefer the Vine canon of work as they again pushed the boundaries and the writer produced more of a novel with a crime element than what could be classed as a ‘normal’ work of crime fiction. Kate Atkinson and Susan Hill have been applauded in recent times for interweaving mainstream literature with crime fiction, something Rendell has been doing since the 80’s with her first Vine novel, ‘A Dark-Adapted Eye’.

My favourite of the Vine books is by far ‘Asta’s Book’.  It intrigued me with its premise with Asta and her husband, Rasmus arriving from Denmark to begin a new life in Hackney in 1905. It is a loveless marriage and Asta is homesick for her country and pours her heart and soul in to diaries that she keeps for the rest of her life. After their arrival in Britain, Asta has two more children including her favourite, Swanny. However, typically with Vine there is something not quite right and despite her continual blustering and sidestepping, Asta swerves her daughter’s constant hankering to know if she really is Asta’s daughter or some changeling. It isn’t until Asta’s granddaughter, Ann discovers the diaries decades later and publishes them to great acclaim that the truth about Asta and her favourite daughter, Swanny begins to emerge.

The prose in ‘Asta’s Book’ is lyrical and the characters and places, especially Hackney is so vividly brought to life (most probably as I was born in the area).  Asta can be cold and cynical but the unconditional love she feels for her ‘little Swanny’ is wonderful to behold. The writing is rhythmic and the book flows smoothly like a good wine, so that Vine with professionalism alternates between the past and the present with ease. ‘Asta’s Book’ can never simply be defined as a crime novel – it is a novel about families, about immigration, about love and above all: identity.  With the recent explosive interest in genealogy, more people than ever feel the need to know their ancestors and discover their family tree. ‘Asta’s Book’ perfectly puts this in to perspective.  Do we really need to know our past or does the unconditional love of a parent solve our need to know who we truly are?

The ‘crime’ itself, the trial of Alfred Roper is buried deep within the book and could be classed as a side issue, for the real crux of the novel is the relationship between mother and daughter. Reading this book back on its release in 1993, moved me so much that I wrote my one and only ever fan letter to the author about how I had loved this book. She replied and mentioned that Asta and Rasmus had originally been built on her own grandparents although by the end of the book neither of them was remotely like the portrayed characters in the book. No other book has ever propelled me to write to an author the way ‘Asta’s Book’ ever did.  This novel shows Vine/Rendell at her zenith and is sublime in its subtlety and through her gentle prose unravels a conundrum that is breathtaking as it is heartbreaking. This is why it has stayed with me nearly twenty years after the reading. I strongly suggest you read it. This is why ‘Asta’s Book’ will always be my number one and my book to die!

Background to Bloggers and Reviewers take on Books To Die For

When I decided to invite a number of well-known bloggers and reviewers to contribute to the Shotsblog celebration of the launch of Books To Die For which is edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke I was unsure of the response that I was going to receive.  To my delight, everyone that I approached was enthusiastic about my suggestion and wanted to be a part of it.  Deciding whom to invite was a hard enough job in itself.  The final decision on the guest bloggers and reviewers was mine alone.  My reasons for deciding to do this was because it would be a great chance to find out from all these people who spend pretty much all their spare time discussing and writing about the genre what would be their one book that they would put forward.  

My guiding thoughts on deciding whom to invite were varied but I knew that it had to be a mixture. It had to be international if I wanted it to show case the best bloggers and reviewers of the community.  I could not and did not want it to consist solely of UK bloggers and reviewers.  They also had to be people who had not only been blogging for a long time but were also well known in the crime and mystery fiction community. People whose comments and thoughts on the genre are taken seriously and are highly regarded.  Whilst I am aware that there are many crime writers that are also prolific bloggers, I wanted to avoid having crime writers as they had already done their bit in Books To Die For.  I did however have two people who are an exception to the no crime writer rule and that is because the persons concerned are known also as reviewers/bloggers.  I am not going to tell you whom they are as I am sure that you will be able to work it out yourselves.

All the invited guest bloggers/reviewers are household names to the community and if you do not recognise them then this is your opportunity to do so!  A number of them have not only been nominated but have also won a number of crime fiction awards.  Furthermore, some of them also write and maintain well-known blogs and (in some cases) publish magazines on the genre as well.  Some of them have even (and still do) organise crime fiction conventions and festivals.

I do not know what books they have chosen and like you all I wanted to be surprised. Would it be a classic book or something more contemporary?  Which sub-genre would it fall under?  I do not know.  There is only one person on the list that I had inkling of what book that they might choose and I am pleased to say that my assumption was correct.

It was not easy trying to decide whom to invite but I am sure that once you start reading the blog posts that I hope that you will realise why they were chosen. They are all knowledgeable about the genre and the posts will be put up on the blog every day from 20^th August until they have all been posted. 

A lot of bloggers and reviewers hold down full time busy day jobs as well and therefore I would like to put it on record and state now that I am extremely grateful to all of them for agreeing to do this, as I am fully aware of the busy lives that they lead.  It shows how much camaraderie there is within the community and I hope that everyone that reads the blog  posts gets as much enjoyment out of it as I did putting it together. 

My thanks go to both John and Declan for putting together Books To Die For.  It is one of those books that needs to be on the book shelf of any self-respecting reader of crime and mystery fiction.  The amount of knowledge in the book alone is outstanding.

Comments about the choices will be most welcome!

2010 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award

During an event held at Little Brown Publishers in their Library on Thursday 4 November 2010, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger was awarded. The full list can be found here. The winner of the 2010 award was Rory Clements with his 16th C Thriller Revenger (John Murray).

Revenger is the second book in the series to feature his historical Elizabethan character John Shakespeare who is the older brother to play-writer Will Shakespeare. The first book in the series is Martyr and it was short-listed for the New Blood Dagger Award. The crime fiction critic Barry Forshaw who was also one of the judges made the announcement.

Rory Clements giving his acceptance speech can be seen in the video below.

(photographs and video Ayo Onatade)

Sponsors of the Ellis Peters Historical Award were the British Crime Writers’ Association, the Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Company, and the Little, Brown Book Group. Rory Clements will receive £3,000 as part of his prize for the award.

CJ Sansom’s novel Heartstone came a close second.

Amongst those in attendance included Teresa Chris (his agent) Sam Eades from Headline Publishers who organised the event along with Little Brown Publishers (who were the hosts), Jane Wood from Quercus Publishers. Sue Lord From Mystery Women, critic Michael Carlson, Andrew Clarke and Chris Simmons from Crimesquad, critic and reviewer Jessica Mann, Myles Allfrey co-organiser of Crimefest Bristol, author NJ Cooper, Thalia Proctor, Selina Walker from Transworld, David Shelley, Julia Wisdom and of course my fellow SHOTS colleagues Mike Stotter and Ali Karim to name a few.

From Left to Right - Aly Monroe, Andrew Williams, Rory Clements, S J Parris and Andrew Taylor