I've heard from the good folks at Bitter Lemon Press, that if all goes to plan, Gianrico Carofiglio's third title in English, 'Reasonable Doubt' will come out in July."What could be more fun on a winter Sunday afternoon than to gather round the wireless with the family to listen to the BBC? Especially when it's Radio 4 Book Club featuring our very own Val McDermid? Yes, at 4pm on Sunday February 4th (repeated on Thursday February 6th at 4pm) Val will be talking to host Jim Naughtie and an audience in Manchester about her landmark Gold Dagger-winning novel, The Mermaids Singing. If you can't pick up Radio 4, you can listen live at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/. And if you want to listen to it at a later date, it's available for a month via the Listen Again facility at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/bookclub/.
Val said, 'I was thrilled to be asked to take part in Book Club. I'm a great admirer of the show and of James Naughtie as an interviewer. I was a bit nervous beforehand, because you never know what sort of questions a live audience will throw at you. But we had great fun on the day, and I found it very interesting to revisit a book I wrote a dozen years ago. I hope you get the chance to listen to it, and that you will enjoy it."
The last film from Dutch director Theo van Gogh came out on R1 DVD a few days ago. The film is based upon the book 'The Sixth of May' by Tomas Ross.From The Independent:
On Her Majesty's civil service
Whispers of excitement among Whitehall's calculator carriers following the publication of a civil service thriller. (A new sub-genre and not, on this occasion, an oxymoron.)
John Nightingale, a financial fraud bod in the Department for Work and Pensions, has spent sandwich breaks daydreaming his debut novel, The Sky Blue Parcel.
As expected from a man married to Caroline Slocock, the head of the Equal Opportunities Commission, Nightingale ensures his female sleuth is not confined to holding the evidence bags for a testosterone-charged protagonist.
Indeed, his Jane Charles bears a canny resemblance to James Bond's latest companion, the gutsy Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), in Casino Royale) - a female Treasury official charged with keeping tabs on the investigators, who subsequently becomes embroiled in espionage and extra-curricular intimacy.
Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: "In a sensual region of France, a crime detective like no other...Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot of the Cavaillon Regional Crime Squad is called to an artist's retreat in Provence, a luxury hill-top hotel where a young woman, it seems, has been murdered. There are bloodstains, but no body. The mystery deepens as Jacquot begins his investigation. Among the guests are those who have both means and motive, with personal secrets, hidden agendas and their own dangerous liaisons to conceal. Some of these people are very powerful indeed, and none of them take kindly to Jacquot's probing questions. Looming over them all is a celebrated and reclusive artist whose masterworks are priceless, a monster who torments all those who seek to bask in his glory. When a summer storm isolates the hotel, and not one but two bodies are found, passions start to run high!"
According to the classic crime Granta diary, Arnaldur Indridason was born in Reykjavik on 28 January 1961."This portrayal is lifted from the Da Vinci Code, a book and film which claimed - against all evidence - to be based on fact. Despite strenuous and well-publicised objections at the time by the Catholic Church, and despite countless press reports into Opus Dei which found the organisation innocent of Dan Brown's depiction, the BBC chose to exploit this portrayal as if it were commonplace fact."
The chap on Volume 2 is none other than recent Bond villain Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen).Operation Whooooo!
Friday 26 January 2007 11:30-12:00 (Radio 4 FM)
By Lynne Truss.
When a headless corpse is found on the ghost train on the Palace Pier, Steine puts the death down to natural causes. But can new policeman Twitten help Brunswick prove otherwise?
Inspector Steine ...... Michael Fenton Stevens
Mrs Groynes ...... Jan Ravens
A 20-second spoof of Camberwick Green has been made by the BBC to promote series 2 of Life on Mars, and is being distributed virally for maximum exposure. In an inventive twist, the sequence will also be used in the show itself as part of a dream Sam has following drug treatment, used in the present to try to bring him out of his coma.
The show's marketing, which includes blanket coverage of all media outlets, maintains the retro theme by using the 1970s' BBC branding. At the end of the campaign the Ford Cortina Mark III used in the show will be auctioned, and proceeds donated to Comic Relief.
The biggest thrillers of all time - The Day of the Jackal and The Da Vinci Code - built their conspiracy plots around real historical events. So it was inevitable that the death of Princess Diana would get the same treatment. In July, the month before the 10th anniversary of the Paris crash, Transworld will publish The Accident Man by Tom Cain (the pseudonym of a "well-known investigative journalist"). The book stars an assassin who ordinarily targets "bad people", but who realises, after engineering a car accident, that he has been set up to murder the royal. The branch of Waterstone's at Harrods - the store owned by Dodi Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed - has not yet decided whether to stock the book.The Telegraph calls it a bad idea
If you scandalously missed the superb mini-series, The State Within, a few weeks back, now's the chance to remedy that error as the DVD is out today. Blurb: "A flight explodes in mid-air during take off near Washington DC. Later that day, as a shocked capital struggles to come to terms with the disaster, a diplomatic catastrophe envelops the British Embassy. A cat's cradle of tangled affinities and conflicting interests told through interlinking stories unfold as British Ambassador Mark Brydon slowly realises that he is being played by an invisible puppeteer with great power. A tightly plotted conspiracy thriller about the limits of diplomacy in a world where government has abdicated responsibility for war."Shown as a six parter on BBC1 last year, it's extremely complicated in a '24' way with Lucius Malfoy, I mean Jason Isaacs, as the British Ambassador. I had heard there might be a follow-up, I do hope so as there's so little homegrown quality drama made these days.
Britain, 1964: a time when the line between the police and criminals has become increasingly blurred; when the proliferation of drugs is about to change the face of policing forever; when Britain's youth stand on the brink of a social and sexual revolution.Expect it on BBC1 in the Spring.
Inspector George Gently is one of the few good men at Scotland Yard, his sense of public duty an increasingly rare commodity in a police force where corruption is rife and unchecked.
But his relentless pursuit of notorious gangsters such as Joe Webster (Phil Davis, Bleak House) leads to the murder of Gently's beloved wife Isabella, a killing arranged by Webster himself in an act of revenge upon Gently.
When a grieving Gently learns of the murder of a young biker, Johnny Lister (Christian Cooke, Where The Heart Is), who was part of a Northumberland drugs ring, it has all the hallmarks of a Webster operation and he insists on being given the case, deciding it will be his last...
In Northumberland, George takes on the headstrong young Detective Sergeant Bacchus (Lee Ingleby, The Street) who is convinced that the prime suspect for Johnny Lister's murder is Ricky Deeming (Richard Armitage, Robin Hood), the charismatic leader of the Defenders biker gang.
But as the case grows ever more complex, Gently must decide if Bacchus can be trusted – hot-tempered and ambitious, could he too be drawn to the corrupt road taken by so many of his contemporaries? Or can Gently keep Bacchus's integrity intact?
As the case reaches its violent climax, Gently begins to feel that his brand of policing is needed now more than ever – and perhaps he is not ready to call this his last case after all...
Fred Vargas is another original. In Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (Harvill Secker £11.99, pp400), first published in France three years ago, her doughty policeman, Commissaire Adamsberg, is sent to Quebec for training and discovers a serial killer has followed him. Before long, Adamsberg is on the run from the Canadian police, accused of murdering a young woman he has only just met. He believes he knows the true murderer, the fearsome Judge Fulgence, who may be responsible for nine other murders over a 60-year period and whose unusual weapon of choice is the trident. Vargas, who won last year's inaugural Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, has a wonderfully offbeat imagination that makes each of her novels a refreshing delight.
On the Clipper website you can listen to a sample which has Bryant explaining what 'Peculiar' means."Children of Men" has won the University of Southern California's Scripter Award, the only honour that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation.
Crime novelist P.D. James wrote the book, her 12th, in 1992. Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby adapted the screenplay for the movie, which was directed by Cuaron.
Clive Owen and Michael Caine star in the story of a world where women have become infertile. The acclaimed Universal Pictures has earned $22 million (11 million pounds) to date at the North American box office.
"(The screenwriters) took P.D. James' bracingly dystopic novel and crafted from it a film at once brave, subtle (and) shocking. This is writing and screenwriting of the highest order," said Howard Rodman, chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing Division.
The winners will be feted February 18 at a dinner on the USC campus. The other finalists were "The Devil Wears Prada," "The Illusionist," "The Last King of Scotland" and "Notes on a Scandal."
English libraries are attracting more visitors than ever before despite a fall in total expenditure on books, according to a new report.
There was a small rise of about 1% in the number of visits to public libraries - continuing a trend for increasing visits. The total number of visitors has risen 7.5% in total over the past five years. The number of computer terminals in public libraries has risen by 7% in the past year as libraries continue to expand their role into different forms of educational media.Evidence from the report suggests the more libraries invest in books, the more the public borrows; a 7% increase in children's books added to the shelves was supported by a 3% increase in their lending.
The culture minister, David Lammy, said: "Books and the written word remain at the heart of the public library service, and rightly so, but local libraries offer much more than that. Local authorities disregard their importance to communities at their peril."
Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: "England, 1235, and Brother Petroc is living a simple life as a novice monk. Struggling to keep his soul fairly clean and worrying most about resisting the local girls, he inadvertently stumbles headlong into vicious trap. Framed by a sinister Templar Knight for a brutal murder of a church official and accused of the theft of a priceless relic, he is forced to run for his life. But when his best friend Will is killed by the chasing knight, Petroc's flight becomes a quest for restitution. Trusting his fate to an enigmatic relic-hunter and scoundrel, he must dodge the long arm of the church and somehow get to the bottom of everything that has happened to him. He must find out how his fate is entwined with that of the sacred object and get revenge on the man who wrecked his life - all the while avoiding the pitfalls and perils of love for a beautiful Greek princess..."
Thursday 18 January
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
We continue our dramatisations of Alexander McCall Smith's enormously successful and popular series of novels set in Botswana.
Written and dramatised by Alexander McCall Smith. A series of plays adapted from the fifth and sixth books in Smith's hugely popular series set in Botswana. 1: How to Handle Men Through the Application of Psychology. Precious Ramotswe, owner and founder of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, sets out to release her fiance, Mr JLB Matekoni, from a terrifying obligation. Meanwhile, a new case comes into the agency and the ladies find themselves on a love quest.
Cast includes:
Mma Ramotswe …. Claire Benedict
Mma Makutsi …. Nadine Marshall
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni …. Joseph Marcell
Brief synopsis from amazon.com: Traditionally crime fiction comes into its own early in the New Year.You can still listen to the whole programme and the books mentioned are listed here.
To mark the imminent avalanche of titles Mariella invites three of the stars of the genre, Barbara Nadel, Qui Xiaolong and Karin Alvtegen to nominate their top fictional detectives.
Summary from amazon.co.uk: "In Self's Deception, private investigator Gerhard Self receives a request to track down the daughter of Herr Salger, the Assistant Secretary of Bonn, who's been absent from her translation classes at the university. Repelled by the pomposity of the government official, he rejects the case. But an insistent letter--and five thousand marks--changes his mind. After discrete interrogations at her school and her former residences, and a quick survey of the local hospitals, it turns out she washed up at a psych ward where he's told she had fallen out of a window earlier that week and died. Self suspects that this may be a lie, and soon decides that one of the doctors is covering for her. As his investigation takes a sinister turn he realises that his quarry may have been involved in a terrorist incident--but a terrorist incident that the government seems intent on covering up. With the woman still missing, and a growing suspicion that the client who hired him may not actually be Herr Salger at all, Self finds himself embroiled in a dark and complex conspiracy that reaches to the very top of government. But with his plentiful supply of Sweet Aftons, and his cat Turbo to talk to (as well as the realisation that the young lady he is searching for is not without her own charms) Self sets out on his latest adventure with his inimitable blend of cynicism and charm."Scandinavia continues to provide a fertile landscape for crime writers and the latest to join the fold is Mari Jungstedt. Her debut novel Unseen is the first of a projected series set on the island of Gotland in the Baltic and follows the cat and mouse game between a serial killer and the authorities at the height of the holiday season. There's an icy, dispassionate grip to Jungstedt's writing that recalls Henning Mankell, although one does wonder whether the genre is starting to reach saturation point.Comments welcomed on whether the genre is getting saturated. Can one have too many Scandinavian writers translated into English?
At the other end of the scale is The Third Heaven Conspiracy, a thickly atmospheric historical thriller by the Italian author Giulio Leoni set in pre-Renaissance Florence. A conspiracy to turn a church into a university that involves the new Pope as well as all manner of witchcraft pricks the interest of young poet Dante Alighieri in a literary mystery that's more The Name of the Rose than The Da Vinci Code.
Meanwhile, in Quebec, Commissariat Adamsberg finds himself personally involved in a series of linked murders committed over a 50-year period in Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand by Fred Vargas with the result that he soon finds himself on the run. A dense, complicated, exciting novel from one of the more interesting crime writers around.
To programme what has now become the finest Crime Writing Festival in the world is a great responsibility, but also a great pleasure, and with a tenure of only one year, the decision as to who will take over the role once your time is up is a very important one. Yes, of course a “safe pair of hands” is crucial – just ask Andrew Flintoff – but it is vital that each successive chair will take the Festival further; will oversee growth, bring a fresh perspective and raise the bar even higher, so that writers, publishers and readers will continue to flock to a festival that is unrivalled anywhere.
This is what the programming chair must take on, and there could be nobody more ideally suited to the task than Natasha Cooper.
Daphne – as those fortunate enough to be her friends call her – is not only one of the most accomplished crime writers in the country, but she is one of the most popular figures in the literary community as a whole. She is as adored as she is respected, and, under her chairmanship, the programme for the 2007 festival is shaping up to be the best yet.
So what makes the ideal Programming Chair?
Daphne’s writings about crime fiction make it clear that she sees this genre as one that must continue to develop. She is a fresh thinker; bubbling with ideas and initiatives and her programme for this year’s festival will most certainly reflect this.
Daphne is hugely “clubbable”, and not in the baby seal or Pete Doherty sense of the word. This quality will go a long way towards creating the Festival’s uniquely warm and welcoming atmosphere and I can think of no writer who better unites readers and writers which is what makes the Theakston’s Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival so special.
And, of course, there also needs to be a degree of steel. Anyone who has read any of Daphne’s wonderful Trish Maguire novels will not need to be told that there is a darkness and a determination lurking beneath that charming exterior, and when you’re dealing with the pressures of putting a large festival together, not to mention the miscellaneous demands of stroppy crime writers (suites, drugs, limousines etc), this is a quality that cannot be underestimated!
A tradition has evolved whereby the outgoing chair nominates his or her successor.
There was only ever one name on my list.
I was delighted when Natasha Cooper accepted the invitation and I know, that under her chairmanship, the 2007 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival will be the best yet.
Mark Billingham
Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: "In 1944, Daniel, a soldier legendary among the Norwegians fighting the advance of Bolshevism on the Russian front, is killed. Two years later, a wounded soldier wakes in a Vienna hospital. He becomes involved with a young nurse, the consequences of which will ripple forward to the end of the century. It was 1999: Harry Hole, working alone having caused an embarrassment in the line of duty, has been promoted to inspector and is lumbered with surveillance duties. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities; fairly mundane until a report of a rare and unusual gun being fired sparks his interest. Ellen Gjelten, his partner, from his police officer days makes a startling discovery. Then a former soldier is found with his throat cut. In a quest which takes him to South Africa and Vienna, Harry finds himself perpetually one step behind the killer. He will be both winner and loser by the novel's nail-biting conclusion. The Redbreast won the Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel when it was published in Norway, and was subsequently voted Norway's best crime novel. "The Devil's Star", Nesbo's first novel featuring Harry Hole to be translated into English, marked Nesbo as a voice to watch in the ever-more fashionable world of Nordic crime."...has acquired an author whom it believes is set to join the ranks of British crime-writing greats.I'm surprised they didn't throw a reference to Dalgleish in there too...
Publisher Sue Freestone has taken on Elena Forbes, a former investment banker whose debut Die With Me will introduce readers to DI Mark Tartaglia and pathologist Fiona Blake. The novel is set in the London suburb of Barnes, which in Forbes’ hands is “as vivid as Morse’s Oxford”, while Tartaglia has “the charisma and complexity of a Rebus or Wexford”.
The book is part of “a very decent” two-book deal, and independent TV production company Windfall, which is pitching a documentary about the making of a bestseller, is filming Forbes as she goes through the editorial process.
Audio books are set to be revolutionised by a tiny card that can store up to five lengthy novels on a phone.I like the sound of this as I'm always running out of tapes/cds when on the train.
The card can be slotted into a mobile phone, dispensing with the need to carry up to six CDs for an audio version of a book. The technology, originally developed to store music, will be released this year by Nokia.
One title that will be available is the bestselling Looking Good Dead, by the British thriller writer Peter James. He said: “I think this will revolutionise storytelling . . . with this, you can wander off into the park, lie down and listen to a book.”
Nokia is introducing the technology initially with James’s German publisher, S Fischer Verlage. His publisher in Britain, Macmillan, is in talks for a British version. Annual sales of audio books have reached about £71 million in Britain and £435 million in America.
Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: "The Brotherhood Of The Holy Shroud" is the explosive international bestseller that mixes fact and fiction to tell the riveting story of one of the world's most controversial relics, the Turin Shroud - believed by millions of the faithful to bear the likeness of Christ - and the desperate race to save it from those who will stop at nothing to possess its legendary power. A fire at the Cathedral of Turin and the discovery of a strangely mutilated body attract the attention of Italy's special Art Crimes Department, for the fire is only the latest in a troubling series of arson attacks and break-ins at the cathedral which houses the famous shroud. Department chief, Marco Valoni leads a team of top investigators in a race to solve a crime certain to shock the world: someone is planning to steal the Holy Shroud. Spanning centuries and continents, from the storm-rent skies over Cavalry, through the glories of Byzantium and the intrigue and treachery of the Crusades, "The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud" is a provocative page-turner of the highest order - one that will challenge you to believe."Want to help script the last Ellie Quicke book?I've read the first three and I enjoyed the first one very much and the second two almost as much.
Murder of Identity is published in hardback in December 06, and is the 8th in the Ellie Quicke series. The publishers would like to have just one more book to round off the series in 2007. The main storyline is already agreed, but I would welcome suggestions from readers as to the fate of Ellie’s dreadful daughter, Diana. What would you like to see happen to her? Ought she to reform? Or marry again – and if so what sort of man would take her on?
The only thing I know for certain is that she is not the next murder victim, as I think death is too good for her.
Please go to my contact page and let me know what you think.
My comments at the time: "A smooth read with a likeable main character. Ellie Quicke, recently widowed has been spending lots of time staring out her back window which faces the church. Her brain is befogged by grief and tablets. Unfortunately the killer of a local bad boy leaves the body in the church and is convinced that Ellie saw something. What follows is an account told by Ellie and sidebars from two would be assassins who naturally make a hash of it. Ellie has been sheltered from life by her husband but now she sets out to experience life. Recommended."he is to reprise his role in I, Claudius for a whole new audience. The series, to be aired by BBC Radio in January, will see him return to the pivotal role in what was widely considered to be one of the greatest pieces of TV drama after a gap of 30 years.Not content with one iconic figure, Jacobi will star as Charles Dickens (and a tramp) in the murder-mystery film, 'The Riddle', set to be released in the Spring.
The revamped eight-part serialisation has been staged for BBC Radio 2 and will be broadcast from 12 January. Though the 1976 TV version - which also starred Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed and John Hurt - combined Graves's 1934 novel and its sequel, Claudius the God, the radio revival will stick solely to the first book.
Plot outline from IMDB: "A journalist investigates a series of murders that follows the discovery of an unpublished novel by Charles Dickens in the cellar of an old Thames-side-pub. Gradually he becomes obsessed with unraveling a century-old murder in the pages of the manuscript. Only when he has done so, with the help of a mysterious beach-combing tramp who stalks the Thames foreshore, is he able to solve the modern murders."