Showing posts with label Thriller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thriller. Show all posts

Tuesday, 23 June 2026

How to Survive in The Woods - Q & A with Kat Rosenfield

Ayo:- How to Survive in the Woods is as much as about the wilderness as it is about control betrayal and survival. What sparked the idea for the story.

Kat:- I love the wilderness as a setting for two reasons: first and foremost and very pragmatically, it's an elegant solution to the thriller writer's most annoying challenge, which is putting your characters into situations where they can't ruin the story by pulling out an iPhone. (After 6 books, the amount of time I've spent trying to figure out ways to separate fictional characters from their devices probably adds up to months at this point.) But the wilderness is also a character unto itself: a place where pretense falls away, where things come to the surface that you might have been able to keep hidden in more civilised circumstances. Which is to say, if you want someone to show you who they are? Take them camping.

Ayo:- What actually does it mean to be a survivor? 

Kat:- I'm very interested in, among other things, how social media has caused "survivor" to become not just a descriptive noun but a personal brand — and an identity you can opt into because you like how it looks on you. It's central to the conflict between these three characters that each one is a survivor, but not necessarily the same kind.

Ayo:- One of the central questions in the novel is how difficult is it to decide what one would sacrifice to stay alive. If you had to, what would you sacrifice?

Kat:- When I was about 12 years old, I read a short story by Stephen King called "Survivor Type"; without going into detail, it involves a surgeon who ends up shipwrecked on a desert island where there's nothing to eat except his own body, and, well, you can probably guess the rest. I think about that story whenever someone asks me about extreme survival scenarios: would I cut my leg off to survive? Yes, but I think I'd draw the line at eating it. (Of course, this is easy for me to say now.)

Ayo:- Unreliable narrators also play a big and important part. Do you have any favourite unreliable narrators?

Kat:- The nameless narrator from Fight Club, Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, and Humbert Humbert from Lolita

Ayo:- There is a great sense of place in How To Survive in the Woods and the Appalachian Trail play a big part. Do you think that the story would have worked if they were not in such a rural place?

Kat:- The central premise of How to Survive in the Woods is a riff on the setup of a certain mid-century French film (I won't name it here for the sake of spoilers, but anyone who's seen it will know exactly what I'm talking about) — and I have no doubt that the drama between these characters could have played out just as well in a different setting. But that would have been a different story; for me, for this book, I always knew it would happen in the woods. 

Ayo:- How important is research and did you have to do much for How to Survive in the Woods?

Kat:- This book was born in the wilderness— I had the initial idea for the story while hiking to the very same pond where Emma, Logan, and Taylor spend their first night in the woods — and while I ultimately fudged some details of the trail here and there to better fit the story, it was very important to me that the setting and stakes feel real, especially to anyone who's spent time in the North Woods in Maine. So I did spend a lot of time hiking for this book, especially on and around the section of the Appalachian Trail where it takes place. I also had some subject matter experts for things I couldn't or didn't want to do myself, like apocalypse prepping, or mountaineering, or (most extreme of all) sleeping in a tent outside.

Ayo:- The book touches on themes focusing on emotional endurance, the morality of survival, and the dangers of toxic, controlling relationships. Was there a deliberate message that you were trying to convey about the characters' moral compasses?

Kat:- I think the great thing about fiction, apart from its entertainment value, is that it provides a place to ask questions about what it means to be human — who we are, what we do to each other — without needing to answer them fully or even necessarily at all. I'm draw to stories where some characters are more morally centered than others, but nobody is purely good or bad, and everyone is sympathetic — which is to say, you may not like what this person is doing, but you understand why they're doing it. I would say that How to Survive in the Woods is a place to explore these ideas and draw your own conclusions about them, if you're so inclined, but I would never tell anyone what those conclusions ought to be! 

Ayo:- What are you working on next?

Kat:- I'm at work on my next novel, which I'm trying to peck away at in between promoting this book and my work as a culture writer. I'd rather not share many more details this early in the process, but will say I'm looking forward to doing on-site research in a place where there is a zero percent chance of being attacked by a bear!

How to Survive in the Woods by Kat Rosenfield (Zaffre) Published on 25th June 2026

Emma Sharp knows the rules of survival. From being raised by a doomsday-fearing father and hardened by the startup world, she has learned how to endure - especially in her marriage to Logan Grant, a charismatic tyrant who keeps her under tight control. To Emma, her marriage is a cage: it keeps you in, but it also keeps you safe. Until it doesn't. When Emma forms an unexpected bond with Logan's former girlfriend, the two women form a plan to help Emma reclaim her life. Destination: the punishing final stretch of the Appalachian Trail. After all, bad things happen in the woods all the time. As the three venture deeper into Maine's backcountry, desire and dread curdle into something unpredictable, dark and deadly. Someone is lying. Someone is watching. And in the remote heart of the forest, someone is about to be lost . . . or found.

More information about Kat Rosenfield can be found on her website. You can also find her on Substack and on X @katrosenfield


Thursday, 28 May 2026

Octagon – How real is the threat of nuclear terrorism?

Photo by Dan Donovan

It’s not a spoiler to say that my new spy-action thriller Octagon contains a nuclear terror threat. The opening pages tell the story of how a disgruntled Chechen scientist, repeatedly passed over for promotion, steals small quantities of highly enriched uranium from the research facility where he works in Russia, storing it at home until he has enough to make an atomic bomb. Many years later, this material finds its way onto the international criminal market, where a new buyer expresses interest, and a deal is set up. The plot unfolds from there. But how realistic is the threat?

Thankfully there have been no recorded instances of nuclear terrorism. This is partly because such materials are very highly controlled, and usually in the possession of nation states who know how to guard them. If bad actors were to acquire nuclear materials – which Al-Qaeda, among others, long professed as an ambition – they would still need to know how to produce a nuclear bomb, which is no simple task. They would require at least 25kg of weapons-grade uranium to initiate a self-sustaining chain reaction – the kind of huge mushroom cloud explosions seen in old video clips. And unless they had a very reliable time delay for detonating it, they would need a remote delivery mechanism, which is typically a long-range ballistic missile. Again, not easy to come by, let alone launch.

Much easier, on the other hand, would be detonating an explosive device containing radiological materials. It would be very unlikely to produce a chain reaction, but the psychological impact would be huge. Public terror, blind panic, people fleeing the area where it was detonated. Massive cleanup costs, extensive economic damage, political turmoil. These kinds of devices are called ‘radiological dispersal devices’ and are sometimes referred to as ‘dirty bombs’. Fortunately, there haven’t been any of those either. But not for want of people trying.

The Chechen scientist in Octagon who manages to steal 100kg of communist-era surplus uranium from a poorly administered research facility is based on a real insider case, that of Leonid Smirnov, in post-Soviet Russia during the 1990s. Smirnov found himself in financial difficulties after the breakup of the USSR, and decided to monetise his access to the valuable asset he worked with every day: highly enriched uranium. Luckily, he only managed to steal 1.5kg and ended up being caught – but I wondered what would happen if someone did steal enough to build a bomb and got away with it.

Smirnov’s case is by no means isolated. There have been hundreds of instances of nuclear materials going missing and turning up on the black market over the past 35 years or so. Most involve tiny quantities, sometimes just a few grams. Others involve medical radiological material which is nowhere near as harmful. Most involve the former Soviet Union, which set vast production targets at the height of the Cold War, when they faced the possibility of all-out nuclear war with the US and its Western allies. And the legacy of that still haunts us today. 

Since 2019, the former Soviet republic of Georgia has thwarted three separate multi-million-dollar uranium smuggling plots – including two in 2025 alone. Real fissile material is out there (among the fake stuff no doubt being pedalled) and there are plenty of people who want to get hold of it. None has succeeded so far, that we know of. But Octagon asks the question: what if they did? Fortunately, for now, the answer is still within the realms of fiction.

Octagon by C.J.Merritt (Penguin Books) Out Now

A dying Russian scientist confesses to his children what he did as a young man. A murdered spy shares vital intelligence before he’s ruthlessly assassinated in the English countryside. A hidden ritual killing hidden in a forest clearing in Sweden hints at something much worse. Former MI6 Agent runner Stella McRae is the only person who can be trusted to investigate now her former employer has been compromised. Ex-SAS Operator Tommy Kane has always had Stella’s back, but as the threats against them escalate, will his formidable skills be enough this time? Octagon - A devastating plot against the West is already in train. Only Stella and Tommy stand in its way. And time is running out...

More information about CJ Merritt can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook. On X @drcjmerritt, Instagram @chrisjmerritt

Saturday, 9 May 2026

The Zaffre Crime & Thriller Showcase 2026

 


Mike Stotter and I were looking forward to seeing what Bonnier Books Crime and Thriller Imprint ‘Zaffre’ had in store for 2006/7 – as well as catching up with the Shots Magazine Blogger Ayo Onatade, and our fellow London-based book reviewers.

But first, a digression.

I met up with Mike Stotter for lunch at a Pizzeria in Fitzrovia, followed by Coffee and Dates at a nearby Middle Eastern cafĂ©. As ever, our conversation centred upon our lives within literature; particularly my excessive reading and Mike’s excessive workload at Piccadilly Publishing. I was heartened to hear that Mike’s publishing house had acquired the western novels of the renowned thriller writer Brian Garfield and had also published The Legend of Hereward a historical novel by the prolific Mike Ripley. I had enjoyed Ripley’s latest novel Played to Death, which I reviewed last month, noting especially - its observational humour and affectionate deconstruction of the golden age crime novel - “Rarely have I enjoyed myself as much as I have reading through this piece of narrative metafiction. Though you have to work for your money, because despite its concise size, the novel has significant heft in provoking thought – which it does with a smile. Though the novel is much darker than it appears from the surface, much like life.” Read my full review HERE

After adjourning to The Bricklayer’s Arms we enjoyed small glasses of Stout. I was delighted to learn that my very dear friend had started writing again. I had been urging him to return to penning his own work, after many years of promoting and publishing the work of others. I have been growing concerned at his relentless workload at Piccadilly Publishing, and [perhaps selfishly] missed becoming lost in tales torn from Mike Stotter’s fevered imagination [Click Here for more information]; work that even Elmore Leonard had commented on “I’ve now seen it all, a Limey writing Westerns” Dutch had laughed when he last visited London and talked with Mike [as they coincidentally had both published stories in the same western collection].

Anyway, it was soon time to venture to the private room [above The Black Horse] that would be hosting the Zaffre Crime & Thriller Showcase.

We were welcomed by the Zaffre team, who treated us to an eclectic array of cocktails and food which was generously provided by Bonnier Books. The display of the upcoming publications reinforced what publisher Ben Willis told us in his welcoming speech “Zaffre’s list can only be described as diverse, spanning all the myriad subgenres that make up crime, mystery and thriller fiction”.

Many of the Zaffre Authors were in attendance, including Vaseem Khan, Felix Francis, T.M. Logan, Robert Peston, Jo Spain among many others. I was on the lookout for Susie Dent as my very dear friend [and one of the hardest working editors in Crime and Thriller], Journalist and the Editor of The Rap Sheet Jeff Pierce had enjoyed her debut thriller Guilty by Definition. But it was a busy gathering and I didn’t manage to find her – I did however snag an advance proof of her sophomore work Death Writ Large which is released this August.


I am also intrigued by an upcoming 2027 novel White Smoke by [the pseudonymous] Nick Brucker, as I had enjoyed his Techno-SF thriller Ascension which he penned under his real name Nicolas Binge. White Smoke was the subject of a publishing bidding war that Zaffre Publisher Ben Willis won. It should be noted that A24 has acquired film rights for White Smoke

Benedict Cumberbatch has signed on to star and produce the proposed TV Series. Though proofs were not available at the party, we were provided with a short extract and information, which we are pleased to share with our readers [click on image below enlarge & download]

Joining Ayo Onatade, Mike Stotter and I [from Shots Magazine] at the party were our friends and reviewing colleagues Deidre O’Brien, Jake Kerridge, Maxim Jakubowski and Barry Forshaw as well bloggers and members of the press, booksellers, fellow bibliophiles and the team from the Zaffre imprint of Bonnier.


We present a few photographs of the party, and of our mingling - as we talked books and catching up on our lives as well the absurdity of the reality we share.







Shots Magazine would like to thank Alice Dovey, Ben Willis and the Zaffre Team at Bonnier Books for generously hosting an excellent evening that wonderfully showcased their 2026 publications as well as providing an opportunity to talk about books.  

Many of the books from Zaffre / Bonnier are available to order currently or for pre-order.  

More information available HERE

https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/imprints/zaffre

 


Monday, 2 February 2026

2026 International Thriller Writer Award Nominees Announced


 

Best Standalone Novel

Cross My Heart by Megan Collins (Atria)

Zigzag Girl by Ruth Knafo Setton (Black Spring Press)

The Burning Library by Gilly Macmillan (William Morrow)

The Locked Ward by Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press)

So Happy Together by Olivia Worley (Minotaur)


Best Series Novel

Chain Reaction by James Byrne (Minotaur)

The Big Empty by Robert Crais (Penguin/Putnam)

Head Cases: A Novel by John McMahon (Minotaur)

The Tourists by Christopher Reich (Thomas & Mercer)

Terminal Moonlight by Vincent Zandri (Down & Out Books)


Best First Novel

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall (Pamela Dorman Books)

Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox (Minotaur)

Count My Lies by Sophie Stava (Gallery/Scout Press)

History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Crime)

Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang (Atria)

 

Best Audiobook

King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby (Macmillan) Narrated by Adam Lazarre-White

The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards (Simon & Schuster) Narrated by John Hopkins and Anna Burnett

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (Macmillan) Narrated by Cia Court

When Devils Sing by Xan Kaur (Macmillan) Narrated by Michael Crouch, Anjali Kunapaneni, Jennifer Pickens and Landon Woodson

The Cheaters Wife by C N Mabry and N’Dia Rae (Simon Maverick) Narrated by Ruffin Prentiss and Machelle Williams

The White Crow by Michael Robotham (Simon & Schuster) Narrated by Katy Sobey


Best Young Adult Novel

Murder Between Friends by Liz Lawson (Delacorte Press)

This Stays Between Us by Margot McGovern (Penguin Young Readers)

Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman (Delacorte Press)

The Silenced by Diana Rodriguez Wallach (Delacorte Press)

The Thrashers by Julie Soto (Wednesday Books)


Best Short Story

Level Up by Katrina Carrasco (Bywater Books)

The Seduction of Dr Dimension by Scott William Carter (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)

Eleven Numbers by Lee child (Amazon Original Stories)

False Note by David Lagercrantz (Amazon Original Stories)

The Violent Season by Jessica Van Dessel (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine)


ITW will announce the winners at Thrillerfest XXI on Saturday, May 9, 2026 at the New York Hilton Midtown, New York City.

Congratulations to all the nominated finalists!

Friday, 21 November 2025

From Hunted. to The Burning Grounds with Abir Mukherjee

This down to earth, incredibly funny and all-encompassing interview took place over the sunny weekend of St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend between 8th to 10th August 2025.

This interview with Abir Mukherjee not only covers the writing of his best-selling and award-winning novel Hunted, but his return to his award-winning Wyndham and Banerjee series, his research, background to the new book, authors of colour and other bits of information that I managed to persuade him to talk about.

Ayo: Can I just start by saying congratulations. 

Abir: Why thank you. Can I say thank you for everything. It cost a lot of money to bribe you, and it was money well spent.

Ayo: That is so funny. Okay, let’s be a bit serious. 2025 has been an interesting year. 

Abir: It has been an interesting year from a political point of view. It has been a great year if you close your mind to all the world.

Ayo: I'm talking more about you and your books. 

Abir: Ah well explain?

Ayo: Well British Book Award, Theakston's need I say more?

Abir: I know well. It has been mental.

Ayo: Did you actually expect to win the Theakston's

Abir: I didn't expect to win either to be quite honest with you. As you know I didn't expect to win the Theakston's as I turned up in my shorts.

Ayo: Well yes, I heard about that.

Abir: I was going to get changed but then I saw everyone looking so fancy I thought don't I understand someone obviously knows that they have won but they had not told me and so I didn't bother to change. So I stayed in my shorts and then I felt like a complete idiot.

Ayo: You are never a complete idiot. Oh dear.

Abir: Partially then.

Ayo: When I think back to when you first started writing I thought bloody hell this is good. I was just so happy.

Abir: Well, you didn't give me the prize that year did you. Nine years I had to wait.

Ayo: Can I just say this is my first year of judging the main prize.

Abir: Okay then, I forgive you then. That's all right. Why is this your first year. Someone needs to answer for this. You should have been a judge years ago.

Ayo: I have no idea. I have to say that I was quite pleased that they asked me.

Abir: Quite right

Ayo: You do know that I generally tend to be low key

Abir: As one of the wise great heads of crime fiction not just nationally but internationally. Everyone where I turn up you are Guest of Honour

Ayo: Now you are making me blush if you could see me doing so. I am not everywhere. Anyway, this is not about me it is about you. As much as this is about the new book, It would be very remiss if we don't start off by talking about Hunted. What a year it has been with Hunted.

Abir: Yes, please do as I can’t remember the new book.

Ayo: (Laughing) You can’t remember the new book? 

Abir: (Laughing) – No, I wrote it a year ago. Actually, yes, I can but I wrote it a year ago - I’m writing another one. This is the problem.

Ayo: Let’s talk about Hunted. What made you decide to write Hunted which is your first contemporary novel and standalone.

Abir: Well, there were a couple of things I had written five Wyndham and Banerjee novels and that had taken the best part of a decade. Seven or eight years I had been writing, and I had these two voices in Sam Wyndham and Surendranath Banerjee in my head. Three voices actually those two and my wife’s and I wanted a change. I wanted firstly to write something different. I was getting a bit stale and secondly, I wanted to see if I could write something that was different because historical crime fiction is great, but it is a certain style of novel. Let’s call it middle brow. That’s something somebody once called it. I am not sure that I like that term.

Ayo: No, I think that I have to disagree with whoever said that it’s middle brow.

Abir: It is a certain book, a certain pace, a certain amount of research goes into it, a certain amount of history comes in. Whereas I had never written a thriller and I wanted to write a thriller. It just turns out that I wasn’t particularly good at it to start with because it took three years. The first two attempts were awful. The first one was terrible. I’m surprised none of my editors jumped off a bridge it was so bad.

Ayo: So how did you feel about moving not solely to the 21st Century but to North America when you wrote Hunted?

Abir: As you know I write about things that make me unhappy and angry and the thing is when I started writing this what we see now and is probably worse now is the rise of extremism, the rise of populism, the rise of intolerance. All of these things and I thought well the last book I had written Shadows of Men dealt with some of those issues, but it was allegorical and I thought that it was getting really quite bad and that I should tackle it head on. And so, it made sense to look at them. If we are talking about the rise of the Right, talking about the rise populism then America seems to be the fulcrum of that. It is happening everywhere but that is what we see the most of.

Ayo: You think it has become more prominent?

Abir: Err, yes. Well, it certainly matters more. Let’s say if it happened in Hungary which it is happening in Hungary it doesn’t really affect most of the outside world. When it happens in America, as they say when America sneezes, we all catch a cold.

Ayo: Was the transition difficult and if so, what was the most difficult part of it?

Abir: It was bloody terrible! It was really difficult as I didn’t know how to write a thriller, so I wrote 15,000 words of this book and it was written in the style of how I wanted to write it and then I got a book deal off the back of those 15,000 words. For the first time I had a big publisher in America, and I got a bit scared, and I thought I don’t know what I am doing. I need to write a thriller; I need to write a different sort of book and so I wrote the next 80,000 words in a very different style which in hindsight was a terrible mistake because they all read it and went 'this is not what we paid for'. And they were right and the stated that if they wanted a book in this style they would have commissioned a book in this style. Why don’t you write the book you want to write.

The first time was very plot heavy and so I went back and rewrote it in the style I would write my other books but that wasn’t right either because that was historical fiction. The first time too much happened and the second time nothing happened. And so, it was about getting that balance. What I did was that I went away and read a lot of thrillers by people I liked.

Ayo: For example?

Abir: Steve Cavanagh who I think is brilliant. Reading a Steve Cavanagh book is like being hit in the face with a frying pan every couple of chapters.

Ayo: I am fairly certain I saw somebody mention that recently.

Abir: It was probably me. I have been saying that for the last couple of years. I learnt how to be braver and essentially to dial all the action up to eleven. The issue I had was marrying that action with the character development and arcs and the quiet messages. That was a very tough part and then I have never written from three points of view before, and they were all vastly different points of view. Whereas Sam and Suren both of them are the voices in my head, they are my personality, I can get them. These were different characters from me. A white American guy 20-year-old, an American woman of a certain age and origin and a Bangladeshi Muslim man and while I could relate to bits of their character, these were quite different to the sorts of things that I had written before. Just getting the voice of each character took a long time in each draft. By draft three we had the story, the action and the plot sorted but in terms of getting the characters right it took another three to four drafts. It took an exceptionally long time.

Ayo: How many drafts do you normally do of your books?

Abir: It varies. I think by the end of the second draft we will have the structure, then there will be three smaller and smaller drafts including a copy edit. But you know if you say it takes me nine to twelve months to write a first draft, probably three to four months to do the second draft and then the subsequent drafts get shorter and shorter. This one took much longer. I mean the first three drafts took about in total over two years, getting close to two and a half years. All in that book took a long time.

Ayo: Were you panicking at any stage about this?

Abir: I wasn’t panicking precisely because failure is my natural state (laughing). I know how to deal with things going wrong. I have no idea how to deal with things going right. I don’t trust myself when things go right. I feel I jink it. So, when things were going wrong, I was really happy because I knew – hear we go again this is my natural state. Also, I never really knew how bad it was until I looked back. This is the wonderful thing about editors they never really tell you just how bad you are until you have fixed it yourself. I didn’t panic; I got lucky in that respect.

Ayo: How soon after you finished writing Hunted did you start writing The Burning Ground.

AbirHunted had been going on for so long I had to start it anyway as I was getting tired. I must have handed in the fourth draft and while I was waiting for the fourth draft of Hunted to be pulled apart, I started researching and I started writing the new book. To be fair the gem of that comes much earlier. It probably goes back to 2018 when I was in Calcutta doing a walking tour and we were taken to the house of India’s first female photographer. That was interesting to me and the reason that she made such a name for herself was because in those days a lot of men if they were Muslim or even Hindu men did not like their women being photographed or seen by other men so she had this natural constituency and she could go into everyone’s houses and everyone loves a photo. So, she did pretty well.

Ayo: She found her niche.

Abir: Yes, and I thought that’s an interesting story I have got to build that into a book. That was many years ago – 2017/18. I was actually in India with Val McDermid and Graeme McCrae Burnett at that point. We were on this walking tour together and that’s when that happened and then there is another part of this story when I was researching that I came across another story which I can’t tell you about because it is in this book but if I tell you, it’s a spoiler.

Ayo: No spoilers please. 

Abir: I started the research by the fourth draft of Hunted and started writing probably by the time the fifth draft was in.

Ayo: Describe the new book in five words?

Abir: Oh gosh that’s tough. I can’t describe anything in five words. I can’t even describe my breakfast in five words. Um --- Rich people in Calcutta with secrets.

Ayo: How important is history to you in relation to the Wyndham and Banerjee books?

Abir:  I love history, I have always been a bit of a history nerd – I’ve been many sorts of nerds. My son seems to be an even bigger history nerd than I am. He has a little friend that lives across the road but when he switches on Horrible Histories she goes home. I think that it must be genetic. History is important because if we don’t know our history and, in this country, we certainly do not know our history, we are doomed to make the same mistakes. It sounds like a clichĂ©, but it is not. We can only make decisions from an informed position and if we are not informed, we do stupid things again and again.

Ayo: Do you think that your connection with India has changed since you wrote your first Wyndham and Banerjee book?

Abir: Has it changed, I suppose it has matured a bit more. I understand India more. I get treated slightly differently as well.

Ayo: How?

Abir: The books are read there and that’s all really nice.

Ayo: Really, that’s very nice. Does it help when you get to India.

Abir: I don’t know if it helps. But if you go to Calcutta, and Calcutta is a weird place where writing and the arts are essentially fetishised everywhere. You tell people you are a writer they will do anything for you it is amazing. It is really cool in that respect. You go to the airport in Calcutta, you land, you go into the terminal, you look up and you will see writing all over the ceiling and that is Rabindranath Tagore the first non-white winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature who came from Calcutta. That’s his handwriting from the Bengali edition of the book Gitanjali (Song Offerings) which won. The whole city is literature, poetry, and art creativity, so it helps there.

Ayo: I know that you have mentioned the first female photographer (who was Homai Vyarawalla) but what else inspired the story because you talk about the dead being laid to rest in the burning ghats of Calcutta. What are the burning ghats of Calcutta. I have during my research got some vague idea but let’s talk about it from the point of view that some people may not know anything about it.

Abir: Hindu’s believe in reincarnation and reincarnation is effected by the burning of the shell which is the corporeal body to free the soul and this tends to happen around auspicious places if possible and the most auspicious and holy place the Ganges and the part of the Ganges that goes through Calcutta is called the Hooghly but is essentially still the Ganges and there is this point in Calcutta, in fact there are several the main one is Manikarnika Ghat where these bodies are cremated and it is called the burning ground or the burning ghats right near the river. The cremation can only be done, I mean the priests can conduct the prayers but the burning, the carrying and the preparation of the bodies can only be done by a subset of an untouchable cast called the ‘Doms.’  It is a really bizarre situation. Outside of the burning grounds these guys are nobody but inside they are literarily kings to the extent that in Varanasi, which is not in Calcutta they say that the head of that community is a millionaire just because of the money that they get for this monopoly on essentially carting the dead around. So, I heard that story and thought that’s pretty cool I have got to put that in as well.

Ayo: Did you go to India to do research about this and if you did, did you go to Varanasi?

Abir: No, I did my research in the sense that my father passed away on holiday some time ago and he was from Calcutta, and he spent half his life there and half his life here. He and my mother were on holiday, and he fell ill and passed away, and, in that sense, it was nice as he went in the place where he was from and we gave him proper funeral rites, we scattered his ashes on the river. If it were here, it would have been in a crematorium, and he would be sitting in a jug above my mantel piece. So, in that sense we went through the whole thing. These days it is almost industrialised there are so many people, and they have incinerators as opposed to funeral pyres but there are certain things that remain. I have had this discussion with Craig Robertson. There is a part of the body that apparently doesn’t burn at the same temperature as the other parts of the body. He says that this isn’t true, but I have seen it, and I don’t know if it is true, but it is the navel, the inside of the umbilical cord which stays inside you. So, once they give you the ashes, they also present you with the navel which you then pack in earth or mud and return to the Ganges separately. I did not put it in this book, but I did put it in the second book. So, I have been fascinated by this whole procedure of reincarnation. Have you ever been somewhere, where you have gone into a building or a place and it’s not just dĂ©jĂ  vu but you have this really strong sense that you have been there before.

Ayo: Oh God, yes. 

Abir: That happened to me once in India. I went to this house, and I have never been there before in my life, but I seemed to know the layout, and I had this really strong feeling that I had been there.

Ayo: That is rather spooky you do realise that!

Abir: Yes, it is really spooky.

Ayo: Let’s talk about Indian cinema.

Abir: Okay we can do that, or I can tell you about the time my dad saw a ghost! But we can talk about Indian cinema if you want.

Ayo: As much as I would like to hear about you dad and ghosts, I think we should talk about Indian cinema. Indian cinema is a big part of this book as well. How did you go about doing your research. What I want to know is did you end up sitting down watching loads of Indian films and was some of it nostalgic.

Abir: God no. I did not for this because the period for this is still the silent movie period and there were very few films. The Indian film industry did exist, and it existed in Calcutta at that point in time. I watched YouTube clips but not much has survived from that because that was the very early days of Indian cinema. But Indian cinema is funny because we think of it all as Bollywood.

Ayo: But don’t you think that this is partly because what we grew up seeing?

Abir: You did – or people did. But Calcutta has its own, very different heritage of cinema. So, we have Satyajit Ray who was given an Oscar for his lifetime work The Apu Trilogy. He was the first Indian to receive it. We have a very different culture of film making which is skewed towards the artistic. They are generally four hours long, you come out with a headache without any clue what happened, but you are very happy it is an art film, and you feel intellectually good. Again, it goes back to this idea that Calcutta and Bengali’s thinking of themselves as intellectuals. Our film industry is different; it has its roots in intellectual fiction rather than commercial fiction.

Ayo: When were you doing all your research was there anything that you found that you realised that if you put this in the book nobody would be believe you?

Abir: Well in this book I did not find anything to that extent other that then crucial premise of the book. The whole twist is around something that is real, but I can’t really speak about that, but it will go in the author’s note at the back. And that was really the trigger for the whole book. Finding out this fact and that is where the book comes from and that is what the whole book hinges on. I didn’t believe it, and I wouldn’t have believed it if it wasn’t true. I can’t say anything more than that.

Ayo: What do you think readers would make of the relationship between Wyndham and Banerjee now?

Abir: Well, you know what it’s changing isn’t it. It is very different from what it was five /six books ago. Five/six books ago Suren was in awe of this detective who had just come from Britain, ex-Scotland Yard. Now they have spent a couple of years apart. We should point out this book is set in 1926, the last book was set in 1923 at the end of which Suren left India Ostensibly for six months, but because it took me so long to write a hunted he has been away for three years. They are ageing in real time.

Because of that Sam has been alone for three years. He is pretty grumpy about it. So, the relationship is quite difficult. At least to start with it is quite abrasive. I don't think either of them really forgives the other. Sam because Sam is Sam and Suren because he is a bit sort of traumatised by the whole experience of having to leave India because of the way he was framed at the end of the last book.

Ayo: What generally therefore are your thoughts on the portrayal of friendships and relationships in novels particularly yours.

Abir: I think they are very important. And why do I have that relationship? It is because these relationships are across cultures, across races and actually existed. We tend to draw history in broad brushes, them and us. Whereas so much of the time the really interesting details are in the individual relationships and we see that they don't meet their stereotypes and there is another of those in the books. It is the story of Jatindra and Nellie Sengupta. Jatindra was this Bengali guy whose father sent him off to Cambridge at the age of 17 to study law and he fell in love with this woman whom I think was called Ellie. Anyway, she changed it to Nellie. This white girl called Nellie and Jatindra fell in love, and he wrote to his parents saying I've met this girl we are falling in love and I'm going to marry her, and she told her parents who were white and they were fine with it. His dad wrote a letter to her parents saying this is terrible' the cultures are too different, and Jatindra was ordered to get on a boat back to India. So, he cancelled everything got on the boat but got as far as the Suez as he realised, he had made a mistake. He sailed all the way back, got Nellie went back, got married on the boat and she arrived in Bengal dressed in a Sari. Fast forward the story. Jatindra is a freedom fighter and becomes the Mayor of Calcutta. Jatindra is then arrested and dies. Nellie then becomes a member of the Indian National Congress party as she also becomes the first non-Indian female head of the party. She becomes a bigger name in the freedom struggle than he does. So, this white woman whose in-laws didn't want her coming across is revered as this hero of the independence movement. She had stamps produced in her honour.

Ayo: Okay we are going to skip back a bit. Let's talk about when I think back to 2016 when you were one of the debut authors for the new blood panel at Harrogate. So much has changed hasn't it.

Abir: My hair didn't have specks of grey, and I didn't have a beard.

Ayo: No, you didn't. You were fresh faced. How has this change affected you?

Abir: It has changed my life. I mean I was an accountant for 20 years and then all of a sudden, I have all this good luck.  I had this book published and it Starts getting all this great praise and it gets onto this panel just to be the best debuts which was a huge surprise because I had never written anything and that turbocharged everything. The week before that Vaseem and I were published in the same year, and we did an event together. We have been doing events together for 8 to 9 years now.

Ayo: You are such a great double act.

Abir: It's ridiculous. I love him (laughing). We talked to an audience of four people. One of which was his wife, the other his publicist and also my publicist and just someone random who accidentally walked in off the street and then the next week I'm at Harrogate talking to 700 people or whatever it is.  So, it did, it changed and that was the beginning and now (touch wood) I'm writing full time. I'm doing the job I love. I would use the phrase George Orwell uses in 1984 – 'It's like swimming against the tide your whole life and then suddenly turning around and going with it'. It just feels right.

Ayo: Well – is there anything you would change since you started writing?

Abir: (Laughing) – I would sell more books, and I would like Chris Whittaker’s sales.

Ayo: You were saying when you started you did this literarily on a whim when you entered the competition.

Abir: I would have done it earlier if I had known. I would have done it ten years earlier. In hindsight I would have said to myself be brave and do it earlier.

Ayo: Are we going to see another standalone novel from you?

Abir: I am just finishing the first draft. I would be writing it now if I were not talking to you. I have got to hand it in on Tuesday (12th August 2025)

Ayo: Really? Oh my God.

Abir: Yeah, first draft. I'm loving it. It is the best thing I have written. (Laughing)

Ayo: Can you give us a bit of a hint.

Abir: I can tell you all about it as I'm writing it now. So, think, a George Clooney type American Hollywood star. Slightly over the hill, marries India's Bollywood sweetheart. She is the biggest actress in India, and they move to Mumbai, and they are staying in billionaire's row in one of these massive private houses and she is murdered. He is the prime suspect. And what do you do when suddenly 1.4 billion people suddenly hate you?

Ayo: Go and hibernate?

Abir: Well, you have to hide. So that's what this book is about.

Ayo: One of the things that I have realised is that there has been an increase in books specifically referring to authors of colour. Why do you think that this is the case, and I am sure that you will agree with me that not only is it long overdue but that we could still do more?

Abir: Yeah – Why is it happening? It's market forces. I think it's market forces. If you go back ten years ago, Vaseem and I came around at a time when there were very few non white, or certainly not British Asian writes writing crime fiction. I can't remember any. There were very few British Asians writing anything other than literary fiction. There was a feeling I think that books written by British Asians just wouldn't sell. Things like Londonstani which is Gautam Malkani's book. It is a great book, over hyped and when it did not sell to the degree that publishers wanted it seemed to put a damper on the market. Vaseem and I were quite lucky that we came along in the same year, and we were both commercially successful, to the extent that we are viable as writers. It showed that these sorts of books – that there was and is an appetite for them. Something that was wider. Times were changing, tastes were changing and because we did that and we were lucky to be there then next year there were more people and more people. It's still incredibly difficult. I mean if you are going into supermarkets and if you are lucky, you will find one book that is by a non-white writer on the shelves. It is changing though.

Ayo: I did a paper for Martin Edwards at the Gladstone Library last year in June 2024 and my paper was called from Black Mask to the Modern Day; The Evolution of the Black Crime Writer, but when I was doing the research for it I got so angry because on the one hand we have the US who are much better than we are and then there is the UK and the major gap just made me think that we could be much better than this.

Abir: We should be better than this but on top of that there is the gap between us and the rest of the world as well. Anger is a funny thing, we should be angry, but it is how we channel this anger.  Too often in the past we have channelled that anger by saying to the industry -'You should be doing this, you should be doing that and that you should be doing the next thing. The problem with that is that you can't guilt people. What we have got here is an industry that works in a market economy. So, the only way you change things is by showing them there is a profitable route and make it win, win. It happens every time. Even in the last couple of weeks there has been a retrenchment in terms of publishers and booksellers selling non-white books and publishing non-white books. And we had the same thing with a literary agency a few months ago and I think the problem there is, is that you can’t guilt people into doing it you have to make it work economically and that’s a different approach. 

Ayo: One does hear so much about people complaining and saying that there are not enough authors of colour.

Abir: You have to buy the books.

Ayo: Yes – One you have to buy the books and two, it is a business and sometimes people forget that it is a business.

Abir: Maybe because I come from a financial background, I always look at it in these terms. But that’s the only way you can make this sustainable. It has to be market driven. You cannot force a model on to the public via a subsidy which so many of these did. You have to change minds, you have to change tastes, you have to change attitudes and that is a very long process unfortunately. Or maybe there will be a moment like we had with Scandi fiction. Knowing my luck, it will be Vaseem who does that. You know what (laughing) more power to him. As long as somebody does it.

Ayo: Is there anything that makes you fearful?

Abir: Yes, the whole world right now makes me fearful. Intolerance makes me fearful, the state of the country and the world. The lack of seriousness in our politicians. The lack of willingness to do things for the greater good as opposed to a small subset. Fear, hatred, anger – all of these things worry the shit out of me. But at the end of the day the only way you deal with any of these things is by dialogue, by talking, by making people laugh. You can’t hate someone who makes you laugh.

Ayo: How do you counterbalance your writing? I know that you have got the podcast.

Abir – Whiskey! Whiskey is a good counterbalance to most things and falling in rivers. I think family life really, that’s the counterbalance. It doesn’t matter what happens, you can win an award like the Theakston’s or the British Book Award, but you still get told to put the bins out, shouted at for putting the wrong things in the washing machine. It doesn’t matter who you are; or it certainly doesn’t work in our house.

Ayo: What are the few things that you like about the crime writing community?

Abir: Oh gosh – It’s brilliant. I mean look at it.  It is so friendly, so collegiate. It is a wonderful world both in terms of writers and readers. Everybody looks out for everyone else. Since the day I started in this industry people like Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Lee Child have gone out of their way to help and that’s mental. Which industry can you go into and the best people in it will go out of their way to help a novice. It doesn’t happen. People think of themselves as too important generally but not in this industry. Everybody is so down to earth. (laughing) which upsets me as I’m not allowed to be a diva at any point.

Ayo: Who wants to be a diva within the crime writing community?

Abir: It would be amazing it would be. I would be a fantastic diva (laughing). I just won’t be given the chance.

Ayo: Last two questions. What books have you read recently that you would recommend.

Abir: You like putting me on the spot. – Oh, The Good Liar by Denise Mina which is phenomenal. Again, nobody gets under the skin of people and understands human nature like she does. I’m going to give you a non-crime book. – The Shortest History of Migration by Ian Golding. I thought I need to know about this as it is going on right now and it is eye-opening.

Ayo: Any last words?

Abir: Thank you so much for this interview, thank you so much to all the readers, I hope that you read my books.

 

The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee (Vintage Publishing) Out Now

In the Burning Ghats of Calcutta where the dead are laid to rest, a man is found murdered, his throat cut from ear to ear. The body is that of a popular patron of the arts, a man who was, by all accounts, beloved by all: so what was the motive for his murder? Despite being out of favour with the Imperial Police Force, Detective Sam Wyndham is assigned to the case and finds himself thrust into the glamorous world of Indian cinema. Meanwhile Surendranath Banerjee, recently returned from Europe after three years spent running from the fallout of his last case, is searching for a missing photographer; a trailblazing woman at the forefront of the profession. When Suren discovers that the vanished woman is linked to Sam's murder investigation, the two men find themselves working together once again - but will Wyndham and Banerjee be able to put their differences aside to solve the case?

The Shots review of The Burning Grounds can be read here.

More information about Abir Mukherjee and his books can be found on his website. He can also be found on Facebook, on Instagram and on Twitter @radiomukhers