Martin Edwards's Blog, page 290

Forgotten Book - The Crime of the Century

It's safe to say that, of Kingsley Amis's books, The Crime of the Century is one of the least known, even to experienced crime writers. So, although Amis remains a well-read author, this quirky little volume is a suitable subject for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books for Friday.

I first became aware of The Crime of the Century when it appeared in a rather good, though regrettably short-lived paperback series known as Dent Mastercrime. This, in 1987, represented the story's first...

Witness to Murder

Witness to Murder is a 1954 movie which I stumbled across the other day and found surprisingly enjoyable. The premise is engaging, if not totally original – a woman sees a murder committed in the apartment block across the road, but can't find anyone to believe her story, and becomes increasingly paranoid.

So we are in Rear Window territory, although Cornell Woolrich wasn't responsible for the screenplay, which was the work of director Chester Erskine. The cinematographic style takes Witness t...

Roz Southey and Chris Nickson

The long-term health of the crime fiction genre depends on a number of things, including the willingness of publishers to bring out the work of new writers – and to keep publishing capable writers for more than a couple of novels. All too often, there is a tendency for new or newish writers to be picked up on, say, a two-book deal and then dumped thereafter if the figures don't look good. I understand the economic reasons for this, but short-term thinking has major downsides in most...

Kate Ellis

Margot's guest blog on Saturday about writers who are good at both novels and short stories brought a number of names to my mind. Some of them – such as Ruth Rendell, Reg Hill, and Peter Lovesey – are famous. But I'd like to highlight a friend of mine who isn't (yet) as well-known, yet who delivers real value both at novel length and in the short form.

This is Kate Ellis, whose latest Wesley Peterson book, The Flesh Tailor, has just fallen into my clutches. The Wesley series is very well...

The Serial Thrillers and Marketing Books

Transworld have sent me a sampler of book extracts entitled The Serial Thrillers (sub-title 'Fourteen Killer Reads') to publicise a group of their leading authors whose latest books appear in 2010. This strikes me as a good marketing ploy, although not unique, and I'd guess it's something which many authors published elsewhere will find quite enviable.

How you market crime fiction (or, indeed, any fiction) effectively is one of the questions over which much ink has been spilt for years. There ...

Falco: The Official Companion

I mentioned recently Lindsey Davis's new companion-style book, published by Century, about her enormously popular series featuring Marcus Didius Falco. If you are a Falco fan, it will surely be required reading and even if you are not, there is enough of interest in the book to ensure that you will become intrigued by Davis and her writing.

The strength of the Falco books lies in Davis' humorous and intelligent writing, and her characteristic style is much in evidence here: 'My opinions may...

Margot on short stories versus novels

Margot Kinberg needs no introduction to readers of her insightful blog, 'Confessions of a Mystery Novelist' or her two novels, Publish or Perish (great title!) and B-Very Flat. Her blog posts are not merely regular but detailed and very skilfully conceived, leaving the rest of us in awe at her industry as well as her depth of knowledge. She also manages to find time to be an associate professor in San Diego.

I greatly appreciate her comments on this blog, and I'm delighted she has agreed to...

Forgotten Book - The Odd Flamingo

My latest entry for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books is by an author who is very far from forgotten. Nina Bawden is a writer of considerable distinction, now in her 80s, but it's often overlooked that, early in her career, she published a couple of detective novels.

I came across The Odd Flamingo when it appeared in a series of Jubilee reprints celebrating 50 years of the Collins Crime Club, back in 1980. Julian Symons selected and introduced a dozen titles, many of which were...

Following

Christopher Nolan is now an acclaimed film director, with massive successes such as Memento and The Prestige under his belt. But he began in 1999 with a low budget black and white movie called Following, which is short, sharp and compelling.

I found the premise fascinating. A young wannabe writer gets into the habit of following strangers just 'to see where they go'. He isn't really a stalker, just an eccentric loner, and really quite a decent person in many ways – but very naïve. His...

Starting a Thriller

I've been meaning to devour another Lee Child for ages, after loving The Visitor, and now I've just begun to listen to an audio book version of Echo Burning, featuring his regular hero Jack Reacher. It's made a good start.

Lee Child has not become a global best-seller by accident. There are reasons for his success (just as there are always reasons for great success) and writers like me can, I'm sure, learn a good deal from studying the methods of such a writer, even if his books are different ...