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

Borders Books UK opens in Cardiff...

... at long last!  Situated in the Hayes, in the old (dearly departed) David Morgan department store building, Borders is a short walk from the Waterstone's branch and St David's Hall.

This branch of Borders boasts a sales venue of over 25,000 square feet, along with:

Over 120,000 books

The largest Welsh Books section in Cardiff with over 1,100 titles

The largest Children’s department in Cardiff

Thousands of CDs and DVDs

UK’s widest range of magazines and newspapers

Paperchase stationery, cards and gifts for every occasion

Delicious food and drink from Starbucks Coffee.

I am looking forward to checking it out next week.

Cardiff, like Bristol, is changing and both cities have sites that look like the Blitz is making a revisit.  Both are re-developing their shopping areas, the Cardiff building works taking place across the road from the new Borders branch.

Curiously, Borders is opening from 08:30 to 21:00 on Monday through to Saturday (11:00 to 17:00 on Sundays).  I suspect it will be quiet in the evenings while the building work is underway in that area, but the run up to Christmas may help.  Borders in Cardiff also promises a number of author events, following their opening weekend extravaganza.

Die with Me - Elena Forbes

When taking a risk on a début author - and yes, it is a risk - crime aficionados will want to know what is different about the novel; what is original about the novel; what might make the reader be prepared to trade their well looked after "nashers" for a set of dentures if the thrills are as good as anticipated from the blurb and synopsis on the sleeve, causing all sorts of tense jaw clenching.

• So, before we start, what marks out this début novel from Forbes?

1.  It is very contemporary in feel and deals with the modern world, focusing on a phenomenon that has developed on the internet: some feel so down, but still so fearful to do the deed, that they seek a companion with whom to commit suicide.

2.  The plot of the novel involves a twist on the above; someone wants to take advantage of these lost souls and enjoy their deaths.

3.  The novel is set in west London and Forbes knows her "beat".  I lived there for the best part of a decade and have keen memories of the places she explores - I can vouch for her knowing her "beat" in this novel.

4.  In a very interesting "other twist", Forbes defies our prejudices of gender.  Women seek to understand their thoughts and motives, often thinking too hard; men just get on with life and never pursue the emotional side too much.  But here we have a protag, male, who is always examining his thoughts and emotions.  Not that he's your typical metrosexual man either.  Far from it!  When he needs to get somewhere fast and his own two legs won't do, he's on two wheels, not four.  Neither does he take time out to seek a manicure/wax/facial.  A different kind of male protag?  You'll find him here.  Yes, he's single; but he's not a loner and an alcoholic.  He tries, at all times, to be on top of things.  He's sociable and intuitive.  Above all, he's ambitious and his name is Mark Tartaglia.  More later...

5.  Marketed as a duo of fictional personalities for the future in this series, Fiona Blake (the pathologist in this novel) and Mark Tartaglia are not the only ones to have that future.  Sam Donovan, a member of Tartaglia's police team has a strong presence in Die with Me and a good story to tell.  More of her, please.

But, back to the novel at hand, Die with Me...

The inaugural Henley Literary Festival

The funniest moment of my foray to into England for the Henley Literary Festival was taking a seat next to Martin Bell at the Jeremy Paxman event.  I had crossed the borders (not much left of a United Kingdom is there now?)  and the weather did the same.  I arrived in knee length boots, polo neck sweater, suede jacket and tweed skirt, and very hot.  Good coverage for south Wales on a quite chilly Saturday morning, but summer skimpies would have done for Henley that afternoon.  Bell took only one look at me and said "You look hot."   I stripped off as much as I could, then asked, "I'm not red in the face am I?"  "Depends on what you look like normally" said the down to earth über journalist and former MP who knows the value of his convictions.

Paxman arrived and bumped into Bell with a boisterously enthusiastic and surprised "Hello Martin" at more decibels than an unwelcome iPod on public transport, then he took to the stage.

But, back to the chronology of the day, I arrived in Henley towards the end of the Clarissa Dickson Wright event for which I had failed to get a ticket, sat in the square and eventually watched her march to the square's festival tent where she did a book signing for her autobiography Spilling the Beans.  Anyone I spoke to on the weekend said she was brilliant and all wished she'd had more time to speak.  She was inspiring, apparently.

Paxo too was sold out by the time I booked, but I was lucky to get a return...  It appeared that he was to be interviewed but his interviewer had not turned up.  He didn't need him, whoever he was.  Jeremy Paxman held his own and the audience, for the full hour, in a very entertaining and educational fashion on his view of royalty and very humerous at that - he also does a great Tony Blair impersonation and you'd have to see it as well as hear it.  It's lip curling.  More detail later in the week on that one. 

Suffice to say, all in the audience were glued to his words, apart from perhaps one old man in the back most row, who took about 40 minutes  to express his concerns that he could not hear Paxo.  After a bit of incoherent to and fro, Paxo invited him into a spare front seat and he moved, only to remain silent for the last minutes.  During his speech Paxo said he was "Mr Rude and will always be Mr Rude", but on that occasion he was far more welcoming than he had been to Michael Howard; indeed he was Mr Charm and Mr Enthralling to his audience.  In person those journalistic sharp corners are more than pared down.  Caught short by his reaction to the death of the Queen Mother, which prompted Paxman to revisit his thoughts on royalty, he's no longer a republican but a reluctant monarchist with the view "Why change"?  On Royalty is well worth a read after what I heard.

Venturing east for a UK Lit Fest...

Tomorrow morning I head east on the M4 into pastures previously enjoyed to seek out the inaugural Henley Literary Festival.  By the time I booked my tickets during the last week, a couple of events were already sold out, so I hope to get there for a book signing, in one case at least.  I also booked a ticket I did not originally plan; but this one is a "force of nature" in the written word and I hope to cover the event later.

I'll let you know what I find at Henley, when I return...

Bravo to Borders and its new investor in the UK

How wonderful to return home late on a Friday night to some good news for the UK's book buying public.  Thanks to the the ever reliable Book2book's communications, we now know that Borders UK has a new investor and it won't disappear into the ever generic and bland high street's modus operandi of book selling.

Book2book linked to an article in Publishing News that tells us that Risk Capital Partners has had their bid accepted by Borders US and that is good news!

Risk Capital Partners, to quote from their site, is "a team of four individuals investing their own money in private equity transactions. We are entrepreneurial investors with a good understanding and track record across a range of consumer, retail, leisure and support services businesses."  Notice the key word here: "entrepreneurial".  Entrepreneurs think differently; they don't boringly follow the established business models, they see gaps and opportunities in the market and then exploit them, creating successful businesses.

You only have to look at the make-up of the four investors that are "Risk Capital Partners" to get the picture.  Luke Johnson is probably their biggest name, currently the Chairman of Channel Four (a bit of a trial of a job during the last year) and sitting on the board of various other companies, he's also the man that bought PizzaExpress and took it into public ownership, he also brought Belgian cuisine to London in the form of Belgo, and there's far more.  His investing colleagues at Risk Capital Partners include a couple of chartered accountants and an experienced professional in "start-ups, restructuring and investment banking".  It's a bit like the team on the BBC's programme Dragons' Den, but this team is not seeking a media profile as well, they remain in the market, seeking success and making money.

What might this mean to the UK's book buying public?  There will remain another separate bookselling chain, under its own management, that can seek opportunities and do things differently.  I hope that Borders management, under its new ownership, will be steered into less of the lemming tendency and more of the "let's approach this differently and listen to our customers' expression of needs".  With investment from a team of entrepreneurs - that key word again - I am confident that Borders UK will have an interesting future and that book buyers will seek out their stores.

Bravo to Borders UK and to Risk Capital Partners!

Adding the Welsh angle, as sometimes comes up on this blog, Borders in Cardiff opens next weekend, on the 28th of September to be precise, in The Hayes in Cardiff, in the old David Morgan department store building, a mere few paces from the local Waterstone's branch.  Might this prove to be the "book corner" in Cardiff?

Good to see Borders remaining an independent chain with the potential for remaining "different" and hopefully with a wider selection of stock.  Readers want that; it doesn't all come down to price as it does in the case of a can of beans or the latest cook-chill variety of an evening meal to stick in the microwave.  Readers are discerning creatures; taste matters and individual genres are swallowed whole or spitted out.

Fallen Angel on screen; the Roth trilogy in the novel

Seeing the number of referrals to this site seeking information on the TV series Fallen Angel in the last 36 hours or so, all from Australia, I can only guess that Fallen Angel has been televised there over the past weekend.

The series is based on the Roth Trilogy, now available in one book from HarperCollins.  If you've been quite taken by this story, then do pay a visit to Andrew Taylor's site, where you'll find that the Roth Trilogy is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the prolific writing from Andrew Taylor.

Andrew has produced a mix of crime and mystery fiction: in addition to Roth, we have the Lydmouth series, which happens to be a favourite of mine; a few standalones and other short series.

Where Roth/Fallen Angel took the genre in a new direction - we know the murderer at the start, but what follows is an exploration of history to find the answer to the "why" question - the Lydmouth books are set post-war, mainly in the 1950s, with great attention to detail when it comes to period and the culture of the time (always tense, as human nature was restrained by culture then).  Andrew also makes his mark in these mystery novels with a canny ability to twist and twist again.  You are guessing until the end and enjoying the journey every step of the way.

Andrew can also deliver with a contemporary novel; his most recent A Stain on the Silence made for a compelling read.  His next standalone, Bleeding Heart Square will be published in 2008.

Another bonus with the writing from Andrew is the quality of the prose.  Easy to read, he still manages to remind us of words long forgotten and hardly used these days.  You have a reminder of the richness of the English language; some meat and sinew on the skeleton of words we engage in every day.

So, do explore; the place to start is here.  Enjoy your reading...

The Inaugural Henley Literary Festival

The inaugural Co-operative Bank Henley Literary Festival kicks off on Friday 21 September, continuing until Sunday 23 September.

It hosts a wonderful bumper pack of names; but if you're a crime aficionado and can get there for the Friday morning at 11am, you'll encounter David Hewson and Simon Kernick in an event entitled Masterminds of Crime at a mere £6.

Over the weekend, others featured include: Jeremy Paxman, Irvine Welsh, Andrew O'Hagan, Colm Tóibín , Boris Johnson, Peter Oborne, Martin Bell, John Mortimer, Eleanor Bron, Craig Brown, General Sir Mike Jackson, Julia Donaldson, Charlie Higson, Michelle Paver, James Naughtie, Charles Spencer, Lesley Garner, Marie Helvin, Tim Lott, Bella Bathurst, India Knight, Gyles Brandreth, Richard Littlejohn, Jessica Williams, Anna Pasternak, Deborah Moggach, Mike Atherton, Sandra Howard, Irvine Welsh, Clarissa Dickson Wright and more...

Henley-on-Thames is also quite a pleasant place to visit at the best of times.

Not sure I can make it that weekend, but I wish Henley all the best for a damn good inaugural year!  You have a fine line-up, an enviable line-up; so, more to come I hope.

Borders UK's Top Ten Books and a glaring omission from its readers...

I received an email last week from Borders UK.  They'd recently asked their customers to vote for their all time favourite top ten books (CDs and DVDs), with more than 20,000 taking up the baton online.  The glaring omission in my mind is that, considering crime and thriller fiction regularly appears in the top ten bestsellers (usually at least 50% of it, the last time I reviewed the lists), there's nothing you could call classic crime or thriller fiction on the list of top ten books for Borders readers.  I wonder why?  Perhaps the crime and thriller aficionados were too busy readng their next fast paced, densely plotted and wonderfully character-driven novel to notice the vote?

Anyway, the top ten is currently on offer in store at "buy one get one half price" and here they are:

1. Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Here the Borders customers put an American author at number one, but it's not a surprise, really.  When Bryson held a very humerous mirror up to the UK with his Notes from a Small Island, back in the 1990s, UK readers took him into their hearts and the man will forever provide another view on everything.
2. William Golding Lord of the Flies.  Pretty much a classic and one that is read at school.
3. Gerald Durrell My Family and other Animals.  Again, another classic and one that features with the young.
4. Frank McCourt Angela's Ashes.  He wrote "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."  His started in the 1930s.  This was a book that took the UK by storm when it came out originally.
5. Alice Walker The Color Purple.  I saw the movie back in the 1980s, so I've never read the novel, alas.  (Screen and book don't work for me.  It has to be one or the other for one story; my only exclusion being that I'll watch a screen version of a book I've read, to see what the production did to it.  Hopefully "justice", but as we know, this isn't always the case...)
6. Jung Chang Wild Swans.   Another book that took the UK by storm.
7. Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tail.  Alas, as for The Color Purple, I saw the movie and never the twain shall meet...
8. Ian McEwan Atonement.  I loved Saturday, but I've not read this yet.  The movie is out now, so if I'm tempted, and publicity is rife right now, my chances of reading the novel will be down the drain before you can utter the two syllable word "plumber".
9. Nigel Slater Toast.  "Toast: the story of a boy's hunger" is Slater's memoirs of his life with food as a youngster before he grew up to become a food writer and author of many cook books.  I'm surprised at this entry in the top ten, but very pleased to see it.  Life has moved on so much in the last 50 years and we now have a far greater opportunity and span when it comes to ingredients and making up a meal.  In the 1960s we were still just emerging from the constraints of WWII and starting to discover new delicacies, as could be imported from foreign lands, reliably and regularly, to enable them to become foods of choice every week or month.  If you're 40 plus, you'll appreciate the memories in this memoir.  (What might have been "posh nosh" then, is to be derided now; but all achieve a retro comeback at some point.  Prawn cocktail anyone?  Even "Abigail's Party" is to get the retro revisit treatment in our new millennium.)  The reminder of the "then" (the 1960s) in Toast and the comparison to now is staggering.  Having read Toast, then get yourself a copy of Slater's "The Kitchen Diaries", in hardback if you can as the heavy tome is beautifully produced, in quality paper, pictures and binding, with a ribbon bookmark.  Where Slater once ate canned peaches, in The Kitchen Diaries he muses, by month on month what's in season (back to British basics) and then provides recipes for what he does to these splendidly fresh and available ingredients.  Slater knows his food and its history.  And Toast is quite a unique memoir.
10. Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Again, I saw this movie first, so it does not augur well for a reading on my part.  Neither did I manage to watch the movie to the end; I became bored.

The biggest surprise for me on that list is Nigel Slater's Toast, but it's excellent to see it there.  I had thought his wonderful memoirs had received a somewhat quiet attention and reception.  Good to see otherwise!

As for the CDs' and DVDs' top ten, I'll leave it up to you. You can find them on the Borders home page, at the moment. 

But why the lack of crime and thriller fiction in that top ten on books?  It seems odd, even if I lay the excuse that we are all reading our next tome of delight...

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Personally, I have a quiet admiration for Borders in the UK as they a have a different approach to bookselling.  In their newer branches, which I have experienced, I find the staff enthusiastically engaged in making things work and organising author events.  Local author featured book collections seem to be more widely thought through than those of their main competitors (if they have them).

I'm not sure where the future ownership of Borders is going - the last time I looked a possible management buy-out was on the table, and I hope this is the successful case.  Sucked further into the generic and repetitive high street and supermarket offerings will not service the buying public well.  Less variety of sellers leads to less choice and the same on the shelves at the same price, depending on how far you are prepared to walk and/or drive.

Any updates on Borders, anyone?

We need less generic High Street repitition of "same old, same old," being pushed under the same banner, across the same origins.  We need more promotion of the new to this world and the genre.  It's time to give the newbies a better chance, surely?

Linked in update...

Added into the links on the sidebar this weekend:

Dave's Fiction Warehouse

Wonderful humour.

Detectives literarios

Crime fiction blog in Spanish.

Previously added to the sidebar:

Crime fiction blogs in German:

Internationale Krimis & KRIMIBLOG.DE

International Literacy Day and some Literary News from the Week

Richard Lea over at The Guardian's Book Blog is certainly attracting more of my attention.

Yesterday he asked "Go on, what's your favourite word?" (see below) as well as questioning whether we might be Man Booker-Prized-Out in the UK, given that sales for this year's shortlist are less than enthusiastic, in comparison with previous years...

In consideration of the Man Booker shortlist, Lea also covers the controversy over Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach", which is shorter than his usual works and deserves the label "novella" in the eyes of some, including the author himself.  Lea quotes The Daily Mail:  'It's a "controversy" swiftly dealt with in the Times, which quotes the judges' decision that the book is eligible "because the dictionary definition of a novella is 'a short novel'," and quotes the chairman of the judges, Howard Davies: "We don't think of it as slight."'

Short? Slight?  Oh for the continued debate over word meanings.  I can't see this one dying quickly.  And if book sales are not as before, I can only see the controversy helping to bump them up.

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But time for some fun, let's revisit Richard Lea's post "Go on, what's your favourite word?"   Lea made the post, as today is International Literacy Day, according to the UN. 

Thus I offer up one of my favourite words:"ecclesiastical".

"Ecclesiastical" clicks off the tongue and that's why I love it.  It's like speaking with a small pyramid in your mouth. And unless you are proficient in Greek, the word offers no suggestion as to what it relates to.  Here's the definition from AskOxford.com:

ecclesiastical

  • adjective relating to the Christian Church or its clergy.

  — DERIVATIVES ecclesiastically adverb.

  — ORIGIN Greek ekklesiastikos, from ekklesiastes ‘member of an assembly’.

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Finally, just in case you've missed it, Cheltenham's Literature Festival is now booking.  And for those who visit/revisit this site looking for information on Neil Pearson and his forthcoming book Obelisk, Pearson will be talking to John Walsh there on Sunday 14 October at 10am.  Amazon has the publication date as 1 October 2007, so I guess the book will be on sale at the festival.  Some time after 11am on that Sunday morning, expect to see a long queue of women at the book signing...