IT'S A CRIME! (OR A MYSTERY...)

"Instinct": new crime drama on TV from Lizzie Mickery

I just watched the concluding episode and well, what can I say?  Plenty of nasty scenes to keep the toes curdling.  Not too many suspects to lead you astray.  More than plenty to keep you guessing to the end.

Great work from all actors concerned.  Loved it.

But an ending akin to "I just found the accelerator peddle and my foot is to the floor".  Yes, it ended on "0 to 60 in under a second" - just a change of frame in fact.  Then all came to light.

Good for mystery and good for character development; but the ending could have paid more attention to the intelligence of viewers.   Not many like a gigantic wooden spoon at the last moment.

Thomas Flynn, the senior investigating officer started out as a protagonist with a lot to be desired.  We had to find sympathy elsewhere.  Then the tables turned.  But somehow, the "Top Gear" equivalent of acceleration to the end was left wanting.   This was a disservice to him.

It could have been so much better.  It wasn't, but it's still well worth a look.  And a concentrated one at that!

Anthony Flanagan as DCI Flynn was great, so was Tom Ward (from Silent Witness) as the hubbie of the first victim.   Great acting from both.

Almost a really good script too.  It just needed more time in resolution and consideration before the dénouement.  But scrap that.  I'm prepared to overlook it and watch the next, if it makes it to a series and I hope it does. The benefits well outweigh the partial misdemeanours.  This makes a great début/pilot, so I hope we get a series out of it.

DCI Flynn has a past and a future the viewer would like to see more of.

Massimo Mongai and Rome

For those who remember a certain post on Rome and Massimo Mongai, I've received an email to say that the lovely site on Rome has been renamed.

It's now called Rome File and the Mongai interview can now be found at this address.

Another diatribe...

This is the second time within a month or so, where I feel so enraged by something, I need to speak out.  Again not crime fiction.  Last time it was Burberry.  This time it's the NHS and the government.  I really ought to consider establishing another site for my vitriol.  In the mean time, if you want to find out what's made my blood boil, click the link.  (I'm keeping this short so as not to intrude on the focus of this blog.)

Death Studies - Lindsay Ashford

Death Studies from Linsday Ashford  is the next in her Megan Rhys (forensic psychologist) series after Strange Blood which was shortlisted for the 2006 Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

Strange Blood included quite a bit of trauma to Megan and members of her family, so it's not a surprise that Death Studies opens with a relocation to Borth on the west Wales coast.  Megan is taking a break, mixing attendance at a conference with a small holiday.  She's staying with her sister Ceri, who has moved there with her family and taken a job as a reporter with the local newspaper.

Instinctively new crime drama on UK TV

It's from ITV (they've really got the bug, haven't they?) and airs on Monday at 9pm.

Penned by Lizzie Mickery (The State Within, Messiah), it's called Instinct and stars Anthony Flanagan as Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Flynn.

From what I've read,  Instinct refers to Flynn's ability to follow his own.  Today's Daily Mail's Weekend supplement carried an article on Mickery, entitled "Queen of Crime Time".  I can't find an online link, so I'll quote:

"In inventing Flanagan, a handsome, thirtyish, quiet man, rediscovering his own emotional intelligence, Lizzie is consciously breaking away from the sort of telly-tec we have grown all used to, embodied by John Thaw's Morse or David Jason's Frost, fiftysomething, disillusioned, cynical, world-weary, divorced, and sinking their sorrows in the whisky bottle.

'I wanted a detective who's fresh, incisive and clear - someone for whom the job is the oxygen of life,' she says."

Sounds good.  The second part airs on Tuesday, also at 9pm and clashing with Life on Mars (which has a cult following, I believe) and CSI.

I'm all serial-killered out, are you like me? Or am I missing something still hot to trot?

I had a penchant (craving/addiction?) for dark chocolate Bounty bars at university; I had one almost every day.  But I lost it along the way and by the time I started work, even the memory of that squidgey, pressed, ever so sweet coconut, in an envelope of bitter-sweet chocolate was gone - regardless of the TV advertisements.  Likewise, when I started reading crime fiction, with a vengeance akin to addiction in 1992, the serial killer novel was a unique thrill.  I simply could not get enough of it.

Roll on to the birth of the next millennium and I started to realise I had become a tad tired of this.  Roll on to 2003, or thereabouts and I started to acknowledge that I really was tired of this sub-genre.  By 2004/5, I was happy to say that I was all "serial-killered out".

Originally, I put this down to culture.  I'd embarked on that reading "fix" when based in North America for eighteen months in the early nineties.  There, they have serial killers aplenty, or so it seems.  The UK did not/does not still.

Returning to the UK, I was slow, initially, to take up the British authors, as they didn't have the pace I was used to.  One exception was Minette Walters, where I picked up a copy of "The Scold's Bridle" in a local bookshop and found something I considered unique.  I'd no idea what a "scold's bridle" was until I read that novel.  Also, I'd had no idea that people lived that kind of life until I read that novel.  I was hooked and went back to the bookshop and bought the (small at the time) backlist.  I still didn't have a replication of  the "serial killer chase pace", but I was intrigued enough to keep turning the pages.

So what made the long term change for me, and why?  And why do I seek your thoughts on this?

Where are they now? Andrea Badenoch.

Sadly Andrea Badenoch died in early January 2004.  I start this series of "Where are they now?" as a tribute to her.

I'd seen a book with the title of "Blink" in various places on the web and that prompted some memories for me. 

The "Blink" I think of first and foremost is this one from Macmillan Crime.  The author is indeed the late Andrea Badenoch and the site I've linked to there is one set up in her memory, for an award in her memory.  (This is open to women fiction writers, over the age of 42 and in various areas of the north east only.)  Badenoch died, way too soon, on 4 January 2004, at the age of 52, due to breast cancer.

I think it was in 1999 that I met Andrea Badenoch.  She tutored an Arvon crime writing course with Jake Arnott at Lumb Bank and I, at that time, was enthusiastic about writing my own crime novel, with approaching 15k words, under my belt.  She was very encouraging and very able with "students", such was her ability to teach and tutor.  I was even more enthused and fired up as a result of that week.  But I digress slightly.  During the week she read from her forthcoming novel "Blink" and all who sat and listened enjoyed the reading with great appreciation and delight.

Up until that point Andrea's previous two novels had been pretty decent, but it was hard to find a truly sympathetic character, which presented something of a problem.  But then, when she read from her next novel, Blink, the small group gathered heard something that led to the feeling that this was now her time.  She'd hit the nail on the head and produced something beautiful to read.

Authors from previous years - where are they now?

I read, with earnest and enthusiasm some crime authors many years ago.  But reading drops off, for various reasons.  I recently wondered "why" and asked "where are these authors right now?"

I investigated previous "good reads" for me, and will come back with a series of "Where are they now?" posts.

Please keep a look out.  There are novels so good to mention in this category.

All posts will be headed up with "Where are they now? [Author name.]".

Slightly older can still be good!

"Lewis" the TV series - descendant of "Inspector Morse"

I have to admit that I missed the début, pilot trailer for this new TV series.  But I caught up with it earlier this week, for episode one of three, in a fresh run of three, two hour long episodes in the UK.

To catch up, "Lewis"  the new TV series was born out of the series ""Inspector Morse", a much loved and long running TV series in the UK, north America and elsewhere,  courtesy of the books of Colin Dexter, where Lewis was the side-kick Sergeant to Inspector Morse.

The oh so junior, naïve and with a lot to learn at the start Lewis ended the Morse series seeking promotion and finally achieving the exam results that provided the first step to his promotion to Inspector.  Unfortunately, even though Lewis may finally have achieved some "real credibility on the block" by this time, he needed to find a dead man's shoes to fill; such is the nature and reality of the UK public sector.

When that particular sad and final opportunity, or unexpected moment came, the "dead on the quad" Morse, could never provide that gap; it was too close and too personal a relationship for Lewis.  These were a dead man's shoes he could not face.  Morse had been his mentor.  Having missed the début for this series, I'm guessing here, but suggest that's why Lewis went abroad.

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You may notice a new banner on this site.  It was designed and created by Jenny, daughter of Maxine at Petrona.  Jenny also created her mother's banner.  Another fine banner from this creative young lady!