Your name: Jacques Filippi
Your blog’s name: The House of Crime and Mystery
Blog’s URL: http://houseofcrimeandmystery.blogspot.com
Which types of books do you review: crime fiction, mystery, thrillers, also biographies and other non-fiction titles
What do you like about crime fiction: The best crime fiction will pull me into a world that is real and where my brain will be kept alive by a good plot in a well-written story involving characters I will believe; the good guys as well as the bad guys.
For anyone starting out, can you recommend 5 essential crime books to read: Only five? I could recommend so many! My classics are by contemporary writers so here are my choices:
- Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
- Angel’s Flight by Michael Connelly
- Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
- Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
- The White Trilogy by Ken Bruen
Pretty much everything else by these five authors. And Laura Lippman, Michael Robotham, Mark Billingham, Mo Hayder, Ian Rankin, Adrian McKinty, etc.
Do you have 1 or 2 personal favourites: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, and Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith because they started me on the path of crime fiction when I was a teenager.
New crime fiction authors you are most excited by: Chris F. Holm and David Swinson (they have forthcoming titles in fall 2015 and spring 2016). I also really enjoyed Kelly Braffet’s Save Yourself, in 2013, and can’t wait to see what she’ll publish next.
Greatest fictional criminal: I won’t think too long about this one because it would be too hard to pick only one; I’ll go with a very recent one, named Joseph “Joe” Coughlin, from Dennis Lehane’s imagination. I choose Joe Coughlin because he’s the good guy that we follow around and cheer for in the books “Live by Night” and “World Gone By” (also has a small part in The Given Day) but he is also a gangster who killed many men (and is also responsible for the death of a few women and kids). The fact that Lehane can make us like a character like that proves his writing skills are out of this world.
Greatest fictional detective: Hieronymous Bosch.
Are you on social media? Twitter Facebook.com and on Goodreads under my name. I’m also co-founder of the QuébeCrime Writers Festival
How can authors and publishers encourage you to review their books: just politely ask and send books (my address is on my website).
How do you like people to contact you? by email at housecrimyst@gmail.com
