Today I'm delighted to welcome
LOUISE CANDLISH
to share her BEST OF CRIME ...
Our House by Louise Candlish has been shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Awards. The winner will be announced on Monday 16th September.
THE GOLDSBORO BOOKS GLASS BELL AWARDS
Launched in 2017, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award is awarded annually to an outstanding work of contemporary fiction, rewarding quality storytelling in any genre. The winner of the Glass Bell will receive £2,000 in prize money, and a handmade, engraved glass bell. The jury of ten consists of team members from Goldsboro Books, DHH Literary Agency and The Dome Press. There is no fee, or limit to the number of books that a publisher may submit, allowing both established and debut authors a chance to win. The inaugural winner was Chris Cleave, for his extraordinary Everyone Brave is Forgiven (Sceptre), the moving and unflinching novel about the profound effects that the Second World War had on ordinary citizens back at home in Britain. Last year, the award went to John Boyne for his sweeping, poignant and comedic odyssey of post-war Ireland, The Heart’s Invisible Furies (Transworld).
... AUTHORS
I tend to like crime fiction that isn’t too strict about the genre, like Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. A sly, satirical edge is good for me. One of my all-time favourite thrillers is John Colapinto’s About the Author, which combines plagiarism and murder. Bliss.
... FILMS/MOVIES
Old movies win every time. I love a dangerously discontented housewife, preferably played by Barbara Stanwyck, and so I can’t not choose Double Indemnity (1944) by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. I love the mood of doom, the clouds of cigarette smoke, the way you can’t help wanting the villains to get away with it.
... TV DRAMAS
I like TV crime with a legal element and also a series that’s inventive in its storytelling. It’s hard now to remember when TV drama wasn’t nonlinear, but for me Damages – set in a legal firm helmed by Glenn Close’s ruthless patty Hewes – was a game changer for its brilliant use of flash-forwards.
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
I’m a sucker for a killer who doesn’t recognize or remember his crime(s), like the enigmatic Mike Engleby in Engleby, a square peg in the round hole of an Oxbridge college who gets caught up in a missing persons investigation. Sebastian Faulks isn’t known for crime fiction, but this is a psychological masterpiece.
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
Surely the most common answer, but Poirot has never been bettered, has he? The egg-shaped head, the eccentric use of English, the OCD habits. I love his sense of compassion, especially for the young and desperate. Death on the Nile was my first and favourite Poirot and I remember being very struck by his mercy, the way he allows the killer a way out.
... MURDER WEAPONS
Sorry to be Agatha Christie-centric, but I have to choose the infected pus from a cat’s ear used in Murder is Easy. Urgh. I also have a soft spot for the scene in Serial Mom (by John Waters), when Kathleen Turner’s character bludgeons a neighbourhood enemy to death with a leg of lamb. Now that’s domestic noir.
... DEATH SCENES
The one I find the most powerful is in The Talented Mr Ripley, when Tom Ripley beats Dickie Greenleaf to death with an oar. It’s such a stark, visual scene, just victim and killer in a little boat in the middle of an empty sunlit ocean. Horrific.
... BLOGS/WEBSITES
I admit to trawling Mailonline daily for ideas for new ways to torture my middle-class characters.
... WRITING TIPS
When I was first asked to do a reading, I found I was editing the scene to make it more fluent, so I’m now a big believer in reading your WIP aloud. For dialogue in particular, it weeds out unnecessary words and unnatural phrasing.
... WRITING SNACKS
I’m keen on a mashup of snacks. I might mix together some walnuts and Maltesers and shards of Dime bar. As with reading, you don’t want the same texture and flavour with every mouthful.
About LOUISE CANDLISH
Sunday Times bestselling author Louise Candlish was born in Hexham, Northumberland, and grew up in the Midlands town of Northampton. She studied English at University College London and worked as an illustrated books editor and copywriter before writing fiction. She is the author of thirteen novels, including the thriller Our House, winner of the British Book Awards 2019 Crime & Thriller Book of the Year and shortlisted for several other awards. It was a #1 bestseller in paperback, ebook and audiobook and has been optioned for TV by Red Planet Pictures. Those People, a novel about the neighbours from hell, was published in hardback in June 2019.
Find Louise Candlish on her website and on Twitter - @louise_candlish
About OUR HOUSE
Publisher's description
On a bright January morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought in Trinity Avenue. Nothing strange about that. Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it.
When Fi arrives home to find a removals van outside her house, she is completely blind-sided. Trinity Avenue has been her family’s home for years. Where are all their belongings? How could this have happened? Faced with a new family standing in their kitchen, Fi desperately calls her ex-husband, Bram, who owns the house with her. He’s disappeared…
The more Fi uncovers, the more she realises their lives have been destroyed by a nightmare of their own making. A devastating crime has been committed, but who is the guilty party? What has Bram hidden from her – and what has she hidden from him?
Our House was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2018.
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