Bookish backdrops
WHAT BETTER PLACE to set a book than in a bookstore or library? It makes sense that many authors, including myself, pay homage to these vital literary locations in our novels and non-fiction; most of us ‘grew up’ in libraries and bookstores – and chances are, many of our readers did too. I not only...
Locked-room mysteries
Back in the day, a ‘locked-room mystery’ meant exactly that – a murder behind not only closed, but locked doors, ostensibly impossible to commit, and thus a mechanical conundrum to unpick. Think Gaston Leroux’s Le mystère de la chambre jaune (1907), or even Arthur Conan Doyle’s personal favourite of all his Sherlock Holmes stories, ‘The Adventure...
Kate Simants: Extreme reality
Reality TV is dead! Long live reality TV! And so it goes. Just when we think audiences have had enough, and production companies are scraping the barrel for ideas, along comes another surprise that grips the nation. This winter, it was The Traitors that got the whole nation talking – and not just about how Claudia Winkelman...
All in the mind
At the risk of sounding like valedictorian delivering a graduation speech, a ‘psychological thriller’ is defined on Wikipedia as a thriller “which emphasizes the unstable or delusional psychological states of its characters.” As definitions go, that’s good enough for me. In general, I just know a psychological thriller when I read one. Most whodunits, at...
William Ryan: Seeking answers to the darkness
William Ryan’s historical thriller A House of Ghosts has been receiving high praise in the press and from readers. I’m willing to bet the stunning cover design, featuring an embossed gold-leaf image of Blackwater Abbey, has played a part in the novel’s success. Stars flicker in the night sky and stylised rays of light fan...
Be creative
Let’s say you would like to write a novel. You have a plot summary, gained over weeks, months, years, which has formed in your mind while you have been out walking, running, having a bath. The plot is simple and effective, and you can describe it in less than a minute. Your friends like your...
Beyond imagining
Willa Cather in Death Comes for The Archbishop was able to create imaginary conversations and actions that gave her main character (based on Father Jean Marie Latour) and story depth and motivation, metaphors and textures, a sense of fullness and believability, that may not have been accessible to her had she wrote the book as...
A bear in a million
The varying merits of the UK’s early November film releases appear to be in direct proportion to the protagonists’ face-fuzz. Much was made in advance of Kenneth Brannagh’s reimagining of Hercule Poirot’s ‘magnificent moustaches’ in the latest adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (20th Century Fox, 3 November), but the rest of...
In the shadow of Poe
It’s commonplace to credit Edgar Allan Poe with inventing the modern mystery story with his trio of tales featuring the Parisian detective C. August Dupin. Poe’s innovation explains why to this very day the annual awards given by the Mystery Writers Association are called the Edgars. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle freely acknowledged that Poe had...
Agatha
In December 1926, Agatha Christie vanished, sending shockwaves through British society. As the authorities scoured the country for her, theories and suspicions abounded: it was murder, a hoax, suicide, a publicity stunt, revenge. When she was finally discovered ten days later, living under an assumed name in a hotel in Harrogate, she returned to normal...
Lost in story
Peter Swanson’s gripping new thriller The Kind Worth Killing, containing a satisfyingly twisted and murderous plot with nods to Patricia Highsmith, Agatha Christie and James M. Cain, has become an immediate bestseller and is shortlisted for the 2015 Ian Fleming Silver Dagger. He tells us about his influences and reading habits, and about delving into...
