C M Ewan on Why I Wrote A Window Breaks

Chris Ewan is the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of many mystery and thriller novels.  His is also the author of THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO …  a series of mystery novels set in Amsterdam, Paris, Las Vegas, Venice and Berlin.  His first standalone thriller, Safe House was shortlisted for The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. He is also the author of three other thrillers Dead Line, Dark Tides and Long Time Lost. 

Stories of break-ins and home invasions have always fascinated me. As a kid, I had a recurring nightmare about a series of burglaries in the quiet suburb in Taunton where my family lived. I’m still not sure why. There never was a burglary in the area that I knew of. There were no stories of armed men in balaclavas going from house to house. But those were the visions that crammed my mind in the small hours of the night. And, I guess, like most childhood fears, they’ve lingered on ever since.

The first time I heard about a real-life home invasion actually happening to someone I knew was when I was studying Biology for my A-levels. A student in my class who lived in the countryside came into college shaken up one day. The previous afternoon, she’d been home alone when a stranger had broken into her parent’s place. She’d barricaded herself in her bedroom. The stranger had toured the house, pushed on her bedroom door, tried to get in. She’d pushed back and yelled at him to leave and, thankfully, he had. But the story left me chilled. Imagine being on the other side of the door from a total stranger. Imagine having nowhere to run for help.

Other incidents followed. There was the time when I was at law school in Nottingham and someone followed me into my student house without me knowing it. They swiped my housemate’s car keys and stole her car. It was found burned and abandoned the next day. Then there was the time that same housemate was sleeping over at a friend’s house some months later. She was crashed out on a sofa in the living room and thought it was pretty considerate of the other people in the house to use a torch when they walked by her to use the bathroom in the middle of the night – until she said hello and the burglar who’d broken in jumped in terror and fled the house.

Eventually, it happened to me. I was sharing a flat in London when I got home one evening to find the door to my apartment ajar. I guessed my housemate had forgotten to pull the door closed on its latch first thing that morning. I went in, saw her bedroom door closed ahead of me, thought nothing of it and went to take a shower. I was in the middle of singing a very bad version of Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me A River when I heard a door slam. Embarrassing, I thought. My housemate must have got home and heard me singing. But when I came out of the bathroom, there was nobody there. Hours later, my housemate got home late from work. She knocked on my bedroom door and asked me if by any chance I’d been in her bedroom, ransacked her things, stolen all her jewellery? It wasn’t me (I swear) but it dawned on me pretty quickly that a burglar had been there when I’d come home. Lucky for me, I guess, that I’m such a bad singer, or they might have stuck around.

Just over a decade ago, I took all these stories and experiences and I channelled them into writing a series of comic mysteries about a globetrotting burglar (starting with The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam).

But I never explored my real fear at the heart of all these stories about burglaries and home invasions. Our homes are meant to be safe havens – but what if they’re not?

People are scared of all kinds of different things. There are entire spectrums of phobias. But I think there’s one fear we don’t just all share but we’ve all experienced, too. It’s that haunting moment, very late at night, when you’re fast asleep and then you’re woken by a strange noise in your home. What do you do? Do you get out of bed to investigate? Go room to room, flipping on the lights? Or do you lie in bed, crippled with fear, wondering if you should call someone for help?

That’s the question that led me to write A Window Breaks. The book is a fast, twisting and nerve-shredding exploration of how far one family will go to save themselves when they’re all alone at a remote lodge in the wilds of Scotland and they hear footsteps downstairs in the middle of the night.

What would you do in that situation? Would you run, or would you fight?

A Window Breaks by  C M Ewan (Published by PanMacmillan)

If your family was targeted in the middle of the night, what would you do?  You are asleep. A noise wakes you.  You stir, unsure why, and turn to your wife.  Then you hear it.  Glass. Crunching underfoot.  Your worst fears are about to be realized.  Someone is inside your home.  Your choices are limited. You can run. Or stay and fight. What would you do?

A Tale of Two Novels: Where Crime Fiction meets the Horrific

When two of the World’s greatest Thriller Writers decide to release their latest (and highly anticipated) work, in the UK, and on the same week, one has to admire the bravery of the publishers. Both Peter James and Thomas Harris have achieved both critical acclaim, as well as bestselling status for their highly acclaimed work.

Firstly, from the William Heinemann imprint of PenguinRandomHouse, we have Thomas Harris’s Cari Mora, his sixth published novel [a stand-alone] set in Miami and Columbia, and secondly from PanMacmillan we have Peter James’ fifteenth Roy Grace police procedural Dead at First Sight, set in Brighton, England as well Germany and America.

I pondered upon the diffuse line that separates crime, from the horror sub-genres of Thriller Fiction, as both Thomas Harris and Peter James could be considered as penning Crime Fiction work, that has a generous slice of the horrors that this world contains. It is well known that Peter James carries out extensive research for his Brighton based police thrillers. And Thomas Harris alludes chillingly to the New York Times, in a similar vein “I don’t make anything up, because everything I write about has happened”.

Read More HERE from Peter James as he explores the dark and dangerous side of internet dating, a prelude to his research for Dead at First Sight.

Read More HERE from Thomas Harris in this very rare interview from The New York Times, as he talks about Cari Mora.

That line between what we consider Criminal and what we term Horrific is indeed diffuse, as evidenced when you read either Peter James and Thomas Harris.

It seems like only yesterday when Barry Forshaw, Mark Timlin, Carla McKay and I sat with Peter, for lunch at The Wolsey. He had just embarked on the Police Procedurals, with Dead Simple out in Paperback [his first in the series], and Looking Good Dead just out in hardcover. I recall that lunch vividly, because looking back at the time, I actually discussed the work of Thomas Harris and the gothic character Dr Hannibal Lecter. Little did any of us know that later, much later Peter James’s Roy Grace Detective Series would beat Thomas Harris’ own work.

Then we shifted our conversation to the return of Thomas Harris and the release last week of Hannibal Rising. Mark and I were both enthusiastic about this fourth outing for Dr. Lecter, while we knew that Barry and Carla were lukewarm on the subject, at best. But like civilized people, we came to agreement on the opinion that Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988) represent the twin pinnacles of Harris’ work. (It’s interesting, by the way, that Peter James references The Silence of the Lambs in his latest detective thriller.)

Read more HERE

Many of us recall Peter James’ early work, his film interests as well as his foray within the Horror Genre.

“……his early work in the horror genre, which had won him designation as “the British Stephen King.” I used to be heavily involved in that genre, and enjoyed some of Peter’s horror novels, such as Host, Possession, and Prophecy. But he’s not one to be constrained by genre boundaries; Peter has published thrillers as well as horror, and Dead Simple is the first entry in a police procedural series featuring Superintendent Roy Grace of the Brighton, England, constabulary.”

Read more about the early days HERE

So, what have readers in store from Peter James’ DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT?

You don’t know me, but I thought I knew you . . .

A man waits at a London airport for Ingrid Ostermann, the love of his life, to arrive. Across the Atlantic, a retired NYPD cop waits in a bar in Florida’s Key West for his first date with the lady who is, without question, his soulmate. The two men are about to discover they’ve been scammed out of almost every penny they have in the world – and that neither women exist.

Meanwhile, a wealthy divorcée plunges, in suspicious circumstances, from an apartment block in Munich. In the same week, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called to investigate the suicide of a woman in Brighton, that is clearly not what it seems. As his investigations continue, a handsome Brighton motivational speaker comes forward. He’s discovered his identity is being used to scam eleven different women, online. The first he knew of it was a phone call from one of them, out of the blue, saying, ‘You don’t know me, but I thought I knew you’. That woman is now dead.

Roy Grace realizes he is looking at the tip of an iceberg. A global empire built on clever, cruel internet scams and the murder of anyone who threatens to expose them.

Read the Shots Mag Review HERE from Gwen Moffat

And, what have readers in store from Thomas Harris’ CARI MORA?

Twenty-five million dollars in cartel gold lies hidden beneath a mansion on the Miami Beach waterfront. Ruthless men have tracked it for years. Leading the pack is Hans-Peter Schneider. Driven by unspeakable appetites, he makes a living fleshing out the violent fantasies of other, richer men.

Cari Mora, caretaker of the house, has escaped from the violence in her native country. She stays in Miami on a wobbly Temporary Protected Status, subject to the iron whim of ICE. She works at many jobs to survive. Beautiful, marked by war, Cari catches the eye of Hans-Peter as he closes in on the treasure. But Cari Mora has surprising skills, and her will to survive has been tested before.

Monsters lurk in the crevices between male desire and female survival.

Read the Shots Mag Review HERE from Ali Karim

Both these highly recommended crime thrillers, could be considered horrific in terms of what they reveal about what surrounds us - because both writers research heavily, and what they uncover is unsettling. They are also available as unabridged audio narrations, downloadable from Audible.co.uk as are many great novels, more information about the importance of the audio sector. Click HERE

The popularity in crime fiction reached a tipping point last year, when it was reported

British readers have become more gripped by crime and thriller novels, with sales up by 19% between 2015 and 2017, new figures suggest.

The rise has been fuelled by the growth of psychological thrillers and the success of big names like Lee Child, James Patterson and Dan Brown.

Last year, 18.7 million crime books were sold - 19% more than in 2015, data company Nielsen Bookscan says.

They overtook sales for general and literary fiction, which were down 16%.

Read More HERE

And many other great works of Crime and Thrillers on the UK Book Charts with authors leaving their Pitons on the Nielsen Bookscan with CHRIS CARTER, TIM WEAVER, JEFFERY DEAVER, MARK BILLINGHAM, MICHAEL CONNELLY, JAMES PATTERSON (in-concert with Bill Clinton), LEE CHILD, STEPHEN KING and HEATHER MORRIS

So as both Thomas Harris [the creator of Dr Hannibal Lector] and Peter James [the creator of the character Roy Grace] released their latest novels in the same week, what did Nielsen Bookscan [the industry standard in terms of book sales] report?

It seems, in a book chart dominated by Crime and Thriller Fiction, DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT by PETER JAMES was the Numero Uno in the UK.

In these days of anxiety, depression and worry, it has been widely acknowledged that reading novels is an excellent form of relief.

Read more about Bibliotherapy HERE

And both Peter James’ DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT and Thomas Harris’ CARI MORA read back-to-back is a great dose, to steer ones’ thinking, as counter intuitive as it may appear with such dark books.

Remember that to fight the fire, we sometimes have to use fire, as anyone who has worked in Oil Field and Chemical Incidents knows.

Below Peter James reads the first chapter from DEAD AT FIRST SIGHT, the biggest selling novel in the UK >

While below - the first appearance of Dr Hannibal Lecktor, as played by Brian Cox in Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter featuring William Petersen playing Will Graham. Note Dr Lecter's name was spelled Lecktor for this adaptation of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel RED DRAGON

I would urge you to seek out these two outstanding novels of Crime that feature the Horrors that lie beneath the cracks of our reality.

Macmillan's Thin Blue Spine

Late last year Literary Publicist Francesca Pearce had been busy contacting various literary commentators with an interest in the darkest edge of literature, Crime, Mystery and Thriller [namely Journalists, Reviewers, Bloggers, Editors, Writers, Booksellers and Literary Agents] - asking us to ‘save a date’ in our busy diaries. Many of us have known Francesca from her days with Penguin UK; as she had recently arrived at Macmillan Publishing;  and as Sherlock Holmes has once remarked to Dr John Watson M.D. ‘the games’ afoot’.

Macmillan [with its various publishing imprints] were planning their first Crime and Thriller Literary Party, one that would showcase some of their 2017 publication list., and also to highlight their web resource The Thin Blue Spine. The venue selected was somewhat apt, the Hunterian Museum within the London’s Royal College of Surgeons., adjacent to The London School of Economics.

Like any party host, as the time approaches one gets nervous as to attendance; for we all lead busy lives but the Macmillan team needn’t have worried for on arrival, it seemed the majority of London’s literary community had arrived. The Museum was decked out with advance copies of their 2017 output, promotional material, fine wine and canapes all in a convivial and surreal venue.

Macmillan’s Crime and Thriller List had grown to become one of the most intriguing, so it was of little surprise that the invited guests came in significant numbers. Many of Macmillan’s authors were present, and they mingled with the guests. It was good to meet up with Mandasue Heller, who had recently joined the Macmillan stable and had her novel RUN out on release. Mandasue and I laughed recalling the times we would bump into each other at Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester when Lee Child started publishing his Jack Reacher novels nearly two decades ago. It was also great to congratulate Ann Cleeves for her CWA Diamond Dagger that was to be awarded to her from the Crime Writers Association. For Macmillan, this would be the second consecutive year that one of their authors received the highest accolade in crime writing, as in 2016, the CWA Diamond Dagger was awarded to Peter James, a writer also at the top of his game after much hard work, developing his Roy Grace Thrillers. 

I chatted with Ann and was delighted that she would be recognised by her peers made even more wonderful after so many years of her championing the work of other writers. I reminded her that much of the fascination and popularity for Scandinavian and Nordic Crime Fiction in the UK was ignited during the inaugural Theakstons’ Crime-Writing Festival hosted in Harrogate in 2003; when she with colleagues showcased translated work. During that event her out-reach work with libraries was much applauded. I too share Ann’s enthusiasm for promoting libraries in this post-fact world.

I was also delighted to meet author Chris Morgan-Jones again as we first met at Crimefest Bristol when he debuted with An Agent of Deceit which he quickly followed up with this book. I told him that I enjoyed his latest novel The Searcher as had fellow writer David Edgerley Gates who I recently interviewed, and who was also a fan of his work.

So it was time to mingle again; and the canapes were excellent as was the wine selection which helped lubricate the proceedings. It was good to see Macmillan’s renowned senior team arrive, including Philippa McEwan, Maria Rejt, Wayne Brookes among many others.

I mentioned to Jeremy Trevathan of my unbridled enthusiasm for the new direction that Andrew Gross’ writing had taken upon joining Macmillan after many years with HarperCollins - with last year’s The One Man, and was looking forward with impatience for the follow-up.

It was soon time for Macmillan’s renowned publisher Jeremy Trevathan to welcome the assembled to the Party, which we have recorded for our readers here –

For more information about the upcoming work in 2017, click here and for The Thin Blue Spine click here

And here we present a selection of photos taken at Macmillan’s first Crime & Thriller Party -

Debbie Howells Top 5 Crime Novels

Today's guest blog is by Debbie Howells as part of her The Beauty and The End Blog Tour. She lives in West Sussex with her family. Having worked as cabin crew and a flying instructor, she spent years running a very successful wedding flower business, whilst also writing and self-publishing three novels. The Bones of You was her first novel published by Pan Macmillan.   Her latest novel is The Beauty and The End.

Rosamund Lupton – Afterwards is her second novel and one of my all-time favourites, not just for the characters and the story, which is heartbreaking, but for the writing.  Her writing is beautiful.

Clare Mackintosh – I Let You Go.  This is another beautifully written book, with a twist I hadn’t seen coming.  The landscape is vivid, the characters so real.  It’s a disturbing read that stayed with me. 

Agatha Christie – Sparkling Cyanide.  Agatha Christie’s novels were the first crime novels I read, Sparkling Cyanide the very first. I’d race through, needing to find out who the murderer was, before starting on her next book.

Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca.  So beautifully written.  Manderley is unforgettable, as is the naivety of the second Mrs de Winter and the hostility of Mrs Danvers.   A timeless classic.

Frederick Forsyth – The Day of the Jackal.  I first read my Dad’s copy of this as a teenager, and it was like nothing I’d ever read before.  The plot, the suspense, had me rushing to the library to find more of the same.   

The Beauty of The End by Debbie Howells is published by Pan, priced £7.99

April is on life-support and the only murder suspect. Noah is a reclusive ex-lawyer attempting to ignore his sadness and write crime novels. April is also the love of Noah’s life and, though he has never recovered from her rejection, he returns to their hometown to prove April’s innocence. Meanwhile, Ella has her own secrets, but no one will listen to her. She is the same age that April was when Noah first met her, and what Ella knows is key to finding the murderer.  Following the story of April and Noah’s tragic and flawed relationship and Ella’s determination to uncover the truth.

You can find more information about Debbie Howells on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @debbie__howells.