Crime Fiction Lover
Archive for July, 2012
Interview: Alison Bruce
Before stunning us with her DC Gary Goodhew series of crime fiction novels, Alison Bruce used to write history books such as Cambridgeshire Murders and Billington: Victorian Executioner. A touch macabre perhaps, but also a perfect source of inspiration for her later creations. Her most recent Goodhew story, The Silence, was most impressive, so we[...]
Fireproof
Written by Alex Kava – A down-and-out former accountant returns to his cardboard box home in an industrial unit on the edge of Washington DC. He is furious to find that there is someone else in his space. His anger turns to horror when he finds that this intruder is very, very dead. Within seconds,[...]
A Private Venus
Written by Giorgio Scerbanenco – Giorgio Scerbanenco was an important figure in postwar Italian crime fiction, but is little known to English-speaking audiences because his novels were never translated into English. Hersilia Press is seeking to rectify our ignorance of Scerbanenco and other Italian crime fiction by translating and releasing English editions of notable Italian[...]
Dare Me
“At first, cheer was something to fill my days, all our days. Age fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something – anything – to begin. There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.” So says Addy Hanlon, narrator of[...]
The Murder Wall
The Murder Wall opens with the horrific double murder of a young nun and her priest in a Northumberland church, a crime which goes unsolved and is still dogging Kate Daniels one year later when the action jumps ahead to the fatal shooting of a prominent local businessman in a swanky dockside development in Newcastle.[...]
The Girl in Berlin
It’s summer 1951 and London is feeling the downbeat mood of austerity. Jack McGovern is a detective with Special Branch. High level British diplomats have defected to the Russians and he’s told to investigate Colin Harris, a British communist who has recently returned from East Germany, leaving behind his fiancée, Frieda Schroder. In London, Harris[...]
Murder Mile
The term ‘tartan noir’ might have been coined for Tony Black. Following his successful Gus Dury series, he’s turned his attention to the police procedural and Murder Mile is the second outing for DI Rob Brennan, a complex and brooding character who makes Rebus look positively chipper by comparison. Brennan has a full payload of[...]
A Fatal Debt
Written by John Gapper – Set in the imploding world of high finance in both the UK and US, this could have been the novel of our times. Instead, it falls as flat as a Shrove Tuesday pancake. The garish, over-designed cover was nearly enough to put me off this book, but, encouraged by the[...]
London 2012: Five Olympic books of death
With the final preparations for London 2012 nearing completion – and all those confusing flags being sorted out – we thought it might be fun to take a look at this global sporting occasion from a darker angle. So if you’re likely to be need a distraction from the butterfly stroking and heptathalating, how about[...]
Like a Bat out of Harrogate
On the radar – The cream of crime fiction literati have drifted home from Harrogate but our radar this week has certainly been picking up some residual energy from the Yorkshire town’s Crime Fiction Festival last weekend. Kicking things off is this year’s festival programming chair, Mark Billingham. He’s followed by new blood panel chair,[...]
Look who’s writing for us VIII
Time for some news on the Crime Fiction Lover team. We’re pleased to announce the arrival of two new writers for our site – Lucy Conlon and Sandra Mangan, aka DeathBecomesHer. Sandra is an experience journalist who’s worked for the Press Association and newspapers and magazines around the UK. But her true passion is crime[...]
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Interview: Jay Stringer
Walsall born, Glasgow based, author Jay Stringer has taken a winding route to crime writing via stints as a bookseller, call centre operator and zoo keeper – yes really. This week saw the release of his debut novel Old Gold, the first of a series which will feature half-Romani cop turned PI Eoin Miller. Jay[...]