Five Mysteries about Blood Ties

Tana French is our guest blogger, and she explores five of her favourties books about family ties. But first, a little something on Tana. Tana is an Irish novelist and theatrical actress. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar Award, and the Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards. She is a liaison of the Purple Heart Theatre Company and lives in Dublin. She has dual citizenship of the United States and Ireland.

TANA FRENCH

My third book, Faithful Place, is about home, community, and family – in all its facets. Twenty-two years ago, Frank Mackey and his first love, Rosie Daly, were teenager with big dreams. They were going to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, get away from all the poverty and problems of their inner-city Dublin neighbourhood. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie never showed. Frank thought she had dumped him, probably because of his dysfunctional family. He never went home again. But now Rosie’s suitcase has shown up in an abandoned house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not…
As he tries to find out what happened to Rosie, Frank also has to discover whether he’s a detective undercover in his old neighbourhood, or a boy from Faithful Place undercover in the police force – what counts as his real home, and his real family. So here are five of my favourite mysteries about family ties, what they mean, and the devastation they can wreak when they go wrong.

1. Sleeping Murder, Agatha Christie. As far as she knows, Gwenda’s never been to this little house on the English coast – so why does she know what pattern she’ll find on the paper inside the cupboard, and where that blocked-up door used to be? And why does a terrifying wave of memory rush over her at a line from The Duchess of Malfi? This has always been my favourite Agatha Christie. It’s a wonderfully eerie story about what can happen when love goes wrong.

2. Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. Chicago reporter Camille Preaker – sharp-tongued, beautiful, and breathtakingly damaged – has been assigned to cover the story of a possible child serial killer in her hometown. The assignment forces her to confront her manipulative mother, her dangerous thirteen-year-old half-sister, and the buried secrets that are rotting her town, her family and her own mind from within. This is one of the darkest, most disturbing and most powerful books about family relationships that I’ve read in a long time.

3. The Wrong Kind of Blood, by Declan Hughes. Private investigator Ed Loy has come back to Ireland, after twenty years away, to bury his mother and find out what happened to his missing father. But then his past starts to resurface – literally, at one point… This is a gritty, pacy noir that explores the many meanings of family, home, and blood.

4. P.D. James’s Innocent Blood. Philippa has always known she’s adopted, but when she turns eighteen and goes looking for her parents, the truth comes as a brutal shock. Her mother is a murderess, in jail for killing a child whom Philippa’s father had raped. And she’s about to be released… This isn’t a whodunit; the mysteries pulling Philippa into dark, dangerous places are much more subtle and crucial: the nature of identity, of intimacy, of redemption.

5. A Field of Darkness, by Cornelia Read. Madeline Dare is a smart, caustic ex-debutante turned small-town reporter. Then a set of dog tags found in a field seem to implicate her favourite cousin in a long-ago double murder… The shifting relationship between Maddie and her cousin Lapthorne – and, by extension, between Maddie and her whole crazy blue-blooded family – is twisted, treacherous and fascinating.

Tana's latest book is FAITHFUL PLACE which you can read purchase from Amazon. Of it, Sophie Hannah says, "Even more gripping than her last two. A truly amazing novel - so brilliant on dysfunctional family dynamics, with characters so real that you can hardly believe someone's made them up."

Hodder Paperbacks £6.99 (7 July 2011)



Visit Tana's own website www.tanafrench.com

Peter Guttridge Reports on Quais Du Polar 2011

So anyway I’m smiling at this beautiful young woman and she’s kind of half-smiling back in that way that says, “I haven’t a clue who you are but you look vaguely familiar and I hope you’re just being friendly and don’t misinterpret my half-smile.” Well, okay, maybe I’m reading too much into what is, after all, only a half-smile. But I’m smiling at her because in fact I do know exactly who she is and she, in theory, knows who I am. We’ve done a couple of events together, after all.

However the context is unusual. We’re in an ornate reception room in the Beaux-Arts Museum in Lyon, France to celebrate the opening of Quais de Polar, the biggest crime fiction and film festival in continental Europe. John Harvey is over in the corner with his French publisher, Roger Ellory is somewhere around, though I can’t see him in the scrum of people in here. David Peace and Peter Robinson are arriving late.

They’re about to award the prize for best crime novel of the year. Declan Hughes wins – go, Declan! – but he’s not here to collect it. Always a disappointment when that happens, especially as whoever it is who collects it on his behalf is a bit gabby. Which in a language you only understand in part translates into very gabby.

I’m here for an event about international crime festivals on behalf of Bristol Crimefest. On my panel there are people from Liege, Belgium and a place in Italy I can’t spell without looking it up. There is simultaneous translation through earphones for us. This is discombobulating, especially as my set goes haywire - I think because the Italian guy sitting next to me is texting and checking his phone messages throughout the event, hiding his phone behind his name-card.

So I lose about ten minutes of the conversation. But that doesn’t matter because we’re all being pretty boring and the chairwoman does most of the talking anyway – don’t get me started about chairing at festivals – and anyway there are more people on the panel, if you include the translators, than there are in the audience.

Still, it’s a sunny day and we have a nice lunch whilst planning a way of working together and talking movies. The Italian guy and I agree on The Spider Stratagem as Bertolucci’s best thriller – why can’t you get it on DVD? (That’s a rhetorical question, pop-pickers.)

Turns out the Italian guy (I can’t remember his name, if you think me calling him that is a bit rude – although as I can’t remember the name of his festival either it probably is very rude) works on his festival with our own Maxim Jakubowski and Adrian Wootton.

Peter Robinson does his thing at two; John Harvey is done and dusted. Roger Ellory has two events lined up so he’s still working hard. There’s a big dinner tonight. I’m in two minds. My French isn’t good enough to handle any kind of intelligent conversation and I feel bad, therefore, that people out of politeness need to tire their brains speaking English to me. Plus, Lyon is such a great city to wander around in the evening. Roman remains to die for. Which people probably did.

It was S J Parris, in case you’re wondering.