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

Fourth Day - Zoë Sharp

''...[Charlie], you're one of the most fearless. And the most courageous. You do what most of us dread, what most of us fear. I have never believed that violence was the answer to anything, but giving in to violence is not the answer either.''
 
Charlie Fox, ex Special Forces soldier and now a bodyguard, is back with a vengeance in this, her eighth outing, going undercover into Californian cult Fourth Day. She and her partner, Sean Meyer, have been given the task of removing Thomas Witney from within the cult, five years after he himself went in with the aim of discovering if the cult and its leader, the enigmatic Randall Bane, were responsible for the death of his son, Liam. Five years is a long time and, while Witney had left instructions to be removed if he had not come out voluntarily within a year, that deadline to try and extract him had come and gone... Why? Struggling with some personal demons of her own, the task is initially successful, but repercussions resound long after Witney is removed from Fourth Day. With more questions than answers for those on both the outside and inside of Fourth Day, Charlie faces a challenge which threatens her professionally and personally.
 

Hay Festival Programme 2010 Crime Authors & Bibliotherapy

Just so you don’t have to, I have browsed this year’s Hay Festival Programme for the crime fiction (and related) events.  It would be appear that Wales is to have an invasion of the tartan tattie-noirs with Alexander McCall Smith, Louise Welsh and Val McDermid.  Flying the Swedish flag, Henning Mankell is up for two appearances this year.  Some Brighton rock will be provided by Peter James.  Levering in London representation we have Martina Cole and Mark Billingham, the latter talking about the move to screen for DI Thorne.  And there are more…

GUEST BLOG: Sue Armstrong on a Matter of Life and Death

This week sees the publication of Sue Armstrong’s A Matter of Life and Death: inside the hidden world of the pathologist with Canongate.  It is a collection of conversations with pathologists, exploring their hidden worlds and it’s a book I look forward to reading as soon as a certain reading challenge has been completed.  I invited Sue to write a guest blog post to uncover the story behind the book and to give a taster.  With many thanks, and over to Sue…

The Scheduling of the CWA Dagger Awards 2010

Someone asked me on twitter for the dates of the shortlist announcements.  Investigation on the CWA's site indicates the following:

The Daggers are being announced in two groups.

The shortlists for the Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, Dagger in the Library, International, Short Story and Debut Daggers will be announced at Crimefest (Bristol 20-23 May) and the Daggers will be awarded at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate (22-25 July).

The shortlists for the John Creasey (New Blood), Ian Fleming Steel and Gold Daggers will be announced at Harrogate and the Daggers will be awarded at a televised ceremony in the Autumn, as part of the Specsavers ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards.

Recognising the current spirit & mood in the publishing world...

This is the oomph that sends all to the London Book Fair:

And this is the official & authoritative word on the iPad:

London Book Fair 2010 - News

Due to the ash cloud coming down from Iceland, travel arrangements for those coming from overseas have been impaired or completely scuppered.  Efforts to overcome – observed on twitter – have been tremendous.  One Dutch publisher (Meulenhoff) is promising a night ferry if no flights for Monday morning and another, Ambo Anthos, has suggested it might be the first publishing house to “host a Skype dance party during the fair”.

This year, there is a focus on South Africa at the London Book Fair and, sadly, with further to travel and dependent on airlines, this contingent is suffering and having to cancel.

Some of us, as close as train or road travel are also not able to make it.  But, if you can’t make it, the London Book Fair can come to you instead.

Firstly, due to the wonderful internet and Twitter specifically, there will be tweeting for the fair.  The official hashtag to follow is #LBF10 and, following on from the developments at the  Emirates Festival of Literature earlier this year, there will be a Twitterwall at the London Book Fair on display at the Market Focus Bar.  Another one to follow is #lbtweet.  So, if you can’t make it but want to keep up with the news, you can let it flow to you via Twitter.

UPDATE 17/4: You can follow the Twitterwall here.

Waterstone's BooksQuarterly Magazine Short Story Competition

In the latest Books Quarterly magazine, Waterstone's has teamed up with Pan Macmillan and the Arvon Foundation to create the Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition.  Entrants need to be unpublished professionally in fiction, over 16 years of age and have their entries of up to 2,000 words submitted by 1 July 2010.  More details here.

The prize includes lunch with Will Atkins, Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan and one of his authors, James McCreet; an Arvon course of the winner's choice; and the winning entry published in the October edition of Book Quarterly.  The three best runners-up will receive concise written feedback on their entries, which will be published online, as well as £50-worth of Pan Macmillan books.

Sleuths! English Riviera Festival of Crime and Thriller Writing

The above festival runs from 20 to 25 April down in sunny Devon, closing with a Book Fair on the 25th.  This year's crime authors include Bernard Knight, Ann Cleeves, Diane Janes, Graham Hurley, M C Beaton, Simon Brett and Michael Jecks.

Details of booking can be found here.  For ease, here's the programme in a pdf.

And while we're on the topics of the south west of England and crime fiction, keep your eyes peeled on the Poole Literary Festival which runs from 29 to 31 October.  Minette Walters has already signed up for an appearance.

2010: the Desmond Elliott Prize Longlist for new fiction...

And here it is, courtesy of The Bookseller:

The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen (Tindal Street Press)
The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry (Blue Door)
Rupture by Simon Lelic (Picador)
The Shadow of a Smile by Kachi A. Ozumba (Alma Books)
Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley (Picador)
The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Designs for a Happy Home by Matthew Reynolds (Bloomsbury)
Beauty by Raphael Selbourne (Tindal Street Press)
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books)

My best wishes to everyone on the list!

Willing Flesh – Adam Creed

Coming on 1 May, Willing Flesh from Adam Creed is the next in his DI Staffe series with Faber, following Suffer the Children.  Where the first concerned the unsavoury, but particularly contemporary theme of child abuse and its impact on society, Willing Flesh remains contemporary with the theme of prostitution and trafficked women. 

In the days before Christmas, Elena Danya, a beautiful top-end prostitute has been murdered in an upmarket London hotel room.  Soon, a friend of hers, a working girl at the lower end of the market is also dead and their mutual acquaintance/friend, the aristocratic Arabella goes missing.  Staffe’s investigation takes him into many aspects of London life, with the City and a City banker, a Russian oligarch, a Turkish playboy, and the British establishment.  It’s an investigation that proves more difficult for Staffe when his boss, Pennington decides to cut him loose from the case and he continues to investigate on his own.