A Friend You Haven’t Met Yet by Peter Swanson

One of the themes I wanted to explore in my new novel, Before She Knew Him, was the idea of friendship. Not those long, impervious friendships—the ones that begin in childhood and stretch through the years—but those friendships that start late in life. And in particular, I was interested in the couple friendship.

Making friends as an adult is hard. If you happen to be part of a couple, then making couple friends can be doubly hard. Everyone needs to get along. Inevitably, such relationships can become fraught with tension—who doesn’t like whom, or, worse, does someone like someone else too much?

The opening scene of my book depicts a neighbourhood block party in a suburb west of Boston. Hen, the main protagonist, an artist with a history of mental health issues, is reluctant to go, even though they are new to the neighbourhood. Lloyd, her husband, convinces her. Of course, if he hadn’t managed to get her to attend, the rest of the novel wouldn’t happen. At this party, Hen and Lloyd meet their neighbours, Matthew and Mira, and after a dinner party with the four of them, Hen becomes convinced that her new neighbour is a murderer.

What interested me in writing this book wasn’t exploring the idea of whether Hen was imagining things, or if her neighbour is really the killer. It’s not a spoiler alert to say that Matthew Dolamore is a killer. The reader is told this at the beginning of chapter two. What interested me in writing this book was that Hen and Matthew ultimately form a relationship, one actually based on a strong, if twisted, bond.

After Hen becomes convinced that Matthew has killed someone named Dustin Miller, a former student of his, two years earlier, she shares her suspicions with both her husband and with a homicide detective. But because of Hen’s past, including a time in college when she falsely accused a fellow freshman of attempted murder, she is, understandably, an unreliable witness. And because she is such an unreliable witness, it provides an opening for Matthew, once he learns that she knows the truth. He can tell her anything, because she is powerless to turn around and repeat what he has said. No one will believe her. Most importantly, he can tell her the truth.

In a strange way, Hen gets something from Matthew, as well. When the two talk, it’s not just that he can confess to her what he’s done, he is also the only person who actually believes her, who knows that she’s not crazy. If that’s not the basis for some sort of friendship, I don’t know what is. 

I love these kinds of relationships in thrillers. There’s the relationship between Guy and Bruno in Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. There’s Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling from Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. And my absolute favourite part of the recent TV series Luther, starring Idris Elba, was Luther’s relationship with the killer, Alice Morgan, played by the always brilliant Ruth Wilson. I have to say I lost a little interest when she disappeared from the show.

Strangers are scary, and sometimes friends are, as well. We never know what’s really in someone’s heart, and I think that’s a good basis for a thriller. It’s possible that my book is one long cautionary tale about attending neighbourhood block parties, but it’s also about putting yourself out there, getting to know people. Strangers are just friends we haven’t met. Or friends we wish we had never met.

Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson is out now (Faber & Faber, £12.99)

When Hen and Lloyd move into their new house in West Dartford, Mass., they’re relieved to meet, at their first block party, the only other seemingly-childless couple in their neighbourhood, Matthew and Mira Dolamore. Turns out they live in the Dutch Colonial immediately next door.  When they’re invited over for dinner, however, things take a sinister turn when Hen thinks she sees something suspicious in Matthew’s study. Could this charming, mild-mannered College Professor really be hiding a dark secret, one that only Hen, whose been battling her own problems with depression and medication, could know about? Lloyd certainly doesn’t seem to believe her, and so, forced together, Hen and Matthew start to form an unlikely bond. But who, if anyone, is really in danger?

More information about the author can be found on his website.  He can also be found on Facebook and follower him on Twitter @PeterSwanson3

Watching the Detectives

So, as we greet another adventure featuring the surreal detectives from the pen of Chris Fowler in the upcoming “The Lonely Hour”, Shots asked the author a little about these two iconic characters.

This may come as a shock but I don’t think of the Bryant & May mysteries (seventeen and counting) as a series. They’re a chance for me to write every kind of crime novel I can imagine, and to emulate some of my hero(ine)s. So far, I’ve tackled locked-room puzzles, whydunnits, how-will-he-get-away-with-its, races against time, comic capers, Christie and Crispin homages, and a dozen other crime sub-genres. I haven’t got around to gluing little clues into the pages as Dennis Wheatley’s publishers did but it can only be a matter of time. As a result, the books work well out of sequence because each is a fresh adventure.

The latest, ‘Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour’, is a darker, somewhat grittier adventure for my senior detectives. And it’s not a whodunnit, as I let the reader know the killer’s identity from the start, but there are questions about how and why, so there are still surprises to the very last page.

Each book feels like a new beginning, except that I get to use the same characters, and it really is like greeting old friends who have become so real to me over time, perhaps because each one is based at least in part on someone I know.

The new novel is about a man who knows what people fear most, and always strikes at 4:00am, the loneliest hour of the night, when we are all at our most vulnerable. To catch him Arthur Bryant changes his unit’s shifts to night-time, causing all kinds of havoc. It gave me a chance to explore the city at night and investigate murder, arson, kidnap, blackmail, bats and the psychological effects of loneliness on city-dwellers.

My research required me to chat to strangers hanging around in the street at 4:00am, many of whom didn’t make much sense. It’s a time when all the normal rules are upended, which only made the writing more interesting!

More information about these surreal detectives is available HERE

Hilda's Crime Countdown

Dear Partners In Crime,

A reminder that the early booking deal for this year's Crime Fiction Weekend closes on 31 March.

Our theme this year is 'Gamechangers: writers who have transformed the genre'and you can view the full line-up of authors and speakers, plus the weekend schedule here

BRAD PARKS: The reality of modern money laundering

Photo Credit: Sara Harris

The seedy strip mall with the potholed parking lot.

The dimly lit warehouse, weeds proliferating out front.

The restaurant that stays open even though no one eats there—and always seems to have a lot of guys with crooked noses coming in and out.

In the popular imagination, these are the places we think of when someone says the words “money laundering.”

In reality, chances are excellent the most notorious money launderer in your neighborhood is the gleaming, solidly constructed, scrupulously landscaped office of a large, international bank.

My latest standalone thriller, The Last Act, is inspired by the malfeasance of one such financial institution.

The action of the novel centers around Tommy Jump, an out-of-work actor who is approached by the FBI and offered the role of a lifetime: He must go to prison and befriend a disgraced former banker who knows the location of documents related to money laundering that can be used to bring down a ruthless Mexican drug cartel.

It’s all loosely based on the real-life case of Wachovia. During the mid-2000s—when, coincidentally, I was a Wachovia customer—the bank had a relationship with currency exchange houses in Mexico wherein anyone could walk in off the street with a wad of cash and, for a small fee, change it into American greenbacks that were then shunted into an account at Wachovia.

It was practically an invitation to launder money and according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, several Mexican drug cartels happily availed themselves of it.

The DEA discovered this arrangement after it had already been bumping along for a few years, and only when Mexican authorities seized a DC-9 plane, owned by the Sinaloa cartel, that was laden with $100 million worth of cocaine. The DEA started following the money—how did a criminal syndicate manage to buy a commercial airliner?— and soon found Sinaloa had done it the same way I was buying my breakfast cereal at the time.

With an account from Wachovia.

Wachovia, which has since been taken over by Wells Fargo, later agreed to pay a $160 million fine for failing to apply proper anti-money laundering controls on $378 billion worth of transfers between itself and the currency exchange houses.

Let’s write that again: $378 billion. As in more than a third of a trillion dollars. 

A lot of it was surely legitimate guest workers sending money back to their families, that sort of thing. But some of it? Apparently not so much.

And Wachovia is far from alone. Not long after its malfeasance was uncovered, UK-based HSBC paid a $1.9 billion fine for its role in laundering drug money. French-based BNP-Paribas and, most recently, Dutch-based Danske Bank had also paid huge fines.

It turns out criminals today are just like everyone else: They want to be able to move their money easily, with the touch of a button. And they have found willing partners in these banks, which collect large fees for their services as they remain willfully blind about the griminess of the money they’re handling.

Oh, sure, the banks say they have cleaned up their acts. But I can almost guarantee that even if they have, some other bank out there hasn’t.

Why? Because as of this writing—after having laundered many untold billions of dollars for these criminal syndicates—not a single executive from any of these banks has served so much as a day in prison.

They haven’t even faced criminal charges.

            

All of the banks have received what is known as a deferred prosecution agreement. Basically, it’s the government slapping them on the wrist and saying, “Now you cut this out! Or else!”

That’s where my novel—in which the banker gets tossed in jail—diverges from reality.

Because otherwise who could believe anything so preposterous?

The Last Act by Brad Parks

Former Broadway star Tommy Jump isn’t getting the roles he once did. As his final run as Sancho Ponza draws to a close, Tommy is getting ready to give up the stage, find a steady paycheck, and settle down with his fiancée.  Cue Special Agent Danny Ruiz. An old school friend of Tommy’s, now with the FBI, Ruiz makes Tommy an offer that sounds too good to refuse. All Tommy has to do is spend six months in prison, acting as failed bank robber ’Pete Goodrich’.  Inside, he must find and befriend Mitchell Dupree, who has hidden a secret cache of documents incriminating enough to take down New Colima, one of Mexico’s largest drug cartels. If Tommy can get Dupree and reveal where the documents are hidden, the FBI will give him $300,000, more than enough to jumpstart a new life. But does he have what it takes to pull off this one final role?

International bestseller Brad Parks is the only author to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His UK debut, Say Nothing, was Sunday TimesThriller of the Month. The Last Actreleases from Faber & Faber on March 12. For more, visit www.BradParksBooks.com.

'The Never Game': An Evening with Jeffery Deaver at Heffers

Number one bestselling author Jeffery Deaver returns with a stunning new thriller – the first in an exciting series featuring enigmatic investigator Colter Shaw. Join Jeffery at Heffers, as he talks about THE NEVER GAME and life as 'the best psychological thriller writer around'.

The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver (Published by HarperCollins Publisher)

You wake up all alone, in the middle of a forest, miles from anywhere. Beside you lie five objects – a lighter, grease, picture-frame wire, a piece of silk, a bottle of water – which you will need to use if you want to survive.

You’ve been taken by the Whispering Man and there is no escape. He makes the rules and nobody ever gets out alive. Enigmatic investigator Colter Shaw is fighting to stop the murders. But another victim has been snatched from her family and he’s running out of time. In the darkest corner of Silicon Valley, a new breed of killer is emerging: someone with a deadly obsession, whose twisted game is spiralling out of control.

More information about the event and tickets can be found here.

Go behind the scenes of Grantchester! Competition

We have a pair of tickets to giveaway to one lucky Shots reader for an event with author James Runcie (The Grantchester Mysteries) this Wednesday 13th March!  

Led by TV personality Reverend Richard Coles (BBC One The Big Painting Challenge, QI, Have I Got News For You?), the author behind ITV’s hit series will be in conversation with lead scriptwriter Daisy Coulam, to dive behind the scenes of the popular TV show.

James and Daisy will discuss the inspiration behind the stories, the challenges of adapting to screen and key moments from the last four series: From the bromance between Sidney Chambers (James Norton) and Geordie Keating (Robson Green), to tackling homosexuality and the church, and introducing the new vicar William Davenport (Tom Brittney).  

Attendees will also be treated to a preview of James’ new novel - The Road to Grantchester - a captivating prequel published by Bloomsbury on 21st March.

To be in with a chance send your names by 5:00pm to grantchestercompetition@fmcm.co.uk 

The winner will be notified.

All Falls Down Behind the Book By Sheena Kamal

The places that leave an impression on my imagination are not usually the ones I’d expect. They’re not your average vacation hot spots, all-inclusive resorts with endless buffets or even famed cities steeped in history. They’re not necessarily the places I want to return to (though I’d never turn my nose up at a free trip, either.)

Detroit is one of those cities that caught my attention for no particularly good reason. I know as well as anyone else it’s not a city that you’d expect or desire to be moved by. However, my first time driving through Detroit some years ago, on my way to a concert, there it was. Like a feather passed along my nerve endings, a jolt of awareness. There’s something for me here, I thought. At the time, I didn’t quite know what, but I filed the impression away and knew I’d somehow come back to it. 

It took a few years, though. In the meantime, I’d moved from Toronto to Vancouver to write a suspense novel (Eyes Like Mine) about a damaged but very resilient woman named Nora Watts. When Nora’s story began to take shape as a series, I knew that for the second book I wanted her to hunt down the clues to her past in an American city. That’s when I remembered Detroit. It was perfect. I have strong feelings about it, firstly, and it also has an incredible music scene. Nora has a powerful connection with music, so it seemed like the ideal location. It’s also very different from Vancouver and I thought that juxtaposition would be interesting to examine.

The events of this sequel would take place over a relatively short period of time, and I knew I had to approach it differently from how I write Vancouver. I wanted my Detroit experience to be short and immersive, a shock to my system and Nora’s, so I planned five days there and contacted a private investigator to show me the ropes. 

There was a snag almost immediately. 

The private investigator was so busy he foisted me off on his friend. Given Detroit’s reputation, I was suspicious of this “friend,” but it was coming down to the wire and I needed someone. I said, what the hell, and agreed to let a stranger pick me up from the bus station when I arrived in from Toronto. 

I’m quite impulsive when it comes to travel, but even I had reservations about the wisdom of this plan. 

However, luck was on my side. My private investigator was not a murderous psychopath, as I’d feared. He was an active police investigator named Ira Todd who genuinely enjoyed talking to writers. (I promise I’m not making this up!) 

When he picked me up, he said, “My task force just broke a 2-year old case and I’ve got to get back to headquarters to interview a witness. Want to come along?”

Did I ever! Instead of depositing me at reception, which is what I’d expected, he took me to meet the other members of the homicide task force and allowed me to watch the interview take place on a live feed. It was incredible to see this seasoned interviewer talk to a witness just as a case was breaking. I’d never seen anything like it.  

I spent five days with Ira, riding in his undercover vehicle, getting to know this city he’d lived in his entire life, the streets he’d patrolled and worked his butt off to keep safe. I learned how, when the city crumbled and became the punchline of a nasty joke, the people who could leave did and everyone else was left to pick up the pieces. I talked to everyone I could. Some people loved this broken city and others hated it. No matter what their views were, just about everybody had a strong opinion they were eager to share—and share at length. 

At the end of my brief trip, I said goodbye to my guardian angel Ira, who’d gone out of his way to show me that Detroit isn’t good or bad. Like everywhere else, it’s a bit of both, and everything in between. It’s the perfect city for this part of Nora’s journey because you can’t go there without feeling something. I hope I was able to put some of that feeling into the book. If it didn’t come through, it’s entirely my fault. The city of Detroit, as always, gave me one hell of a ride. 

It All Falls Down by Sheena Kamal (Published by Zaffre Books)

Nora Watts is being hunted . . . When Nora Watts is approached by a man claiming to know her late father, she is thrown into turmoil. Struggling with the imminent death, from cancer, of her friend and mentor Sebastian Crow, she is unprepared for the memories that this encounter brings back. What happened to her father that made him kill himself and abandon Nora and her sister? Heading to Detroit to try and find some answers about his life there, Nora expects to discover a reason behind his suicide. Instead, she finds more questions than answers. But trouble always follows Nora, and it's found her in Detroit, a city that is as broken as she is.

More  information about the author and her books can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @sheena_kamal.   You can also find her on Facebook.

Grantchester - behind the scenes with creator James Runcie

Go Behind the Scenes of Grantchester!

Don’t miss an opportunity to see London Book & Screen Week Ambassador James Runcie (The Grantchester Mysteries) for this special event on Wednesday 13th March!

Led by TV personality Reverend Richard Coles (BBC One The Big Painting Challenge, QI, Have I Got News For You?), the author behind ITV’s hit series will be in conversation with lead scriptwriter Daisy Coulam, to dive behind the scenes of the popular TV show.

James and Daisy will discuss the inspiration behind the stories, the challenges of adapting to screen and key moments from the last four series: From the bromance between Sidney Chambers (James Norton) and Geordie Keating (Robson Green), to tackling homosexuality and the church, and introducing the new vicar William Davenport (Tom Brittney).

Attendees will also be treated to a preview of James’ new novel - The Road to Grantchester - a captivating prequel published by Bloomsbury on 21st March.

Ticket information can be found here.

If all roads lead to Rome, what took me to Athens?

The first historical mystery I read was Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth. I’d say it qualifies, as Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover his father’s lost legion’s fate. Along with Sutcliffe’s other novels, it fired my fascination with history, and ancient history in particular. People’s worlds and lives were so different to our own, and yet people themselves were and are wholly recognisable in things like everyday letters, from cuneiform tablets onwards. We know how it feels to succeed, or to fail, when we see these things on papyrus or parchment. We sympathise with the sting of injustice, and share gratitude for a loyal friend. Other aspects of ancient lives are incomprehensible, such as the unquestioning acceptance of slavery. These tensions intrigue me to this day. 

In my teens, historical mystery fiction taught me to look very carefully at whose version of the ‘truth’ I was reading, and to consider what might lie behind that. In Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, Alan Grant’s bed-ridden investigation into the deaths of the Princes in the Tower is transformed by his realisation that the sainted Sir Thomas More was a child at the time of events he’s supposedly recalling. More’s whole testimony is hearsay and, Grant concludes, it’s driven by a particular agenda. I applied what Alan Grant taught me to my history lessons, and to reading crime fiction, thereafter. 

When I discovered Peter Lovesey’s Sergeant Cribb novels, I found facets of Victorian life that we never came across at school. This started me reading social history, alongside the details of politics, battles and dates that I needed to revise for exams. The other fascination of this series was realising how integral the particular time, place and social attitudes were to each book. These specific circumstances created these crimes and it’s as a man convincingly of that era, that Cribb uncovers the truth. This has coloured my choices in historical mysteries ever since, and is one reason why I’m currently enjoying Andrew Taylor’s Marwood and Lovett books so much, where the crimes, the settings and the resolutions are inextricably interlinked. 

I continued to read crime fiction through university, though I confess I was reluctant when an enthusiastic friend, and fellow Classics graduate, first tried to lend me The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis. I’d pretty much stopped reading any historical fiction set in the Ancient World. After four years of study, these books either bored me rigid with pages of detail that I already knew, on Rome’s cursus honorem for instance, or infuriated me by presenting as uncontested fact something that was highly debatable. The chances were I’d spent a week reading contradictory accounts and interpretations on that very topic, before trying to beat my essay notes into submission with only Alan Grant to guide me. This doesn’t mean these were bad books, but however good they might be, they weren’t for me. 

I’m glad my friend persevered. I’ve been reading the Falco books ever since, and wait impatiently for each Flavia Alba story. Davis does her research and equally crucially, she understands that what goes onto the page is only what’s needed for the story, to illuminate character, means, motive and opportunity. As a result, her light touch brings ancient Rome to vivid and convincing life in a way that seemingly endless pages of detailed description can paradoxically fail to do. That was a touchstone for me as I considered writing my own historical crime novels. 

Though I was never tempted to write stories set in Rome. As well as history, I studied Classical literature at school and university. That taught me how human nature fascinated the Greeks of 5th Century Athens. Tragedies from The Oresteia to Oedipus Rex explore what drives men and women to kill, as well as testing the eternal tension between justice and revenge. Euripides’ Trojan Women looks at war from the victims’ perspective. Aristophanes’ comedies use humour to examine how far people will go in pursuit of love, lust and money. Herodotus and Thucydides consider the nature of political power, and democracy’s vulnerability to demagogues and oligarchs. With so many of these ideas underpinning contemporary crime fiction, I decided this time and place was an ideal fit for a history mystery. When any successful detective must be an astute observer of human nature, who better than a playwright to shed light on a murder in the shadows of Athens? I began writing...

Shadows of Athens by J M Alvey (Orion Publishing Company) £8.99

443 BC, and, after decades of war with Persia, peace has finally come to Athens. The city is being rebuilt, and commerce and culture are flourishing.  Aspiring playwright Philocles has come home to find a man with his throat cut slumped against his front gate. Is it just a robbery gone wrong? But, if so, why didn't the thieves take the dead man's valuables? With the play that could make his name just days away, he must find out who this man is, why he has been murdered - and why the corpse was left in his doorway.  But Philocles soon realises he has been caught up in something far bigger, and there are those who don't want him looking any further . . .

More information about J M Alvey can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @AlveyAuthor and also on Facebook.

Solving problem-solving problems – on writing Viking Crime and getting yourself into a spot of bother.

©Photo by Gunnar Freyr Photography

When I started out I wrote a fantasy trilogy about large men with big beards and bigger axes finding inventive ways to hack, cleave and slash at each other with the odd enthusiastic string of curses thrown in, because sometimes one has to. And while that was great fun (The Valhalla Saga, available from retailers of various repute, features fantasy, mythology and crimes (against history, comedy, common sense and at times language)) it had one thing in common with all trilogies, bad and good - it ended. 

While not wholly unexpected, this left me somewhat stuck as to what on earth to do next. Like all writers I had a couple of ideas for things. Most of them were non-starters; a couple were half-starters, one was a limper and another an enthusiastic shuffler but none was a runner or even close to a finisher. I kept coming back to the fact that one of my minor characters from the second book in the trilogy had been such fun to write that she sort of elbowed herself into the third book and played a much larger part in it than I’d expected – and her name was Helga Finnsdottir.

And as characters sometimes do, Helga posed questions. Some were easy to answer; others were, if I am to be honest with you, quite inappropriate and definitely not fit for printing on the pages of a reputable website. The one I got stuck on, though, was a simple one: Where did she come from?

So I set to finding out – and I found myself writing a story about a murder set on a family farm in Norway in the year 965 and a young farm girl full of curiosity that would get her into quite a lot of trouble. And already, the astute reader will spot some things that I possibly maybe didn‘t think about so much before launching myself enthusiastically into this new project.

What exactly constitutes murder in the Viking Age? They were – rather famously – not against a spot of killing. They weren’t so keen on murdering your own family, and guests were supposed to be safe in your house – and then there is the whole matter of Viking Law, which is a subject matter for another chat.

But the main problem remains. Once there is a murder – how does one investigate? Physical evidence is at best rather limited, and forensic evidence is non-existent. 

There is of course an easy way to get around the evidence part. One could invent a Viking named, say, Skarlak Holmsson, who invents a method of burning ash in a very hot fire and dusting it over dagger hilts to note the finger marks left behind. Sadly, having decided to splash ‘Viking’ all over the books, doing that would probably mean I’d need to change my name, hand in my Icelandic passport and spend my days in hiding from irate Viking enthusiasts (of which there are a fair few, and they don’t give much ground to the Vikings themselves in fearsomeness). Also, as I am unaware of other Viking Murder Mysteries out there (but do feel free to correct me on this) there’s not really an established procedure to follow, so some of the joys of the more procedural route are a little bit lost.

My conclusion, once I had done a fair bit of wailing, head-scratching and a spot of gnashing of teeth was that if one wants to keep some measure of historical accuracy, writing a Viking Murder Mystery is actually a little bit tricky – but Helga did have a solution that fit in nicely with the answer to the question of how she became like she was when she first walked onto the page. 

And this is where we get to a point which I am more than happy to argue, possibly over a tankard of mead. 

Crime fiction depends on plausibility. A murder is a puzzle, and if there are pieces of the solution that are from another puzzle, or missing, or clearly cut to fit by your grandfather‘s knife (he was a man of great practical ability but never one of patience) it is markedly less satisfying. The world is full of people who can write annoyingly brilliant crime books that work, so the book has to work within the reality of the world. 

Further to that, historical fiction depends on historical veracity. The period has to feel authentic, and what is in the period must feel real to the characters because otherwise it doesn‘t feel real to the reader. And while the Vikings had little in the way of tech, they did have – and firmly believed in – Gods and magic. And because magic by its very nature solves things and Gods are sort of supposed to know everything, we have a little bit of a problem if we want a satisfying story about crime. However, Gods are also known for not doing what they are supposed to and magic can be quite tricky to wield. And there is also entirely the possibility that some of it might not be real. 

Some mysteries are better left for the reader to solve.

Kin by Snorri Kristjansson is published by Jo Fletcher Books in paperback on 7th March, £8.99

THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 2019

We were delighted to get news of the upcoming Scottish Crime Book of the Year, named after the legendary William McIlvanney, the Godfather of the so-called sub-genre we call Tartan Noir, with Laidlaw. Recently we thanked publisher Jamie Byng of Canongate for keeping the work of William McIIvanney in print.

This year is particularly melancholic as William’s brother, Hugh the renowned Sports Journalist recently passed away, though the family’s writing tradition continues with Liam – as this article indicates. It was at last year’s event that Liam McIlvanney was awarded the 2019 award, and his novel, The Quaker is currently in paperback and is one we recommend highly.

So without further ado, here’s more information from the Bloody Scotland Team >
 
Winner to be presented at Opening Reception of Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on Friday 20 September 2019
 

The McIlvanney Prize – Bloody Scotland’s annual prize awarded to the best Scottish Crime book of the year – is now open for entries. It provides Scottish crime writing with recognition and aims to raise the profile and prestige of the genre as a whole. Scottish roots are a must for competition applications: authors must either be born or raised in Scotland, have lived there for six years or more or their books are substantially set there. Only fiction is eligible. The prize was renamed in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the Godfather of Tartan Noir, in 2016.

Eligible novels must have been first published in the UK between 1 August 2018 and 31 July 2019. Full details at https://bloodyscotland.com/mcilvanney-prize-entry/

New this year we have a debut prize which will be selected from the highest scoring titles in the first round and judged by the board of Bloody Scotland including crime writers Lin Anderson, Craig Robertson, Gordon Brown and Abir Mukerjee.

The McIlvanney Prize itself will be judged by Alison Flood, books reporter for The Guardian and a former news reporter for The Bookseller; James Crawford, chair of Publishing Scotland and presenter of BBC series, Scotland from the Sky and Stuart Cosgrove, writer and broadcaster who was formerly a senior executive at Channel 4.

Entries (PDFs of the book sent by email to Director, Bob McDevitt bob@bloodyscotland.com with McIlvanney Prize Entry 2019 plus the book title in the header) should be submitted by 5pm on Friday 26 April 2019.

The longlist is expected to comprise up to 12 books which will be announced after the organisers meeting in June 2019 at which point finished copies will be sent to each of the three judges.

The winner of The McIlvanney Prize will receive a cheque for £1000 and a new prize of £500 will be awarded for the Scottish Crime Debut of the Year

This year the Festival will take place from 20-22 September 2019. Full information at www.bloodyscotland.com

The 2018 programme will be launched on Monday 3 June in Stirling and Tuesday 4 June in London.

Previous winners of the Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award are Liam McIlvanney with The Quaker in 2018, Denise Mina with The Long Drop in 2017, Chris Brookmyre with Black Widow in 2016, Craig Russell with The Ghosts of Altona in 2015, Peter May with Entry Island in 2014, Malcolm Mackay with How A Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013 and Charles Cumming with A Foreign Country in 2012.

The initial longlisting is handled by over 70 crime fiction readers and booksellers from all over Scotland overseen by an organising committee and the longlist is then handed to the panel of judges to decide on the eventual winner.

Longlisted titles are promoted in bookshops throughout Scotland in the period between the announcement at the end of August and the presentation on 20 September 2019.

Publishers will make every effort to ensure that any longlisted author attends the ceremony on 20 September 2019 in Stirling and will be available for interview before, immediately afterwards and the following week.

We welcome TV & radio crews. BBC Scotland filmed the prize live in 2016 and last year spent the first day of the Festival getting footage of past winners and shortlisted authors which was broadcast immediately before the prize was announced.

Alan Yentob and the crew from BBC Imagine spent the whole weekend at the Festival in 2016 and last year Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4 broadcast live from Stirling during the Festival. Come and join us!
 

A Place of Danger by Kate Rhodes

Kate Rhodes explains why Tresco is the ideal setting for her new thriller, Ruin Beach

 When I told my husband that my new D.I. Ben Kitto book would be set in Tresco, he looked at me in amazement. I had to work hard to make him see why the place chills me, with its innate sense of menace. It’s one of the most popular locations in the Isles of Scilly, with day trippers strolling ashore, determined to see the orchids and rare plants inside the world-famous Abbey Gardens, but when winter’s chill descends and the population reduces to less than 200 permanent residents, the island’s darker side emerges.

Tresco is the only privately-owned island in the Scillies, leased from the Duchy of Cornwall by the Dorrien-Smith family since 1834. No one is entitled to own property there, with all of the picture-perfect holiday cottages run as time-shares. Once the population thins, the two-mile-long island becomes a ghost town. It resembles Portmeirion; a haunted stage set with manicured lawns, and a helipad for super-rich visitors, but the shops, hotels and pubs are all closed. The story of RUIN BEACH is set before the tourist season begins, when the locals are thrown back on their own resources and the Atlantic is unsettled by harsh sea breezes. Tresco lies just a thirty minute boat ride from the larger island of St Mary’s, but storms can interrupt the ferry service and leave the place isolated for days.

The island’s history makes it an ideal setting for murder and mayhem. It has always been an embattled place, used as a strategic defence point by Roman settlers and later by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Evidence of its military past is littered across the coastline, with the Gothic ruins of castles, batteries and fortifications towering above every beach. Smugglers have left their mark on the island too. Until the end of the seventeenth century trading in contrabrand was Tresco’s main form of employment, because the island lay too far from the mainland for customs and excise men to catch the law breakers. Ruin Beach gained its name from the hundreds of ships that foundered close by, only to have their goods plundered by locals who battled fierce waves to reach the wrecks in the island’s sailing gigs. Pieces of wreckage, broken barrels and the bodies of drowned sailors washed ashore at Ruin Beach for days after a ship broke apart on the spikes of basalt that lie hidden at the edge of the cove, below the sea’s surface.

The starting point for my book is a place that terrified me during my childhood summer holidays. Piper’s Hole is a sea cave on the northern coast of Tresco; a dank and murky place used long ago by smugglers to hide stolen goods. My sister scared the living daylights out of me, with tales of drownings and ghostly pirates. Local storytellers also paint a dark picture of the place, claiming that the cave runs so deep below the sea’s surface, the tunnel connects with St Mary’s, several nautical miles away.

Tresco gave me all the elements I needed as the setting for my new novel. DI Kitto must investigate the death of a professional deep-sea diver who has been running diving trips to the many wrecks that lie just off-shore, but the local community guards its secrets. He discovers that the island’s identity is inextricably linked to the sea, which can turn murderous in the blink of an eye.

Ruin Beach by Kate Rhodes published by Simon and Schuster.

The island of Tresco holds a dark secret someone will kill to protect.  Ben Kitto has become the Scilly Isles’ Deputy Chief of Police. As the island’s lazy summer takes hold, he finds himself missing the excitement of the murder squad in London. But when the body of professional diver Jude Trellon is discovered, anchored to the rocks of a nearby cave, his investigative skills are once again needed.  At first it appears that the young woman’s death was a tragic accident, but when evidence is found that suggests otherwise, the islanders close ranks. With even those closest to the victim refusing to talk, it seems that plenty of people might have had reason to harm her. As the islanders remain guarded, Ben Kitto suspects a killer is on the loose in Tresco.  Everyone is a suspect.  Nobody is safe.

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 More information about Kate Rhodes and her books can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @K_RhodesWriter.