G.P. Ritchie's Blog, page 2
February 23, 2019
CARL #7: Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
Circuit Breakers CARL – (See list at goodreads) PICTURE CREDIT: Sebastiaan Stam at Pexels
The Motive:
If you’ve been playing with technology since before World Wide Web, shouldn’t you have something worthwhile to say about cybercrime?
Actually CARL, I think I should. But since I’ve spent years specialising in digital activity of a more mundane nature, I’m going to take some direction from a four-year-old book which remains,...
January 15, 2019
CARL #6: Forensic Psychology: A Very Short Introduction
Reality Bites CARL – (See list at goodreads)
What lurks inside the mind of a criminal? How does criminal profiling work? When did psychologists become badass? But of course, these questions are pretty mundane. The question I really had in mind was…
The Evidence:Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?
I first watched The Silence Of The Lambs in a local arthouse cinema b...
December 29, 2018
CARL #5: Parapsychology: A Beginner’s Guide
One Knock For Yes? CARL – (See list at goodreads)
The Motive:
Sometimes, when I reach for my laptop, CARL distracts me with slow groaning noises and chain rattling. Occasionally, he even wears a white sheet in protest. He becomes so troubled when supernatural elements creep into my fiction that he extemporises on an old Scottish prayer:
“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things t...
December 24, 2018
CARL #4: The Psychopath Whisperer
An MRI scanner at Bates Motel CARL – (See list at goodreads)
The Motive:
“Psychopaths. Sociopaths. Osteopaths. Writing what you know isn’t your most exciting option.”
The psychopathic serial killer is a staple of crime fiction. But what’s the truth about the man behind the shower curtain?
The Evidence:When I said man behind the shower curtain, was that a sexist assumption or a mashup reference to The Wizard of Oz?...
An MRI scanner at Bates Motel CARL – (See list at g...
An MRI scanner at Bates Motel CARL – (See list at goodreads)
The Motive:
“Psychopaths. Sociopaths. Osteopaths. Writing what you know isn’t your most exciting option.”
The psychopathic serial killer is a staple of crime fiction. But what’s the truth about the man behind the shower curtain?
The Evidence:When I said man behind the shower curtain, was that a sexist assumption or a mashup reference to The Wizard of Oz?...
December 7, 2018
CARL #3: Strangeways: A Prison Officer’s Story
The Turn Of The Screw CARL – (See list at goodreads)
The Motive:
“Write about crime without knowledge of punishment? You’ve never been in a prison, although perhaps you deserve to be.”
Laurel and Hardy. Yin and Yang. Fish fingers and custard. Some things inextricably linked. And if you plan on writing about career criminals, at some point you’ll want a sense of how they spend their societally-impos...
November 13, 2018
CARL #2: History in an hour
Nuggets of knowledge... CARL – (See list at goodreads)
The Motive:
“Calling it ‘Alternate History’ is what chumps do to avoid research”
This type of barb is typical Carl, and he’s missing the point. I only mentioned alternate history once in a moment of weakness. And only then because it sounded far grander than what I’d actually done, which was to bolt on little pieces of fiction onto real events. When he mutters so...
November 10, 2018
CARL #1: Unnatural Causes
The Pathologists Tale... CARL – (See list at goodreads)
“There’s proper science in this, you know! You can’t just wing it!”
It started, as it often does, with Carl shouting. He often shouts at me, but that’s a personified neurosis for you. As it happens, I was confident he was wrong on this one. Authors wing things all the time, and veracity is surely less important than verisimilitude: something ne...
Starting a life of crime…
Starting a life of crime... CARL: Crime Author's Reading List
Introducing Carl…
A crime novel wasn’t an obvious choice for my first book. My father had loved Ian Rankin’s Rebus and nothing gladdened his Glaswegian heart more than a pint in Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar. But fantasy, folk-tales, mythology, supernatural and horror dominated my reading. I’d written various stories and always wanted to publish something, so after my father died, it seemed fitting to attempt a...
August 27, 2018
Ask the author: G.P. Ritchie
Avoiding spoilers, I’d say that a few things went into it
A short story I wrote about the Edinburgh festival felt like it could be placed into a larger context A piece of research I encountered about aging in mice I’ve always liked horror and supernatural fiction, but have also read a fair bit within the crime genre. A short story won me a place in a masterclass with Iain Rankin, which was a great encouragement to trying something in that space How long did...
