'Is it spies or crime'? Why I'm trying to do both’ by Patrick Worrall

Talia in Waterstones Cambridge asked me an interesting question when I thrust a proof of my new book The Exile into her hands last week.

"Is it spies or crime?"

A bit of both, I replied. We need stories that can span both genres now. Because that's the world we live in, isn't it?

Look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I certainly did, when I was writing The Exile. It's the closest thing to a third world war that I've lived through.

If the Russian President was a fictional character, how would you write him? Sure, he's an ex-KGB officer. But we're a long way from the intellectual fencing match of the Cold War. 

Vladimir Putin likes "active measures", and he's not subtle about it. Recent aktivnye meropriyatiya include countless hacking operations, a bomb at an ammunition depot in the Czech Republic and a poison plot which left a civilian dead in Salisbury. 

He's also as keen on amassing personal wealth as he is on plotting intelligence exploits. So is Putin a politician, a spy chief or simply a thief and murderer?  Is it spies or crime?

What about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man who almost unseated the boss? Oligarch? Military leader? Aspiring statesman? Perhaps - but Prigozhin was also a convicted gangster who swelled the ranks of his private army with recruits from the same kind of penal colonies he knew from the inside.

When the new Cold Warriors are ex-cons and their leaders are warlords who order bloody hits on their rivals, we've come a long way from cerebral MI6 men sniffing out Cambridge-educated moles. Intelligence work "rests on a kind of gentleness", said George Smiley. Not anymore.

The brazen, lawless quality of the Putin age was very much on my mind when I wrote The Exile. I mostly do historical novels, and my new book is largely set in France during the early 1950s - the closest analogue I could find to modern Russia.

The France of the Fourth Republic was a fading empire too, unsure of its place in a new world order and desperately trying to hang on to its rebellious colonies. Post-war France was hurting - and lashing out. Political violence is nothing new on the other side of the Channel, but the really astonishing thing was the level of collusion between various agencies of the state and organised crime, particularly the Corsican underworld.

I hadn't set out to write a crime thriller, but I couldn't do justice to the period without trying to get into the minds of the spivs, seductresses, con-artists, gunrunners and godfathers who got caught up in the secret war.

Espionage fiction is tough enough, with its geopolitics and tradecraft, its complex characters leading double lives. Crime writing has its own special demands too. To my mind, it's all about the dialogue. Is it authentic? Does it smell of the streets?

Why attempt to combine the two genres, if it's so hard to pull off? Because that's the world we have to deal with. The boundaries between state actors and criminal organisations are disappearing. High diplomacy and low lives are intertwined.

Writing fiction that reflects this reality is a worthy aim, I think, even if the books that emerge from the process end up being harder to categorize. 

It's certainly an idea that will keep me occupied for my next few novels. I hope you find them somewhere in good bookshops, although I'm not sure about the section.

 The Exile by Patrick Worrall is published by Bantam Press on 11th July at £16.99

It's 1951 and the servants of Stalin are closing in on the occupied nations of eastern Europe. As the Red Army tightens the net, Greta - best and bravest of freedom fighters - is told to escape to the West and undertake a dangerous mission. Greta's task is to find a missing girl: the precious daughter of a partisan general who was sent into exile in the final days of the war. But the so-called Free World is no place for vulnerable young refugees. Europe is in ruins, the old Empires are dying, and a spectacular cast of spivs, gangsters and rival intelligence agencies are fighting over the scraps. Crossing the Iron Curtain will require nerves of steel as Greta faces down the French mob, ex-Nazis, Soviet spies, all the glamour and temptation of Paris and ultimately, her own demons. The Exile is the stunning prequel to The Partisan, which introduced the world to the force of nature that is Greta. This is her white-knuckle ride into the black heart of post-war Europe - a terrifying world in which allies and enemies are impossible to tell apart.

Patrick Worrall can be found on “X” @paddyworrall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In The St Hilda's Spotlight - Kia Abdullah

 Name:- Kia Abdullah

Job:-Author and Travel Writer

Website: kiaabdullah.com

X: @kiaabdullah

Instagram: @kiaabdullah

Introduction:- 

Kia Abdullah is an author and travel writer.She has written for The Guardian, the BBC, The New York Times and The Times as well as a number of other papers. Her 2019 debut crime novel Take It Back was chosen by The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Telegraph as one of the best new crime and thriller novels. Her third novel Next of Kin was long—lsted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

Current book? 

I’ve carved out time to read IT by Stephen King in between the proofs I get sent for work. The book is 1,067 pages long, so is quite an undertaking, but I’m halfway through and absolutely love it so far. After the first few chapters, I literally went and checked that my front and back door were locked so that Pennywise couldn’t creep into my house from the gutter outside. That’s a pretty skilful thing for an author to make you do. King truly is one of the best storytellers of our time. 

Favourite book: 

My favourite book that I’ve read as an adult is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s beautifully written, rich in character and just completely immersive. 

My favourite book overall, however, has to be Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. I read that as a child and it had such a strong impact on my life. I grew up in a conservative Bengali family and much of my life felt prescripted: education, marriage, motherhood. Anne taught me that you could subvert cultural expectations and expect more from life. 

Which two musicians would you invite to dinner and why?

Mariah Carey because I genuinely think she’s one of the greatest philosophers of our time. When she was in her early twenties, she insisted on paying for half the mansion she bought with her then-husband Tommy Mottola. Years later, when she was 40, she was asked about this in an interview. “Oh yeah,” she said drily. “Quite the silly little girl, I was.” I love that there was no pretence at feminism; she just said yeah that was stupid of me. I like that she is unapologetically who she is. 

I’d probably also ask Jon Bon Jovi frankly because I’ve always had a crush on him. 

How do you relax?

I go boxing three to four times a week, which completely de-stresses me. I came to boxing a year ago purely by chance. My next novel has a character, Safa Saleem, who takes a few boxing lessons and I thought, “If I’m going to write these scenes realistically, I’ll have to take a couple of lessons myself.” I booked two lessons with a local boxing coach and absolutely fell in love with the sport. 

I like that it’s changed how I think of myself. I was never sporty or particularly active. In fact, there is a long history of British-Asian women not exercising enough, partly because our roles were traditionally in the home. To find myself in this very male dominated sport is both a surprise and a delight. 

Which book do you wish you had written and why?

There are so many books I love which are not in my style or genre: The Secret History, The Time Traveler’s Wife, One Hundred Years of Solitude among many, many others. If I can narrow the focus to crime, then I’d choose Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It’s so sharply observed and brilliantly written – and of course has one of the best twists of all time. 

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

It will happen. Be patient. But also look up compound interest. 

How would you describe your latest published book?

Those People Next Door is a tense courtroom thriller about nightmare neighbours and how far we’re prepared to go to defend the people we love.

With A Dance to the Music of Crime: the artful crime to murder being the theme at St Hilda's this year, which are you three favourite albums?

Can I say HIStory: Past, Present and Future by Michael Jackson? It’s a bit of a cheat because it’s a compilation album, but I’ll have it if I can.

Moondance by Van Morrison. I’m never sad when listening to Van Morrison.

I honestly can’t decide between Tracy Chapman by Tracy Chapman and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill. Please let me have both. - Of course!

If you were given the ability to join a band which would it be and why?

I’d choose the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Critics of the band say all their music sounds alike and maybe there’s some truth to that, but I’m a fan. In reality, I’d probably have a breakdown. I am very organised and methodical, and don’t know if I could cope with their vibe of ‘California whatever’. 

If you were to re-attend a concert which would it be and why

I was lucky enough to see Michael Jackson in concert in 1997, but I was in the second row and had to be pulled out because I was getting crushed. I watched most of the show through a crack in the makeshift medical room. I’d like to do that concert again. 

What are you looking forward to at St Hilda's?

I hear that St Hilda’s has a really relaxed, informal vibe. I’m looking forward to meeting readers and catching up with author friends long into the night, perhaps with a glass or two of wine. 

Those People Next Door by Kia Abdullah (HarperCollins Publishers)

You can choose your house. Not your neighbours. Welcome to your dream home. Salma Khatun is extremely hopeful about Blenheim, the safe suburban development to which she, her husband and their son have just moved. Their family is in desperate need of a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like the place to make that happen. Meet your neighbours. Not long after they move in, Salma spots her neighbour, Tom Hutton, ripping out the anti-racist banner her son put in their front garden. She chooses not to confront Tom because she wants to fit in. It's a small thing, really. No need to make a fuss. So Salma takes the banner inside and puts it in her window instead. But the next morning she wakes up to find her window smeared with paint. And prepare for the nightmare to begin. This time she does confront Tom, and the battle lines between the two families are drawn. As things begin to escalate and the stakes become higher, it's clear that a reckoning is coming... And someone is going to get hurt.

Information about 2024 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book online tickets can be found here. 

CFP: Literatures and Laws

 

 

CFP: Literatures and Laws online one-day symposium

A one-day symposium hosted online by Bournemouth University, UK, held on 13th April 2024. 

Department of Humanities & Law, and Narrative, Culture, and Community Research Centre

‘Literatures and Laws' considers law as literature, and law in literature. The first considers how law constructs narratives to make sense of and process non-legal events and experiences. Thus personal experiences of an event or dispute with another have to be translated into their legally relevant features so that a legal narrative can be constructed. Additionally, barristers when presenting a case in court seek to build a narrative to persuade juries. The second explores how law, courtroom spaces and rhetoric, justice, and legal systems and infrastructure (and their associated politics) are represented in (or excluded from) literature.

At a time where legal frameworks and understandings are increasingly contested, it is important that we consider how storytelling enables to the law to operate and how storytelling represents law and affects our understanding of law. An important component of a successful judicial system is the general trust the public have in that system. We want to explore both legal and literary perspectives on how that trust relates to storytelling and fictionality, and how both fictional literature and law construct stories about us as participants within a legal system. 

At Bournemouth University, literature studies and law sit within the same department; inspired by this contiguity, we are inviting research and/or creative papers that explore the ways storytelling and narrative intersect within representations of law, justice, and legal systems. 

Broad themes considered within the symposium, then, may include but are certainly not limited to

• Law and literary genre, for instance papers that focus on representations and significant instances or structures of law and legality in crime and detective fiction, Gothic and historical fiction, procedurals, ecological fiction

• Inventions of law and legal systems in speculative fiction

• Courtroom drama

• Law, politics, and the state in literature

• Historical case studies

• Precedent and storytelling: Cases as links in a storytelling chain

• Lay terminology to legal terminology: Lay and legal understandings

• Genres of law: Conceptualising law as genre

• Storytelling conventions in strands of law: Criminal, civil and human rights

• Fictionality and media framing of law: Sensation, celebrity and perception

  Please submit a 200-word abstract for a 15-minute presentation and a brief biographical note to swalker@bournemouth.ac.uk no later than February 22nd 2024. You may direct general queries to the same address.

  Keynote speakers:

  Professor Hywel Dix (Bournemouth University, NCCR member)

  Hywel is interested in the relationship between culture and social and political change, especially in relation to political devolution in the 4 nations of the UK, as well as autofiction and cultural memory. Recent publications include Compatriots or Competitors: Welsh, Scottish, English and Northern Irish Writing and Brexit in Comparative Contexts (University of Wales Press, 2023). 

  Dr Caroline Derry (Open University)

  Caroline Derry joined the Open University in April 2017. She is a senior lecturer in law, teaching subjects including criminal and evidence law. Her other roles include Law School EDI Champion.  Caroline qualified as a barrister, practising in criminal defence law, and as a solicitor in a large, central London legal aid practice. She then taught for fifteen years at London Metropolitan University, where she was a senior lecturer in criminal and evidence law and gender & law, and course leader for the LLB Law. She has been a visiting lecturer in criminal law at SOAS and at Paris Descartes (Masters in Common Law).

  Symposium organisers

  Dr Rebecca Mills is Senior Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University. Her publications include work on crime and detective fiction, particularly of the interwar era. Please contact Rebecca if you have any questions about developing a literary topic for the symposium: rmills@bournemouth.ac.uk

  Dr Samuel Walker is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bournemouth University. He researches the notion of embodiment in law, and how literature explores our understanding of law and justice. Please contact Sam if you have any questions about developing a topic on law-focused topic for the symposium: swalker@bournemouth.ac.uk

  
  

  
  

Striving for Verisimilitude by James Woolf

Achieving verisimilitude in your work is the Holy Grail for Crime and Thriller writers, because as soon as the reader gets a whiff that something doesn’t stack up, doubt will begin spreading like Covid 19 on a cruise ship. 

I first became aware of the effort that some writers put in behind the scenes to achieve verisimilitude when studying Wuthering Heights for A Level. I came across a small book which told me that almost every event in the novel’s thirty-one-year timeline could be precisely dated, or at least placed within a small window of time, even though relatively few dates are mentioned. The book printed a chronology, not dissimilar to the one shown here. I was fascinated by the idea of Emily Bronte working obsessively on these details, perhaps before she even began drafting the story in her tiny handwriting. It also intrigued me that she set her book some half a century before she was born. Was she seeking greater clarity or objectivity by doing so?

When writing my debut novel, Indefensible, I also used a table document, which in this case ran to forty-five pages. My chronology sets out (in columns headed with character names) the key points in their lives, and which chapter, if any, these events appear in. My novel is also set in the past, and my chronology contains a column for news events that were talking points at the time, such as the collapse of Barings bank or the declaration by Jonathan Aitken that he will “fight the cancer of twisted journalism with the simple sword of truth”. In Indefensible, every news event referred to is precisely dated within the narrative.

I went a good deal further than chronology, however. Indefensible follows a barrister, Daniel, who defends a man charged with a grisly murder at the Old Bailey and then becomes too close to his ex-client afterwards. With their permission, I included two clerks as characters in the novel, both with their real names and acting as they would have done in their professional lives almost thirty years ago. Bill Conner was the right-hand man to the legendary barrister, George Carman QC, who successfully defended Jeremy Thorpe in his attempted murder trial. Carman is also a minor character in my book. Bill was able to provide many details about his former head of chambers, such as his close attention to the earnings of other barristers in the same set, as each barrister paid a percentage of these towards running costs. As the highest earner of them all, Carman was naturally hit with the biggest deduction – something he was never happy about.

As well as people, I tried to ensure the authenticity of all locations in the book. I even included a flat I once shared with my brother in Hackney as the site of a murder. The property is arguably identifiable, so someone may get a surprise when reading! I was very keen not to trip up on forensic matters too. My novel opens with a report that a man’s head was seen being thrown into the River Thames. Eventually, when the head surfaces, a murder investigation begins. When researching the book, I spoke to David Tadd, a forensic expert whose team worked on many high-profile cases, including identifying the Grand Hotel bomber of 1984. David offered great advice about the state of decapitated heads that have been floating in rivers for rather too long. 

Moving on to objects and day-to-day clutter, I am not gifted with a great visual memory, but wanted to ensure that the things my characters use are not described generically or seem anachronistic. My favourite example of my over-the-top attention to detail was when I researched a 1990’s handbag which is used by a court reporter who becomes involved with my protagonist. I found the perfect one on eBay and bought it for my partner. I’ve been trying to persuade her to use it at the book launch in February.

My final thought on achieving verisimilitude concerns theme. Having worked in the legal sector for over twenty years, including running the ethical hotline for barristers, you might say I turned my day job into a novel. As well as being a legal thriller, Indefensible is also a discussion about professional boundaries and what can happen when they break down. My main character, Daniel, recommends to another barrister that he should phone the Bar Council but at times in the story he should have done so himself. I like to think that had he spoken to me when I was working on the hotline, he would have received sound advice.

Indefensible by James Woolf (Bloodhound Books) Out Now.

A lawyer crosses a dangerous line with a former client and discovers that some decisions are indefensible…Daniel, a criminal barrister, is working all hours on a sensational trial, defending a client he believes is wrongfully accused of a grisly murder. Determined to keep Rod out of prison, he begins to neglect his wife—and soon suspects she’s having an affair. After Daniel triumphs in court, the bond with his newly acquitted client grows even stronger. And when Rod offers Daniel a favour that he really shouldn’t accept, things take a catastrophic turn. Daniel realises the lethal consequence of his actions and now his dream case threatens to become his worst nightmare…

James Woolf can be found on X @WoolfJames

Robin Jarossi on The Real Ted Hastings

 

It was a real scandal that inspired Line of Duty, the BBC’s most watched drama series this century.

Creator and writer Jed Mercurio said the incident that sparked his series was the Met's inadvertent shooting of an innocent man and their dishonesty in it's aftermath. Mercurio was referring to the 2005 shooting by police of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station in London. De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, had been mistaken for a suicide bomber. Afterwards, the police said he had refused to obey instructions when challenged, which was later found to be not true.

This tragedy is reimagined in the opening moments of the first episode of Line of Duty. Officer Steve Arnott, pre-AC-12, is a member of a armed anti-terrorist team raiding the home of a supposed jihadist bomb-maker. The problem is that the man Karim Ali, has been misidentified. He is not a terrorist but is nevertheless shot dead. Chief Inspector Philip Osborne then orders Arnott's team to concot false statements to suggest the man acted aggressively when asked to surrender. 

This revealed Mercurio’s intention in writing his series focusing on corruption, because as he explained to The Guardian before the first episode was broadcast in 2012 “I appreciate the value of escapism, but there must also be a platform for television fiction to examine our institutions in a more forensic light.”

So, the unifying idea was set from Line of Duty’s opening sequence – this was escapisim entertaintment that resonated to corruption scandals and police wrongdoing in the real world. Along with the plot twists and car chases. Line of Duty's storylines are permeated with the most shocking police scandals of recent times. 

I rewatched the whole six series and replayed many scenes when writing The Real Ted Hastings. Again and again the real-world parallels appear.

Notorious investigations referenced during the series have included the murders of teenage student Stephen Lawrence and private investigator Daniel Morgan, Jimmy Saville's showbiz career built on sexual abuse has featured several times.

Other parallels include the killing of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia with fictional character Gail Vella in Series 6, while the wrongful 16 year imprisonment of Stefan Kiszko for a 1975 murder he did not commit inspired the framing of Michael Farmer in the fourth series. There are many further true scandals loitering with intent in Line of Duty.

When it comes to a role model for Superintendent Ted Hastings, we have to go back to the 1970s to find a Met Commissioner who epitomised his strong-minded integrity. Robert Mark, later knighted, staked his reputation on confronting the culture of rampant corruption in Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID). He is still remembered as the anti-corruption chief who shook up a complacent Scotland Yard and rooted out hundreds of crooked cops. It is no surprise he is often cited as the corruption buster who is the closet frame of refrence for Hastings. 

There are differences between them. Mark was a Manchester man working in London, while Hastings is from Northern Ireland and based in an unidentified Midlands city. Their ranks are different – Mark was the Met Commissioner in charge of strategy, while Hasting is a superintendent directing investigations. Hastings is eventually suspected of being bent himself, while Mark never was.

The similarities, however, highlight a shared lineage. Both faced hostility and pariah status from fellow officers as they dug into allegations of criminality in their forces. Mark shook up the CID when he set up A10 to chase down dishonest detectives. Hastings, of course, heads its fictional counterpart, AC-12. Hastings is accused in Season 1 of being a zealot in his fervour to investigate fellow officers. Mark was similarly accused of being more interested in arresting policemen than criminals.

Jed Mercurio’s use of high-octane drama to explore a powerful subject that increasingly hits the headlines – police wrongdoing is in a long tradition of writers who have used real cases as inspiration for their fiction.

Agatha Christie worked the notorious kidnapping and killing of the toddler of aviator Charles Lindberg and his wife Anne, in 1932. A $50,000 ransom was demanded. This was handed over, but the little boy Charlie was found dead. He had probably died during the kidnaping two months earlier.

Christie followed the case and was affected by this shocking outcome. In Murder on the Orient Express she has the victim Mr Ratchett, revealed to be a gangster called Cassetti who had also kidnapped a child and allowed the family to believe it was alive while extorting a ransom. Cassetti is murdered in retribution.

Fiction writers often explore disturbing crimes to gain a glimmer of understanding into how they might have occurred. In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological mystery The Tell Tale Heart echoed a contemporary murder that of elderly, wealthy, Joseph White in 1830 Salem, Massachusetts. The case fascinated observers at the time as a study of guilt and ruthless indifference to the victim.

Truman Capote's 1966 non-fiction novel in Cold Blood examined the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas seven years earlier. In her 1996 novel Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood explored the true story of Canadian girl Grace Marks, who with another household servant, James McDermott, was tried for murder in 1843 of her employer and his mistress.

Mass shootings, such as the one at Columbine High School in 1999, were reflected in Lionel Shriver's novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. 

Reimagined as fiction, such shocking events can be deconstructed to posit some comprehension of the motivations and causes behind them. And, of course, they can be gripping entertainment.

Professor Heather Marquette who has spent more than 20 years researching corruption has said, “Watching Line of Duty is practically research. While I appreciate that not everything in the show is as it is in real life, it can help bring corruption research to life. It presents a vision of a police service in the UK under significant pressure. And it's not just the police. The whole justice system is fraying at the seams in Line of Duty. From prison wardens to the yawning incompetent duty solicitor who sits idly by while an innocent and vulnerable young man wallows in prison. Line of Duty suggest a system that can effectively fulfil its purpose and risks losing public trust. This is why the work of AC-12 iw wo important. It's about public trust on the law'.

Some political commentators even cite Line of Duty as a bell weather of the state of contemporary. Britain, with its Party-gate, Wallpaper-gate, lobbying, sexual misconduct, PPE procurement and other scandals. 'The British state is like Line of Duty, but without no AC-12 ”said journalist Paul Mason”.

“While nobody in their right mind thinks Line of Duty is real, its metaphoric truth is: when dealing with commercialised and fragmented British state, you have to assume that everybody is on the make, everyone is gaming the system, everyone has something to hide, and that behind every investigation there is a cover-up”.

As the show’s millions of fans wait and hope for news of a seventh series, there is no mystery about what is holding up the announcement. Jed Mercurio probably can’t decide which of the many current police scandals to include in it.

The Real Ted Hastings: The True Story of the Cooper at the Heart of Line of Duty by Robin Jarossi (Ad Lib Publishers Ltd) Out Now

Line of Duty holds its status as the defining TV crime drama of today. The conspiracy theme of the series chimes at a time when public institutions and representatives are distrusted. Ted Hastings, the show's head of anti-corruption, has emerged as the beating heart of the series. This book reveals how the compelling drama reflects real crimes, events and figures, most notably that of Robert Mark and his battle against Met corruption. 'None of my people would plant evidence. They know I would throw the book at them... followed by the bookshelf' Starting with a bang - 'I'll put you all back in uniform' were his first words to his team. New Met Commissioner Robert Mark - the inspiration for Ted Hastings - took on his entire corruption-riddled detective branch in his first brutal speech. The scale of the problem facing Robert Mark was institutionalised corruption in CID. During his four years eleven months as commissioner, he saw 478 men leave the force following or in anticipation of criminal/disciplinary proceedings. Departures in the previous decade had averaged about 16 a year. Mark's extraordinary career established the need for a dedicated team to investigate corruption that lives on today.

Penguin Modern Crime Announcement

 Penguin Modern Classics

CRIME & ESPIONAGE

Published by Penguin Modern Classics | 13 July 2023 | Paperback £9.99

First published 75 years ago, the iconic green Penguin Crime paperbacks have long held a special space in every crime lovers heart and bookshelf, as CrimeTime puts it: “If the Golden Age of Crime has a colour, it’s bottle green. And, if it has a smell, it’s the caramel of old paper. Nothing sums up crime fiction between the ages of flappers and flares quite so well as the classic Penguin Crime editions.” As one of our most popular imprints, the Penguin Crime series encompassed stories from Agatha Christie to Dashiell Hammett, and everything in between, expanding the horizons of crime readers with thrilling new discoveries in a familiar, trusted, and instantly recognisable green jacket. 

This summer, Penguin Modern Classics are thrilled to be reviving this beloved collection with our new Crime and Espionage series, celebrating the endless variety and enduring appeal of one of fiction’s great genres. Combining a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, including John le Carre, Josephine Tey, and Chester Himes, with exciting forgotten treasures which are well overdue a rediscovery, such as Edogawa Rampo and Davis Grubb, the first tranche of ten titles takes us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat, through English country estates to the streets of Harlem. Transporting the reader through time and space, these novels can be outrageously entertaining but also chilling, filled with the darkest politics, vices, and betrayals.

The series, which will be released in ten-book tranches and continue to grow, is carefully curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder,  A long-time editor at Penguin and reader of crime, the revival of Penguin Crime and Espionage has seen Simon dig deep into the archives, reading hundreds of books to determine which of our existing titles should make the list, and which titles, previously not published by Penguin, should have been included years ago:

“Penguin Modern Classics is one of the great publishers of crime and suspense fiction.  I thought it would be enjoyable to pick out some highlights, add some new titles and revive the wonderful green livery Penguin used to use for all its crime fiction. 

These books are united by atmosphere, anxiety, a strong sense of time and place, and an often appalling ingenuity, both on behalf of the authors and their characters.  They have also all aged very well, gaining an additional pleasure from shifts in manners, clothes, wisecracks, politics, murder weapons and potential alibis.

The novels were designed to be entertainments, albeit sometimes of a very dark kind, and they all plumb extremes.  Fear of fascism or communism; fear of the anonymous city or of a fetid swamp; fear of vast global conspiracies or of just one rather odd family member with a glint in his eye….”

For lifelong crime lovers, who will no doubt be as excited as we are for the return of the bottle-green jackets as well as the previously unpublished titles, to new readers unsure where to start with the formidable back catalogues of Georges Simenon, Eric Ambler, or Len Deighton, the Penguin Crime and Espionage series is a collection of gems showcasing the best of the Golden Age of Crime.

The British Book Awards shortlists 2023

 

The British Book Awards shortlists have been announced!

The complete shortlists can be found here. 

Crime and Thriller shortlist 

Bamburg by L J Ross

Murder Before Evensong by Reverend Richard Coles

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

When real crimes ‘spark’ novel ideas by Sherryl Clark

 

I often wonder how many crime writers, like me, turn to the pages of the newspaper first that deal with crime reports and investigative articles on real life murders. One of my longtime favourite crime reporters is John Silvester, at The Age in Melbourne, who has a weekly column called “The Naked City” (and a fascinating podcast as well).

It was from Silvester’s early books, co-written with fellow journalist Andrew Rule, that the first ideas and sparks came for my crime novel, Trust Me, I’m Dead. They wrote extensively about the Melbourne Gangland Wars in which over 20 people were murdered, but the ones that stuck with me the most were those where innocent women and children were killed or were witnesses.

One of these was Jane Thurgood-Dove, shot in her driveway in front of her kids – for no apparent reason. She had no gangland connections at all. It took a long time before police discovered the actual hit was supposed to be on another woman, wife of an underworld gangster, who lived up the street. And who in Melbourne could forget the brazen shotgun and pistol murders of Jason Moran and Pat Barbaro in a van in which five kids were sitting in the back seat? Two of them were Moran’s twin children.

Up until then, many people in Melbourne figured if crims were knocking each other off in a war, who really cared? But after these killings, things changed, not least the intensity of police actions to quell the war. In my novel, this idea that innocent women and children get caught up in violence through no fault of their own plays out through Judi Westerholme’s brother, who is murdered despite appearing to have changed his life and started again. Answering the question of why becomes vital so Judi can save her own life and that of her niece.

When it came to writing Mad, Bad and Dead, another crime against a woman and child was like a nagging tug at the back of my mind. Vicki Jacobs, who was living in country Victoria in 1999, was shot in the head and body while lying in her bed. Police said it was a cold-blooded execution. The most horrific part of this was that Ms Jacob’s six-year-old son was asleep next to her when it happened. As well, a young niece was sleeping in another room. That callous murder and trying to imagine what the children went through sparked the initial chapters of Mad, Bad and Dead.

It was believed that Ms Jacobs’ murder was in retaliation for her testifying against her ex-husband who had murdered two mechanics in South Australia. The court was told the murders were ordered on behalf of the Hells Angels motorbike club. Ms Jacobs had been offered police protection, but felt she didn’t want her young son to grow up away from family and friends.

For my novel, rather than follow the realities of this case, I used it as an inspiration. It meant I needed to come up with my own motive for the murder of my character, Kate, which of course included finding a credible villain and plenty of red herrings. I sometimes feel like a magpie, with a huge box of cuttings from newspapers and a number of true crime books to delve into for sparkers (I find the ones that are collections of newspaper articles the best. 

In looking for good villains this time, it was a saying that nagged at me – “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. I discovered a criminal, Christopher Binse, who called himself “Badness” (a nickname given to him in jail) and at one point, put a public notice to police in the newspaper saying, “Badness is back”. He also used to send Christmas cards to police signed Badness. Binse is an intriguing subject, seeming to have no qualms about enjoying himself while he robbed banks and carried out other armed robberies. He was put in a boys’ home when he was 14, deemed “uncontrollable”, and abused and beaten while there. Now 53, he’s been inside for 36 of the last 40 years, often in solitary confinement and at one point, in shackles.

Binse doesn’t feature in Mad, Bad and Dead at all, but he partly inspired my hitman, as have others who kill for money. That chilling ability to murder or commit crimes with no regret or compunction is something that sends a shudder through us all. One police officer said of Binse, “I would be genuinely frightened if I saw him on the street.”

As for “mad, bad and dangerous to know”? It’s believed to have first been said by Lady Caroline Lamb to describe Lord Byron. The mind works in mysterious ways!

Mad, Bad and Dead by Sheryl Clark (published by Verve Books) Out Now

A dead employee. A missing child. Anonymous phone calls in the dead of night. Judi Westerholme's troubles aren't over yet...  Already struggling to juggle co-running the local pub along with her new childcare responsibilities for her orphaned niece, Judi does not need her life to become any more complicated. Yet, as usual, complications arrive in spades: she starts receiving threatening, late-night phone calls before discovering one of her employees, Kate, shot dead. Judi finds herself caught up in a murder investigation, as well as the hunt for the Kate's fourteen year-old daughter, who has been missing since the murder. Add in the uncertainty of her relationship with Melbourne-based D.S. Heath and the fact that her estranged mother's nursing home keeps urging her to visit, and Judi might finally be at breaking point.

My Favourite Non Fiction Reads of 2021

For the second year running I also read a number of great non-fiction books that I really enjoyed. Once again they are in alphabetical order. These were -

Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction: A History in Stories by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton) The story of genre fiction - horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more - is also the story of Irish fiction. Irish writers have given the world Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, and the world of Narnia. They have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories and ground-breaking women's popular fiction. Now, for the first time, John Connolly's one volume presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself. Deeply researched, and passionately argued, Shadow Voices takes the lives of more than sixty writers - by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary - and sets them alongside the stories they have written, to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses. Here are the Shadow Voices. 

We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City by Justin Fenton (Faber & Faber) Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old black man who died in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were once again surging. For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - were the city's lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they had been skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force? Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.

My Life as a Villainess: Essays by Laura Lippman (Faber & Faber) - I knew something new about venality - my own. I realized I had become the bad guy in someone else's story. And I deserved it. Laura Lippman's first job in journalism was a rookie reporter in Waco, Texas. Two decades later she left her first husband, quit the newspaper business, and became a full time novelist. I had been creating villains on the page for about seven years when I finally became one. Her fiction has always centered on complicated women, paying unique attention to the intricacies of their flaws, their vulnerability, and their empowerment. Now, finally, Lippman has turned her gimlet eye on a new subject: herself. My daughter was ten days old the first time I was asked if I were her grandmother. In this, her first collection of essays, Lippman gives us a brilliant, candid portrait of an unapologetically flawed life. Childhood, friendships, influences, becoming a mother in later life - Lippman's inspiring life stories are at once specific and universal. 

The Reacher Guy by Heather Martin (Little Brown) The Reacher Guy is a compelling and authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, refracted through the life of his fictional avatar, Jack Reacher. Through parallels drawn between Child and his literary creation, it tells the story of how a boy from Birmingham with a ferocious appetite for reading grew up to become a high-flying TV executive, before coming full circle and establishing himself as the strongest brand in publishing. Heather Martin explores Child's lifelong fascination with America, and shows how the Reacher novels fed and fuelled this obsession, shedding light on the opaque process of publishing a novel along the way. Drawing on her conversations and correspondence with Child over a number of years, as well as interviews with his friends, teachers and colleagues, she forensically pieces together his life, traversing back through the generations to Northern Ireland and County Durham, and following the trajectory of his extraordinary career via New York and Hollywood until the climactic moment when, in 2020, having written a continuous series of twenty-four books, he finally breaks free of his fictional creation.

Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan (Harper Collins) is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder.The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There's Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crew mates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defence of necessity to murder. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defence of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people - victims, killers, lawyers and judges, who unwittingly shaped the history of that most grisly and storied of laws. Join lawyer and writer Kate Morgan on a dark and macabre journey as she explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law. The big corporate killers; the vengeful spouses; the sloppy doctors; the abused partners; the shoddy employers; each story a crime and each crime a precedent that has contributed to the law's dark, murky and, at times, shocking standing.

Relieve Omicron Anxiety with Audible

 

In case you’ve been living in cave for the last two years, we have entered the age of anxiety. Reality has turned a tad surreal and rather scary with this ever-mutating virus in our midst. Just when we thought the COVID vaccines would return our lives into some form of normalcy, up pop these variants. Firstly, we had the Delta [variant], named after the 4^th letter of the Greek alphabet [and used in Chemistry and Physics to signify change]; and now we have the Omicron [aka Omikron Variant] named after the 15^th letter of the Greek alphabet – and this variant appears to be evading our vaccine defensive barriers.

But what has this to do with thriller novels, apart from our perceived reality resembling the title of Robert Ludlum thriller?

Because reading, or listening to audio books can significantly reduce anxiety; the overthinking of our situation, creating existential problems that reside in our mind and keep us from sleep, or focused on the tasks at hand – instead our minds rage with unhelpful thoughts like an ocean in a storm.

What to do?

Bibliotherapy, the reading of fiction / or listening to narrated books are medically recognised and prescribed for the easing of anxiety, and returning the mind to a calmer state.

This article is enlightening –

“During the last lockdown, when my anxiety was high, a friend suggested I tried re-reading books I used to enjoy. While the thought of starting a new book felt somehow daunting, reading something familiar appealed, so I gave it a go. And it worked: I found that I was able to lose myself completely. Absorbing myself in a story I already knew and loved was as good as a mental rest, and now, if I feel anxiety creeping in, I’ll reach for a well-thumbed novel!'

Literature has the power to transport us away from the to-do lists and troubles of life and soothe us with a comforting balm of captivating characters and scintillating storytelling. But how exactly does reading aid our mental health? Here we outline seven of the top benefits”

Read More CLICK HERE

I read in bed to ease me to sleep, but find at times I find reading in itself a challenge because my attention span becomes truncated as my mind wanders from unwelcome thought to troubling thought – but I found a solution. Instead, I listen to a well narrated audiobook.

I’ve been a member of Audible, for some time now and found their thriller range my medication to combat anxiety and worries, both existential and real.  

A number of titles on the audible platform are exclusive, acted as dramas and narrated professionally so they engage and hold the mind captive from those unwelcome worries and anxieties that derail our thinking.

The importance of the narrator’s performance is critical, such as Scott Brick among others such as Stephen Fry.

The market leader in Audio Publishing, is the Amazon subsidiary Audible who not only provide a platform for audiobooks, but also generate their own productions, using actors, vocal artists as well as soundscapes so the reader can become part of an immersive experience.

As reported within the publishing industry –

Even though the availability of audiobooks in digital format is relatively new, their origins date back as far as the 1930s when they were sold as analog cassette tapes and vinyl records and used as an educational medium in schools and libraries. Since the shift to digital, the audiobook market has grown exponentially with new entrants jostling for market position.

The undoubted leader is Amazon-owned Audible, the world’s largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. Since its 1995 launch, Audible’s library includes more than 200,000 audio programs covering all genres – subscribers downloaded 725 million hours of audio last year, almost double that of 2011.

But the market has opened up. Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller argued back in 2014 that audiobooks are “following almost the exact pattern and trajectory as e-books in that we are seeing a massive explosion in response to a switch to digital. But it’s also more exciting because you can do so much more with audio – it’s not just a facsimile of the print book.”

Read More

So, what’s new from Audible?

Well, I’ve enjoyed two particular titles, tucked up in bed and I’d like to share them with Shots Magazine Readers -

Life Sign by Carl Goodman

The second book in the DI Eva Harris series, is a dark and totally engrossing thriller -

In an abandoned warehouse, a schoolboy makes a grisly discovery: ninety-six containers, each filled with exquisitely preserved bodily remains. Detective Eva Harris knows the line between life and death better than most. Having survived a near fatal encounter with the criminal underworld once before, she is still haunted by the repercussions of her actions – and fearful of the whole truth emerging. With the remains showing signs of experiments and modifications, she is forced to contemplate a difficult question: what does the perpetrator of this extraordinary crime imagine themselves to be? Artist, scientist - or something completely new? Her search for answers takes her across Europe, from the upper echelons of society’s glittering elite to the dark and tangled web of the underworld – and finally, to the very limits of humanity.

Read about 20/20, the first in the DI Eva Harris Series CLICK HERE

Read more about Carl Goodman’s writing of LIFE SIGN Click Here

To download LIFE SIGN written by Carl Goodman and Narrated by Louise Brealey then CLICK HERE

To download the first in the DI Eva Harris series 20/20 written by Carl Goodman and Narrated by Louise Brealey then CLICK HERE and search [“20/20 Carl Goodman”]

A Perfect Stranger by Shalini Boland

A troubling and all-engrossing domestic thriller from the dark imagination of the prolific Shalini Boland.

Annie comes home from a market trip with her young son George only to make a gruesome discovery. Could the perpetrator be the new lodger she and her husband David just rented their spare bedroom to? Emily dreams of one day owning a house where her son Josh and the little one on the way can grow up, but when her husband Aidan insists on leaving his lucrative job as a luxury car salesman, she senses something more is afoot—even while she harbours a secret of her own. What is Aidan hiding and will it jeopardize their young family’s future? Meanwhile, Aidan’s boss, Marcus, finds himself caught between placating his wife Dani’s all-consuming desire to get pregnant and managing the less than savoury group of associates now helping to run his car dealership. How far is Marcus willing to go to prove his love for Dani? Or will his business come first?

The production values of this audible original production are extraordinary, with vocal talents of Alison Campbell, Tamsin Kennard, and Ciaran Saward who bring this thriller to life.

Highly recommended

To download A Perfect Stranger by Shalini Boland or any of the authors’ previous audiobooks, Click Here and put ‘Shalini Boland’ into the search box.

Images © 2021 Audible Studios