Today I'm delighted to welcome
NICOLA WHITE
to share her BEST OF CRIME ...
... AUTHORS
This changes all the time, but today, I’m going with Raymond Chandler for verve, style and wit. He creates a world that is all his own, with the sure rhythm of a jazz soloist.
... FILMS/MOVIES
Maybe it’s because I’m writing about the 80s, but I think the courtroom thriller Jagged Edge – with Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges, is very satisfying. There’s no better sound than hearing a whole cinema gasp as the clue is revealed that changes everything. With a terrifying score by John Barry and some excellent tailoring.
... TV DRAMAS
The Killing was the first Nordic noir I ever watched, and I think has never been bettered. A series leaves room for subtleties in the way a film can’t. I loved the workaday slog of a long case, with all its false triumphs and reversals. There was also an interesting focus of the family of the murdered girl and the damage they endured. Perhaps there’s something about having to read subtitles that means your attention is particularly undivided.
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
I’ll always have a soft spot for Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. I read The Talented Mr Ripley as a teenager and it threw me into moral confusion when I realised I was hoping he would get away with it all. He sees himself as a victim of circumstance. I think a lot of people who do bad things see themselves as victims.
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
I think the detective I have loved most is Sara Peretsky’s VI Warshawski. She was the first detective I had read who was out there on her own, smart, tough and self-reliant, fighting abuses of power, but with a lovingly described ordinary life. She did the laundry, loved her food and walked the neighbour’s dogs – everywoman and superhero.
... MURDER WEAPONS
A hatpin has definite appeal, something small, stylish and deadly.
... DEATH SCENES
There is an amazing murder scene in Denise Mina’s Blood, Salt, Water where a hired thug has to kill a woman. The woman is annoying, the thug is full of self-loathing. It’s such an emotionally powerful scene, drenched in pity for the waste of it all.
... BLOGS/WEBSITES
I’ve become reliant on watching archive film clips on YouTube. While newspaper and magazine archives are hugely useful for the facts of things, there is nothing like seeing the era you are writing about – the clothes people wore, what the shops are selling – to put you right back there. It amazes me that there are dozens of home videos that people took of themselves, just driving around Dublin in the 1980s. It’s a magic portal!
... WRITING TIPS
Work makes work. That is, when you are in the midst of writing, the best ideas come. It’s no use waiting for inspiration to strike (though walks and baths can be useful strategems), you have to wrestle your way into your prose and work from there. Also, I have the Freedom app on my computer for when the willpower is weak.
... WRITING SNACKS
No snacks at the desk! Snacks are for bribery only – when I finish this page I can have lunch kind of thing. Instead, I indulge in a parade of hot beverages – coffee black or white, strong tea, herbal tea, chai, miso soup, Lemsip…
About NICOLA WHITE
Nicola White won the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2008 and in 2012 was Leverhulme Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University. Her novel The Rosary Garden won the Dundee International Book Prize, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize, and selected as one of the four best debuts by Val McDermid at Harrogate. She grew up in Dublin and New York, and now lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Find Nicola White on Twitter - @whiteheadednic
About A FAMISHED HEART
Publisher's description
Her head was bowed, and the hands braced on the chair arms were not like hands at all, but the dry dark claws of a bird ... The MacNamara sisters hadn’t been seen for months before anyone noticed. It was Father Timoney who finally broke down the door, who saw what had become of them. Berenice was sitting in her armchair, surrounded by religious tracts. Rosaleen had crawled under her own bed, her face frozen in terror. Both had starved themselves to death. Francesca MacNamara returns to Dublin after decades in the US, to find her family in ruins. Meanwhile, Detectives Vincent Swan and Gina Considine are convinced that there is more to the deaths than suicide. Because what little evidence there is, shows that someone was watching the sisters die ...
A Famished Heart was published by Viper Books on 27 February 2020.
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