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Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year…the winner is
Live from the awards ceremony at The Crown Hotel, Harrogate…the winner of this year’s novel of the year is A Simple Act of Violence by RJ Ellroy!
Congratulations!
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Grab your notepad and pen and get some real festival action at ‘Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival’
Tomorrow afternoon the Killer Reads team heads to Harrogate for its
annual Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. With our very own Stuart MacBride presiding over events, this year promises to be one of the best yet! -
An interview with Jilliane Hoffman
Killer Reads: What inspired you to write Pretty Little Things? Jilliane Hoffman: My daughter was just eleven years old when a classmate of hers started a texting relationship via cell phone with a boy she’d met on the internet. She had pretended she was sixteen and he had claimed he was a teen, as well. This classmate then passed the telephone numbers and email addresses of all her fourth grade friends along to her new cell phone pal. The friends, being eleven year old girls, thought the whole thing was pretty funny and so they continued the ruse and ‘told’ this stranger that they were all 16.
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Jilliane Hoffman’s Top Ten Favourite Novels
1. Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris, because he can scare me – not an easy task.
2. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, because of his style. He took a real life crime and novelized it, but yet retained the grit of a true crime drama, complete with quotes.
3. The Firm, John Grisham, because it was the first legal thriller that I ever read that didn’t bore me during the legal parts.
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Win a signed copy of Pretty Little Things
Jilliane Hoffman’s…
Pretty Little Things
Pretty Little Things is the 4th novel from former Assistant District State Attorney Jilliane Hoffman. After her fantastic debut Retribution, Hoffman has gone from strength to strength and Pretty Little Things is no exception. A terrifying, spine-chilling tale that is set to get your pulse racing. Inspired by both her experience as a felony prosecutor in Miami and her worst fears as a mother to two young teenage daughters, Hoffman describes it as “the most personal, frightening thriller I’ve ever written”.
Read the first couple of chapters here
Buy now from Amazon
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An interview with Neil White
Neil White answers our questions on the inspiration behind his novels, his role as Senior Crown Prosecutor and the book he wishes he’d written
Killer Reads: How long have you been writing for?
Neil White: I have been writing since 1994, when I decided that I would try to write a book when I was on holiday. After twelve years of work and rejections, I signed a publishing contract in 2006, and my first book, Fallen Idols, was published by Avon in 2007.
KR: How much do you draw on real life in your work?
NW: I write crime fiction that is meant to be contemporary, and so it is impossible not to draw on real life, particularly as I still work part-time as a Senior Crown Prosecutor. Although I do not use real cases of my own as plots, I pick up small asides and opinions from the police that do make it into the books, and I have gained an understanding as to what motivates the police on an individual and personal level. The same can be said for the actions and motivations of criminals, particularly those who view crime as a career option rather than an occasional blip.
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31 BOND STREET by Ellen Horan: The Story Behind the Book
I discovered the idea for this book one Saturday afternoon, years ago, while idly flipping through the bins in a print shop. I found a yellowed newspaper page with an etching of townhouses on a tree-lined street in New York City. At closer look, a crowd was assembled on the cobblestones before one of the homes. The caption said the address was 31 Bond Street and the date was 1857.
The print shop was on Houston Street, just blocks away from Bond Street, which is a short street nestled between Soho and the Bowery. It was puzzling, because I knew of no townhouses on that single block. Not yet trendy or gentrified, there were only warehouses, car parks and the type of business that sells rusting scrap metal. Examining the page further, the story mentioned a crime at 31 Bond Street — a wealthy dentist had been brutally murdered inside his home.
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Meg Gardiner talks Jo Beckett
JO BECKETT:
FIGHTING THROUGH CHAOS IN THE REAL WORLD
I wanted to turn CSI inside out.
Forensic pathology and crime scene investigation can tell us a lot, but often they come up short—the evidence may be inadequate or inconclusive. And while blood spatter, DNA and gunshot wound analysis might tell us how a victim has died, for closure we still need to know why.
So I wanted to write a thriller series set in a messy, uncertain, dangerous world where lab technology can’t solve all problems. Yeah, I wanted to write about the world we actually live in. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to Killer Reads – the one-stop shop for all the latest Crime and Thriller books published by HarperCollins. If you want to discover the best books from the most talked-about writers then this is the place for you. We will be giving you exclusive extracts and interviews from our top authors as well as keeping you up to date with our latest book news.
