Thursday 15 February 2018

BEST OF CRIME with James Nally

Welcome to my latest BEST OF CRIME feature, looking at crime writers' top picks, from their favourite author and fictional detective to their best writing tip. 




Today I'm delighted to welcome 

JAMES NALLY


to share his BEST OF CRIME ...



... AUTHORS
Tana French, such relatable characters and a mistress of suspense. (Oh and she’s Irish and I’m biased!) 
Roger Hobbs, completely reinvented the genre, puts my research efforts to shame.
Raymond Chandler, for wanting me to be Marlowe.
Patrick McCabe, not crime per se but so many bad things happen. Dark, twisted yet hilarious. 


... FILMS/MOVIES
The Guard, hilarious, chilling and surreal. I love the combination of humour and gore.
Down by Law, beautifully-crafted, acted but forget all that, it’s got Tom Waits!
The Long Good Friday, Bob Hoskins proving that small men are indeed scarier. 


... TV DRAMAS
Unforgiven, what a cast, and a lesson in how to interweave disparate stories while keeping the viewer hooked.
River, a series that had the balls to feature a detective interacting with a dead former partner. The finale is one of the TV moments of the decade.
Born to Kill, shows what a brilliant documentary maker like Bruce Goodison can bring to drama. 


... FICTIONAL KILLERS
Fowler in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. There is something really appealing to me about a person who murders someone else for the greater good.
Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
Lou Ford, the original and baddest ‘bad lieutenant’ in Jim Thompson’s ‘Killer Inside Me’.  


... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 
Philip Marlowe, of course.  


... MURDER WEAPONS
I’ve always liked a blade fashioned out of ice, so that you can melt the evidence! 
    

... DEATH SCENES
In the late 1990s, the IRA developed a ‘flashgun’ detonation system whereby the flash of a camera would set off a semtex bomb. An IRA unit abducted a milkman, murdered him and left his body in the dim, unlit hallway of a house alongside what looked like six cartons of milk.  Except the cartons had been stuffed full of semtex. The hallway and house was full of police officers and forensics when the scenes-of-crime officer arrived and took out his camera… 
  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES
The frankly amazing murderuk.com website listing every murder for decades. Clipshare provides newspaper cuttings going back to 2006.  Bridey-by-the-Sea, my partner’s blog, which contains uplifting copy and some of the best photos I’ve ever seen of the south coast and Brighton. 


... WRITING TIPS
Don’t be fussy about the first draft; get it down! Writing is re-writing. Use everything you can from your own life and experiences. You don’t know how amazing you are! 


... WRITING SNACKS
Water, Tunnock caramel bars (I consume a good portion of the 6 million bars they claim to sell every week!), pistachios, post 6pm Peroni, post 9pm Shiraz. 


About JAMES NALLY


James Nally is an ex-crime reporter and award-winning film-maker whose crime fiction books ‘Alone with the Dead’ and ‘Dance with the Dead’ have been described as ‘intoxicating’, ‘hilarious’ and ‘gripping’ by the Sun and Mirror newspapers.
His third book, ‘Games with the Dead’ sees rookie Irish cop Donal Lynch stumble across a nexus of crime involving bent cops, notorious villains and a morally-bankrupt reporter. When his personal life falls apart, Donal agrees to take on a Kamikaze undercover caper in an attempt to smash the ring, only to find himself being set up to get whacked.  

Find James Nally on his Facebook page and on Twitter - @jimnally


About GAMES WITH THE DEAD



Publisher's description
Life is about to get complicated for DC Donal Lynch.
When a young woman is kidnapped, Donal is brought in to deliver the ransom money. But the tightly-planned drop off goes wrong, Julie Draper is discovered dead, and Donal finds his job on the line – a scapegoat for the officers in charge.
But when Donal is delivered a cryptic message in the night, he learns that Julie was killed long before the botched rescue mission. As he digs further into the murder in a bid to clear his own name, dark revelations make one thing certain: the police are chasing the wrong man, and the killer has far more blood on his hands than they could even imagine.

Games with the Dead was published by Avon on 28 December 2017.


Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.

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