-
Review of Lucifer’s Tears
November 30, 20119:44 am
As well as being our featured reviewer this week, as Gareth has written in with such a detailed review of Lucifer’s Tears, we thought that we’d give it its very own blog post!
Name: Gareth RiceOccupation: University Researcher and freelance writer
Best detective/good guy: John Rebus/Dr. Gill Grissom Favourite place to read: Anywhere really but I prefer cafes that have a quiet hum or, my top floor apartment with a stunning vista of the city.
Anything else you want to tell us? Reading crime fiction has taught me a lot about my own psychology and obsessions…
Review of Lucifer’s Tears
With its cold landscapes a perfect setting for grisly tales of murder, ‘Scandinavin noir’ has been the inescapable genre of recent years. When reviewers search for a ‘Scandinavin noir’ icon they tend to come up with writers, such as Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell, Ilkka Remes, Matti Joensuu and, more recently, Stieg Larsson. Enter Lucifer’s Tears, James Thompson’s second Inspector Kari Vaara novel which is a full-hearted stab at a sequel with more than an invigorating whiff of its brilliant predecessor, Snow Angels. The purgatorial sounding title comes from the first chapter, in which Vaara reflects on his home: “Finland. The ninth and innermost circle of hell. A frozen lake of blood and guilt formed from Lucifer’s tears, turned to ice by the flapping of his leathery wings.”
We join Vaara in Helsinki where he has moved to from his home in the remote Finnish north because his wife, Kate, was offered an opportunity to advance her career in the most upmarket hotel in the capital. It’s not long before Vaara and his sidekick, Milo, “a nervous puppy…who needs a firm hand to guide him”, are dispatched to investigate a crime scene in the residential district of Töölö. They are faced with what seems like an open and shut case: the nude, dead body of a young woman, Iisa Fillipov, the wife of the Russian businessman Ivan Fillipov. She has been sadistically tortured. Her skin is marked with cigarette burns and she has been whipped viciously with a riding crop, and ultimately asphyxiated. Iisa’s lover, an Estonian man called Rein Saar, woke up beside her in bed covered in her blood. Vaara is reluctant to arrest Saar and be done with it, contra his boss’s, Jyri Ivalo, suggestion. This marks the start of well paced interwoven plot lines that never feels padded out, and make it difficult to gulp back the keenness to read on.
-
Advice for all aspiring writers from Laurence O’Bryan
November 22, 201112:29 pm
The Easy Road to Writing Success
As with most things in life it’s the details that count. My first novel, a thriller titled, The Istanbul Puzzle, is coming out January 19. And I’m as excited as a puppy with his first friend.
I recommend the feeling to any aspiring writer. Or to anyone in fact. It’s the recognition you’ve always wanted and the dream you never told anyone about. Ok, I hear you think, how did he get here? Was it really that easy?
The answer is yes, depending on how you view the small matter of time. My journey went like this:
In 1998 I bought a book on screenwriting. It advised writing a book first.
I started writing a novel in the middle of 2000. I’ve written almost every day from then until now. I reckon I’m a slow learner. You’ll probably pick it up a lot faster.
I mean who takes that long to learn how to write?
I finished my first book in 2005 and started on The Istanbul Puzzle. My first book has never been published. That’s for the best. I sent it to a paid for editor in 2006 for a review. I had to sit down as I read it. I couldn’t write for a week after. Maybe it was because I could only afford her cheapest review service, but she certainly didn’t spare the knives. Though why she went on for so many pages I still don’t know. A perverse generosity, I suppose.
But from 2005-2010 I took every point she’d made and started to work on my writing. I read about 50 books on the craft of writing, attended conferences (Winchester do a great one) and night courses. Then I started getting up at 3-4AM to write. I’ve been doing that ever since. Don’t even ask what that does to your life.
Then I joined Authonomy to see what Harper Collins were doing online, but I couldn’t submit anything as I’d already sent The Istanbul Puzzle to agents and it didn’t feel right having it on Authonmy at the same time. But I read everything on the site and on every other writer’s site I could find. Eventually my wife wanted to get me an addiction counsellor. But she never gave up on me. -
Researching a thriller
November 21, 20115:58 am
How I researched Hide Meby Ava McCarthy
Did you hear the one about the Irishman, the badger and the pygmy shrew? Apparently, they all originally came to Ireland on a boat from the Basque country.
Well, maybe not the same boat.
I stumbled across this entertaining piece of science while researching my latest thriller, Hide Me. For various reasons, I had flung my Irish heroine, Harry Martinez, into the Basque country of northern Spain, and now here it seemed that the Irish and the Basques had ancient and unique genetic links. Who knew? Research is always fun, but uncovering nuggets like these is what makes it so addictive.
Setting is important to me. The best books are created when the writer knows her story world in intimate detail and understands the kind of people that populate it. So when I sent Harry to San Sebastián, naturally I went along for the ride.
And so did my husband and children. In our house, for ‘research’, read ‘family holiday’. But being a writer on location is nothing like being
a tourist. Sure, we visited some local attractions, but mostly I looked for places where I might kill people. Forests, mountains, tall buildings. Cliff edges were always full of potential. In San Sebastián, I had rich pickings: steep river banks; thrashing water; the churning ocean driven by wind blasting across the Bay of Biscay.With my plot scenes in mind, I dragged my young family to graveyards and hilltops, backstreets and alleyways. We staked out the local police station, photographing it from all sides. A uniformed officer with a gun eventually asked us to move along.
-
Are you brave enough to read it?
November 16, 201111:27 am
Welcome to 77 Shadow Street, where every 38 years a terror descends….
December 1897:
A family abducted, never to be found
December 1935: A house hold slaughtered in their beds
December 1973:
Terrified workmen see a glimpse of hell
December this year… is 77 Shadow Street destined to be a death house once more?
To read an extract and watch a trailer, simply visit
-
October’s Killer Review title is…
November 9, 20119:34 am
The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill
Wolf Hadda’s life has been a fairytale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter’s son, he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur, happily married to the girl of his dreams.A knock on the door one morning ends it all. Universally reviled, thrown into prison while protesting his innocence, abandoned by friends and family, Wolf retreats into silence. Seven years later prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes the breakthrough. Wolf begins to talk and under her guidance gets parole, returning to his rundown family home in rural Cumbria.
-
And the winner of the Stuart MacBride tickets is…
November 4, 20111:25 pm
Sue Gunnee! Congratulations, Sue! We’ll be in touch to let you know how to collect your tickets.Thank you to everyone who entered, and please remember to visit http://www.readingfestivalofcrimewriting.org.uk/index.html for tickets and more information on Reading Crime Festival.
-
A Million for a Morgue: Vote to name a new morgue after Stuart MacBride
November 3, 201112:51 pm
For the bargain price of only £1 a vote, Dundee University’s cutting-edge new forensics centre could be named after HC author Stuart MacBride.
-
Home alone? All the books you shouldn’t read
November 1, 20119:28 am
In the spirit of Halloween I asked the team to answer the following question:
What book would you never read alone in an empty house?
Don’t forget to look below for your chance to win two of our most terrifying reads…
Laura: I have started Misery by Stephen King many times. I have only ever finished it once, in broad daylight, in a park full of people. My reason for this was simple. Passers-by could come to my aid should Annie Wilkes decide to jump out from behind a tree and smash a typewriter over my legs before dragging me off into the wilderness. When reading Misery you cannot help but picture the film. But I urge you to read the book. It is the kind of read that has you on the edge of your seat from start to finish as obsessive fan Annie flits between the personas of, carer, tormentor and would-be murderer to author Paul Sheldon. The build-up of suspense between Annie and Paul is staggering and when you reach the end I guarantee that your heart will be in your mouth.
Helen: Anything by Neil White! I love Neil’s books, I really do, but he sure does know how to set up a gruesome murder scene. He’s a master of suspense, and as his killers stalk their victims, you know that someone’s about to meet a seriously sticky end.
I’m currently working on his new book, Beyond Evil, and it’s opening scene stayed with me long into the dark October nights. Imagine, if you will, the victim tied to a bed. Behind him, a wall daubed in his own blood. And his body, with blood, guts, bones and sinew on show to the world, after having had a full autopsy carried out on it. Whilst he was still alive…
Chilling? Gruesome? Oh yes. But I couldn’t wait to find out who was behind it all. Brilliant stuff.
Hannah: When I’m not checking every single cupboard and wardrobe in the house for skulking murderers, double-checking under my bed for the odd rapist, closing the curtains tight so that the lone eye of a madman can’t peep through, and convincing myself that I can hear breathing coming from underneath my bed, I am reading crime and thriller fiction. I can’t help it, I’m obsessed, and nothing will dissuade me from plunging into the latest in the genre. -
Win two tickets to see Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham at Reading Crime Festival 2011!
October 31, 20111:31 pm
What is it? From comedy to corpses, this will be a night to remember as two of the UK’s top crime writers, Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham, chat to the audience about their careers and their experience in crime-writing.Where is it? Victoria Hall, Reading Museum and Town Hall
When is it? Saturday 12th November from 7 to 8pmTo win two tickets, which have been kindly donated by our good friends at Reading Crime Festival, then simply click on the button below to read an extract from Stuart MacBride’s latest ebook, Sawbones, and answer the following question:
-
Hurricane Katrina: a great place to set a thriller?
October 28, 20117:21 am
Daniel Blake certainly thought so! Read his article on why he chose to use a natural disaster as the setting for his latest novel, City of Sins. The moment I first saw footage of Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans, I knew I wanted to use the tragedy as the setting for a thriller. If that sounds like exploitation or some literary version of disaster tourism, it’s not supposed to. It’s simply that crime fiction, by its nature, deals with tragedy more often than it does with triumph – and tragedies don’t get much more resonant than the destruction of a great city.
In the case of New Orleans, that resonance was particularly poignant. Even those who’ve never been there feel they have an emotional connection to the place. Think of New Orleans, and you think of many things. You think of partying – Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, the Big Easy. You think of the music – jazz, blues, Zydeco. You think of the writers – Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Anne Rice. You think of food and drink – gumbo, beignets, daiquiris.
If you’re a strict Christian, you might think of the city as a repository of sin – the Southern Decadence gay festival, the sex shows of Bourbon Street, the shadowy mysteries of voodoo. And whatever your faith, you’d have to admit New Orleans has a darker side, and in spades. One of the highest murder rates in America, a Third World public infrastructure, and levels of official corruption and political intrigue which would have made the Borgias green with envy.
In short, New Orleans is humanity writ large: our excesses, our triumphs, our follies.
Which, of course, makes it a great place to set a thriller. -
Why are women so attracted to crime fiction?
October 27, 20116:53 am
Genevieve is currently working with the Crime and Thriller department for two weeks in order to gain work experience. Look out for another article from her on her experience in our department.
“Crime novels are about life, death, love, loss and broken minds”
Alex Barclay
I read a fascinating article in the Irish Examiner about female crime fiction writers and it got me thinking…why are women so attracted to this particular genre?
The presumption is that men, seen as naturally more aggressive, are more inclined to read novels of crime, violence, blood, guts and gore. But it seems as if the opposite is true.
The article, Murder, She Wrote by author and journalist Declan Burke, explores the opinions of four of the leading lights of the current wave of Irish crime writing – Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O’Connor and Ava McCarthy. All women who prove that the female author is very often deadlier than the male.
One of the explanations given for this gravitation towards the more sinister side of fiction is due to what Barclay sees as “a compulsion to understand” a broken mind; a need to know how the darker side of humanity works. Perhaps the reason for this attraction is that crime fiction gives women an opportunity to explore the psychological motivations of a killer in the safe confines of the pages of a book.
