Martina Cole Receives 2021 CWA Diamond Dagger

 

Martina Cole is the recipient of the highest honour in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger.

The long-reigning Queen of Crime Drama is a publishing powerhouse. Martina has written 25 novels, all published by Headline, seventeen of which reached No.1 and her books have collectively spent over 4 years in the bestseller charts. Total sales stand at over 17 million copies, making her Britain’s bestselling female crime writer and with The Faithless she became the first British female adult audience novelist to break the £50 million sales mark since Nielsen Bookscan records began. Her books have been translated into 31 languages and adapted for multiple stage plays and television series.

Martina’s own story is as remarkable as any bestseller plot. Martina grew up on an Essex council estate and Ronnie and Reggie Kray once visited her family’s home when she was a child.

The youngest of five children in a large, poor, Irish Catholic family, she attended a convent school, where her struggle against authority started; this culminated in two expulsions. She finished school at 15 with no qualifications; was married at 16, divorced at 17 and pregnant at 18. A single mum, she struggled to bring up her son, Chris, taking on waitressing jobs.

Aged 21, she lost both her parents and started to write her iconic debut novel, Dangerous Lady, but it wasn’t until she was 30 that she gave up her job and decided to devote herself seriously to writing and finished the manuscript. Dangerous Lady caused a sensation when it was published in 1992 – and the rest is history.

Martina is a passionate advocate for prisoner rehabilitation and visits prisons to give writing classes. She often quips to her classes: ‘there’s one thing you’ve got that all writers want – time’. It’s therefore no surprise her books are the most requested in Her Majesty’s prison libraries, and the most stolen from bookshops.

The Diamond Dagger award recognises authors whose crime-writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to crime fiction writing.

The CWA Diamond Dagger is selected from nominations provided by CWA members. Martina Cole joins icons of the genre who have been recognised with the accolade, including Ruth Rendell, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, PD James, Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, Lindsey Davies, Peter Lovesey, and John Le Carré.

Martina said: “It means so much to me to be receiving this prestigious award from my peers at the CWA. I can’t believe it’s nearly thirty years since Dangerous Lady was published - some people dismissed me as an Essex girl and a one-book wonder – but as one of my favourite songs goes: ‘I’m still here’!”

Linda Stratmann, Chair of the CWA, said: “We are delighted to award the Diamond Dagger to a crime-writing legend.”

Maxim Jakubowski, Hon CWA Vice Chair, said: “A much-overdue reward for a major crime author who has often been badly overlooked by the critical establishment. Martina has single-handedly created a new crime genre and brought so many new readers on board, and has always been a vocal supporter of her fellow writers in word and deed.”

Desmond Bagley Memoir – Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist

 

Fans of thriller writer Desmond Bagley will be pleased to know that his previously unpublished memoir Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist is due to be available for free download from The Bagley Brief website from 1 March 2021.

Shots and GAWM monthly author Mike Ripley wrote the foreword which can be read below.

WRITER

Foreword

It is widely accepted that there was a ‘Golden Age’ of English crime fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, centred very much on the detective story which set a puzzle, usually a ‘whodunit?’ but sometimes a ‘howdunit?’ or even a ‘whydunit?’. Famous fictional detectives were created, among them Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown and Miss Marple, all familiar names to this day, yet even in the ‘Golden Age’, their adventures in print were eclipsed by the popularity of thrillers.

However much the Golden Age authors of detective stories are revered – and they certainly should be – the fact is that at the time, they were outsold by thriller writers such as John Buchan, ‘Sapper’, Leslie Charteris, Edgar Wallace and many others long forgotten. The thriller writer was not so much interested in who had done the crime (invariably murder) but in putting his characters in jeopardy and then posing the question ‘how do they get out of this?’

But if there was a Golden Age of the British thriller, and there was, it ran from 1953 (the first James Bond book) until around 1976. In that period, British authors of adventure thrillers, and then spy stories, dominated best-seller lists internationally and the ‘big three’ were Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley.

The triumvirate of Innes, MacLean and Bagley had much in common, not the least being the same publisher, William Collins (now HarperCollins). Innes’ thriller writing career began during World War II and many of his adventure stories were turned into successful films in the 1950s, the books on which they were based outselling the spy fantasies of Ian Fleming, much to Fleming’s annoyance. By 1958, Innes’ sales had been overtaken by those of relative newcomer Alistair MacLean, with a trio of thrillers set during the war, written as high adventure, but both authors benefitted from large runs of paperback editions.

It was no wonder that Desmond Bagley approached Collins with his first novel The Golden Keel, supposedly introducing himself as someone who ‘wrote stories like Alistair MacLean’ and indeed a review of that debut in the Sunday Times claimed that ‘it catapults him straight into the Alistair MacLean bracket’.

In truth, Bagley’s novels had more in common with those of Hammond Innes than MacLean, a fact ironically acknowledged early on in The Golden Keel when a character says ‘(this sounds like something) from a Hammond Innes thriller.’ But all three shared one important life experience: they had travelled widely at a time when foreign holidays for most of their readers were still only an aspiration.

Both Bagley and Innes were inveterate travellers and MacLean had seen wartime service in the navy in the Arctic, the Mediterranean and the Far East. Their experience of exotic, foreign locations soaked into their writing and became a key factor in their success. Not surprisingly, few of their stories took place on mainland UK with Bagley’s fictional Atlas eventually covering the High Andes, Yucatan, the Bahamas, British Columbia, the Sahara, Scandinavia and, perhaps most famously of all, Iceland. Reading a Desmond Bagley, who could describe the topography, climate and natural hazards of far-away lands in beguilingly simple prose, was like going on an expedition without leaving one’s favourite armchair.

And in a Desmond Bagley novel, that expedition would always be in the company of ordinary, believable characters who would come through whatever was thrown at them by nature or by villains, by resourcefulness and pluck, not super-human powers or gadgets. In this, Bagley was following in a long tradition of popular writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Nevil Shute

One other thing Bagley had in common with Innes and MacLean was sex, or rather the lack of it. Female characters do, of course, feature in the novels of all three but sex – unusually for the ‘Swinging Sixties’ – never raised its ugly head. Its absence gave Bagley’s work something of an air of innocence and certainly did not affect his sales one jot.

It may also explain one other thing. I have no empirical evidence other than conversations with hundreds of thriller readers and writers over the years, but I am convinced that Desmond Bagley was as popular with female readers as he was with adventure-seeking red-blooded males. For proof, I can only offer a snippet from a newspaper interview given by Bagley in 1980 when he told a journalist; ‘In Lahore there’s even a Desmond Bagley fan club of about 400 teenage girls. What on Earth they do, I haven’t the faintest idea.’

They read your books, Desmond, and they enjoy them. They probably still do.

This memoir, painstakingly and lovingly reconstructed, gives a rare glimpse into the early life and formative influences of a very successful author and a man about whom few had a bad word to say. As a writer and as a reader of his novels from thew age of 13, I was both fascinated by it and grateful for it.

More information about Desmond Bagley and his work can be found in Mike Ripley's book: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed (HarperCollins)

2021 Norwegian Silver Knife nominees

 

The nominees for the 2021 Norwegian Silver Knife have been announced.

The nominees are 

The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl

So It Got Cold by Frode Eie Larsen

Fate Stone by Sven Petter Næss

The winner will be announced on 16 March 2021

Lynda La Plante - Listening to the Dead and The Judas Horse

 

Queen of Crime Drama Lynda La Plante launching series 2 of true crime podcast on 24th February; LISTENING TO THE DEAD

The forensics podcast Listening to the Dead is available via all good audio platforms. Season 2 will feature episodes on; blunt force homicide, poisoning, gun shot wounds, terrorism & mass disaster, strangulation & cause unknown.

LISTENING TO THE DEAD SEASON 2 PODCAST

Lynda La Plante’s true-crime podcast series, Listening to the Dead, co-hosted by CSI Cass Sutherland, will feature interviews with specialists in the field of criminal science.

The first series, which focussed on forensic science was an Apple Podcast bestseller. The new series, launching on 24th February 2021, will look at how investigators approach different causes of death – from blunt force to poisoning – with a focus on the methods used in the Prime Suspect and Tennison series. The podcast is a contributing factor to the incredible success Lynda La Plante enjoys in audiobook format, with sales of Buried in 2020 55% higher than her previous audio bestseller, Widows, in 2018.

NEW NOVEL JUDAS HORSE OUT 1ST APRIL 2021

La Plante will also be continuing her Detective Jack Warr series with a new book, Judas Horse, publishing on 1st April 2021. The first in the series, Buried, was published at the very start of the Covid-19 pandemic in April 2020, but despite this became a bestselling sensation, reaching #2 in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in both hardback and paperback, and going on to sell over 100,000 units in the UK and 130,000 units worldwide, making it La Plante’s biggest seller since Bloodline in 2011.

Lynda La Plante said “I am thrilled with all the activity taking place this year, re-packaging, online festivals, my podcast and the new Tennison,Unholy Murder, and Jack Warr novel, Judas Horse. I am also so grateful to the publishers, retailers and especially the readers, who have encouraged and supported me over the years. I’m looking forward to being able to meet and thank them all in person, hopefully in the not too distant future.”

About Lynda La Plante

#1 Sunday Times Bestselling author

Over 30 internationally bestselling novels

Over 170 hours of international television scripted

One of the best-loved authors in the world and 6th most popular in the UK

Recipient of four BAFTA awards

CBE since 2008 for services to Literature, Drama and Charity

1 of only 3 screenwriters to have been made an honorary fellow at the British Film Institute

The first lay person to be awarded with an honorary fellowship by The Forensic Science Society

Biography

Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing– and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series Widows. Her novels have all been international bestsellers.

Her original script for the much-acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmy, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society, as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Lynda has written and produced over 170 hours of international television.

Lynda is one of only three screenwriters to have been made an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Best Writer Award in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and Charity.

If you would like to hear from Lynda, please sign up at here or you can visit Lynda’s website for further information. You can also follow Lynda on Facebook and Twitter

Y Gwyll – The Dusk by James Oswald

 

It seems like you can’t switch on the TV these days without being confronted by a dozen or more different detectives, all vying for your attention. Home grown series like Broadchurch or Silent Witness; slick US shows like Bones and True Detective; and the newcomers - at least to these shores - the Scandinavians and Europeans with their bleak vistas and even bleaker characters. What is it about these shows that is so popular? Why do we keep coming back to them?

Confession time: while I’ve written eleven novels featuring Detective Inspector Tony McLean and three featuring Detective Constable Constance Fairchild, I haven’t watched a great deal of crime drama on TV in recent times. In my defence, I’d add that I haven’t watched a great deal of anything at all on TV in the past decade. I run a livestock farm pretty much single-handedly. That takes up most of my time during the day. In the evenings I write. Somewhere I manage to find some time to read, although not as much as I’d like to. Telly comes a distant fourth.

The last crime drama I can remember watching (at least the first series, I’ve got a little catching up to do!) was BBC Wales’ excellent Hinterland – otherwise known as Y Gwyll, or The Dusk in Welsh. Mostly I was drawn in by the fact it was filmed in and around Aberystwyth, where I’d lived for ten years before returning to Scotland to take on the family farm. Some of the series was filmed on the research farm where I used to work – you can see the house where I wrote the first two Inspector McLean novels in episode two, next door to where the murderer lives! A few of the locals turn up as extras too, which is equal parts distracting and hilarious.

More fascinating is seeing how the show is structured visually. Actual geography very much takes second place to getting the best, most atmospheric shot whenever possible. Many’s the time the detectives drive out of Aberystwyth and then arrive at their destination from completely the wrong direction. Or there’s an aerial shot of a car dodging sheep as it speeds across the mountain road towards Rhayader, and the next thing they’re arriving in Borth – exactly the other way.

Setting is always important to any story, but with crime fiction it is often crucial. Edinburgh is an essential backdrop to the Inspector McLean stories, verging as they do on the edges of the supernatural. The city becomes one of the characters, dark and mysterious and layered both by age and architecture. Television being a visual medium brings that reliance on setting all the more to the fore.

The setting for Hinterland – the moorland of the Cambrian Mountains and the Cardigan Bay coast of Wales - is an area of great beauty, wide open vistas and very few people. At its centre, Aberystwyth is quite literally the end of the line – the furthest you can go into Wales on a train before you fall into the sea. It’s a prosperous enough place, with the University, Bronglais Hospital and the Welsh Assembly Government offices the main employers, but like many a seaside town it’s also the metaphorical end of the line, where successive waves of incomers have ended up and not done so well. There is desperation, poverty, the misery of drug abuse and people who have simply reached breaking point. There’s a tension, too, between the Welsh-speaking locals and the incomers, many of whom have spread further afield into the small villages dotted inland and along the coast. All in all a perfect melting pot for studying the worst of the human condition.

But what really makes Hinterland for me, beyond the sense of hiraeth I get from its wonderfully bleak and evocative setting, is its use of the Welsh language. The series was recorded in both Welsh language and English versions, and the Welsh, suitably subtitled, was initially more popular than the English. That sense of foreignness – otherness – cranks up the tension another notch, tapping into the same exotic and sinister vein as the most successful Scandinavian and European crime noir shows, like Trapped and Spiral. It is at once familiar and unsettlingly different, the normal routines of life interrupted by something unspeakable.

And is that not, after all, what we look for in our crime fiction, both written and viewed? Crime affects us all, one way or another, and seeing it through the lens of fiction gives us that distance necessary to process and deal with it. The enduring appeal of crime series on the TV comes from the way we can immerse ourselves in other worlds, experience the vicarious thrill, revulsion and horror, empathise with the victims or even root for the underdog villains, all from the warm safety of our living room and favourite armchair.

What Will Burn by James Oswald (Headline Publishing)

The charred remains of an elderly woman are discovered in a burned-out game-keepers cottage, hidden away in woodland to the west of Edinburgh. Clearly no accidental fire, Detective Inspector Tony McLean suspects that neither is this simply a grim arson attack. There is far more to the victim than her humble surroundings might suggest, and something ritualistic to her horrific murder.  Nor will it be the only case of death by fire that Tony and his team will be faced with. This is only the beginning, and with such evil clouding the air, Tony begins to wonder what else will burn. 

Writing Crime? Need Help? Ask the Experts!

 

In a free online event this Saturday lunchtime, top Dublin writer, Sam Blake will be grilling an ex detective, a CSI and a forensic psychologist on how to write gripping yet authentic crime fiction.

In the lunchtime session, bestselling author Sam will quiz Graham Bartlett, Kate Bendelow and Dr Emma Donnelly on their roles, the three top mistakes they see in relation to their jobs in fiction and how authors can get the best of both worlds; drama and reality.

Graham, a former senior detective who now advises and trains around seventy crime authors and TV writers, Kate a serving crime scene investigator from Manchester and Dr Emma a Dublin-based clinical psychologist are all writers in addition to their day jobs. As well as Sam putting them through their paces, there is plenty of time for audience questions and a surprise give-away too.

Retired Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett said, ‘I am delighted Sam invited us to take part in this event. Kate, Emma and I advise authors through www.policeadvisor.co.uk but the opportunity to take our service on the virtual road is an honour. I hope lots of people come along armed with everything they ever wanted to know about writing authentic crime fiction but didn’t know who to ask.’

Writing Crime? Ask the Experts is a live Facebook event hosted by Writing.ie at https://fb.me/e/2t6UHOp1j between 12.00 midday and 1pm Saturday 20th February 2021

 

Note to Editors

Sam Blake

Sam Blake’s latest novel, The Dark Room is out now, a psychological thriller transporting readers to a mysterious country house hotel called Hare’s Landing in West Cork Ireland, where the past never dies. Described by the Daily Mail as ‘Laced with creepy menace and dark characters that live in the mind, it gets under the skin very quickly’. Her debut novel 'Little Bones' (Bonnier 2016) was No 1 in Ireland for four weeks, remained in the top 10 for another four, and was shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year. It launched the bestselling Cat Connolly trilogy. Now Sam is keeping a focus on strong female characters, writing psychological thrillers for Corvus Books. 'Keep Your Eyes On Me' went straight to No 1 in January 2020 and 'The Dark Room', hit the bestseller list in January 2021, outselling Graham Norton. Sam has already signed for two more thrillers with Corvus Atlantic that will keep her busy until 2023. Sam lives close to Dublin and started writing in 1999 when her husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks and she had an idea for a book.

In her day job Sam Blake is Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, the founder of the award winning writing resources website www.Writing.ie and a board member of the Society of Authors. She’s spent the past 20 years assisting new authors to achieve their dreams through The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and has helped many award winning and bestselling authors to success. Check out Sam's online writing courses where she draws on her own huge experience to take you through her writing process to help you write your own book.

Graham Bartlett was a UK police officer in Sussex for thirty years, rising to become a police commander. On the way he was a homicide senior investigating officer and led on managing dangerous offenders, sexual offences, domestic violence, child protection and hate crime. He was a qualified strategic firearms and public order commander, leading the policing of many armed operations, large scale protests and sporting events.

Since retiring, he has become a police procedural and crime advisor helping scores of authors and TV writers (including Peter James Mark Billingham Elly Griffiths and Dorothy Koomson) achieve authenticity alongside their drama. He works with authors at all stages of their writing career and adopts an ethos of ‘creativity with credibility.’ Graham runs a series of hugely popular online courses and workshops under the banner of ‘Crime Writing: Making it Real. He is also a best-selling crime writer, with two non-fiction books – Death Comes Knocking and Babes in the Wood – to his name and a crime novel in the pipeline.

Kate Bendelow is a serving Crime Scene Investigator with 18 years of experience. She has worked on thousands of crime scenes including rapes, robberies and murders. Kate can provide you with an insight into what really goes on behind the crime scene tape. A writer and the author of The Real CSI: A Forensic Handbook for Crime Writers, Kate has a novel scheduled for May 2021.

Dr Emma Donnelly lives in Dublin and works as a Chartered Senior Clinical Forensic Psychologist. She has two decades of clinical and academic experience in the field and has worked predominantly with victims and perpetrators of crime. Emma has lectured in colleges and universities in Ireland and England as well as having guest lectured to police students in John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York. Emma has worked in a number of prisons in Ireland and the UK where she has specialised in the assessment of sexual offenders, violent offenders, and killers as well as working with prolific and problematic offenders. Emma is an experienced consultant, working with systems, interagency and multidisciplinary teams, including An Garda Síochána, the Child & Family Agency (Tusla), and the Health Service Executive (HSE) as well as consulting to best-selling authors and writers. Emma is a trained investigator in forensic interviewing. Prior to life as a psychologist, Emma worked in the radio and film industries.

 

A Q& A with Laura Shepherd Robinson

 

Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the author of the award-winning debut novel Blood & Sugar which won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown and the Specsaver’s Debut Crime Novel award, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, and a Guardian and Telegraph novel of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the Sapere Historical Dagger. Her latest novel is Daughters of the Night which is out now. 

Ayo:    Congratulations on Daughters of the Night, can I though ask you first a question about your debut novel Blood & Sugar which made so many end of the year lists (including mine) and was nominated for numerous awards and won the HWA Debut Crown along with the Specsaver’s Debut Crime novel Waard?  How surprised were you with the reception of Blood & Sugar?

Laura:-           It was lovely that so many people appreciated Harry and Tad and the world I built for them. Slavery is such an important part of our history, and people are really beginning to appreciate that. I wanted to bring that subject to life in a crime novel and hopefully take it to new readers – I didn’t really have any expectations beyond that. To win two prizes and be a Waterstones Thriller of the Month was beyond anything I’d ever dared hope.  

Ayo:-  Why write about Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           My first book involved the crew of a slaving ship and so naturally a lot of the characters were men. This time I wanted to redress the balance by focusing on women and the struggles they faced in Georgian England. The Daughters of Night in the title is a reference to prostitution – the victim and several of the characters work in the London sex trade – but it also refers to the Furies in Greek mythology, who were the daughters of Nyx, the Goddess of Night. They were women demons or goddesses, who pursued the perpetrators of unpunished crimes, often against women. Vengeance is a big theme of the book.

Ayo:-  Is Daughters of the Night a direct sequel to Blood & Sugar?  If not, what made you decide to write about a different character from Blood & Sugar?

Laura:-           It is not a sequel as such, but it takes place in the same world and the books complement one another. My main character, Caro, is the wife of Harry Corsham, the main character of Blood & Sugar. They have a rather strange, troubled marriage, which my readers have already seen from his perspective. I wanted to show her side of the story!

Ayo:-  Are you planning on writing about any of the characters in Blood & Sugar and Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           I am currently writing a standalone book that is set in 1740. But I would love to return to the world of Harry and Caro and I know exactly where I want to take them!

Ayo:-  You clearly did a lot of research for Blood & Sugar.  Did any of the research that you did for your debut novel spill over into Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           Definitely! The general way of life in the 18^th century, the geography of London at the time, as well as many more precise historical details. I have a document where I put any brilliant details I come across – if I can’t use them in my current novel, I save them for the future.

Ayo:-  What did you find out that shocked/surprised you when you were doing your research for Daughters of the Night?

Laura:-           That 1 in 5 female Londoners participated in the sex trade at some point in their lives. The line between vice and virtue was much more blurred than people often assume. Women moved in and out of prostitution as their economic circumstances changed.

Ayo:-  What was it about value (which is an essential theme in the book) that fascinated you so much?

Laura:-           The commoditisation of women’s bodies is as old as time. The book explores different aspects of the sex trade, but also how women were depicted in art, and the legal and economic constraints placed on them in marriage. All the woman in the book struggle against a system that valued them only in terms of the men who desired them. Plus ça change.

Ayo:-  How did it make the crime more compelling?

Lucy Loveless, the prostitute whose murder is the central mystery of the book, was killed in part because she asserted the value of women’s lives and would not be silent. Caro, although of an entirely different economic and social status, in turn asserts the value of Lucy’s life. She refuses to stop her investigation, whatever the cost.

Ayo:-  Daughters of the Night has two timelines, was this intentional

Laura:-           Originally the book only had one. It wasn’t quite working, and adding the backstory was the missing piece. It was important to me that the victims in the book were depicted as women with agency and ambition and friendships, rather than dead, faceless sex workers. That’s all there in the backstory, as well as many clues to the mystery in the present.

Ayo:-  Where did you get your interest in history and historical crime fiction from?

Laura:-           Both my parents were very interested in history. As a child, I loved Joan Aitken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase series and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Although I studied politics at university, I did courses on the 18^th century as a subsidiary subject. Then I fell in love with Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost, and that was when the idea of writing a historical novel came to me. I didn’t get around to it for over ten years, but eventually I did something about it!

Ayo:-  Do you have a favourite period in history? If so which period and why?

Laura:-           The 18^th century obviously! It is the period that shaped so much that is familiar to us today: liberal values, art and architecture. But it was also very different to our society and much more brutal. I’m thinking of slavery, blood sports, the lack of women’s rights, crime and punishment, poverty. It’s an interesting juxtaposition and one that to me felt perfect for writing crime. 

Ayo:-  How has the lockdown affected your writing?

Laura:-           For the first six weeks it felt scary and confusing and I couldn’t write at all. Luckily I was between books, so I used it to take a break. I didn’t force it, I read some novels, and generally had a nice time with my husband. Then I woke up one morning filled with a fierce urge to write again, and I haven’t looked back!

Ayo:-  How do you write? Do you prefer writing in silence or do you have music on in the background? If you do have music on what type of music does it tend to be?

Laura:-           Absolute silence.

Ayo:-  What is the more important for you characterisation or plot or do you try and have a happy medium between the two?

Laura:-           I think they flow out of one another. Story is always king, but a good story needs both plot and character. I start from what I need my characters to do in the plot, and then construct a living breathing person who can credibly perform that role. And naturally, of course, sometimes they take on a life of their own, and I change the plot to better suit their personality.

Ayo:-  Do you plot before-hand or do you just let the writing flow?

Laura:-           I am a huge planner. I write 30k word plot plans before I start writing. Lots of things change as I go along, but the fundamental structure, the beginning and end, and major plot points rarely do. 

Ayo:-  What are you working on at the moment and can you tell us about it?

Laura:-           It’s called The Square of Sevens. It’s set in 1740 and is more of a feminist Dickensian mystery than a straight crime novel. The book’s heroine is called Red. She tells fortunes with playing cards and her method of fortune-telling informs the structure of the book. I can’t say too much more about it at the moment, but I am absolutely loving writing it.

Ayo:-  With the lockdown festivals and events have had to be either cancelled or moved online.  What have you missed the most due to the lockdown?

Laura:-           Seeing my lovely writer friends and having fun at book launches and festivals. Writers are such solitary creatures, and we need to come out of our caves from time to time to stop us going mad. Zoom has been a life-saver in this respect – imagine doing this in the 18^th century!

Ayo:-  What do you do to relax?

Laura:-           Mostly the usual boring things. Dinner parties, TV, wasting too much time on Twitter. Oh, and we like to play bridge – another thing we’ve been unable to do. We’ve been filling the gap with jigsaws and Lego. 

------

Daughters of the Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Published by Pan Macmillan) out now.

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline 'Caro' Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thief taker Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives. But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro's own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous, than she can know. 

More information about Laura and her books can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @LauraSRobinson.

The Shots review of Daughters of the Night can be read here.

Ellery Kane - By the Seat of My Pants!

 

The phrase “flies by the seat of his pants” originated in the 1930s with Douglas Corrigan’s flight from the United States to Ireland. An airplane mechanic described Corrigan this way, meaning that he flew without instruments, a radio, or other technology to guide him. Today, we use the term to refer to someone who approaches life (or writing) in a carefree and impulsive manner, without much design or forethought. It is important to have the capacity to be both plotter and pantser. To have a plan but also to be able to think on your feet.

In my day job as a forensic psychologist, I am both plotter and pantser. When I travel to a prison to interview an inmate, it is essential that I have done my homework. I usually spend several hours reviewing an inmate’s file in advance of our interview so I can quickly pinpoint inconsistencies in his statements and identify areas for further exploration. I think of “plotting” as making a road map of the interview. The more I plan in advance, the smoother the interview will go, and the more I will learn in the limited time I have with the inmate. Early in my career, I made the mistake of failing to “plot” adequately before an interview. I found myself face to face with an elderly man who had murdered his wife when they were both in their fifties. He laid out his life story—his college degree; his happy marriage; his supportive children—but I was skeptical. When I returned home and reviewed his file in more detail, I learned that, in his five prior interviews, he had told five different stories about his life. And a sixth, in his interview with me. A definite failure to plot! Fortunately, since that time, I was able to interview him again on two subsequent occasions, and you can bet I came prepared.

Sometimes, in a forensic interview, I have to be a pantser. Even though I come to the table with an idea of where I want the interview to go and the topics I need to cover, I cannot be so rigid as to miss out on the breadcrumbs that just might lead to an important discovery. For example, an inmate once mentioned to me that he used a cell phone (illegally) to talk to his family during his mother’s recent illness. When I probed for more information about his activities on the telephone, he confessed that he had been online and had set up a Facebook page to meet women, claiming he was a rap artist. Later, when I investigated myself, I also found a GoFundMe page in his name. If I had stopped with his first answer and stuck to my “plot,” I never would have found the true nugget. His conning and manipulation of others.

In my life as an author, I am 95% pantser much to my own dismay. I start with an idea of the plot and the main characters. Sometimes, I create a rough sketch to chart my course, but I do not outline or plan scenes in detail. With Her Perfect Bones, the latest book in the Rockwell and Decker series, I began with the inspiration of the true life murder of Reyna Marroquín, a woman whose mummified body was discovered in a barrel thirty years after her death. Instantly, the image of a young girl came to me. I called her Shelby Mayfield, and she was afraid and confused and harboring a dark secret. She was on the run to the sleepy seaside town of Fog Harbor, the fictional town where my series is set. Once I started writing, Shelby’s story took on a life of its own. Often, when I write, I have no idea what will happen next. It is both terrifying and liberating. The more I learned about Shelby, the more I understood about her killer, and the rest of the plot began to take shape, revealing the twisted road that had led to Shelby’s death. For me, pantsing allows my characters to take the lead, while plotting can feel stifling. But be warned, pantsing is not without its pitfalls. There is nothing quite as horrifying as pantsing yourself right into a corner, which is why every pantser worth their salt needs two things: the favor of the writing gods and an unofficial plot consultant to help work out the kinks over a glass of wine. Cheers!

Her Perfect Bones by Ellery Kane (Published by Bookoutre) Out Now

The girl’s body is curled up like a shell and almost completely buried in sand. Only her fingertips can be seen, reaching helplessly up towards an escape she will never find…  Seventeen-year-old Shelby Mayfield sits alone on a bus to Fog Harbor, California. Aside from a few items of clothing, all she has with her is twenty-two dollars, the ragdoll she’s kept since kindergarten, and the devastating secret she’s been hiding.  How long will it be before her family realizes she’s gone?  Can anyone see the fresh bruise on her cheek beneath the makeup?  Perhaps she was a fool to believe the person she is meeting in this remote little town could help her…  When a girl’s body is found hidden in a barrel in a woodland cabin, the local police are at a loss. The film from an old camera found looped around her neck is their only lead, but Criminal Psychologist Olivia Rockwell’s blood turns to ice when she recognizes the ragdoll in one of the girl’s last photographs. She used to own one just like it, and it can only mean one thing: if she doesn’t dig deep into the mind of a deadly killer from her past—her own father—more innocent lives will be in danger…!

Amazon: https://geni.us/B08PNZ1SQ3Social

Apple: http://ow.ly/JLaA50CGFZn

Kobo:  http://ow.ly/LX7v50CGFUT

Google: http://ow.ly/ZHu150CGFRq

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Author Bio:

Forensic psychologist by day, author by night, Ellery Kane has been writing professionally and creatively for as long as she can remember. Real life really is stranger than fiction, so Ellery’s writing is often inspired by her day job. Before writing the Rockwell and Decker series with Bookouture, Ellery published the Legacy series for young adult readers and the Doctors of Darkness series of psychological thrillers. She was previously selected as one of ten semi-finalists in the MasterClass James Patterson Co-Author Competition. A Texan at heart, Ellery currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ellery Kane can be found on Facebook and you can follow her on Twitter at @ElleryKane

 

 

Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies - Call for Papers

 

 Giallo! The Long History of Italian Television Crime Drama

Special issue edited by Luca Barra (Università di Bologna) and Valentina Re (Link Campus, Rome)

 Most of the Italian television drama able to circulate internationally belongs to the multifaceted crime genre, both in some sparse examples from the past and in growing contemporary productions (from premium channels and digital platforms to public service and commercial broadcasters). However, for many decades, only a limited range of titles has been given scholarly attention, drawing a useful yet partial account of an otherwise dense and multi-layered history. Moreover, exceptions have often been studied far more than the most conventional crime series in the ‘giallo’ spectrum: most police procedurals are deemed too formulaic, or too popular, to be distinguished. Therefore, this special issue intends to overcome these limits by focusing on the historical evolution of the crime genre inside the development of Italian television, from the early stages to the latest mainstream and niche successes, and by highlighting the many crime titles that have become familiar to large Italian audiences.

 Through the Italian crime drama and its evolution over the decades, an original history of Italian television and media can be easily outlined, where ‘giallo’ would often mark changes of pace, innovations, successes and failures. Already in the first twenty years of the so-called paleo-television and monopoly period, crime drama was facilitating the Italian ‘sceneggiato’’s turn towards a medium-long seriality: the investigations of ‘tenente’ Sheridan (from 1959 to 1972, first with Giallo club. Invito al poliziesco and later with Ritorna il tenente Sheridan, Sheridan squadra omicidi and Le donne del tenente Sheridan) or Le inchieste del commissario Maigret (1964-1972), starring Gino Cervi; or Nero Wolfe (1969-1971). Further on, it was crime drama that marked the transition—even the lexical transition—from ‘sceneggiato’ to ‘fiction’, with the great success of La Piovra (1984-2001). It was crime television that punctuated the golden age of public service fiction in the late Nineties: Il maresciallo Rocca (1996-2008), Il Commissario Montalbano (1999-), La squadra (2000-2007) and the reassuring Don Matteo (2000-). It was crime drama that underlined the innovations of commercial networks: Distretto di polizia (2000- 2012), RIS. Delitti imperfetti (2005-2009) and Squadra antimafia. Palermo oggi (2009-2016). Once again, it was the crime genre that marked the arrival of premium original productions, first with Sky – Quo vadis, baby? (2008), Romanzo criminale. La serie (2008-2010) and Gomorra. La serie (2014-) – and later with Netflix – Suburra. La serie (2017-2020). Lastly, crime is one of the main battlegrounds for the return of Rai and Mediaset competition, innovating genres and aesthetics and establishing global partnerships, with titles like Non uccidere (2015-2018), Rocco Schiavone (2016-), La porta rossa (2016-), I bastardi di Pizzofalcone (2017-), Maltese (2017), Il Cacciatore (2018) and Il Processo (2019). In Italy, as in many other countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, the entire nation is reflected in the history of its TV crime drama, mixing the reverberations of a changing society – which experiences new tensions and conflicts in terms of economic insecurity, political uncertainty, family and gender norms – with formal experiments and the shared imageries of a long-lasting, rich and always new genre.

 The editors encourage submissions that cover, but are not limited to, the following subjects and topics:

 1. The genre and its polymorphism. How has Italian TV, across its entire history, interpreted the many subgenres of ‘giallo’ (noir, police procedural, legal drama, detective story, crime, etc.)? How are these subgenres related to different periods, specific formats, channels and platforms?

 2. The familiar hybridizations with comedy and melodrama. What are the strategies to ‘balance’ the roughness of crime in the Italian tradition? How have these interacted with the crime genre?

 3. The less familiar hybridizations with other genres. How have popular genres like fantasy, the supernatural, gothic, science fiction and thriller impacted the ‘giallo’ traditions and innovations?

4. The geography of Italian crime. How have the places represented in the Italian ‘giallo’ changed in television history (center vs. peripheries; urban vs. rural stories)? How have locations affected the narrative developments, the production and the national and global circulation of these series?

 5. Literary adaptations and original productions. How has the frequent adaptation of literary investigators (i.e. Maigret, Nero Wolfe, Montalbano, etc.) influenced the narratives, characters, production and promotion strategies of Italian TV dramas? How do fully-original stories differ?

6. The Italian ‘giallo’ as a transmedial phenomenon. How have crime dramas hybridized languages, figures, characters and topics from different media, such as radio, comics and cinema?

7. Mainstream dramas and quality ‘giallo’. How has ‘quality’ or ‘complex’ TV impacted Italian crime by featuring ambiguous heroes and antiheroes, multiple storylines, unconventional locations and a sophisticated visual style? And what is the role of more traditional, mass-oriented crime?

8. From amateur to professional female investigators. How have crime dramas, from Laura Storm to Thou Shalt Not Kill’s Valeria Ferro, shown an increasingly strong interest in female detectives? How does this help us understand, question and renegotiate evolving gender and genre norms?

9. The reality and fiction of Italian ‘giallo’. How have Italian crime dramas reinterpreted or hinted at the news of ‘cronaca nera’, in a complex entanglement between unsolved cases and judiciary truths? In which ways has the recent explosion of serial true crime also impacted fictional series?

10. The international circulation of Italian crime. After the first success of La Piovra, in recent years more and more national productions have met with foreign acclaim. What are the elements that facilitate this international circulation, and what are the effects on narratives and productions?

11. Italian ‘giallo’ and the past: national history and national memory. How has the Italian ‘giallo’ tradition been proven capable of turning our gaze on the past and addressing unresolved social and political conflict? How do ‘gialli’ contribute to a shared national memory of mysteries and traumas?

12. Italian ‘giallo’ and the present: social tensions and moral dilemmas. From financial issues to terrorism, from immigration to the ties between politics, corruption and organized crime, how has the contemporary crime drama contributed to narrating conflict and fear in our societies?

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 30 April. Interested contributors should send the following materials to the guest editors Luca Barra, Università di Bologna (luca.barraATunibo.it) and Valentina Re, Link Campus, Rome (v.reATunilink.it): a 500 word abstract in English of original and unpublished articles, outlining the topic, approach and theoretical bases with a relevant bibliography and filmography; and  a 200 word biographical note. The accepted proposals will be notified by 31 May; completed articles should be sent by 15 October for peer-review; authors will be notified of the results of the peer-review by 15 December 2021.

 

Chester Himes - Harlem Detective Series

Chester Himes

Harlem Detective Series

Published by Penguin Modern Classics | 25 March 2021

Paperback £9.99

“Himes posed questions that few of his contemporaries dared to raise: What defines an “authentic” black voice?” Hilton Als, The New Yorker

A conman disguised as a nun, a preacher flogging one-way tickets to Africa, a golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean. Every one of Chester Himes’ ground-breaking crime novels buzzes with a barely-contained chaotic and darkly witty energy, echoed in vibrant new jackets featuring Harlem collages by Romare Bearden.

 Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and grew up in Cleveland. Aged 19 he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to up to 25 years in jail. In jail he began to write short stories, some of which were published in Esquire. Upon release he took a variety of jobs, from working in a California shipyard to journalism to script-writing, while continuing to write fiction. Like many African-American writers of his generation, he later moved to Paris, where he was commissioned by La Série Noire to write the first of his Harlem detective novels, La reine des pommes/A Rage in Harlem, which won the 1957 Grand Prix du Roman Policier. In 1969 Himes moved to Spain, where he died in 1984.

One of crime fiction’s most overlooked writers, Himes’ inimitable stories take the reader through the criminal underbelly of New York alongside hardboiled Harlem detectives ‘Coffin’ Ed Johnson and ‘Grave Digger’ Jones. His brutally comic surrealism combined with his authentic treatment of the Black Harlem underclass, more myth than reality to most white Americans of the period, earn him a unique place among crime writing giants such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson.

 A Rage in Harlem

Jackson's woman has found him a foolproof way to make money - a technique for turning ten dollar bills into hundreds. But when the scheme somehow fails, Jackson is left broke, wanted by the police and desperately racing to get back both his money and his loving Imabelle. The first of Chester Himes's novels to feature the hardboiled Harlem detectives, A Rage in Harlem has swagger, brutal humour, lurid violence, a hearse loaded with gold and a conman dressed as a Sister of Mercy.

 The Real Cool Killers

The night's over for Ulysses Galen. It started going bad for the big Greek when a knife was drawn, then there was an axe, then he was being chased and shot at. Now Galen is lying dead in the middle of a Harlem street. But the night's just beginning for our detectives, because they have a smoking gun but it couldn't have killed Galen, and they had a suspect but a gang called the Real Cool Moslems took him. And as patrol cars and search teams descend on the neighbourhood, their case threatens to take a turn for the personal.

 All Shot Up

A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together.

 The Heat’s On

Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones have lost two criminals. Pinky ran off - but it shouldn't be hard to track down a giant albino man in Harlem. Jake the drug dealer, though, isn't coming back - he died after Grave Digger punched him in the stomach. This might cost them both their badges, unless they can track down the cause of all this mayhem - like the African with his throat slit and the dog the size of a lion with an open head wound.

 Cotton Comes to Harlem

A preacher called Deke O'Malley's been selling false hope: the promise of a glorious new life in Africa for just $1,000 a family. But when thieves with machine guns steal the proceeds - and send one man's brain matter flying - the con is up. Now Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed mean to bring the good people of Harlem back their $87,000, however many corpses they have to climb over to get it.