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.
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.
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