Today I'm delighted to welcome
SANJIDA KAY
to share her BEST OF CRIME ...
... AUTHORS
Gillian Flynn is one of the best psychological thriller
writers around. The plot of Gone Girl is an incredible jigsaw puzzle of
twists and reversals, the characters are Machiavellian and the prose is pitch-perfect.
Flynn’s previous novel, Sharp Objects, doesn’t have such a
rollercoaster plot, but it’s much edgier with a searing twist that took my
breath away: perfect American deep South gothic-noir.
... FILMS/MOVIES
Minority Report. For me this is the perfect
combination of sci-fic, thriller, philosophical conundrum and crime. It’s set
in 2054: there are no murders because the police’s PreCrime unit arrest
criminals before they can commit a crime. The film asks if you could predict
the future, can there ever be free will? I used the screenplay by Scott Frank
and Jon Cohen as inspiration for the dialogue in my final scene in my first
thriller, Bone by Bone.
... TV DRAMAS
Whether you love it or hate, I think Vince Gilligan created
the perfect screenplay for Breaking Bad. It was horribly addictive! I
also love Richard Warlow’s Ripper Street, set in Victorian London with
Edmund Reid as the troubled detective. The characters and the plot are complex
and the writing is brilliant. As fellow police officer, Benet Drake says:
And is that not you all over,
Mr. Reid? Your fevered eyes once more burning through the deceit of the world,
in the hope that you might, at last, uncover its black mechanics. And there,
perhaps, is the difference between you and I. I chose this work because I
believe... in my dull simplicity... that the inequities of this life might be
checked. But you... well, I've come to believe that you choose them in the hope
that they may never cease. For what then, Edmund Reid? What then for that restless
soul of yours?
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. A
lethal combination of erudition, intelligence and evil.
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
Jackson Brodie in Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories,
played by Jason Isaacs in the BBC drama series. I’m a bit of a sucker for
ex-soldiers with an overabundance of empathy who drink too much and run too
much and are generally quite dysfunctional. I might just fancy him. Just a
little bit.
... MURDER WEAPONS
Lily of the Valley berries used to poison a child in Breaking
Bad. This idea, of something common, beautiful and deadly, was the
inspiration behind a potentially murderous plot twist in my latest thriller, The
Stolen Child.
... DEATH SCENE
[Spoiler alert - for The Kind Worth Killing]
In Peter Swanson’s The Kind Worth
Killing, the protagonist is shot. That is pretty shocking: I mean, you
don’t normally bump off your main protagonist, who’s telling you the story in
the first person, a third of the way through the book. Shocking, but bold.
... WRITING TIPS
Plan, write every day and edit. As Ernest Hemingway says,
‘The only kind of writing is rewriting.
Coffee and dark chocolate!
About SANJIDA KAY
Sanjida Kay has a PhD on chimpanzees and has had nine books published. She has also written features and columns for national newspapers and magazines about science and the environment, directed science documentaries and presented wildlife programmes for the BBC.
Four of her books are novels and she’s won some awards for her writing. Her fifth novel, Bone by Bone, is a psychological thriller published by Corvus Books. It went straight into the Amazon kindle best-selling list. The Stolen Child is another psychological thriller.
She lives in Bristol with her husband, Jaimie, and her daughter, who is five and wants to be a writer-palaeontologist.
About THE STOLEN CHILD
Publisher's description
Zoe and
Ollie Morley tried for years to have a baby and couldn't. They turned to
adoption and their dreams came true when they were approved to adopt a little
girl from birth. They named her Evie.
Seven years
later, the family has moved to Yorkshire and grown in number: a wonderful
surprise in the form of baby Ben. As a working mum it's not easy for Zoe, but
life is good.
But then
Evie begins to receive letters and gifts.
The sender
claims to be her birth father.
He has been
looking for his daughter.
And now he
is coming to take her back...
The Stolen Child is being published by Corvus on 6 April 2017.
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A PhD on chimpanzees? Wow! A book in the making there I would say.
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