BEST OF CRIME with Helen Sedgwick

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 

HELEN SEDGWICK

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Kate Atkinson is one of my favourites, as is Sophie Hannah – I like my crime with a strong dose of feminism, intersecting narratives and multiple points of view.

... FILMS/MOVIES

I love crime films that are offbeat and genre bending – the deep black quirkiness of Fargo, the folk horror genius of Wicker Man. 

... TV DRAMAS

It’s got to be Twin Peaks for me. The subversion of the supernatural colliding with the police procedural, the stunning visual style and soundtrack, the innovative and unsettling use of pace… Twin Peaks all the way!

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

I’m going to choose a killer who’s drawn with such humanity you can’t help but understand why: Roy Batty from Blade Runner.

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

My childhood favourite was always Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it was for his mix of intense logic and bohemian eccentricity or – more likely – his absolute refusal to tone himself down in order to make anyone else comfortable.

... MURDER WEAPONS

I like poisoning with weirdly beautiful and highly toxic plants, stabbing with glistening icicles, and the idea of leaving people to float alone in space. 

    

... DEATH SCENES

You never see an actual death, but Janice Galloway’s short story The Meat is horrific and chilling and, once read, will never be forgotten.

  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

I love wild, frozen places, so I’d recommend the British Antarctic Survey blogs to give a real sense of what it must be like living on the remotest place on earth.

... WRITING TIPS

Go with your instincts, read and write and keep writing – and don’t waste too much time on social media.

... WRITING SNACKS

At the very least there’ll be a large mug of tea and a small mug of very strong coffee on the desk at any one time. I grow vegetables and love to munch on fresh pea shoots, alongside salted caramel chocolate.

About HELEN SEDGWICK

Helen Sedgwick is the author of The Comet Seekers, selected as a best book of 2016 by the Herald, and The Growing Season, shortlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year in 2018. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from Glasgow University and won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Before she became an author, she was a research physicist with a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University.

Find Helen Sedgwick on her website and on Twitter - @helensedgwick

About WHEN THE DEAD COME CALLING

Publisher's description

A murder investigation unearths the brutal history of a village where long buried secrets threaten a small community 

When psychotherapist Alexis Cosse is found murdered in the playground of the sleepy northern village of Burrowhead, the local police force set out to investigate. It’s not long before they uncover a maelstrom of racism, misogyny and homophobia. 

But there’s worse to come. Shaken by the revelations and beginning to doubt her relationship with her husband Fergus, DI Georgie Strachan soon realizes that something very bad is lurking just below the surface. Meanwhile someone - or something - is hiding in the strange, haunted cave beneath the cliffs.

When the Dead Come Calling was published by Point Blank Books on 9 January 2020.

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BEST OF CRIME with Syd Moore

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 

SYD MOORE

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

So tough to boil it down to one author, but I guess it would have to be Wilkie Collins. I remember being a bookseller, i.e. skint, when Penguin brought out their cheapo classics to compete with Wordsworth Editions. The Moonstone and The Woman in White, which at that point I’d heard people mention but had never read, became instantly affordable. The next pay day I bought them, consumed them during my lunchtimes and was pretty instantly hooked. It was the beginning of a life-long love affair with classic crime.  

... FILMS/MOVIES

The Love Witch by Anna Biller. This film is a sumptuous visual feast with the aesthetic of a technicolour Hammer Horror. Anna Biller, the director, also designed the costumes and they are to die for.  Celebrating  kitsch in a serious way its take on women, witches and sexuality is really quite different. Elaine, the eponymous Love Witch, seduces men using love potions and beds them with fatal consequences. The film is feminist, funny, clever and explores the ‘female gaze’. What’s not to love?

... TV DRAMAS

I am a big fan of Scandi Noir and really enjoyed the Swedish series, Jordskott. Though it has many of the components of the crime/thriller genre – a vanished child, an angst-ridden detective and a community hiding a dark secret – there is more than a touch of the Brothers Grimm about it. I do like my crime drama with a sprinkle of the supernatural and this one blends both genres wonderfully. 

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

Is it too obvious to say Vilanelle? She was such a triumph of characterization, the epitome of style, cunning, sardonic humour and grace. Obviously there was that little psychopathy thang going on, but it didn’t prevent me, and most of the UK population, rooting for her throughout Killing Eve.  A third series can’t come too soon. 

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

It’s got to be Saga Noren from The Bridge. Totally atypical of your usual TV detective, Saga is more complex, more logical and more vulnerable too. The writers handled her Asperger syndrome and the development of her character expertly throughout the entire series so that the final episodewas almost televisual perfection.   I’d love to see her back on our screens again, but at the same I wouldn’t want to jeopardise the legacy of what was, in my opinion, one of the best television dramas to grace our scenes in decades. Some things should be left alone.  

... MURDER WEAPONS

The spoon used in The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon.

    

... DEATH SCENES

This is more a scene of death than a death scene and comes from Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. The epigraph that precedes the story gives you a hint of what’sto come ‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?’ (Macbeth).

Simeon Lee, a wealthy git, instructs his four sons to return home for Christmas with the intention of cutting their allowances and changing his will. It’s no surprise then that he doesn’t make it through to Boxing Day. In fact on Christmas Eve the family hear a terrible scream from Simeon’s room. Breaking down the door they are greeted with the most shocking and awful sight. Furniture has been overturned, crockery smashed. Simeon lies dead, his throat slashed from ear to ear, in a great pool of blood. Of course, Christie’s description brings the horror home to the reader. I was a teenager when I came across this and the scene left a very strong impression.  

  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

One of the websites that I come back to time and time again is www.witchtrials.co.uk

It’s a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the Essex Witch Trials and has been put together by one brilliant and clearly noble man, Steve Hulford, who set it up ‘so that the poor victims are not forgotten’. His fantastic site lists the trials in year order and in order of village. It also records the accused women and men by name alphabetically so is very user-friendly. In addition to all this information you will find transcripts of contemporaneous pamphlets, essays on different aspects of the witch trials, details of the Witchcraft Acts, videos and recommended reading. Well worth checking out.  

... WRITING TIPS

1.    Plan

2.    Persist

3.    Finish

... WRITING SNACKS

If I’m going well, I will treat myself to a cup of tea and a slice of cake from the local baker’s at about 3pm.

About SYD MOORE

Syd Moore is the author of the Essex Witch Museum Mysteries (Strange Magic, Strange Sight, Strange Fascination) featuring Rosie Strange, and two previous mystery books, The Drowning Pool and Witch Hunt.

For nine years prior to writing Syd was a lecturer, worked extensively in the publishing industry and presented Channel 4’s book programme, Pulp.  She was the founding editor of Level 4, an arts and culture magazine, and co-creator of Superstrumps, the game that reclaims female stereotypes and the founder of The Essex Girls Liberation Front. When she is not writing Syd works for Metal Culture, an arts organisation, promoting arts and cultural events and developing literature programmes. In 2017 she became a UK ambassador for the Danish charity which helps Nigerian ‘witch’ children,  DINNødhjælp. In 2018 she was appointed Writer-in-Residence for the Essex Book Festival.

Find Syd Moore on her website and on Twitter - @SydMoore1

About THE TWELVE STRANGE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Publisher's description

The perfect stocking filler, this collection of 12 spooky, stand-alone stories has been shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger 2019.

Nothing says Christmas more than a good old-fashioned ghost story on a dark winter’s night, so sit back and enjoy a little pinch of Yuletide mayhem!

The Twelve Strange Days of Christmas was published by Point Blank on 26 September 2019

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BEST OF CRIME with Felicity McLean

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 

FELICITY McLEAN

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Who could go past that god of Gothic literature, Edgar Allen Poe? Poe is variously credited with inventing: the psychological thriller/the detective genre/science fiction/the name of the Baltimore Ravens NFL team. For my money you can’t go past Poe’s poem, ‘The Raven’, which is an elegy of undying devotion to those lost. Poe is the reason I exiled my pining protagonist, Tikka, to Baltimore. 

... FILMS/MOVIES

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, based on the 1938 novel by Dame Daphne du Maurier, and starring Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter. Tense, suspenseful; it’s everything Hitchcock does best. Intriguingly, the film deviates from the book in a major way (spoiler alert) when Rebecca’s death is revealed to be an accident, rather than murder at the hands of her husband. At the time, the Hollywood Production Code required murderers to be punished and so the murder plot was, ahem, killed off.

... TV DRAMAS
Stranger Things. Don’t think Netflix’s blockbuster sci-fi/horror/supernatural series constitutes crime? You tell that to the Demogorgons who are abducting children and imprisoning them in the Upside Down. 

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

We first meet Agnes Magnúsdóttir in northern Iceland in 1829, when she is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. While she’s not entirely fictional (this true criminal is fictionalised in Hannah Kent’s brilliant debut novel, Burial Rites), she’s most certainly a killer, and for that she must die. 

Based on the last public execution in Iceland.

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. Rankin is the UK’s number-one selling crime writer for good reason, and his hard-drinking, deep-thinking maverick Inspector Rebus is a perennial favourite. Linguistically, a ‘rebus’ is an enigmatic puzzle – the perfect moniker for Rankin’s inscrutable detective.

... MURDER WEAPONS

Few are better than the Bard when it comes to murder weapons, but even Shakespeare outdoes himself in Titus Andronicus when he has the titular Titus bake his enemies into a pie before serving them up to their mother. Bon appétit.

... DEATH SCENE

Is it cheating to say my favourite death scene is a scene where there are no deaths? 

The all-important ‘disappearance scene’ in the iconic Aussie novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, describes four Victorian-era schoolgirls vanishing into the sun-saturated scrub, their petticoats flouncing as they go. Accident? Murder? Suicide? Three of the four girls are never seen again, and the riddle of their disappearance is never solved.

Joan Lindsay’s beguiling mystery is something of a national obsession in Australia, with many readers believing the story to be true. It was the starting point when I wrote my own unsolved mystery novel, and the vanishing Van Apfel sisters owe much to those missing girls at Hanging Rock. 

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

My local indie bookshop introduced me to Story Grid which is a website, blog, book, podcast, in fact, it’s an entire bookish universe designed to guide a first time novelist through the process of writing their book. I wish I’d known about it when I started writing.

... WRITING TIPS

Read, read, and read some more. Almost everything I’ve ever learned about writing I discovered through reading. 

... WRITING SNACKS

From 5am to 5pm, I’m fuelled by espresso. After that I switch to scotch. 

About FELICITY McLEAN

Felicity McLean is an Australian author and journalist. Her debut novel The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is out now. She has ghostwritten six books, most recently Body Lengths, co-written with Australian Olympic swimmer, Leisel Jones. Her children’s picture book This is a Book! (no wifi needed) was published in 2017. 

Find Felicity McLean on her website and on Twitter - @FelicityMcLean

About THE VAN APFEL GIRLS ARE GONE

Publisher's description

Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in an isolated suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters - Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - mysteriously disappeared during the school's Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river.  Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.

Now, years later, Tikka has returned home and is beginning to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her. The girls that she never forgot.

Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart.

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone was published by Point Blank Books on 6 June 2019.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

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BEST OF CRIME with Fiona Erskine

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 

FIONA ERSKINE

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

When it comes to thrillers, I adore Robert Harris, John Le Carré and Lee Child, but my current favourite is Lionel Davidson. I devoured Kolymsky Heights, raced through Rose of Tibet and lingered onthe delicate and tragic Smith’s Gazelle.

... FILMS/MOVIES

An Oscar winning film, The Lives of Others, set in 1984 East Germany is a subtle but thrilling portrayal of good people betrayed by those who should protect them. Sebastian Koch is a joy to watch, but it is the internal journey of secret policeman Ulrich Mühe that captivates.

(2006 Das Leben der Anderen Florian Henckel von Dennersmark)

... TV DRAMAS

For its perfect combination of superb writing and faultless acting, I have to pick The Killing. The intricate plot, the honest exploration of bereavement, the charismatic politician, all arebrilliantly handled but it is Sofie Gräbøl’s gritty portrayal of Detective Sarah Lund that steals the show for me.

(2007 Forbrydelsen Birger Larsen)

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

It is very hard to think of a more chilling and compelling character than Dr Hannibal Lecter (in Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris). I like my antagonists cerebral, and my fava beans sautéed.

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

I am more interested in reluctant detectives who operate outside the constraints of police procedure, which is why I warmed to the intrepid V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) and the naughty Nick Belsey (Oliver Harris). But I’ll make an exception for my current favourites Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant “Surrender Not” Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force in the brilliant series by Abir Mukherjee set in 1920’s India.

... MURDER WEAPONS

An elephant (stomping in A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee).

... DEATH SCENE

It’s a dead heat between the opening of Red Snow by Will Dean (man splats open in snow after falling from the tower of a salty liquorice factory) and the opening of Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee (man escapes police raid in opium den only to trip over enucleated corpse).

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

The sadly defunct WordCloud of the Writers’ Workshop kept me sane while I was starting to write. Now Emma Darwin’s wonderful this itch of writing helps me to improve.

https://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/resources.html

... WRITING TIPS

Read

Read outside your genre, fiction and non-fiction, poetry, drama and prose. Read inside your genre: the good – to push yourself; the bad – to avoid the same pitfalls; and the ugly - to work out why it doesn’t work for you as a reader. Act as a beta reader for others - not just so they return the favour, but to hone your surgical skills before you turn to murderous vivisection on your own manuscript.

Write

Write lots. Write every day. If you are stuck, write “I remember…” and just see what flows. If you’re stuck with the novel, write some flash fiction, poetry or short stories instead. Write for yourself. No writing is wasted. It’s a muscle that needs exercising.

... WRITING SNACKS

Prosecco.

About FIONA ERSKINE

Fiona Erskine is a professional engineer based in Teesside, although she travels often to Brazil, Russia, India and China. As a female engineer, she is often the lone representative of her gender in board meetings, cargo ships, night-time factories and offshore oil rigs, and her fiction offers an insight into this traditionally male world.

Find Fiona Erskine on her website and on Twitter - @erskine_fiona

About THE CHEMICAL DETECTIVE

Publisher's description

Dr Jaq Silver. Skier, scientist, international jet-setter, explosives expert. She blows things up to keep people safe. 

Working on avalanche control in Slovenia, Jaq stumbles across a problem with a consignment of explosives. After raising a complaint with the supplier, a multinational chemical company, her evidence disappears. Jaq is warned, threatened, accused of professional incompetence and suspended. Taking her complaint further, she narrowly escapes death only to be framed for murder. Escaping from police custody, she sets out to find the key to the mystery.

Racing between the snowy slopes of Slovenia and the ghostly ruins of Chernobyl, can she uncover the truth before her time runs out?

The Chemical Detective was published by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, in hardback on 4 April 2019.

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Red Snow by Will Dean

Red Snow
By Will Dean
Published by Point Blank (10 January 2019)
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher.

Publisher's description

TWO BODIES

One suicide. One cold-blooded murder. Are they connected? And who’s really pulling the strings in the small Swedish town of Gavrik?

TWO COINS

Black Grimberg liquorice coins cover the murdered man's eyes. The hashtag #Ferryman starts to trend as local people stock up on ammunition.

TWO WEEKS

Tuva Moodyson, deaf reporter at the local paper, has a fortnight to investigate the deaths before she starts her new job in the south. A blizzard moves in. Residents, already terrified, feel increasingly cut-off. Tuva must go deep inside the Grimberg factory to stop the killer before she leaves town for good. But who’s to say the Ferryman will let her go?

My verdict
Dark Pines was one of my favourite books of 2018. And yet again, Will Dean has written a compelling and more-than-slightly-bizarre character-led crime novel featuring deaf reporter Tuva Moodyson. Red Snow follows on from Dark Pines, but could probably be read as a standalone.

Tuva is investigating an apparent suicide and murder at the local liquorice factory. The clock is ticking, as she leaves the small Swedish town of Gavrik to start a new job in the larger town of Malmo in just two weeks. The liquorice factory is very much the centre of the local community, as it's one of the main employers, and is also very much the centre of the book. The local ghostwriter is writing about the history of the factory and asks Tuva to help him research the Grimberg family who own it. Tuva sees this as the perfect opportunity to get to know the usually private family better, hoping this will help her to investigate the recent deaths.

Red Snow is written at a slower pace than the previous book but with the same beautiful descriptive writing and array of quirky characters. It's highly atmospheric, highlighting the remoteness and claustrophobic feel of Gavrik during the winter months with a blizzard moving in. I loved reading about how people living there cope with the bitter temperatures and the lack of daylight - the use of UV lamps to cope with seasonal affective disorder, for example. Tuva's deafness doesn't usually affect her daily life, but it can become more of a challenge when she removes her hearing aids to protect them from the damp, icy or snowy weather when she's outdoors.

The book manages to entertain as well as chill. Will Dean's characters remind me of Willy Wonka and some of the other members of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cast, especially the Grimberg family who are not only eccentric but also slightly menacing at times. The dialogue is spot on, with dark humour and quick witty retorts, providing great character dynamics. Some of the characters were present in Dark Pines, but there are also some new ones, including a police officer to provide Tuva with a love interest.

I look forward to see what's next as Tuva heads to pastures new.

Will Dean is one of the First Monday Crime's February panel members (on 4th February 2019 at City University, London). The other panel members are Christopher Fowler, Gytha Lodge and Lucy Foley, moderated by Barry Foresaw  For more details and to reserve your seat, click here.

BEST OF CRIME with Guy Bolton

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 

GUY BOLTON

to share his BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Dennis Lehane. A lot of crime writers are happy to stick to their detective character series but Lehane has managed to combine that with some really top-notch standalone thrillers. Being a film lover, I’ve enjoyed the movie adaptations of his books but Mystic River, Live By Night, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island are also brilliant novels in their own right. If anything he’s just one of the best literary thriller writers out there today.

... FILMS/MOVIES

My Jonathan Craine novels are about Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s so obviously movies have had a big influence on my writing. I’m a big fan of classic noirs and Out of the Past was one of the early inspirations for The Syndicate. I notice a lot of people say my writing style is very cinematic and I think big bold crime films like LA Confidential, The Godfather, Heat and All the President’s Men have really helped shape my thrillers.

... TV DRAMAS

I’m a big fan of David Simon generally but The Wire has had a huge impact on me. It demonstrated the ability of the crime genre to be entertaining and thrilling whilst asking serious questions about society. That was a big influence on my new novel The Syndicate. It couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

Patrick Bateman. American Psycho is grim reading but the first one hundred pages or so are really more of a blackly comic satire on wealth and ‘80s excess than anything else. I find the book endlessly quotable. And for someone so absolutely heinous, there’s something indescribably empathetic about Patrick. That’s some achievement.

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

Martin Cruz Smith’s investigator Arkady Renko. My uncle introduced me to Gorky Park and Polar Star and he’s without doubt my favourite detective. It’s his black sense of humour that I like more than anything. It’s something I’ve tried to instill in my protagonist Jonathan Craine. Whatever the circumstances, however bad things get, I like to think he can just about see the funny side of things.

... MURDER WEAPONS

Garrote. Craine faces one in The Syndicate. I mean can you imagine anything worse?

    

... DEATH SCENES

I’ll refer again to American Psycho. Some are quite funny. But other scenes are so horrific I that I have to stop reading. Even thinking about it now I’m starting to feel queasy…

  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

I’m a bit of a luddite. I tend to scan through Wikipedia for general research and then from there find books and sources I can track down in the British Library. I’m pretty old school at times. For The Syndicate I spent a lot of time reading old newspaper clippings on the microfilm reader.

... WRITING TIPS

Lots of writers talk about skill and craft but the discipline to write regularly and consistently is probably key when you’re starting out. Particularly for those with full time jobs and / or families. It’s a lot like exercise, you really just need to find the time and ask those around you to be supportive of it. After that it simply becomes routine. Even if you wrote a thousand words a week, you’d have a book in two years. That’s not bad going by any means. 

... WRITING SNACKS

Bananas and nuts to keep me going between meals. But I’m a tea addict - I’ll easily put away 5 cups a day. In fact, I think I’ll put the kettle on right now…

About GUY BOLTON

Guy Bolton is an author and screenwriter based in London. Guy’s first novel The Pictures, a detective thriller set in 1930s Hollywood, was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger award. It was listed as one of the top 10 crime books of 2017 by critics of the Telegraph, The Times and the Mail on Sunday. The Syndicate is out in Hardback October 4th.

Find Guy Bolton on his website and on Twitter - @gpbolton

About THE SYNDICATE

Publisher's description

June 1947.

Jonathan Craine has left his old life in Hollywood behind him, content to live out his days with his son on a rural farm in California. But when infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel is murdered, Craine is forced to face his past once again.

Summoned to Las Vegas to meet mob head Meyer Lansky, Craine is given the impossible task of finder Siegel’s murderers. All he has to help him is an ageing hit man and a female crime reporter with her own agenda. And he knows that if he doesn’t succeed in five days, both he and his son will pay for it with their lives…

The Syndicate is published by Point Blank on 4 October 2018.

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