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Crimesheet

The weblog of the Crime Writers' Association

Monday, November 1st 2004

Good News for a New Year


It was both surprising and a little disappointing that no crime novel or crime writer featured with any significance in BBC's Big Read programme - not a trace of Minette Walters and Ian Rankin, let alone Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle. By comparison in The Times list of the best selling fiction of 2003 there were five crime fiction novels in the top ten: Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell; Blue Horizon by Wilbur Smith; The King of Torts by John Grisham; The Know by Martina Cole; and Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson. This all goes to show that in the popularity stakes, crime fiction is very much alive and kicking.


And as we enter a new year, the publishers' lists are bursting with old and new talent. One of the most enterprising and satisfying of projects comes from Orion with their New Blood selection. They call it 'a fresh injection of crime talent' and for once a publisher's blurb is accurate. Orion has published nine (count 'em) nine novels by new crime writers all at the accessible hard cover price of £9.99. This is a most encouraging and enterprising experiment. The novels themselves cover various aspects of the crime scene. Here's a brief digest:

Phoenix by John Connor
Karen Sharpe is an ex-MI5 undercover agent working for the West Yorkshire police. A double killing in a remote part of the Pennines brings her double trouble.

Frozen by Richard Burke
The central character, Harry, tries to make sense of the attempted suicide of the woman he loves. The publishers refer to it as 'a warm satisfying first novel.'

Bloodless Shadow by Victoria Blake
Samantha Falconer is a private investigator 'with a past' (haven't they all?). Oxford provides the backdrop to the mystery - a woman has gone missing from the university - but this is not the city of dreaming spires and refined academia. Blake reveals the dark underbelly where danger and murder lurk in the shadows.

Judgement Calls by Alafair Burke
A toughie, this one, about a thirteen year old who has been abducted, drugged and anally raped. Samantha Kincaid, Deputy DA in Portland's Vice and Drugs Division is called in to discover if the man the girl identifies as her attacker is really guilty.

The Stone Angels by Stuart Archer
An atmospheric crime thriller set in Buenos Aries. Comisario Miguel Fortunato is aware of political interference in his investigation of a difficult murder case.

The Devil's Redhead by David Corbett
A noir novel set in Las Vegas about two lovers who battle to be together against a backdrop of drugs and violence.

The Columbian Mule by Massimo Carlotto
The story is set in the deep Italian criminal underworld. Originally written in Italian but now translated by Christopher Woodall. The author used his experience of being framed for a murder he did not commit to give the novel a strong and exciting authenticity.

The Third Person by Steve Mosby
This is a tale of Jason's search for his missing girlfriend. He becomes convinced that she has been abducted by someone she met through the internet. The publishers claim that the novel is full of 'gut-wrenching twists and turns.'

The Jasmine Trade by Denise Hamilton
This novel bears the following appraisal from none other than Michael Connelly: 'More than a good crime story. Read it and learn.' Eve Diamond ('a new series character') is a journalist for the Los Angeles Times who follows up the story of a young bride who is found shot dead in her brand new car. When the dead girl's family refuse to help the police with their enquiries, she realises there more to the crime than meets the eye.

The fact that all these are first novels and are being launched by one publisher with more than a few fanfares indicates that the world of crime writing is robust and thriving. Good news, certainly, as we begin a new year.

David Stuart Davies on Monday, November 1st 2004 @ 03:41 PM GMT [link]

Monday, November 1st 2003

The rich scarlet thread


It was Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes who observed, 'Everything comes in circles… The old wheel turns and the same spoke comes up. It has all been done before and will be again…' This is a universal truth and it can be applied to many aspects of life and art. And crime fiction. At present there is a trend for the very gutsy graphic crime novel - writing that leaves little to the imagination. I refer to those best sellers where the gore, the horror and the unpleasant details are not only mentioned but underlined. I am thinking of the stomach clenching moments in such books as Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing or Mo Hayder's Birdman or Mark Billingham's Sleepyhead or any Patricia Cornwell. Sometimes this kind of crafted in-your-face writing is criticised for going too far. Well, I suppose it is if Agatha Christie is your bag. It is unlikely that we would be presented with a detailed description of how a corpse was disembowelled in the vestry in a Miss Marple novel. Genteel poison is more her style. But it would be wrong to think that this vivid approach to crime writing is new. Even old Sherlock Holmes had his gory moments. In the novel The Valley of Fear, the main victim has his head blown off at close range by a sawn off shot gun.

However it was in the thirties that we encountered the commencement of the golden age of graphic violence. At that time a whole gang of writers, probably influenced by the horrors of the First World War, wanted to tell it how it was. When you killed a person there was blood, gore and unpleasantness, why disguise the fact? Paul Cain was one writer, for example, who overstepped the bounds propriety according to some critics. His stories were set in the Prohibition era and dealt with killers, drug dealers, con men, private eyes and sexy girls. One of his notable novels was Fast One (1932) which tells the story of Gerry Kells, a murderous gunman, racketeer and amoral gambler, who with is alcoholic lover tries to muscle in on the west coast mob scene. One Los Angeles reviewer called the book 'a ceaseless welter of bloodshed'; while the Saturday Review of Literature thought it 'the hardest-boiled yarn of a decade.'

Paul Cain was one of a raft of writers who wrote for the Black Mask magazine, a pulp publication which influenced a generation of writers and readers. Within its pages you could find the work of such stars as Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber and Cornell Woolrich. The rich scarlet thread of violence, action and sex ran through their stories.

This 'hardboiled school' of the thirties spawned the toughies of the forties, fifties and sixties when such characters as Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer were slapping women about and shooting anyone who irritated them. But the public loved them. There was perhaps a quietening down of such fiction as the peace-loving sixties drew to a close. But today… well the old wheel has turned again. We are now very much a visual culture with television, DVDs and video phones and a violent one also. Crime fiction reflects the age we are in - as it always has. However, graphic though it may be, the work of the current crop of crime writers is perhaps more honed and carefully constructed than ever before.

David Stuart Davies on Monday, November 1st 2003 @ 03:38 PM GMT [link]

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