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

The Money Programme visits the publishing industry...

... following the demise of the NBA and other developments since (including the loss of 500 independent book stores).  On iplayer here, for a few more days.  Worth watching if only to see lit agent Carole Blake's manuscript TBR piles on her desk; hear Amanda Ross's voice of common sense; hear Will Self's imagination running forth in suggesting things his publisher might ask him to deliver for Amanda Ross and hear Catherine O'Flynn reflecting on the bigger publishers' reactions to her novel What Was Lost.

Red Bones - Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves brings us to Spring with her latest volume in the Shetland Quartet, Red Bones, and it is indeed a most welcome follow-up to the award-winning series opener, Raven Black, and its successor, White Nights.
 
In this, a set of human remains is discovered at an archaeological dig on the island of Whalsay, a small island community where even the local policeman is related to the victim of an ensuing shotgun accident. Is this connected to the red bones unearthed at the dig? Old bones and new bones form a tantalising tale of intrigue.
 
People and landscape are brought vividly to life in a portrayal of a self-protecting community, where even Inspector Perez feels like an outsider when he steps off the ferry after the short crossing from the Shetland mainland.
 
Interweaving mysteries make Red Bones that most appealing of crime novels, the classic page-turner; but make no mistake as this is no 1950s ''cosy'', it is an intelligent, clever and, above all, thoroughly enjoyable novel. I am certainly waiting with anticipation for the final instalment in Ann's Shetland Quartet.

Three Macmillan crime writers touring Scotland...

It kicks off with Ann Cleeves at Lerwick Library for the Shetland launch of Red Bones - and announcement of the winner of the Vaila's Fund character auction - tonight at 7.30pm.  Then Ann is joined by Peter James and Brian McGilloway for the following:

 

Wednesday 11th March

6.00 pm: Ann Cleeves, Peter James and Brian McGilloway at Waterstone's, Edinburgh West End.  Tickets £2 redeemable against purchase of Red Bones.

7.30pm: Bloody Brits at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield

Thursday 12th March

12.30 - 1.30 pm: Ann Cleeves signing at WHSmith, 33 Gyle Avenue, South Gyle Broadway, Edinburgh

5.30 - 6.30 pm: Ann Cleeves signing at WH Smith Aberdeen, St Nicholls Centre

7.00 pm: Ann Cleeves talk at Waterstone's Union Bridge, Aberdeen
Contact: Gail Weaver or Lee, tel: 01224 592440, e-Mail: [email protected]

Friday 13th March 2009

12.30 - 1.30 pm: Ann Cleeves signing at Borders, 98 Buchanan St, Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow G1 3HA

Ann Cleeves, Peter James and Brian McGilloway at the Aye Write Literature Festival, Mitchell Library, North Street, Glasgow.

Detail above from the CWA's site.  ScotKris will be reporting on Ann's Red Bones shortly.

Coming up next...

A very busy day tomorrow, within a pretty busy week, but by the end of tomorrow I hope to post my thoughts on Robert Wilson's "The Ignorance of Blood" (in summary: fab) and my interview with him.  Yesterday, Amazon had the book noted as only two left, today it's back in stock.  Let's hope that's an indication it's selling well as it's a fine fourth and final in the Falcon quartet.

Abergavenny Crime Festival - 26 March @ 7pm

Copied from Andrew Taylor's site:

26 March: I will be joining fellow crime writers Kate Charles, Susannah Gregory, Bernard Knight, Caro Peacock, Phil Rickman and Rebecca Tope to analyse the dark art at  the Abergavenny Crime Festival, one night only, at the town centre Angel Hotel.  Tickets £5 including a glass of wine.  Obtainable from the Angel.  Starts 7.00 pm.  Numbers limited, so early booking is advisable.  The Angel Hotel, 15 Cross Street, Abergavenny, NP7 5EN,  01873 857 121.  The Abergavenny Bookshop (Tel: 01873 850380) will be selling books, and we authors will lavishly inscribe them for their discriminating purchasers.   

The Laugharne Weekend - 3-5 April 2009

The Laugharne Weekend site can be found here.  For crime aficionados Robert Lewis (The Last Llanelli Train and Swansea Terminal) is there on the Saturday at 2pm, Stav Sherez (The Black Monastery) at 2.30pm, and Mari Strachan (The Earth Hums in B Flat) later at 5pm.  Some of the other notables over the weekend include: Stella Duffy; Irvine Welsh; A. L. Kennedy; Geoff Dyer; Keith Allen and Rhys Ifans.

[The second pic comes from the wonderful Bakerlite site.]

"Queryfail": I haven't laughed so much in ages...

Neither has my chest had so much exercise, shuddering up and down as it has, across a span of six inches.  Just spotted last week's phenomenon of "Queryfail" on Twitter, at the Guardian Book Blog.  Apparently some agents and publishers' editors were telling prospective authors why they fail to get noticed.  It went on for more than one day and the Guardian directs you here for a summary after the first day.  Beauties on the fail-side include:

• I know that I have attached a file, but please have a read even though it’s against your policy.
• Before you respond to my query, please send a test email for my spam filter.
• I’M TYPING MY QUERY IN ALL CAPS SO YOU WILL BE SURE TO NOTICE IT.
• Please Google my name for more information.
• This is not representative of my best work.
• This is my first attempt at writing a fictional novel.
• Like my protagonist, I definitely could be described as overachiever, and I naturally have hair like Lady Godiva.
• Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be pulled up a waterfall or to be flushed down a toilet?
• Hi. Are you a visionary agent who wants to take the stagnant fiction literary marketplace to new heights?
• Three paragraphs, no plot, no hook, and lots of “me, me, me, look how wonderful I am!”

The words "megalomaniac" and "thick" come to mind.  But if you do want to get published the recommendations are:

• First sentence hook.
• Wordcount/genre.
• One- or two-paragraph blurb.
• Relevant writing credits/background.
• Polite closing.
• Solid writing sample.

Sorry for any typos in this post, but I am still laughing...

A Very Persistent Illusion - L. C. Tyler

  A Very Persistent Illusion by L. C. Tyler (Macmillan New Writing) is not crime fiction per se, but it does contain a mystery, much humour and is full of suspense.  As with the author's début novel The Herring Seller's Apprentice, this standalone combines a unique prose style and ability to tell a story that is a mixture of humour, quirkiness, inventiveness and the erudite, all glued together by cleverness.  It's out now and the Herring series follow-up will arrive in August, later this year.  So what is A Very Persistent Illusion all about?  (I am deliberately avoiding the author's own summary and publisher synopsis here, as neither particularly appealed to me; thus I take a risk on my own interpretation.)

Our story narrator, London-based Chris (Christian - three syllables as in the original Danish, if you please) Sorensen does not wear socks, but he does wear chinos and a leather jacket to work.  For all his previous academic achievements, he is an office middle-manager and one of the more obviously successful products of "the Peter Principle" - he has been promoted to the extent of his own level of incompetence - and is now the Director of External Affairs at the Royal Society for Medical Education, overlooking Regent's Park in London.  As a team-leader, he is pretty crap; caught up with Virginia his girlfriend, he cannot help but notice and pursue Lucy, the new team recruit, most noticeable for her short skirts, clingy cashmere sweaters, youth and his potential next date.  Neither can he take effective and accurate minutes for the Committee Meetings he attends as secretary; his mind is on the creation of spoof poetry.

Crime fiction set in foreign climes

And today in The Observer, Tobias Jones writes of why foreign crime fiction travels so well.  He cites some interesting statistics where sales on translated crime for a country exceed those written originally in English for the same setting and believes we are possibly becoming more cosmopolitan in our tastes.  He also suggests five to read, having found a better quality product than one akin to reading toothpaste in the O'Brien article to which I referred below.

Tobias Jones will have his first crime novel - The Salati Case - published by Faber & Faber on 4 June, later this year.

Ripping apart the thriller

In his March "Getting Away With Murder" column at Shotsmag, Mike Ripley picks up on an article in The Time Literary Supplement on Feb 11, 2009.   Entitled "Laws of the thriller", the article was written by Sean O'Brien who is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  You can the full article here and it's well worth a read.

I feel sorry for Professor O'Brien.  Clearly, he has read a lot of thrillers to write this critique and it was not a satisying experience for him.  But this comment on one author's work, "...It is like reading toothpaste, but without the unbearable excitement..." just has to be a classic.