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

Book marketing that works…

This caught my eye earlier in the week.  It's something I have as a paperback and an audio-book, and I am now very tempted given the simple message seen here.

 

Why does it work for me?  It tells you the setting and the conditions of the time (which relate to our contemporary world).  The title is a good hint at the content.  It lets the author speak for himself and stand on his own two feet.  But in keeping with the latest trends in publishing, here’s a mock-up:

 

Queen’s Birthday Honours 2011 - publishing-lite?

45 pages of names but publishing-lite on this occasion.  Congratulations to the two below.

 Members of the Order of the British Empire

Ms Kate ATKINSON, Author. For services to Literature.

Julia Catherine, Mrs DONALDSON, Author and Playwright. For services to Literature.

The Apprentice – Week 5, Episode 6

‘… If it sounds too good to be true in terms of price then it probably is …’

 

Oh boy, was this one of the most inspired and hence hardest tasks we have yet seen on The Apprentice.  If you watched ‘You’re Fired’ later you’ll know that the man with the rubbish business who gave the briefing to the candidates is an ex-banker with an MBA: neither of which he likes to draw attention to at the workplace.  But oh, the subtleties of such a business where items can be salvaged.  There’s providing a clearance at a cost for service.  There’s doing it for free knowing that some items can be salvaged at an ongoing revenue return.  And then there’s the margin end of the business…  (Watch the programme for an explanation of that last one as I’m not sure I ‘got it’.  But then, our candidates were not always 100% on the ‘got it’ front either, which led to some dramatic viewing.)  Oh, I forgot one other aspect to this: being screwed by builders. But that’s the business they’re in, innit?

Guest Post: Birth of Clue by James McCreet

It's a Crime! is delighted to welcome back James McCreet with another guest post.  Here he offers an insight into literature’s long-standing debt to crime writing.

Birth of a Clue

TS Eliot famously described Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels” and he was not alone among literary men with a penchant for criminal thrills. Kingsley Amis liked James Bond books so much that he wrote one himself (Colonel Sun, 1968), while arch-wordsmith Anthony Burgess couldn’t resist writing his own “eschatological spy novel” Tremor of Intent (1966).

We shouldn’t be surprised. In a genre sometimes derided as frothily commercial, we can count such ‘literary’ productions as Umberto Eco’s (The Name of the Rose, 1986), Alain Robbe-Grillet’s brain-melting The Erasers (1953), Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths. In each case, these heavyweight authors have leaned heavily upon (and luxuriated in the pleasures of) the tropes and narrative structures created by the originators of detective fiction. Indeed, when Agatha Christie had her unreliable narrator own up to the murder in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), she pretty much threw postmodernism out with the bathwater.

DPD – the courier inspired by Dante’s hell

I had called three numbers – all automated systems and no one to speak to. Hence my parcel remains unidentified.  (I am assuming it’s a book from a publisher at this stage as I have ordered nothing.)  I found the depot number on an internet forum but no one answered.  I tried to arrange redelivery on the site but it was in ‘maintenance’.  Their card says they hold undelivered items for three days only.   The result was that I tweeted this:

DPD is a most absurd company. Why do companies use them? They hold a non-delivery for 3 days only. To arrange a timeslotted re-delivery they charge either £6 or £12 & Saturdays are only available for £12. Collections have to be timeslot booked (they are more important than the Queen’s gynae).  And if I collect I have a 30mile round trip to do…

And this:

So I guess whoever sent me a parcel via DPD wasted their money as I can't be arsed.

The depot to which I’d have to travel is only accessible by car.  I’m lucky I still one have to consider that option, but at 30 miles why should it cost me so much to collect something I am not expecting?  (That said, it might come in at slightly less cost than a delivery to meet my needs.)

I’ll bet DPD presents a very efficient and cost-effective interface for its customers.  However, it fails big time on the follow through service.

So, whoever you are, use this white elephant if you choose, but I am sure I will not be your only undelivered return.  And do enjoy your return when it arrives.

FYI, their charges, quoted exclusive of VAT to make you feel it's cheaper.

 

Scott and Bailey – Episode 1

We must be hitting the time when things of the 60s and 70s provide fond memories for some.  Earlier this year Zen had a planned and distinctive 70s feel to it; now we have the opening credits for Scott and Bailey looking like it was a 70s programme.  And perhaps with Detective Constables Rachel Bailey and Janet Scott we have a British Cagney and Lacey for this millennium?

Keenly mixing domestic lives with the daily grind of life as a copper, the opening hook is not so much the apparent suicide that turns into a murder investigation as the dirty ditching boyfriend who stuns Bailey at dinner when she was expecting a marriage proposal.  It had been two years invested in the relationship and DC or not, Bailey reacts like any other human female would, but has a few tools to hand that others don’t, even if the use of them could lead to a police disciplinary.

John Lawton's A Lily of the Field reviewed in the UK media

There's an excellent review this weekend by Roz Kaveney in The Independent. (And it's a wonderfully written review too.)

I hear on the grapevine that the Daily Telegraph may be covering the novel shortly, possibly this weekend, and will update this post with a link if so.

Previous reviews from across the pond include The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Canada's Globe and Mail.

 

[Update: not online yet, but I have a pic of the Jeremy Jehu review in today's Daily Telegraph, see left.  He's thinking as I am thinking (below).  Let's hope we are both right for this is a wonderful series.]

I have been picking up on a bit of a buzz about Lawton recently and one of those reviews notes 'the work of a writer at the peak of his powers'.  He was shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger the other week.  I wonder if 2011 will be the year when he reaps more than his usual crops of potatoes, onions, leeks and garlic?

 Find this, his latest novel and current availablity of his work on Amazon here. Like collecting? Go to Goldsboro Books.

 

The author will be at Goldsboro Books's Crime in the Court event on 21 June (18:30 to 20:30).

A mere stone's throw away is Goodwin's Court, home of Freddie Troy in Lawton's novels, pictured left as it is today.

BBC1 Case Histories (Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie) with Jason Isaacs - another trailer - enjoy!

The Apprentice 2011 – Week Four, Episode Five

Opener: clearly Glenn is one of those men who is more attractive clothes off than on.  Which made for an injection of interest before last week’s recap… 

And the task this week?  Make and brand a unique pet food and then produce a TV advertisement to sell it.  Pets across the globe would no doubt have been salivating at Lord Sacch’s words.  Could he be the new Pavlov?  Tinkle, tinkle little bell, Lord Pavlova will serve you now.  No, I can’t see it.  Not even at Battersea.