Today I'm delighted to welcome
LAURA WILSON
to share her BEST OF CRIME ...
... AUTHORS
Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962), author of Hangover Square, Twenty
Thousand Streets Under the Sky, and other novels, and plays including Gaslight
and Rope. Described by J.B. Priestly as ‘uniquely individual… the novelist of
innocence, appallingly vulnerable, and of malevolence, coming out of some
mysterious darkness of evil,’ Hamilton is the best of the British Noir writers.
... FILMS/MOVIES
Rififi (1955), a French adaptation by Jules Dassin of
Auguste Le Breton’s novel of the same name. It contains the best heist scene
ever filmed – half-an-hour of pure tension, without music or dialogue.
... TV DRAMAS
I have commitment issues with TV series, so rarely watch
anything all the way through, but I did enjoy Big Little Lies (even though the
ending was a bit disappointing).
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
Mary Katherine ‘Merricat’ Blackwood, from We Have Always
Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, with Tom Ripley and Sweeney Todd
running her a close joint-second.
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
I’ve always had a soft spot for Qiu Xialong’s policeman,
Chen Cao (Death of a Red Heroine, A Loyal Character Dancer, etc). He has to
balance the interests of the Communist Party with the demands of his job in a
country where every case is, potentially, a political hot potato.
... MURDER WEAPONS
Truth is always stranger than fiction. In 2012, a Louisiana
jury convicted a 47-year-old homeless woman called Debra Hewitt of murdering
her boyfriend. She removed her prosthetic leg and – balancing on the other
(organic) one – used it to beat Dwayne Ball to death.
... DEATH SCENES
Bill Sikes’s murder of Nancy in
Oliver Twist is utterly horrific: ‘The
housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of immediate
detection if he fired, flashed across his mind, even in the midst of his fury,
and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned face
that almost touched his own.’ Sikes finishes Nancy off with a ‘heavy club’,
which he then burns, but he cannot get rid of the blood, which is everywhere
(‘the very feet of the dog were bloody’). Dickens is thought to have based this
scene on a true crime: the murder of prostitute Eliza Grimwood.
... BLOGS/WEBSITES
There isn’t one in particular, because I have to research
different things for each book. For The Other Woman, I spent quite a lot of
time googling stuff about chest freezers…
... WRITING TIPS
Be patient. Writing is all about rewriting.
... WRITING SNACKS
Tea, coffee, carrots, and the occasional brazil nut
About LAURA WILSON
Laura Wilson’s psychological crime novels have been
critically acclaimed. Her fifth novel, The Lover, was shortlisted for the CWA
Ellis Peters Award and the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Fiction, and won the
French Prix du Polar Europeen. Her seventh, Stratton’s War, the first book in a
series featuring DI Ted Stratton of the CID which begins in the 1940s and follows
a London policeman during the course of his working life, won the CWA Ellis
Peters Award. Laura lives in London and is currently working on her fourteenth
novel. She is the Guardian’s crime fiction reviewer and teaches on the
Crime/Thriller MA course at City University, London.
Find Laura Wilson on her website and on Twitter - @LWilsonCrime
About THE OTHER WOMAN
Publisher's description
Sophie has an enviable life – beautiful house, successful
husband, three children, and the inevitable black Labrador to complete the
perfect tableau. But all that is about to change.
A message arrives at Sophie’s house, scrawled across her own
round robin Christmas newsletter: HE’S GOING TO LEAVE YOU. LET’S SEE HOW SMUG
YOU ARE THEN, YOU STUPID BITCH. Perhaps she should ignore it, but she ignored
the last one. And the one before that.
When her plan to identify and confront the other woman goes
violently wrong, Sophie must go to extreme lengths to keep her life and her
family together, all the while guarding her devastating secret.
The Other Woman was published by Quercus on 5 October 2017.
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