BEST OF CRIME with R.C. Bridgestock

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 

R.C. BRIDGESTOCK

to share their BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Agatha Christie is THE Queen of Crime Writers. I love her simplistic style that hides complex plotting. Her ability to build suspense throughout the neat little chapters, each one more exciting than the previous one is pure genius. Maybe she used the likes of an Anacapa chart to help track the impossible-seeming, totally un-guessable plots? It does make one wonder how her mind worked, because we know that all her storylines were pure fiction. Agatha Christie books are the kind that I like to read, by lamplight, before falling asleep.

... FILMS/MOVIES

Oceans Eleven. George Clooney and Brad Pitt come up with a Las Vegas heist with a reward so grand that the risk may be an excruciating demise, and that’s for starters. It’s fast-paced, and there’s never a dull moment thanks to the cunningness Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Carl Reiner, Andy Garcia, Casey Affleck and Elliott Gould. A movie for the thinker, this is one of the most fun, and funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Don't get lost in 'things highly improbable'. If you do, you've missed the point. Enjoy!

... TV DRAMAS

Happy Valley. We were the consultants on the BAFTA winning series. Sally Wainwright’s brief from the BBC was 'Juliet Bravo, modern day'. The drama was based in Sowerby Bridge Police Station where I (Carol), spent 17 years as a civilian employee, and where Bob was stationed when he was head of CID in the Calder Valley. We suggested Happy Valley to Sally. It was the name given by the officers to the Calder Valley - it was a lovely place to work. It is well known for the place where creatives live, and you can feel the influence of the writers and artists who flocked to the valley around the 70s and 80s. From artisan shops and inspiring galleries to organic pavement cafés and charming picture houses, the valley is justifiably proud of its artistic identity. A short distance from its towns you will find pretty wooded valleys and picturesque heather moorland.

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

Nurse Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco). In the American medical comedy-drama series, Nurse Jackie finds every day to be a high-wire act of juggling patents, doctors, fellow nurses and her own indiscretions. She’s a serial killer but she’s such a great character that I couldn’t help liking her, even though I obviously disapprove of her murderous ways...

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

Jack Frost. The character of Jack Frost (played by David Jason) was based on a real detective at West Yorkshire Police - unbeknown to him, until he saw his likeness on screen. Jack Frost’s resemblance to Gerry Dickinson, a good friend and former colleague, is uncanny. 

... MURDER WEAPONS

From a senior investigator's point of view, any weapon that is easily identified! For instance, in our experience, a manmade medieval 'cosh' - once the weapon was found, it was easy to put the weapon in the hand, so to speak, of the killer. 

    

... DEATH SCENES

Bob suggested the death scene of Kirsten to Sally Wainwright for the BAFTA awarding winning BBC drama Happy Valley. 

An extract from episode 3: TOMMY puts his foot down and reverses over KIRSTEN. We don’t need to see it; we can see it off LEWIS’s face. We may hear the noise as well, which will be like so many watermelons getting crushed. LEWIS has to look away. He may even get squirted in blood.

To see the full episode: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/happy-valley-ep3.pdf

If this didn’t make your stomach ‘flip’ nothing will... 

  

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

I tend to use Google (or Mr. Google as my mum calls it), as my go-to. I’ll enter the subject I need to research and go with the flow, and see where that journey takes me.... Mr. Google has never let me down yet! We use Rightmove for house-hunting.

... WRITING TIPS

Plan- the backstory is equally as exciting to create as writing the book. 

Finish- we know so many great writers who get so hung up on the first few chapters being perfect, that they have actually never finished a book! The first draft is called a first draft for a reason. 

Write a book you’d want to read.

... WRITING SNACKS

I (Carol) try not to snack - but if I do, it’s chocolate.

Bob is a monster midget gem/wine gum/Haribo addict - anything chewy! 

About R.C. BRIDGESTOCK

R.C. Bridgestock is the name that husband and wife co-authors Robert (Bob) and Carol Bridgestock write under. Between them they have nearly 50 years of police experience, offering an authentic edge to their stories. The writing duo created the character DI Jack Dylan, a down-to-earth detective, written with warmth and humour. The ninth book in the series will be published by The Dome Press in 2019, along with their backlist. A further crime series is presently being scripted by the pair, which has a strong Yorkshire female character - Charley Mann - at the helm.

Find R.C. Bridgestock on their website and on Twitter - @RCBridgestock

About SNOW KILLS

Publisher's description

When a young hairdresser is reported missing by her mother in a blizzard, D.I. Jack Dylan and his team are called in. Kayleigh’s car is found with her mobile phone inside but there is no sign of her. On the desolate Yorkshire moors, items of clothing are found and identified as belonging to the hairdresser, and an intense police search of the area begins. The investigation turns to a loner living close to where Kayleigh’s car was discovered. Meanwhile Dylan’s wife, Jen, is distracted and distant. Unbeknown to him her ex fiancé is in their midst, and stalking her.

Snow Kills was published by The Dome Press on 3 October 2019

About PAYBACK

Publisher's description

Charley Mann left Yorkshire for the Met and a fast-track career - but now she’s back and she’s in charge and the area’s first young, female DI. Her hometown, the Yorkshire countryside, and her old friends all seem unchanged, but appearances can be deceptive. When a brutal murder is discovered, Charley is forced to question everything, and the interest of her ex - reporter Danny Ray - doesn’t make it easier.

Payback is being published by The Dome Press on 9 January 2020.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.

BEST OF CRIME with Louise Candlish (The Glass Bell Awards 2019 Shortlist spotlight)

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 

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 16^th 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.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.

Jean Levy's Writing Toolkit

WRITING TOOLKIT gives you an idea of an author's writing process through the tools they use. The tools can be anything (real or virtual) that they think is essential for their writing - serious, fun or even a fetish (that they're willing to own up to)! 

I am delighted to welcome 

JEAN LEVY

AUTHOR OF WHAT WAS LOST

TO SHARE HER WRITING TOOLKIT

FOR HER BLOG TOUR

What Was Lost was published on 13 September 2018 by The Dome Press.

Where I write

Mostly, I can write any place, any time. I have few requirements. I suppose it comes of years of leaving things to the last minute: homework on the school bus, research reports scribbled on the train, editorials dispatched as the deadline closes. That history of brinkmanship, of just scraping in under the wire, means that I’m not that fussy about chaos.

This is the dining table in my flat. It’s one of two places that I do my writing. Needless to say, we eat out a lot. The other place I write is the family barn. There’s a bigger table there, but there’s also a large bath and that’s probably one of my essentials. If I’m about to start a new sequence, introduce a new character or put the finishing touches to a critical conversation, I run a really hot bath, infused with a Seaweed and Arnica concoction that Father Christmas brings me every year (he gets it from Neal’s Yard). I think the combination of heat and fragrance helps me focus. Probably an increased blood supply to the brain, although I prefer not to think about that. Obviously, on these occasions I have to resort to traditional writing methods: sheets of A4 paper folded twice and an inky pen that writes upside down. (Do not attempt this bath-writing using electronic devices. Dunking iPads/mobiles into an infusion of seaweed and arnica never goes well.)

And those critical conversations … I rehearse them way before bath time, whilst weeding, whilst staring out the flat window at the Cathedral, whilst driving. The floor of my car is littered with quick notes scribbled on till receipts and parking tickets. Of course, silence is essential. I can’t expect my characters to have conversations with noise going on around them. In fact, I mostly can’t write surrounded by noise: the TV, seagulls, pneumatic drills, dripping taps, and definitely not music. Music imposes emotions and sometimes those emotions are not appropriate to what I’m writing.

Wine, food

Wine is not really essential, although I find a glass of prosecco always encourages creativity. Or a Pinotage when it’s cold outside. And I don’t really eat during the day, just cups of tea/coffee and the occasional bowl of pistachio ice cream.

Apps, books, software

Apart from the till receipts and the soggy bath notes, I write directly onto my laptop and back up on a flash drive (constantly), an external hard drive (occasionally) and by sending myself an email attachment (daily). I write in Word, the enemy that know. I search/check using Google and an online dictionary and thesaurus. As far as creative writing books are concerned, I had my fill of those during a Creative Writing degree. They are often a bit flaky, although some are good regarding plot, characters, dialogue. I’d recommend Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. But I’ve found that the best sources for writing technique are books on basic narratology:

Cobley, P. (2001). Narrative: The New Critical Idiom. Routledge, Oxford.

Martin, W. (1986). Recent Theories of Narrative. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

There are many others more recent than that. And there’s a good website I’ve used:

http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/intranet/englishbasics/Discourse01.htm

The major considerations for any writer are plot, character, location, time and tense, sequence, description versus action, pace, use of dialogue, point of view, status of the narrator and narrative focus, but their expression rests upon good grammar and I’m a bit of a pedant when it comes to that. It’s a result of seven years of research into temporal linguistics … but that’s another story. David Crystal has written some very readable books on basic grammar. ‘The Elements of Style’ by Strunk, White and Kalman bridges the gap between creativity and serious grammar, and there’s always Lynne Truss’s  ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’.

By far the best way of realising writing techniques is to read good writers: Sebastian Faulks, Virginia Woolf, Ian McEwan and James Joyce for the beauty of their words, Margaret Atwood for her parallel and non-linear plots, Angela Carter for her imagery, Winterson for her experimental and challenging narratives, Philip Pullman for sheer imagination, Douglas Adams for his humour, and Jane Austen as the pioneer of the techniques of psychonarration.

Social media

I’m not a big fan of Twitter, although I’m going to try harder. I visit Facebook most days, but I find myself watching YouTube dog and cat and Trump videos. And that gets you nowhere.

Exercise and other alien activities

I don’t really do sport, gym, jogging, running. I haven’t got time. Although I know people who strongly recommend such things.

Characters

I’ve often been asked where my characters come from. Well, apart from the occasional evil antagonist, they are hybrids of people I have known. The arrogance, dithering, mendacity, the eccentricities and outrageous affectations, love and friendships I have portrayed in What Was Lost are all drawn from experience.

Time

I suppose the actual process of writing is the result of days, even weeks of mulling things around in my mind, and I find the best time to do that is in the dark, in bed, before I go to sleep. When you’ve given up on everything else and your time’s your own. However, I learned long ago that those perfect plot solutions can disappear overnight, so if I do think of something inspirational I grope for my phone and make a note of it. Just a word or two to jog my memory.

As far as time managing my writing is concerned, I have to admit that I would write all day long. And sometimes I do. Sometimes I reach a point in the plot which refuses to be paused. I have occasionally written through the night, stopping only to accept my morning cup of tea. My husband is very understanding. I can remember, a few years back, taking part in the NaNoWriMo Challenge … just writing all day, every day. I lost all sense of time. It was great, although I realised on one occasion that, for the first time in my adult life, I had started a day, ended a day and proceeded to the next day without having a shower in between. I suppose what I’m saying is I don’t not write. Only when something prevents me from doing so.

THANKS FOR TAKING PART, JEAN!

About Jean Levy

Jean spent several years in genetics research before abandoning the laboratory to pursue a career in academic publishing both in Holland and the UK. She has been a database trouble- shooter, an editor, and a writer for publishing houses, pharmaceutical companies and the EU. She has degrees in Botany, Pathology, Philosophy, English, Law and Creative Writing and is currently completing a doctorate in Linguistics. 

In her spare time she has campaigned for the environment and read a lot of books, the most memorable being Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, everything by Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson, and a few things by Sebastian Faulks, Calvino, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell and Shakespeare. 

She currently lives in a converted barn in the South Downs with her husband and a Heritage Plant Collection, accumulates Christmas tree decorations and aspires to writing multi-genre fiction, travelling on the Orient Express and seeing the Northern Lights. 

Find Jean Levy on Twitter - @JeanELevy

About What Was Lost

Published by The Dome Press (13 September 2018)

Publisher's description

How would you live if you had no memories? And what if you were suspected of a terrible crime?

Sarah has no memories. She just knows she was found, near death, on a beach miles from her London home. Now she is part of a medical experiment to see whether her past can be retrieved.

But bad things seemed to have happened before she disappeared. The police are interested in her hidden memories too. A nice man she meets in the supermarket appears to have her best interests at heart. He seems to understand her - almost as if he knows her...

As she fights to regain her memories and her sense of self, it is clear that people are hiding things from her. Who are they protecting? Does Sarah really want the truth?

Here's a snippet from my review: 'What Was Lost is a compelling literary read - an in-depth multilayered psychological thriller based on science that's designed to question, explore and entertain.'

Read my full review here. 

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