William Ryan in conversation with Declan Burke

In the fourth of a series of conversations, author William Ryan talks to author Declan Burke.

Declan Burke is the Irish author of the Harry Rigby series.  The latest book in the series being Slaughter’s Hound, which was shortlisted in the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Category for the Irish Book Awards 2012.  The first book in the Harry Rigby series is Eightball Boogie (2003) which was also shortlisted in the Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards, 2003.  The Big O (2008) was shortlisted for the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award in 2009.  His novel Absolute Zero Cool won the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award at Crimefest, 2012.  It was also shortlisted for the Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards, 2011.  In 2011, he edited Down These Green Streets, a collection of essays, memoir and short stories written by Irish crime writers about the current wave of Irish crime writing.  With John Connolly, Declan Burke is the co-editor of Books To Die For (2012), a collection of essays on the greatest crime and mystery novels written by the greatest living crime and mystery authors.  Declan Burke is also a freelance journalist and critic.  He has written and continues to write and broadcast on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent.  He also runs the successful and well-regarded blog Crime Always Pays.  His novel The Big O is available for the first time as an e-book  ($4.99 / £4.99). 

William Ryan is the Irish author of The Holy Thief, The Bloody Meadow and The Twelfth Department (to be published in May 2013); novels set in 1930s Moscow and featuring Captain Alexei Korolev.  His novels have been translated into fourteen languages and shortlisted for The Theakstons’ Crime Novel of the Year, The CWA Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards New Blood Dagger and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.  He lives in London with his wife and son. 

WR: So I've been enjoying listening to an Irish rock band called Rollerskate Skinny this week - on your indirect recommendation. Their album Horsedrawn Wishes features heavily in Slaughter's Hound, your latest book, and so I thought I'd better do some research. It was interesting though - the more I listened to it, the more it felt almost like a soundtrack to the novel. Do you have particular music you listen to when you're writing and do you think it comes out in your books?

DB: Glad to hear you like Horsedrawn Wishes. That album was a huge influence on my writing - the idea that you could be Irish, sure, but that you didn't have to sound Irish. Or, for that matter, like anything else you'd ever heard before. It was very liberating at the time - by which I mean, the late '90s, when I was flailing around trying to get my first book written.

I always used to listen to music when I was writing, usually a collection of songs I'd identified as being close to the sound or feel of what I was trying to achieve. For Crime Always Pays, say, I had a loop of Springsteen songs on the go, because I was aiming for a kind of 'cartoon heroic' feel. I don't mean that Springsteen is in any way cartoonish, just that his songs - or the songs I'd picked out - tended to condense into four or five minutes that kind of heroic narrative you get over the course of a whole book or play. Anyway, it felt right for me.

These days, though, I can't listen to any narrative music at all when I'm writing - anything with lyrics. I don't know if you feel the same? I just find it very distracting. It's also true that I made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to put pop and rock music to one side for a while and listen solely to classical, opera and instrumental music. That has the double benefit of allowing me to listen to music with lyrics, except they're in German, or Latin, or whatever - anyway, they're not distracting from a writing point of view because I just hear the voices as another instrument, or instruments.

Music is good to have when I'm writing, though, as it tends to drown out any possible noises / distractions from outside the office / cave. Maybe I should be less easily distracted ... What about you, are you so buried in the storytelling when you're writing that you couldn't possibly be disturbed?

WR: Sadly I could be disturbed by the back of my hand - not that it's disturbing as such, but I'm certainly easily distracted - very easily distracted. So - no, I can't listen to music as much as I'd like.

Not least because I think, more and more these days, that writing has a rhythm of its own which listening to music can sometimes obscure - and as I'm looking for a smooth read for the reader, which is me in the early stages, I want to avoid anything that might affect that. That's not to say I don't listen to music - I do - but, like you, I'm wary of it.

That thing about being Irish, but not necessarily wanting to sound Irish - do you think that's the reason your early novels - like The Big O - feel Irish yet can't be pinned down to a particular location, or even to being Irish, to an extent?

DB: The issue of location, or setting, is actually a bit of a hot topic for me right now. In my mind The Big O is set in very specific locations in and around my hometown of Sligo, but I was deliberate in not giving the story a particular setting because I was trying to suggest that crimes and their consequences are universal – i.e., that story could have taken place in any mid-sized town anywhere around the world.

With my first book, Eightball Boogie, I was a little constrained by the idea that I was writing about places I knew a little too well, I think. I got over that, or past that, by re-imagining Sligo, by giving it certain places and areas that don’t exist, and then working my characters into and out of those fictional places. It might sound a bit trivial but I needed that invented space in order to allow my imagination off the leash. On the back of my latest book it says "Welcome to Harry Rigby's Sligo" and that feels right - it's not the real Sligo I'm writing about, it's Harry Rigby's version of it.

But there’s a bigger issue at play here too, and it taps into your question about ‘being Irish’. I was born and raised in Sligo in the Northwest of Ireland, but my cultural experiences growing up were American movies and books, British books and music, and football, European movies, Dutch beer … all these things, and more, were as important in forming my appreciation of culture as any and all of the Irish elements. And if I’m going to write, and be true to my experience of what brought me to the point where I want to write, then I’d be a hypocrite not to include, or at least acknowledge, those influences. That’s why Eightball Boogie (and to a lesser extent its sequel, Slaughter’s Hound) is so heavily influenced by Raymond Chandler in particular, and the American hardboiled novel in general. Why The Big O is influenced by Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen and Barry Gifford.

I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with living in a post-colonial country. Ireland has been overlaid with any number of cultures over the past thousand years, and more. And then there’s the fact that emigration has played such an important part in Irish history, and that emigrants bring back all these cultural artefacts and incorporate them into the mix. Do we even know what ‘being Irish’ means?

I think that that’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the new generation of Irish crime writers – the diverse locations. John Connolly setting his books in Maine. Conor Fitzgerald and Rome. Until recently, Adrian McKinty set his books anywhere but Ireland. Ken Bruen, Eoin Colfer, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Ava McCarthy, Alan Glynn … they’ve all chosen non-Irish settings in recent times. And, of course, William Ryan and Russia. The setting and time were a big draw for me, even before I opened The Holy Thief. Were you conscious of not setting your stories in Ireland? Or was / is 1930’s Russia the crucial aspect of the Korolev novels for you?

WR: I never made a conscious decision not to set my novels in Ireland but, given I haven't lived there since I was 22 and that's some time ago, I don't think it would have been that easy to do. As it happens, the idea for the Korolev novels came around a bit by chance. I used to write screenplays and I wanted to write something about this Russian writer, Isaac Babel, who was a last minute attendee at an international writer's conference in Paris - in 1937. As it happened he had a wife and daughter in Paris, and his mother and sister lived in Brussels - and by then it was pretty clear that times weren't good in Moscow and that he, in particular, was at risk if he returned - but return he did - and I thought it would be interesting to explore why he made the decision he did. I never really got round to writing it but I did a lot of research and when I was thinking about writing a detective novel, 1930s Moscow seemed to be a place no-one else had thought of.

 Of course, it turned out I was wrong about that - Tom Rob Smith, for one, was writing Child 44 at the same time I was writing The Holy Thief - albeit a bit quicker, not that it would have changed my mind.  It's a period of history that fascinates me and which has all kinds of resonances today. I don't think I could write a similar novel in a contemporary setting - we just don't believe in things the way we used to, not in Europe anyway - and the thirties is very much a period defined by blind belief.

You mention Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler as influences, amongst others, and I know you spend part of your time reviewing and interviewing other crime novelists for newspaper and radio, as well as persuading them into participating in short story collections and the like. Do you think reviewing and writing about crime has also influenced the way you write?

DB: There’s no doubt that writing about crime fiction has changed the way I write it – although whether for good or ill I really don’t know. You can have too much of a good thing, and there are times when I feel a bit burnt out reading only crime fiction, which can be the case for me for long stretches – I suppose any diet is going to become monotonous if doesn’t have variety. And my own tastes in reading are quite catholic, as I think most readers’ are.

I think, in terms of my own writing, that what reading so much crime fiction has caused me to do is move away from the more conventional kind of story. When you’re immersed in police procedurals, say, the last thing you want to do with your precious free time is to try to replicate that kind of story. That’s probably the main reason I wrote Absolute Zero Cool – I wanted to try to write something I hadn’t been reading, something that took the conventions and tropes of the crime novel and gave them a good old shake-up. To be honest, I’m not even sure that Absolute Zero Cool qualifies as a crime novel. I know that there are more than a few readers who would agree with that …

Something else I’ve noticed is that I’ve come to value language above all other aspects of the crime novel. When you accept that most crime books you’ll read will stick to a very similar pattern, or blueprint – which is, after all, what the genre demands, and why it is so successful – then you start to look for the interesting variations. And for me, an inventive use of language is always the most interesting aspect to the telling of a good story. The crime novels that have resonated most with me in the last year or so have been those from Megan Abbott, James Lee Burke, Tom Franklin, Eoin McNamee – writers who really bear down on a line and make it yield up its fullest potential.

That’s something I’m always curious about, when I’m talking with other writers. As in, the trade-off between being adventurous in language or plotting or characterisation, and the necessity of working within the established parameters. How does that work for you? I think it’s obvious to anyone reading the Korolev stories that language, for example, is important to you as a writer – are you conscious of that kind of necessary compromise when you’re writing?

WR: I think I know what you mean - crime readers can be a little set in their ways when it comes to what they want to see in a crime novel. I once received an online review for The Holy Thief that described me as "very creative with his writing, but excessively verbose". I'm presuming the odd adjective was a bit too much for him.

In some ways, that's not such a bad review, of course. Writing is all about words after all - and while I try to avoid being "excessively verbose", I do try and describe things visually and accurately and sometimes it takes a few words to do that. But I suppose crime fiction, particularly in recent years, has tended towards spare and functional writing - so I may be a bit flowery by current standards.  But I like to allow words to build up a bit of cumulative power and I like to have a bit of rhythm and sound to my sentences - and I think a lot of readers like to read that kind of writing as well, even if some would rather rub broken glass into their eyeballs. One of the things you learn early on as a writer is that books are a bit like marmite - you can't expect everyone to like what you've written.

Generally though I think the curious thing about the crime fiction genre is how much freedom there is within it. While readers have some pre-conceptions about what they expect from a crime novel the whole point of the genre is that they want to be surprised - so I think there's a bit of flexibility in there for writers. And it's a very broad church. Fortunately, I also have a bit of a get-out from most crime rules as I write in a different historical period and from the protagonist's point of view, so I can sort of blame my excesses on Korolev - he being Russian and a bit behind the times. It's dialogue that I spend the most time and sweat getting right. I think that's because I'm often interested in what the characters aren't saying as much as what they are - which may go with the whole 1930s Moscow territory.

I think the way your characters speak to each other is very clean and crisp - and dry - and they seem very real. Does it come easily to you? It reads as if it might. And the vivid characterisation was one of the reasons I admired Absolute Zero Cool so much. The character that comes to life is something a lot of writers experience in the course of a novel - at least in terms of characters not doing what you thought they would - but you took that idea and went a bit further with it. The result was exhilarating to read from a writer's point of view - I was confident you'd bring it altogether in the end,  just wasn't sure how. And by any standards it was a good and original novel, with more of the author in it, perhaps, than most novels. How did you feel about appearing in your own novel, to an extent at least?

DB: Heh. NOTHING comes easily to me when I’m writing. I’m not a natural or instinctive writer by any means – it breaks my heart, for example, when I read about Lawrence Durrell, and how he’d write in blocks of ten thousand words at a time, and then bin the lot if he wasn’t happy with it and start all over again the next day. I’m a three-words-forward, two-words-back kind of writer. I grind it out. Although, having said that, there’s no doubt but that dialogue is the part that comes easiest. I don’t know why, it’s not as if I’m particularly sociable or a good conversationalist in real life. But I’ll often fill a couple of pages with dialogue pretty quickly, which can be great fun, and then take ages going back over those pages and putting in the descriptive bits. Maybe I should abandon books and try writing TV or movie scripts.

I’m delighted to hear that you were so confident reading Absolute Zero Cool that I’d ‘bring it all together’ in the end – I wish I’d been half as confident when I was writing it. But I suppose the ending, the climax or twist or whatever you want to call it, was the least important part of that book – for me, Absolute Zero Cool was all about having a bit of fun with the notion of actually writing a book. I suppose I was trying to explore the extent to which we as readers identify with characters, or how ‘real’ they are to us when we’re reading. And the logical extension of that, from a writer’s point of view, was to see how I would react, as a person and as a writer, if one of my characters ever came to life. I mean, how well, or otherwise, would John Connolly get on with Charlie Parker if Charlie was to sit down on a barstool beside him one night, and start mumbling about demons and the guy outside in the parking lot who is trying to kill him? I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

With Absolute Zero Cool, I just thought it’d be interesting to poke fun at myself for a while, to point up my own limitations as a writer, both in terms of my technical ability and my imagination, or lack of same. To be perfectly honest, though, there’s probably a lot more of me in Harry Rigby than there is in the ‘Declan Burke’ of Absolute Zero Cool.

WR: Isn't that always the way with crime fiction protagonists?  There's definitely a bit of me in Korolev's character. If writing a novel is essentially making things up then I suppose it helps if you have something real to start with - from which to hang your falsehoods - and you just hope that, by the time you've finished, the element of yourself that you started with is reasonably well-hidden. Now that you've mentioned the idea - the thought of a having a beer with Korolev is suddenly appealing, although whether he'd have much interest in spending time with a writer from a decadent capitalist country is another question. That's characters for you though - always biting the hand that wrote them.

It's interesting though, a lot of my latest novel, The Twelfth Department, concerns Korolev's relationship with his son, Yuri, who he inadvertently places in great danger. For me that was very much an exploration of how I feel about my own son, who is quite young still but who I find myself worrying about quite a lot. Not that I'm nervous about his safety as such - I like him to take risks and be adventurous - but when I think of his future or the possibility of something bad happening to him it's - well - a very emotional thing. And Korolev's love for his son and efforts to protect him were very much an exploration of parental love. I suppose it's natural to take day-to-day concerns and work them through in a novel, although in a completely fictional setting.

DB: I can totally understand that. Actually, I’m a bit worried that I’m not distanced enough from the day-to-day concerns when I’m writing. Is that a good or bad thing? I suppose it’s good in the sense that it keeps you rooted as a writer in the here-and-now, and if you can communicate your fears well enough, that should resonate for the reader. Then again, if the reader isn’t remotely interested in your concerns, it could be totally alienating for him or her.

I know that when I was writing Absolute Zero Cool I was working out my fear of not being a good father. My daughter had just been born; and in the months beforehand, being entirely narcissistic and immature, or even more so than I am now, I was worried that being a father was going to eat into my writing time / career. Which is precisely what has happened, of course, although my only regret in that respect is that I didn’t have the same experience about 10 years ago.

People do say that a person’s life is split in two: before having a child and afterwards. And while it’s not strictly true, I can fully understand why they might say that. Before my daughter was born I could appreciate a certain kind of situation as being threatening or terrifying from a theoretical point of view; now, I’m wholly committed to those scenarios on an emotional level. I review film as one of my freelance journalism jobs, but I really should have handed in my press pass as soon as my daughter was born. These days, once a child-in-peril storyline presents itself, all my critical faculties freeze up and I’m silently screaming at the screen, ‘Save the child! SAVE THE CHILD!!!’ Afterwards I have no idea if the film is actually any good or not; I’m just delighted the child was rescued.

I think that played into my current book, Slaughter’s Hound, when I realised I was holding back something when I was writing it, and that I needed to commit to the logic of the story, even if it meant writing something that was truly terrible to me. If I’m totally honest, I’ll also say that it’s holding me back from starting my new book, because at the heart of it is a scenario that is – for me, anyway – utterly horrible. I suppose you tend to conceptualise violence in a different way when a child enters your life. I’m not in the slightest bit interested anymore in whether violence has a particular aesthetic, or whether it’s justified in terms of the plot, etc. I’m really hung up at the moment as to whether I even want to write the kind of story that requires violence – and particularly lethal violence. And don’t get me started on violence against women … There’s nothing like a daughter to make a belated feminist-of-sorts of a man.

Are you fully committed to a career of writing crime / mystery fiction? Is there anything about the genre that might persuade you that you want to write a different kind of story?

WR: I wouldn't imagine I'd go off and try anything too esoteric but I might spread my wings at some stage. I have nothing in mind though. What about you? It sounds as though you're not entirely sure which way you're going to go with your next novel.

DB: "You're not entirely sure which way you're going to go with your next novel," is pretty much tattooed on the inside of my frontal lobe. But yes, in terms of the next book, that's especially true. I have the broad storyline, the main characters, the setting - although I don't have the voice. But even if I did have the voice, I'm still not sure I'd be plunging into it. About all I really know about the next book is that I don't want it to be any kind of book I've written before.

WR: I think, to be honest, that's how every writer should approach every novel. I'm just about to start one myself and, although it features Korolev once again, it also features a Soviet Arctic exploration ship trapped in ice surrounded by what may well be murderous ghosts. Now quite how I'm going to approach that - I've no idea. But I have a good feeling about it. Whether that's enough, only time and effort will tell.

The reason I asked about your next novel was that Slaughter's Hound veered back towards the very Chandleresque style of your earlier novels yet still retained much of the gritty and innovative qualities of Absolute Zero Cool. Both novels were shortlisted for The Irish Crime Novel of the Year and Absolute Zero Cool also won the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award and received great reviews. They were very different novels but they were both dark - in the best traditions of noir - and I was wondering if that was something you were going to follow up. At the same time, I'm conscious that's an awkward question to ask.

DB: " ... a Soviet Arctic exploration ship trapped in ice surrounded by what may well be murderous ghosts." That sounds terrific, can't wait to see it. Not least because it sounds like it'll be bending a few genre conventions out of shape.

I'm definitely heading the same direction with the next book, by which I mean having some fun with the genre's expectations, and in my mind it'll be the darkest piece I've written yet - and that's possibly one reason why I'm so reluctant to start it. It's a kind of a 'heart of darkness' story, I suppose, and I'm conscious that it'll be about violence against women and children, and specifically about the violence done to women and children in the name of fiction. Of course, in order to explore that theme, I'll need to make the violence explicit (or will I?), and while I've already written the core scene, which to me is an utterly horrible scenario, I really don't know if I want to go back into it. Maybe I'm flirting with the idea of making it an Absolute Zero Cool kind of story (in which 'characters' interacted with 'reality') so that I can deflect some of that horror. Or maybe I'm just trying to create a get-out clause for myself, and wash my hands of the violence while still incorporating it into the story - that's possible too. 

Funnily enough, I'm just putting the final touches to the e-book version of The Big O, which was originally published in 2007 and was never available as an e-book before. I wrote that book - which is a comedy caper about a kidnapping gone wrong - as a reaction to writing Eightball Boogie and the first pass of what became Absolute Zero Cool, both of which were pretty dark in tone, and the intention was to try to write a credible crime comedy in which no one was murdered and the violence was kept to the absolute minimum (someone does suffer a gunshot wound, but it's via an accidental discharge). So I guess I've been here before, wrestling with the violence-in-fiction issue. And that was probably the most fun of any book I've written to date, so maybe there's a lesson in there for me somewhere.

Having said all that, it's true that I'm the kind of writer to writes to find out what it is he's really trying to say. So maybe I should just knuckle down and write the bloody thing ...

WR: Well, I don't think I'll be the only one looking forward to whatever you come up with. And, in the meantime, I have to work out how I do the practical research for a novel about being trapped in polar ice over an  Arctic winter ...

Criminal Splatterings!

According to the BBC, Mark Ryland is due to play Thomas Cromwell in the Television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies.  More information can be found here.  Mantel's Booker-winning novels follow Cromwell, Henry VIII's adviser, and his rise and fall in the Tudor court.  The books are being adapted for a six-part series due to be shown on BBC Two.

The BBC are also due to make two different dramas based on the Great Train Robbery.  The dramas will be told from the point of view of firstly the robbers who committed the offence and secondly the detectives as they solve the crime.  Entitled the Robbers Tale and The Coppers Tale the two 90 minute programmes are due to be shown on BBC One later on this year as part of the 50^th anniversary of the robbery.  More information can be found here.

As a result of the highly successful run of the first series of Father Brown based on the novels by G K Chesterton shown on BBC One, a second series has been commissioned.  The new series of ten forty-five minute episodes will begin shooting towards the end of May 2013.

The BBC have commissioned a new ten-part series on The Musketeers.  Set on the streets of 17th-century Paris where law and order is more an idea than reality, the series follows Musketeers Athos, Aramis and Porthos who are far more than King Louis XIII’s personal bodyguards.  The 10- part drama is due to be shown in 2014 and will feature Peter Capaldi best known for The Thick of It as Cardinal Richelieu.  More information can be found here.

Look out for Shetland a new crime drama based on the novels by “Vera” author Ann Cleeves.

Set against a stunning Scottish backdrop, Shetland, BBC One’s powerful new murder-mystery stars Douglas Henshall as Detective Jimmy Perez, a native Shetlander who has returned home after a long spell away and leads a murder investigation, uncovering secrets and lies from the past.  The first episode is due to be shown today on BBC One at 9:00pm.  An interview with Ann Cleeves can be read here and a clip can be seen here.  Ann also discusses Shetland in the Telegraph as well.

A new series of Perspectives is due to be shown on ITV starting with David Suchet setting out to unravel the mystery surrounding the life and work of Agatha Christie.  David Suchet: The Mystery of Agatha Christie is due to be shown on ITV on Sunday 17 March at 10:00pm.  More information can be found here.

In more Agatha Christie drama news, David Suchet, Pauline Moran, Hugh Fraser and Philip Jackson have been reunited once again in Agatha Christie’s The Big Four. Adapted by award-winning screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss and actor Ian Hallard, The Big Four plunges Poirot into a world of global espionage where he uncovers a theatrical tale of murder, secrets, lies and love, set against the backdrop of the impending World War II.

The trailer for Iron Man 3 has been released and can be seen below.  It is due to be released on 25^th April in the UK.

And in more Christie news, according to Deadline.com and Empireonline, Paramount Pictures have bought the spec screenplay entitled Agatha.  The spec screenplay written by Allison Schroeder is based on a particular period in Agatha Christie’s life.

Congratulations go to David Hewson who is due to write the novelisation of The Killing III.  Hewson wrote the novelisation for The Killing II and according to the Bookseller, The Killing III is due to be published in February 2014.

Pan Macmillan have acquired two novels from debut author Clare Donoghue.  The first novel in series The Watcher is due to be published in March 2014.  The series is set in south London and features DI Mike Lockyer and DS Jane Bennett.  The Watcher follows the hunt for a serial killer preying on young women.

According to Booktrade.info, CSI Portsmouth the annual event that brings together top crime writers from around the UK to face a panel of crime experts have found themselves a new home.  The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard is to be its new home.  This year the event is due to take place on Saturday 2nd November 2013 in The Princess Royal Gallery.  CSI Portsmouth is the brainchild of author Pauline Rowson whose books are set in Portsmouth.

If you have not seen or read it then there is a good article in the Guardian by Alison Flood who interviewed Ruth Rendell about her life in writing.  The article can be read here.  There is also an article in the Independent as well which is more personal and can be read here.

The Independent’s Invisible Ink: No 163 is on Sébastien Japrisot.  The full article can be read here.  Jasprisot is best known for his first crime novel published in 1950, The 10:30 From Marseilles

Interesting article in the Telegraph by Jake Kerridge who talks to French author Fred Vargas.  Whilst she still works as an archaeologist, she manages to writer her novels in three weeks!

Dennis Haysbert has booked a co-starring role in the CBS drama pilot Backstrom, from writer Hart Hanson, based on the Swedish book series that centres on Everett Backstrom, an overweight, hot-tempered detective who tries, and fails, to change his self-destructive behaviour.  Haysbert will play John Almond, a detective working with Backstrom.  Haysbert, most recently seen on the big screen in Sheldon Candis’ Luv, will next appear in a thriller titled Wards Island, alongside Ernie Hudson and Bill Duke, which centres on a viral outbreak in New York City that turns the infected into werewolves; and also he's replaced the late Michael Clarke Duncan in the follow-up film to the 2005 Robert Rodriguez-directed hit, Sin City, based on the comic by Franck Miller titled Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. 

Point Blank at the BFI

POINT BLANK
Directed by John Boorman
US 1967 | 92 mins | Cert 15

With: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn

A BFI release

Release date: 29 March 2013

At the BFI Southbank plus selected venues nationwide

John Boorman’s American debut remains a landmark crime movie, mixing fast-paced, hard-hitting Hollywood action with European stylistic experimentation and cool, existential enquiry to lastingly intoxicating effect.

Heading up a slew of actors who can only be described as ‘iconic’, Lee Marvin is cast to career-best perfection as Walker, an old-school gangster left to die in Alcatraz after an otherwise successful heist. Like some anachronistic avenging angel, he returns to seek out those who betrayed him and retrieve his share of the loot from the outwardly respectable, strangely faceless ‘Organisation’. But does Walker belong, can he still function in this world?

Bringing a sharp outsider’s eye – and Philip Lathrop’s superb Scope compositions – to the strikingly angular cityscapes of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Boorman also deployed a teasingly fragmented chronology, innovative sound design and careful colour schemes to create a consistently surprising, acerbically witty and gripping narrative that finally constitutes a vengeful dream of vain desires. Though there have been subsequent adaptations of Donald Westlake’s The Hunter, this terse masterpiece remains by far the best, and still feels extraordinarily, exhilaratingly modern. – Geoff Andrew

Books To Look Forward To From Harper Collins

Terrifyingly authentic, London-set debut crime novel with a psychological edge, by an ex-Met detective.  DI Sean Corrigan is not like other detectives.  The terrible abuse he suffered in childhood has not stopped him enjoying family life with his wife and two daughters, or pursuing an impressive career with South London's Murder Investigation Unit.  Nevertheless, it has left him with an uncanny ability to identify the darkness in others - a darkness he recognises still exists deep within his own psyche and battles to keep buried there.  Now Sean's on the trail of the most dangerous killer he has ever encountered.  The perpetrator has no recognisable MO, leaves no forensic evidence and his victims have nothing in common.  But Sean knows they were all murdered by the same man.  Now all he has to do is find the evidence, convince his bosses and stop the killing ...before his adversary gets too close to home.  Cold Killing is by Luke Delaney and is due to be published in March 2013.

Professor Morley's guide to Norfolk is a story of bygone England; quaint villages, eccentric locals - and murder!  It is 1937 and disillusioned Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton is stony broke.  So when he sees a mysterious advertisement for a job where 'intelligence is essential', he applies.  Thus begins Sefton's association with Professor Swanton Morley, an omnivorous intellect.  Morley's latest project is a history of traditional England, with a guide to every county.  They start in Norfolk, but when the vicar of Blakeney is found hanging from his church's bell rope, Morley and Sefton find themselves drawn into a rather more fiendish plot.  Did the Reverend really take his own life, or was it - murder?  Beginning a thrilling new detective series, 'The Norfolk Mystery' is the first of The County Guides by Ian Sansom and is due to be published in June 2013.

Touch is by Mark Sennen and is due to be published in April 2013.  Harry likes pretty things.  He likes to look at them.  Sometimes that is not enough.  He wants to get closer.  Naughty Harry.  DI Savage and her team in Plymouth are struggling with their investigation into a string of horrific attacks on young women.  The victims are being drugged, abducted, assaulted and then abandoned with only a dull memory of what has happened.  However, when the mutilated body of one of these women is found on a beach, the case becomes a chilling murder inquiry.  Stopping at just one victim will never be enough ...not for this killer.  Part thriller, part police procedural, Touch will take you deep into the madness of a serial killer's mind.

The Lost Boy is the seventh book in the Patrik Hedstrom and Erika Falck series by Camilla Lackberg and is due to be published in March 2013.  On a late summer's night, a young woman jumps in her car, her hands slippery with blood on the steering wheel.  Taking her five-year-old son, Nathalie flees to the only safe haven she knows: the island of Graskar off the coast of Fjallbacka...Meanwhile, Detective Patrik Hedstrom has barely stepped foot inside his office following a lengthy sick leave before he catches a murder investigation.  A man has been murdered in his home: the victim, Mats Sverin, was the council's financial director, heading up a regeneration project worth millions.  But when Patrik and his team start digging into the dead man's life, all they can uncover is unanswered questions.  Why was Mats in such a rush to return to his home town of Fjallbacka after years in Gothenburg?  And is it pure coincidence that Mats's childhood sweetheart Nathalie has also suddenly returned to the area?  Mats visited Nathalie on Graskar before his death.  The locals call the island 'The Ghost Isle' - they say that it is haunted, and that the dead have something to tell the living.  But will anyone get close enough to uncover the dark secrets that lurk there?

He's posted on your wall.  He's following you on Twitter.  He knows where you are right now...When Amy receives an email from her older sister, Becky, announcing that she's off travelling and "don't try to find me", she is worried.  Becky would never do such a thing on a whim.  Amy - who is recovering from an abusive relationship that has left her terrified of love - soon finds that Becky had started using online dating sites.  Aided by Becky's neighbour, Gary, Amy sets about tracking down the men her sister had dated, following a trail that leads her into the darkly seductive world of internet hook-ups.  But Amy is unaware that a sadistic killer is watching - a killer who's been using the internet to stalk, torture and kill.  Now he's got something very special planned for Amy and she is about to find out that romance really is dead.  Slash Forward is by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards and is due to be published in July 2013.

As teenagers, Maggie Donaldson and Johnny Taylor fell hard and fast in love.  But they did not know they were from rival gangland families in London's criminal underworld.  Going public with their relationship would have brought them more trouble than they could handle, so for years they concealed the truth.  But their house of cards will not be safe for much longer.  Maggie's violent father Max has always been out for the Taylors' blood and treats his own family with barely more sympathy.  There is a long-buried reason for the vendetta that no one talks about, a secret so shocking it could tear each family - and Maggie and Johnny - apart...  Trapped is a gritty story of bitter feuds and unbreakable bonds by Jacqui Rose and is due to be published in March 2013.

Books to Look Forward to From Faber and Faber

A New Town - Clairmont, Texas is home to some of the South's most wealthy and established families. When Emily Page and her husband Mike move there from New York City, so Mike can become the new sheriff, they believe that it's a place where they can build a new life for themselves. A New Start - Pregnant Emily is soon invited to a prestigious lunch hosted by local doyenne Caroline Warwick. There she meets Clairmont's rich housewives, but soon discovers that under the veneer of respectability lies shifting loyalties and dangerous secrets. A Troubled Past - When Caroline Warwick disappears, Emily wonders if any of the well-bred Southern ladies in Caroline's circle could have wanted her harmed. What was the hold that Caroline had over them and what was Caroline herself trying to hide? As Emily begins to search for clues about Caroline's disappearance, secrets from her own troubled past start to come to light. Have her problems followed her to Clairmont, or is there something more sinister going on closer to home?  Lie Still is by Julia Heaberlin and is due to be published in August 2013.

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway is the second book in the series by Sara Gran and is due to be published in July 2013.  When Paul Casablancas, Claire DeWitt's musician ex-boyfriend, is found dead in his home in San Francisco's Mission District, the police are convinced it's a simple robbery. But, as Claire knows, nothing is ever simple. With the help of her new assistant Claude, Claire follows the clues, finding possible leads to Paul's fate in other cases - a long-ago missing girl and a modern-day miniature horse theft in Marin. As visions of the past reveal the secrets of the present, Claire begins to understand the words of the enigmatic French detective Jacques Silette: 'The detective won't know what he is capable of until he encounters a mystery that pierces his own heart.'

Josephine Tey is brought face to face with her own ghosts when she inherits a remote Suffolk cottage from her godmother, the actress Hester Larkspur. Red Barn Cottage stands close to the site of one of England's most notorious nineteenth century murders, and holds a time-capsule of secrets that Josephine must unravel to solve the mysteries of Hester's life - and her death. As she gets closer to the truth, Josephine is horrified to realise that the cottage has the power to destroy the peace of a village still stained by the shame of its past. Moving between Suffolk, London and Inverness, between the popular world of melodrama and the painful crimes at its heart, "The Death of Lucy Kyte" is both an intriguing insight into the dilemmas of Tey's personal life and a disturbing story of obsession, abuse and deceit.' The Death of Lucy Kyte is by Nicola Upson and is due to be published in August 2013.

The Cry is by Helen Fitzgerald and is due to be published in September 2013.  He’s gone and telling the truth won’t bring him back…… 'Someone's stolen my baby!' When Joanna shouts for help on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world.  The search for baby Noah takes on a life of its own as rumours begin to circulate online and it turns out everyone has something to hide. Guilt eats away at Joanna's sanity and she and her partner slowly turn against each other. Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And will it take another death to finally make things right?

Dead Line is by Chris Ewan and is due to be published in August 2013.And just as your plan is developing, so you're evolving, too. You're changing in ways you never would have thought possible before. But that's acceptable to you. You're prepared to do whatever it takes...Why? Because you're the specialist. And that's how you're going to succeed. What do you do if your fiancee goes missing, presumed taken? If you're Daniel Trent, a highly-trained specialist in hostage negotiation, the answer is simple: You find out who took her and you make them talk. But what if your chief suspect is kidnapped? How do you get him back quickly - and alive? Set in Marseille, "Dead Line" is a fast-paced thriller that pitches the reader into Daniel's world, as he tries desperately to secure the release of Jerome Moreau from a ruthless gang in order to interrogate him on the whereabouts of his fiancee. When things don't go according to plan however, Daniel must use all his skills and instincts to find the answers he's looking for, but will he be in time?

North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes - including giant king cobras - in the first class compartments of the railway. Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah's son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim's incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him...  Night Train to Jamalpur is by Andrew Martin and is due to be published in September 2013.

  

Blue is the Night is by Eoin McNamee and is due to be published in October 2013. 1949. Lance Curran is set to prosecute a young man for a brutal murder, in the 'Robert the Painter' case, one which threatens to tear society apart. In the searing July heat, corruption and justice vie as Harry Ferguson, Judge Curran's fixer, contemplates the souls of men adrift, and his own fall from grace with the beautiful and wilful Patricia. Within three years, Curran will be a judge, his nineteen year old daughter dead, at the hands of a still unknown murderer, and his wife Doris condemned to an asylum for the rest of her days. In "Blue Is the Night", it is Doris who finally emerges from the fog of deceit and blame to cast new light into the murder of her daughter - as McNamee once again explores and dramatizes a notorious and nefarious case.

If You Were Here is by Alafair Burke and is due to be published in September 2013.  When McKenna Jordan, a magazine journalist investigating the story of the heroic and unidentified woman, finds the video footage, she thinks she recognizes her as Susan Hauptmann. But Susan disappeared without a trace ten years earlier, having just introduced McKenna to her future husband, Patrick. McKenna's complex search for her missing friend forces her to unearth secrets that lie deep in all their pasts. A sublimely plotted mystery and a devastating thriller about marriage, private security and journalistic scandal.

In the comfortable suburb where she lives, Heloise is just a mom, the youngish widow with a forgettable job who somehow never misses her son's soccer games or school plays. But in discrete hotel rooms throughout the area, she's the woman of your dreams - if you can afford her hourly fee. For more than a decade, Heloise has believed her unorthodox life to be a safe one; rigidly compartmentalized, maintaining no real friendships and trusting very few people. But now this secret life is under siege. Her once oblivious accountant is asking loaded questions about her business. Her longtime protector is hinting at new, mysterious dangers. Her employees can no longer be trusted. Her ex, the one who doesn't know he's the father of her son, is appealing his life sentence. And, one county over, another so-called 'suburban madam' has been found dead in her car, an apparent suicide...Can Heloise stay alive long enough to remake her life again, and save her son? Can she really expect to leave everything else behind? And When She Was Good is by Laura Lippman and is due to be published in June 2013.

After three years in the wilderness, hardboiled reporter Gerry Conway is back at his desk at the Glasgow Tribune. But three years is a long time on newspapers and things have changed - readers are dwindling, budgets are tightening, and the Trib's once rigorous standards are slipping. Once the paper's star reporter, Conway now plays second fiddle to his former protege, crime reporter Martin Moir. But when Moir goes AWOL as a big story breaks, Conway is dispatched to cover a gangland shooting. And when Moir's body turns up in a flooded quarry, Conway is drawn deeper into the city's criminal underworld as he looks for the truth about his colleague's death. Braving the hostility of gangsters, ambitious politicians and his own newspaper bosses, Conway discovers he still has what it takes to break a big story. But this is a story not everyone wants to hear as the city prepares to host the Commonwealth Games and the country gears up for a make-or-break referendum on independence. In this, the second book in the Conway Trilogy, Liam McIlvanney explores the murky interface of crime and politics in the New Scotland. Where the Dead Men Go is due to be published in September 2013.

  

A reformed Sicilian criminal, Carmelo Trapani, has been kidnapped and his search for the the aged Carmello leads Staffe all the way back to a terrible act at the Battle of Cable Street. Meanwhile, Staffe's own loyal servant,, DS Pulford, is in Pentonville awaiting trial for the murder of Jadus Golding, the very man who attempted to murder Staffe, leaving wounds from which Staffe is still recovering and it suits some in the heirarchy to see Pulford go down. Can Staffe save Carmelo without leaving Pulford to the political vultures? As he battles find the man who murdered his own assailant, pressures also mount from within and Staffe's heart falters - in every way. His job is on the line and when he least expects it, his own past puts a gun to his head. Hailed as 'London's answer to The Wire', "Kill And Tell" takes the "Staffe" series up a notch and into the very highest echelon of contemporary crime writing.  Kill and Tell is by Adam Creed and is due to be published in October 2013.

Limehouse, 1880: Dancing girls are going missing from 'Paradise' - the criminal manor with ruthless efficiency by the ferocious Lady Ginger. Seventeen-year-old music hall seamstress Kitty Peck finds herself reluctantly drawn into a web of blackmail, depravity and murder when The Lady devises a singular scheme to discover the truth. But as Kitty's scandalous and terrifying act becomes the talk of London, she finds herself facing someone even more deadly and horrifying than The Lady. Bold, impetuous and blessed with more brains than she cares to admit, it soon becomes apparent that it's up to the unlikely team of Kitty and her stagehand friend, Lucca, to unravel the truth and ensure that more girls do not meet with a similar fate. But are Kitty's courage and common sense and Lucca's book learning a match for the monster in the shadows? Their investigations take them from the gin-fuelled halls and doss houses of the East End to the champagne-fuelled galleries of the West End. Take nothing at face value: Kitty is about to step out on a path of discovery that changes everything...  Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders is by Kate Griffin and is due to be published in July 2013.

Books to Look Forward to From Quercus and Maclehose Press

Gold, Frankincense and Dust is the third book in the Commissario Soneri series by Valerio Varesi and is due to be published in November 2013.  Parma.  A multiple pile-up occurs on the autostrada into the city.  In the chaos, the burned body of a woman is found at the side of the road, but has no apparent link to the car accidents.  Commissario Soneri is assigned to the case and identifies the dead woman as Nina Iliescu, a Romanian immigrant whose beauty had enchanted a string of wealthy lovers.  Temptress, muse, angel, she was all things to all men.  Her murder conceals a crime and a sacrilege, and even in death, she has a surprise waiting for Soneri.

  

An Act of Kindness is the second book in the series featuring PI Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim by Barbara Nadel and it is due to be published in July 2013.  London's East End has always been a social and racial melting pot and never more so than today.  PI Lee Arnold and his assistant Mumtaz Hakim don't mind - it keeps them on their toes.  It is November.  The days are getting darker and they have a new case on their hands.  A young Asian couple moves into a dilapidated house in Upton Park.  The woman, Nasreen, spends much of her time working alone on the house, her husband Abdullah preoccupied with his job.  John Sawyer is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.  Since his discharge, he has been volatile and is now homeless.  An unlikely friendship develops between Nasreen and John, one that her husband would frown upon.  When John's body is discovered, Nasreen's suspicions light upon Abdullah.  Did he know they were friends?  Reluctant to go to the police, Nasreen reaches out to the Arnold Detective Agency.  Mumtaz Hakim begins to dig into Abdullah's past and into the house itself, which, she finds, holds its own grim secrets.

The Riot is by Laura Wilson and is due to be published in August 2013.  August 1958 and DI Stratton is working in Notting Hill.  In the midst of a heatwave, the area has reached boiling point in the slums as squalor, overcrowding and prostitution reach record levels.  Unscrupulous landlords are only too willing to take advantage of the newly arrived Caribbean immigrants, who find themselves encountering prejudice at every turn.  Tasked with investigating the murder of a rent collector, Stratton finds himself drawn into the maelstrom of greed, scandal and violence fuelled by racism, jealousy and the sheer struggle for survival.

Soho 4.A.M is by Nuala Casey and is due to be published in July 2013.  6 July 2005.  Great Britain has just been announced as the next host of the Olympics.  The euphoric crowds pour forth from Trafalgar Square into the waiting bars and restaurants of Soho.  Dreams, drugs, debauchery...Soho is London's red light district, where any desire can be satisfied in the blink of an eye.  But behind it, all there is a permanent community of residents whose own sins are concealed by the partying and excess.  Zoe, an aspiring model looking for her big break, will discover the sinister world behind the bright lights; artist Seb is hoping he can forget the past by drinking himself into oblivion while his friend Ade is about to take extreme measures to save his livelihood and relationship.  Meanwhile, Stella, Ade's girlfriend, wonders if this is the night to escape.  Through the dark streets, these four ordinary people walk a dangerous, twisted path through London's greatest adult playground.  Come the morning of 7 July, as jubilation turns to horror, will they have fallen into Soho's poisoned embrace while the nation's eyes are turned elsewhere?

Christmas Day.  In the attic of a London mansion, a masked man stands over a disgraced financier, holding a can of petrol and a match.  Looking on are the terrified man's wife and their daughter, who has a primed grenade tied around her throat.  The last hostage is a delivery boy - in the wrong place at the wrong time, but young enough to fancy himself a hero.  Surrounding the building are police helicopters, Special Forces, news crews - and Ed Mallory, blind hostage negotiator, feeling the pressure after his last case went painfully wrong.  But as he begins his tentative negotiations, it begins to dawn on him that this case is more complex, and more cruel, than any he has ever faced.  None of them can know how far-reaching the danger is.  And as a fanatical assassin works his way across the city towards them, hostage-taker and hostages become prey to a torturous pressure that builds to an explosively shocking climax.  Sacrifice is by Max Kinnings and is due to be published in August 2013.

Playing Grace is by Hazel Osmond and is due to be published in August 2013.  Grace is thoroughly in control of everything: her work life, her home life - and her love life.  Especially her love life.  But when her boss hires Tate Saunders, a brash American, to spice up the gallery where she works, he explodes into her life like a paintball.  She hates everything about him.  Then a precious icon is stolen while Grace and Tate are arguing, and the two are forced to team up to help recover it.  In spite of herself, Grace is won over by Tate's blundering American charm, and she begins to fall for him.  But is there a place for love in Grace's carefully ordered world?

When the Dead Awaken is by Steffen Jacobsen and is due to be published in September 2013.  The Neapolitan mafia, deadly assassins and a woman out for revenge.  Late one night in the port of Naples, a shipping container is dropped from a crane, spilling dozens of bodies.  Among the dead are a young woman and her son who were part of a witness protection programme.  A young district attorney, Sabrina d’Avalos, is tasked with the investigation.  But when links to the Neapolitan mafia – the Camorra – are uncovered, Sabrina becomes personally involved: the Camorra assassinated her father.  Now the mafia’s most terrifying assassins – the Albanian and L’Artista – are on Sabrina’s trail.  And Sabrina knows only too well that the Camorra will do anything necessary to protect their interests.

London, 1968: a society cracked down the middle.  A killer on the edge.  London, October 1968.  As Beatles fans encamp outside Abbey Road Studios up the road, the Marylebone CID is as much an old boys’ club as ever it was comfortably sexist, racially prejudiced and crawling with underhand dealings.  Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen is the pariah of the office, having just run out on a fellow officer held at knifepoint, when it’s shaken up by the arrival of WPC Helen Tozer: awkward chatterbox, farm girl, and the first woman to enter the murder unit – apart from the secretary.  When a young woman is found naked and strangled in well to do St John’s Wood her identity is a mystery.  The neighbours offer nothing but xenophobic suspicions, witnesses are staying silent; only Tozer’s savvy eyes gives Breen a lead.  Following it, resourceless, Breen sees one dead body lead to another – a trail of bloodshed taking them dangerously near to a killer with everything to lose.  A Song From Dead Lips is due to be published in August 2013 and is the first in a trilogy by William Shaw featuring DS Breen and WPC Tozer set against a clashing backdrop of sixties idealism and a corrupted CID on the brink of exposure.   

The Garden of Burning Sand is by Corban Addison and is due to be published in September 2013.  On a dark night in Lusaka, Zambia, an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted.  In shock, she cannot speak.  Her identity is a mystery.  Where did she come from?  Was the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act?  The girl's case is taken up by Zoe Fleming, a human rights lawyer working in Africa.  A betrayal in her own past gives the girl's plight a special resonance for Zoe, and she is determined to find the perpetrator and seek justice.  Also investigating on behalf of the Zambian police is Joseph Kabuta.  At first reluctant to work together, they team up.  Yet their progress is thwarted at every turn and it soon becomes clear that their opponents are every bit as powerful and determined as they are corrupt.

Detectives Zoe Barnes and Sam Taylor are called to the Lake District, a brother and sister have gone missing.  And they aren’t the only ones.  Across the country stories of children, missing or murdered by their mothers, grandmothers and nannies, are increasing – and talk of witches, the like of which hasn’t been heard since the 17th century, is spreading.  Could there really be a group of women intent on evil, or is this fantasy?  The Beautiful Killers is by Tom Grieves and is due to be published in October 2013.

No protagonist.  No detective.  Nothing between killer, victim – and reader.  Bavaria, Germany, 1944.  Afra Zauner is unmarried, and pregnant.  Her father’s shame, her mother’s fury and the whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh upon her.  She doesn’t believe in sin.  But everyone else does.  And one of them brings their judgement down upon her.  Years later, Hermann Müller is throwing a drunk out of his pub; a stranger who won’t stop ranting about an old murder left unsolved.  Hermann doesn’t listen.  But the next morning he finds a cutting, fallen from the man’s pocket, it features an old friend of his.  No-one ever atoned for Afra’s death; her story is waiting to be told.  Finsterau is by Andrea Maria Schenkel and is due to be published in November 2013.

In 1799, William Pitt is attempting to force through anti-slavery legislation.  Many have a vested interest in preventing this, and would go to dangerous lengths to stop it.  Meanwhile, Tom Pascoe of the river police is grieving for the women he loved, looking for solace at the bottom of a bottle.  Tom’s drinking has made him increasingly unpredictable, so when he is called to a body in the Thames – that is a close associate of William Pitt – there’s doubt over whether he’s up to the task.  AS Pitt finds himself in increasing peril, Tom must pull himself together or be dragged under.  The Rising Tide is the third book in the Tom Pascoe series by Patrick Easter and is due to be published in August 2013.

  

The Prey is by Tony Park and is due to be published in November 2013.  Kylie Hamilton is an American executive working for the international mining company Global Resource.  Sent to South Africa to investigate a new site on the edge of the Kruger National Park, she becomes caught up in the battle over the area’s resources.  When a group of illegal miners kidnap one of the legal employees, manager Rory Dowd steps in.  With Kylie and Rory forced to work side by side, their mutual dislike evolves into solidarity before becoming something more.  Together, there’s a chance they can rescue the kidnapped man.

In The Passage Du Desire is by Dominique Sylvain and introduces Lola Jost and Ingrid Diesel, a mismatched pair of amateur sleuths always one step ahead of the Paris Police.  On the one hand, there’s Lola.  She is grumpy retired police commissioner who cannot go a day without her best friend: red wine.  On the other hand, there’s Ingrid, an American girl in love with Paris.  She gives massages all day long and does stripteases at night.  This mismatched and funny duo live in a Parisian working class district and can never refuse to help a friend in trouble with the police.  In The Passage Du Passage is due to be published in December 2013.

The Axe Factor is by Colin Cotterill and is due to be published in November 2013.  On the gulf of Thailand, the Juree family are managing their run-down beach resort for the second year – still stalked by disaster.  Daughter Jimm has a new love in her life, but finds herself pursued by another man, with a markedly different agenda in mind.  Meanwhile, Jimm’s new case is that of Dr Somluk, a champion of the rights of rural mothers, who is missing following a run in with the marketers of infant formula.  As ever, there is blood, brine and bedlam aplenty at the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort.

Eight days prior to the American Presidential election, the US Secretary of State is abducted while conducting secret negotiations aboard a tanker in the South China Sea.  ‘Seven days’ is his captors warning.  Seven days before he is beheaded, live on the internet.  Former CIA operative and master thief Robin Monarch embarks on a journey into the volatile underworld of Southeast Asia to locate and extract his target.  But as he navigates this shady labyrinth, Monarch starts to unravel a worrying conspiracy: one stretching from the red light districts of Thailand to the White House itself.  Takes a Rogue is by Mark Sullivan and is due to be published in December 2013.

Recently divorced, Tessa Parker runs a successful B&B in a seaside town.  During a surprise visit from Australia, a long-lost aunt lets slip a family secret that unsettles her fragile world.  In shock, and feeling betrayed by her whole family, Tessa confides in her ex-husband just as he reveals he has a new woman in his life.  Struck unexpectedly by jealousy; balancing her own turmoil against the demands of parenting, Tessa tries to trace her birth father, with devastating results.  Yet she fails to see how this is a crucial moment in her children's lives.  If she gets things wrong, the consequences could be fatal.  The Bad Mother is by Isabelle Grey and is due to be published in September 2012.

Killing Caravaggio is by Alex Connor and is due to be published in December 2013.  In Killing Caravaggio author Alex Connor takes the artist Caravaggio as its subject.

February 1941, wartime Berlin.  Brilliant, idealistic young detective Georg Heuser joins the Murder Squad in the midst of the biggest manhunt the city has ever seen.  A serial killer is slaughtering women on S-Bahn trains and leaving their battered bodies by the tracks.  Heuser must confront evil eye-to-eye as he helps track down the murderer.  July 1959, peacetime West Germany: a pioneering young lawyer, Paula Siebert, is the sole woman in a federal unit investigating men who have committed crimes of unimaginable magnitude and horror.  Their leader has just been arrested.  His name is Georg Heuser.  Siebert is sure of his guilt.  However, one question haunts her: how could a once decent man have become a sadistic monster?  The answer lies in the desolate wastes of the Russian Front; the vast landmass conquered by Hitler's forces...the new empire the Nazis call Ostland.  Based on an extraordinary true story, Ostland is a gripping detective thriller, a harrowing account of the Holocaust and a thought-provoking examination of the capacity for sin that lurks in every human soul.  Ostland is by David Thomas who also writes thrillers under the name Tom Cain.  Ostland is due to be published in July 2013.

Seduction of the Innocent with Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins has been a president of The Private Eye Writers of America, and won or been nominated for numerous Edgars and Shamuses for his large (and constantly expanding) body of work, both for fiction and non-fiction.  He is the author of the graphic novel Road to Perdition that was made into an Oscar winning film.  In September 2006, he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.  Although known primarily as a novelist and critic Max is also a filmmaker.  Titan Publishers have recently published Seduction of the Innocent.

What made you decide to write about this part of comic book history?

It is an extremely significant period -- even a particularly significant year: 1954.  That's the year Dr. Fredric Wertham publishes his anti-comic-book tome, Seduction of the Innocent.  It's the year that the Senate holds a hearing looking into comic books as a chief cause of juvenile delinquency, with Wertham as their star witness.  In addition, it's the year the Comics Code Authority forms and begins censoring comic books, emasculating the comic-book industry.

Dr Werthham’s book sparked a United States Senate investigation and the formation of the Comics Code Authority; do you think that the backlash against the comic industry was justified?

Wholly unjustified.  There's no question that there was bad taste out there, and even EC had its moments where they clearly crossed the line.  But that's freedom of speech, freedom of expression.  Wertham's whole approach was based on two false premises -- that comic books are inherently for children, and that children will be easily influenced by their content.  Most of the comic books that Wertham attacked were clearly intended for audiences no younger than, say, junior high, and mostly older.  Lots of ex-GIs came home from the Second World War having bought comics at their PX.  Lots of high school and college kids were reading them, and housewives and...  well, they mainstream.  Look at the genres: romance, western, crime, humour, and on and on.

How difficult was it to find the balance between fact and fantasy whilst writing Seduction of the Innocent?

Not difficult at all.  The Jack and Maggie Starr aspect is pure Golden Age mystery.  Though I take the underlying historical aspect very seriously, the book is primarily light-hearted fun, if a little dark at times.

What made you decide to have the comic strip like illustrations at the start of each chapter?

This is the third Jack and Maggie Starr novel, and that was always the format -- sometimes kind of in-between a graphic novel and a prose novel.  So we have a comics panel to announce each chapter, and a comic-book sequence that is a "challenge to the reader" from Jack and Maggie, who go over the suspects and clues, to give the reader a chance to figure out the solution.  That's a Golden Age technique started by Ellery Queen, although not with the comic-book presentation.  Artist Terry Beatty, who draws the Phantom Sunday strip, is a great mimic and he can echo the subject of these novels in his art.  This time, he is very EC in his approach; kind of Jack Davis meets Johnny Craig.

How much have comic books influenced your writing?

Very much.  The Dick Tracy comic books of my childhood led me into mystery fiction in the first place.  I think writing comics helped me to learn to think visually, which is also helpful in screenwriting.

As much as Seduction of the Innocent is a pulp novel, there is also an element of golden age mystery to it specifically at the end.  Was this your intention?

Yes.  This is absolutely a Poirot/Charlie Chan kind of wrap-up -- gather the suspects and reveal the culprit.  I did that in the first Jack Starr novel, A Killing in Comics, too.  Not in the second one, Strip for Murder, though.  Here's where the Nero Wolfe homage really kicks in -- after Jack has done all the work, it's Maggie who puts the pieces together and identifies, and confronts, the killer.

Have you a favourite comic book or series and if so which one?

In comic strips, it would be Li'l Abner.  Picking a comic book is tough -- of all time, maybe Crime Suspenstories from EC.  As a kid, I loved Batman...this is before the TV show, when I was very little.  In the early sixties, it was Spiderman and The Fantastic Four, the Ditko and Kirby years.  In the later sixties, it was Zap, with Crumb and that crowd.  In the eighties and nineties, my favourite was Ms. Tree...because it helped pay the rent.  That's the book I did with Terry Beatty, and we may be reviving it.  And that's when Lone Wolf and Cub came to my attention -- brilliant.  One of the best books around today is Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo.

This article was posted as part of the Seduction of the Innocent Blog Tour, celebrating the release of Max Allan Collins' new Hard Case Crime novel. For the opportunity to win a copy of the book, simply tweet “I would like a copy of Seduction of the Innocent @TitanBooks #MaxAllanCollins”.

Find out more about the book and the tour at www.titanbooks.com/seductionoftheinnocent