James Herbert to Headline the WHC 2010

I’m so damned glad I registered as I just got this press release -World Horror Convention 2010 is proud and delighted to announce that our very Special Guest of Honour is Britain's most influential and successful horror writer of all time -- JAMES HERBERT

James Herbert created the modern mass-market horror genre with thepublication of his first ground-breaking novel, THE RATS, in 1974 (for the record, Stephen King's CARRIE was published a few months later). Since then he has reigned as Britain's undisputed #1 author of chiller fiction, with more than 20 novels to his credit -- which have sold more than fifty million copies world-wide. His books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages, including Russian and Chinese. THE RATS has never been out of print, and Jim's list of best-selling titles includes THE FOG, THE SURVIVOR, FLUKE, THE SPEAR, LAIR, THE DARK, THEJONAH, SHRINE, DOMAIN, MOON, THE MAGIC COTTAGE, SEPULCHRE, HAUNTED, CREED, PORTENT, THE GHOSTS OF SLEATH, '48, OTHERS, ONCE, NOBODY TRUE and THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL.

THE RATS (aka DEADLY EYES), THE SURVIVOR, FLUKE and HAUNTED have all been made into movies, the latter starring Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale and Sir John Gielgud. In his 1992 Introduction to the bio-bibliography JAMES HERBERT: BY HORROR HAUNTED, Stephen King wondered "with real excitement" what James Herbert might be up to in the year 2010. Well, now we know -- he'll be at World Horror Convention in Brighton!

ALSO . . . registered members of the convention can now vote for the World Horror Convention's prestigious GRAND MASTER AWARD, which will presented at a sit-down Banquet on the Saturday evening. An electronic voting form is available on the convention website and will also be included in the forthcoming printed Progress Reports. A list of past recipients -- who have included Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Anne Rice, Ray Bradbury, CliveBarker, Peter Straub, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell . . . and for 2009 Tanith Lee!!! -- is displayed on the same page.

For more information about JAMES HERBERT, who joins Author Guests of Honour TANITH LEE and DAVID CASE, Artist Guests of Honour LES EDWARDS and DAVEC ARSON, Editor Guest of Honour HUGH LAMB and Mistress of Ceremonies JO FLETCHER as part of our exciting line-up of Guests of Honour, please go to the convention website. Other writers, artists, agents, editors and publishers already registered as attending World Horror Convention 2010 include: ANGRY ROBOT BOOKS (UK), Randy Broecker, Edward W. Bryant Jr., Pat Cadigan, Ramsey Campbell, CENTIPEDE PRESS (USA), Basil Copper, Peter Crowther, Ellen Datlow, Christopher Fowler, Gary Fry, GRAY FRIAR PRESS (UK), Simon R. Green, John Jarrold, JEMMA PRESS (Greece), Stephen Jones, Paul Kane, Allen Koszowski,T im Lebbon, Samantha Lee, Brian Lumley, Dorothy Lumley, L.H. Maynard & M.P.N. Sims, Gary McMahon, Farah Mendlesohn, MORTBURY PRESS (UK), Mark Morris, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, Adam L.G. Nevill, NEWCON PRESS (UK), Kim Newman, Reggie Oliver, Weston Ochse, Sarah Pinborough, David Pirie, John L. Probert, PS PUBLISHING (UK), REBEL E PUBLISHERS (South Africa), Tony Richards, David A. Riley, Mark Samuels, SCREAMING DREAMS (UK), RobertShearman, Michael Marshall Smith, SNOWBOOKS (UK), Alexandra Sokoloff, DavidA. Sutton, TARTARUS PRESS (UK), TELOS PUBLISHING (UK), Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk, Conrad Williams, and F. Paul Wilson, amongst many others.

Celebrating its 20th Anniversary, The World Horror Convention will be held over March 25-28, 2010, in the historic Regency seaside city of Brighton, on the picturesque south coast of England.

This is the first time that theevent will have been held off the North American continent. The theme is "BRIGHTON SHOCK! -- A CELEBRATION OF THE EUROPEAN HORROR TRADITION FROM VICTORIAN TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY"

WORLD HORROR CONVENTION. MARCH 25-28, 2010. BRIGHTON, ENGLAND.

http://www.whc2010.org/

The Rap Sheet's Crimefest Competition

Coming soon from Adrian Muller and Myles Alfrey is this summer’s Crimefest Convention to be held in Bristol England.

We’ve organised a competition at The Rap Sheet for three lucky winners to get weekend passes to the event – Click Here to enter

I’m looking forward to attending next month’s CrimeFest with Shots Editor-in-Chief Mike Stotter [pictured ©2006 Ayo Onatade]. Last year’s convention offered plenty of opportunities to mix with notable authors. It was also an excellent opportunity for organizers Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey -- who had previously put together the one-off Left Coast Crime convention in Bristol in 2006--to show that the most populous city in South West England can become home to one of the world’s foremost annual gathering of crime-fiction enthusiasts.

Good luck and remember the competition closes Friday 1st May

More information about Crimefest available here

US vs. UK Thriller War

As an [associate] member of International Thriller Writers [ITW]; and judge for the ITW [2006, 2007 and reserve for 2008]; like my American colleague, the renowned critic David J Montgomery we have occasionally pondered upon the differences between American and British Thriller novels over beers. I’ve never considered either nation superior to the other in terms of thriller writing, but rather enjoyed the diversity and popularity the thriller genre enjoys.

At least two Thriller Critics [Photo from Thrillerfest 2006 Pheonix, Arizona] - David J Montgomery [US] and Ali Karim [UK] are available for a peace accord, as long as beer is provided.

As a renowned ‘Thriller enthusiast - I was asked to contribute an essay for the ITW ‘100 Best Thriller Novels’ book organised by David Morrell and Hank Wagner as well as writing extensively about Thriller Novels and Espionage Fiction for Barry Forshaw’s Greenwood Encyclopaedia of British Crime Fiction – So while taking a break at yesterday’s opening of The London Book Fair, I noticed a rather odd article in The Bookseller about a trio of British Thriller Writers who founded ‘The Curzon Group’ attacking American Thriller Novels –

Battle lines are being drawn across the Atlantic with the launch of a group designed to “end the reign of the production-line American thriller writers” and return the focus to domestic British authors. Authors Matt Lynn, Martin Baker and Alan Clements, who are respectively published by Headline, Pan Macmillan and Mainstream, are the founder members of the Curzon Group.

Jeffrey Archer will be advising the trio. Curzon’s manifesto specifically attacks American thriller writers—James Patterson, John Grisham and Dan Brown are all in the firing line. The group hopes to spark a debate, through TV chat shows, radio and national news media, about the "fantastic position" British thriller writing had in the past but which has declined in the past decade.

Lynn said: "Too many of the American thrillers are just being churned out to a rigid formula. The great British thrillers of the past had a quirkiness to them, an originality, and a passion for storytelling and writing that is absent from the market right now. All the writers in this group believe in bringing that back."

Archer said: "These were some of the greatest storytellers in the world. The flame has to be kept burning by a new generation."

The trio will draw on the tradition of writers such as The 39 Steps author John Buchan, Alistair MacLean, who wrote The Guns of Navarone, and the man responsible for the James Bond franchise, Ian Fleming, "reviving them for the 21st century".

Read More from The Bookseller

There has always been the old chestnuts of ‘What is a Thriller?’ as well as the ‘Why are Thrillers dominated by Male Writers?’ and now we have this new chestnut. Now healthy debate is useful in promoting literacy as long as it doesn’t get divisive.

‘The Curzon Group’ have also set-up a website to further promote the virtues of British Thriller Writing –

From Wilkie Collins to John Buchan, Eric Ambler to Hammond Innes, Ian Fleming to Alistair MacLean, and from Len Deighton to Frederick Forsyth, the British thriller is one of the richest traditions in world literature.

But in the last decade the British thriller has fallen into a sad decline. The market has been colonised by production line American thriller writers.

The Curzon Group is dedicated to reviving the traditions of Buchan, Fleming, MacLean and Forsyth, bringing the British thriller bursting back to life in the twenty-first century.

Read More from The Curzon Group

I wonder if these three writers attended James Patterson’s key-note address at yesterday’s LBF or if they’ve pre-ordered Dan Brown’s latest?

The cynical side of my nature considers this venture by ‘The Curzon Group’ as a method of promoting their own work; work which I am unfamiliar with. Personally speaking; the Thriller novel is split into many subgenres; and this UK vs. US debate from ‘The Curzon Group’ is a tad too jingoistic for my taste. Diversity is everything.

Incidentally Readers Digest have an interesting article on what they consider are the best of these thriller sub-genres Here and Here. The listing features both British as well as American landmarks of the Thriller Genre. The problem is where does British Born, American thriller writer Lee Child fit?

More Debate from Sarah Weinman here

2009 Hillerman Competition

GUIDELINES FOR THE 2009 HILLERMAN MYSTERY COMPETITON POSTED

From The Desk of Hector De Jean – PR Manager at Minotaur Books -

4/17/09 -- WORDHARVEST Writers Workshops and Thomas Dunne Books/ Minotaur Books announced today that updated guidelines for the Hillerman Mystery Competition are available online. The Tony Hillerman Prize is awarded annually to the best unpublished mystery set in the Southwest written by a first-time author.

Among the changes of note, the contest is now accepting stories set in Southern California, and the deadline is now June 1st, 2009 (it was previously announced at July 1st). Complete guidelines can be found here

Previous winners of the competition include Roy Chaney’s The Ragged End of Nowhere, coming out in the fall of 2009, and Christine Barber’s The Replacement Child, available in stores now.

Anne Hillerman, Tony Hillerman’s daughter, launched the first Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery in 2003 through the business which she co-founded (with Jean Schaumberg), WORDHARVEST Writers Workshops. The conference highlights writing by Southwestern authors.

Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries, set on the Navajo reservation, were the first “regional” mysteries to become national bestsellers. His work has been praised by reviewers and the Navajo Nation for its ability to combine Navajo traditions and beliefs with a well-told mystery story. Hillerman’s writing reflects his appreciation for the natural wonders and stark beauty of the American Southwest and its people, particularly the Navajo. His books have been translated into many languages and frequently make the New York Times bestseller list. At age 83, Hillerman passed away on October 26, 2008.

Thomas Dunne Books and Minotaur Books are imprints of St. Martin’s Press, which is a subsidiary of Macmillan.

The Last from Michael Crichton

I was very sad last year when I heard the terrible news about Micheal Crichton’s passing. As a reader of his work since adolescence, as well as a follower of his cinematic work, I heard today that he has left a couple or novels for us to enjoy, reports the New York Times –

Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of technological thrillers like “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park” who died of cancer in November, left behind at least one finished novel and about one-third of a second. Both will be released over the next year and a half, his publisher said.

HarperCollins, Mr. Crichton’s publisher for his previous three books, will release “Pirate Latitudes,” an adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century, on Nov. 24. The company also plans to publish a technological thriller in the fall of 2010, a novel that Mr. Crichton was working on when he died. Jonathan Burnham, publisher of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, said Mr. Crichton evidently wrote “Pirate Latitudes” at the same time that he wrote “Next,” his last published novel.

The new novel, discovered by Mr. Crichton’s assistant in the writer’s computer files after his death, features a pirate named Hunter and the governor of Jamaica, and their plan to raid a Spanish treasure galleon. “It’s eminently and deeply and thoroughly researched,” Mr. Burnham said. “It’s packed through with great detail about navigation and how pirates operated, and links between the New World and the Caribbean and Spain.”

The novel represents a departure from Mr. Crichton’s longtime fictional preoccupation with the moral and social ramifications of science and technology. But Mr. Burnham pointed out that “Pirate Latitudes” also harks back to the kind of historical yarn that Mr. Crichton wrote in the “The Great Train Robbery,” first published in 1975. Mr. Burnham said that the book needed little editing and that Harper planned a first printing of 1 million copies.

At the time of Mr. Crichton’s death he was under contract for the second of a two-book deal that began with “Next.” He had begun that second novel, a technological thriller, but was only about a third of the way through. Mr. Burnham said that the publisher would work with Lynn Nesbit, Mr. Crichton’s agent of 40 years, and his estate to select a co-writer who would finish the book, working from Mr. Crichton’s notes.

“We want a high-level thriller writer, somebody who understands Michael’s work,” Mr. Burnham said. “From what I gather, there are notes and indications of which direction the novel was going, so the writer has material to work from apart from the actual material that was finished.”

Neither Mr. Burnham nor Ms. Nesbit has seen the unfinished novel. Ms. Nesbit said that Mr. Crichton was “the most private of all authors that I have ever met in my life,” and that he never showed his agent or his editor any material before he had a complete draft. She said that other than the general category of technological thriller, she had no idea what the incomplete novel was about.

Read More and if you are Thriller Writer looking for a gig, there can be nothing more impressive than speaking to HarperCollins USA to enquire about finishing Crichton’s last work.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Vol III

I was fortunate to be invited by Christopher MacLehose and Quercus Publishing to a private gathering to celebrate Stieg Larsson’s nomination at the Galaxy Book Awards, which Incidentally won the Crime Thriller of The Year Award.

I have a report at The Rap Sheet Here which may help explain my fascination with Larsson’s work in a somewhat surreal twist.

Legendry British PublishersChristopher MacLehose is very protective of the Manuscript for Stieg Larsson's Millennium Vol III as this photo indicates. The UK release date has been brought forward to October 2009

Kenzie Gennaro Investigations Return

I finally finished the transcription of my Dennis Lehane interview for The Rap Sheet during which Dennis kindly signed my monster collection of his work.

Dennis was in very good form even when I pumped him about the new Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novel he’s working on -

AK: You once made it sound as if you’d never go back to the Patrick and Angie P.I. series. But it has now been widely reported that you are indeed returning to their fictional world. Why the switch?

DL: I don’t want to say too much at this stage. Just, “Hey, they’re back,” and that’s it. In fact, I won’t say any more until the book comes out.

AK: I’m still going to pump you. … Boston seems to be a familiar location as a backdrop for your work. So will Patrick and Angie operate in Boston in the new book?

DL: [Laughs] To answer your question, “Yes.” Yes, they will. I took them once to Florida in Sacred (1997). That was fun, but as a reader I always hated reading a P.I. novel [in which] the P.I. and sidekick head to L.A. to hunt down a missing actress, and this was because all the writers were out in L.A. working on movie deals. So I decided that I’ll never do that; hence, Patrick and Angie will operate on their home turf of Boston. OK, if there was a reason to take them to Dublin, I’d do that. No West Coast travel, though.

AK: Will the next Patrick and Angie novel carry on immediately after the events contained in Prayers for Rain [1999]? Or will some time have elapsed? After all, it’s been a decade since that last novel appeared.

DL: I know there will be gap, but it won’t be a full 10 years. I don’t see them in a pre-9/11 America. A lot has happened in the last decade. It would be ridiculous to take them back in time, if you follow me.

Read the full interview here

Part II will feature an interview with Tess Gerritsen

Remembering Rand

In 1957 Ayn Rand published the metaphysical SF novel “Atlas Shrugged” which has been re-issued and is selling well; so Existentialist Man poses the question “Did Ayn Rand predict the current economic collapse in her work?”

“Since I am to speak on the Objectivist Ethics, I shall begin by quoting its best representative-John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged: "Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required” - The Opening of The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand

As a businessman and scientist I have always been interested in science and mystery fiction, as well as philosophy and reality. Pondering on the current economic collapse, I was intrigued what SF has to say about this situation. I always thought that the civilization / reality we have crafted around us would collapse [in golden age SF traditions] by an asteroid impact, an alien invasion of Triffids, a virus destroying plant life, Body Snatchers, a Mega-Volcano eruption, or a Nuclear Exchange, Martians or a man made virus escaping. It seems that Amy Rand’s 1957 novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was closer to the reality we see emerging since the economic crisis, as reported by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian -

Some products do comparatively well in times of recession: alcohol, chocolate, cinema tickets, cigarettes. But one surprise bestseller of the economic Armageddon is a decades-old science fiction novel about an imaginary economic Armageddon - popular now, its fans insist, because the collapse of civilisation it describes is on the verge of coming true.

Sales of Ayn Rand's 1957 book Atlas Shrugged - a hymn in praise of radical individualism, extreme self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism - are surging as the crisis deepens, according to TitleZ, a service that tracks sales trends on Amazon.

As of yesterday, the book's 30-day average rank on the website was 110, far above its average rank of 542 over the last two years. On 13 January it even briefly outperformed Barack Obama's wildly popular work The Audacity of Hope. Yesterday it was in 55th place, between The Reader and a book on cultivating very small gardens.

Atlas Shrugged tends to inspire either cult-like devotion or sarcastic mockery in readers, who are either thrilled or appalled by Rand's vision of a world in which the "men of the mind" - inventors, entrepreneurs and industrialists - withdraw their labour from a society intent on bleeding them dry with taxes and regulations.

Furious at being exploited by the government on behalf of the masses, who are described as "parasites" and "moochers", the striking capitalists retreat to a camp in the mountains of Colorado, protected by a special holographic shield.

Starved of their genius, society collapses and wars break out until eventually bureaucrats are forced to beg the rebels' leader, John Galt, to take over the economy. There is a reason, then, that Amazon categorises the book as fantasy. But Rand adherents see looming parallels in today's Washington.

The Obama administration's support for beleaguered homeowners and banks, they argue, smacks of tyrannical socialism, forcing the strong and successful to prop up the weak, feckless and incompetent. "The current economic strategy is right out of Atlas Shrugged," the commentator Stephen Moore wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal. "The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you."

Obama's frequently expressed view that the crisis demands that all Americans make sacrifices - and that those earning the most will need to "chip in a little more" - would have disgusted Rand, who believed that altruism was evil.
Read the full feature here

These are surreal times indeed and worrying so perhaps it’s time to listen to what Rand described in ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Atlas Shrugged sweeps the reader into its own world of larger-than-life characters—including the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy and the great industrialist who doesn’t know that he is working for his own destruction. The story is a mystery about a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did. Society disintegrates, food shortages spark riots, factories shutdown by the hundreds. Is this man a vicious destroyer—or the greatest of liberators? What is the motor of the world? What is required to restart it?

The answers emerge in the novel’s logical yet astounding climax. The answers are of profound significance not merely for the resolution of the story’s central conflict— but also for man’s life in reality, today.

The Existential French Bookstore

I love bookstores and have visited many over the years throughout the world; but perhaps the most existential is the renowned Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Of course from the land of Camus and Manchette it is little surprise to find such a curious bookstore. In today’s Guardian, novelist Jeanette Winterson has a feature article on the history of this Parisian tourist attraction for Bibliophiles who visit from all over the world. Winterson’s piece reminded me of when I spent an entire day browsing reading and talking about books, which was one of the most remarkable memories of Paris I have.

Winterston reports today –

Way back, in 1913, the original Shakespeare and Company was opened by a young American called Sylvia Beach. Her shop in rue de l'Odéon soon became the place for all the English-speaking writers in Paris. Her lover, Adrienne Monnier, owned the French bookstore across the road, and she and Beach ran back and forth, finding penniless writers a place to stay, lending them books, arranging loans, taking their mail, sending their work to small magazines and, most spectacularly, publishing James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 when no one else would touch it. Hemingway was a regular at the shop, and writes about it in his memoir A Moveable Feast. His spare, emotional prose makes a poignant story of those early days, when material things weren't so important, and if you could get time to read and write, and live on cheap oysters and coarse bread and sleep by a stove somewhere, then you were happy.
It was Hemingway, as a major in the US army, who at the liberation of Paris in 1945 drove his tank straight to the shuttered Shakespeare and Company and personally liberated Sylvia Beach. "No one that I ever knew was nicer to me," he said later, rich, famous and with a Nobel prize.

But after the war, Beach was older and tired. She didn't reopen the shop that had been forced into closure by the occupation. It was George Whitman who took over the spirit of what she had made, but not the name - until 1962, when Beach attended a reading by Lawrence Durrell at the bookstore and they all agreed that it should be renamed Shakespeare and Company.
George took in the beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Henry Miller ate from the stewpot, but was too grand to sleep in the tiny writers' room. Anaïs Nin left her will under George's bed. There are signed photos from Rudolf Nureyev and Jackie Kennedy, signed copies of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

George opened his doors midday to midnight, and the deal then is the deal now: sleep in the shop, on tiny beds hidden among the bookstacks; work for two hours a day helping out with the running of the place; and, crucially, read a book a day, whatever you like, but all the way through, unless maybe it's War and Peace, in which case you can take two days.

George still reads a book a day, and gets very cross if he hears that anyone is wasting his time. You can be bawled out of Shakespeare and Company just as suddenly as you are invited in. The spirit of the place has to be honoured, and there are no exceptions.

At any time there are six or more young people from the compass points of the world, reading, talking, thinking, boiling spaghetti in the kettle, running across the road to the public showers, stacking, carrying, selling, stock-taking, and all in a spirit of energy and enterprise that is not to be found in any chain bookstores. They stay for two weeks or two months, and some just sleep outside on a bench until there's room inside.

If you are a published writer, then you might be able to stay in the tiny pod of the writers' room, and huddle against an ancient plug-in radiator and not worry too much if the electricity goes down and you have to abandon your laptop for a notepad. "There was no running water, no electricity when we started," George says. "It didn't matter. That stuff doesn't matter. Books, people, ideas, that's what matters."

Thousands of people have come through his doors, slept in his shop, eaten at his table, and many of them still write to him, or return. There's nothing quaint or historicalised about Shakespeare and Company. The values, the ethos and hospitality don't change, but the shop goes forward with the times. In 2006, aged 92, George retired, and his daughter, named after the original Sylvia, took over. She was 25 - the age difference tells you a lot about George, his appetites and his energies.

Sylvia lived in the shop until she was seven; then, after her parents' divorce, she went with her mother to be educated in England. It wasn't her intention to take over the shop, but she was drawn back in, and she has made it her life. "When I first arrived, we didn't even have a phone and Penguin was threatening to cut us off for not paying their bills, so I had to run round St Michel looking for a pay phone and ring Accounts in Essex." She adores her father, and is committed to carrying on his legacy - but in her own way. "Dad was furious when I took out one of the beds and installed a computer. When I told him we were going to start a literary festival and a publishing business, he said: 'Who's gonna cook for all those extra people?'"

Read all of Jeanette Winterson’s Guardian feature on Shakespeare and Company here and next time you find yourself in Paris and need something to read that will feed your mind, then head to Shakespeare and Company –

More information here and notes from the 2008 literary festival here the next one is in 2010

Directions Here

Shakespeare & Company
37 rue de la Bûcherie
75005 Paris
Tel : 00 33 (0) 1 43 25 40 93
Mon - Sat 10am - 11pm
Sunday 11am - 11pm

History of Shakespeare and Company Here

Peace comes to TV and Cinema

I have followed the complex world of David Peace since he debuted with his ‘Red Riding series of “novels”. These books are a fictional re-telling of the Yorkshire Ripper case. I was impressed that it was UK independent publisher Serpent’s Tail that first published Peace. I was fortunate to interview David Peace a few years ago for Crimespree Magazine when he launched GB84, a fictional and politically charged look back at the British Coal Miner’s Strike in 1984. I interviewed David with fellow Northern Crime Writer Martyn Waites in the Yorkshire city of Leeds.

A section of my interview was featured at The Rap Sheet, and naturally I was interested in his response to my asking about the origins of the Red Riding series -

AK: So how did you get Nineteen Seventy Four published, as I understand you had a series of rejected books in your third drawer?

DP: Lots, in fact. ... In fact, one of the reasons why I went to teach abroad was that I couldn’t get my books published. I wrote Nineteen Seventy Four purely for myself, to amuse myself in Tokyo. My dad came out and he read it, and told me that I should give it another go and submit it. He also brought some books by some new British crime writers and told me that he thought that Nineteen Seventy Four was better than those he had just read. I read them too and felt the same. I went to Serpent’s Tail first, as I admired what they were publishing--Walter Mosley and George Pelecanos; in fact, they had just published the early Nick Stefanos novels at the time.

Now David Peace has been in the press a great deal of late due to the screening this week of the Channel 4’s adaptation of the Red Riding series, as well as the Film Adaptation of his fictional re-telling of the Brian Clough Management of Leed United Football Club – ‘The Damned United’.

The Observer’s Euan Ferguson meets the three film directors behind Channel 4’s Red Riding series –

The three individual directors of Red Riding, the C4 trilogy adapting David Peace's haunting evocations of 70s and 80s Yorkshire - interlinking tales of very fallible coppers, very noir hacks, very human killers - are sitting down talking about the process for pretty much the very first time. They had a couple of suppers together way back at the beginning, but today, they're talking, really talking, for the first time.

Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker, three very different directors, were trusted by producer Andrew Eaton with his long-term labour of love: the on-screen evocation, after it had been wrestled into a blinding screenplay by Tony Grisoni, of Peace's sprawling, unforgiving series of books set loosely around the time of the Yorkshire Ripper. The result is whatever the plural is for more than one tour de force. We're only in March, but if it doesn't clean up at next year's awards I'll eat that chintz. The filming, of three discreet but linked films (1974, 1980, 1983), had, by definition, to dovetail, collide, overlap, but the directors didn't.
"We tried not to liaise too much, really," says Jarrold. "The freedom we've been given is incredible. But, in a way, the script was so strong that it would have been hard to misinterpret."

While The Times runs a profile on David Peace –

Peace was born in 1967 and was raised in Ossett, near Wakefield, where his parents were primary school teachers. There was plenty to read at home, ranging from his mother’s “religious” books to his father’s library of fiction: “We had the Penguin Classics as well as things like Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway, and local writers such as John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow [who lived in Ossett].” He spent as little time as possible at Batley grammar school, diverted by mischief and comic books: “I would have wanted to be a comic-book writer if I could draw.”

He bought Das Kapital when he was about 12, “though I didn’t read much of it”, and subscribed to Soviet Weekly and Peace News. Clubs and drinking had more appeal: “I was the kind of person who was beaten up a lot. Usually it was brought on by the fact that I’d insist on having the last word on any subject.”

In the musical thrall of the Sisters of Mercy, at about 13 he joined a band, yelling his own lyrics in pubs and at gigs supporting the miners. Peace’s father was branded “Red Basil” in the local press for giving harvest festival donations to striking miners’ families rather than to needy pensioners. “[The Ripper] dominated the conversation. A lot of the time you were really sick of it; you just wished it would go away.” On the day Sutcliffe was arrested and charged in 1981, Peace bunked off school to witness the scene outside Dewsbury magistrates’ court, although he denied that he joined in the mob’s baying. After “a bit of messing about”, he ended up at Manchester Polytechnic in 1987, but left the following year to attempt the great British novel, roundly rejected by every publisher in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. “At the time I thought I was the William Burroughs of Manchester. Looking back, it was pretentious rubbish.”

While the Guardian has a fascinating interview with Peace –

He casts around a bit in his childhood. His parents were both primary school teachers, he went to Batley Grammar. Who knows? "Partly it was Yorkshire. Looking back, it often seemed tinged with violence to me somehow. It's quite a hard place, I suppose, and for a while I was the kind of person who was beaten up a lot. Just in pubs and wherever. And usually it was brought on by the fact that I'd insist on having the last word on any subject. Then further back there was all the Ripper stuff. I remember saying in an interview once that I used to worry that my dad was the Yorkshire Ripper. That is true, but only in the way that everybody feared their father was. That was the effect it had. What I was trying to convey was the level of paranoia it created."

To start with, Peace relieved his angst in a band he likes to think sounded like a cross between the Fall and the Birthday Party. He wrote the lyrics and screamed them, at local pubs and miners' benefit gigs. "And then there was an obsession with Joy Division, and all that, dead poets. My dad once pointed out to me that all the writers I admired had killed themselves. He was right."

In a sense, moving to Tokyo seemed to lock him into some of that gothic sensibility, at least in his work. He's charming, modest and relaxed in conversation, a good listener, but he describes himself as obsessive in some respects also. "If I like a certain writer or a band, you know, I definitely have to know and probably own everything they have done." That kind of obsessive tendency seems to inflect his writing in different ways. At times, he gets so entranced by the rhythm of a paragraph or the cadence of a phrase that he seems to want to keep turning it over, endlessly. It's hypnotic, crafted and sometimes alarming. I wonder if, to begin with, he thinks the style had anything to do with his day job, parsing sentences for uncomprehending Japanese students?

"Friends have said that. I don't know. My wife isn't a fluent English speaker. Perhaps that has made a difference to how I write. What I do know is I walk round this room and say everything out loud over and over to get it right. Or sometimes I'll get a kind of obsession where you will have to have in a sentence the first word as six letters, the second as five, the third as four and so on. Mad stuff. That became a problem. If you look in Tokyo Occupied City, there are bits that are left over from the months I was doing that. Balancing the number of words in a line."

Those months, he suggests, coincided with a period of depression that began around the time he turned 40, two years ago. "There were things going on at home, problems with being in Japan. But it was the writing really. One of the points I reached was a sense that language had no meaning." He laughs now. "That was quite disturbing." In the end he wrote his way out of it, tried on different voices. "If I had been in Britain, I would have sought some help, but that wasn't an option here."

While Peace wrote a fascinating article for The New Statesman about the case of The Yorkshire Ripper –

The hunt for the man who would become the Yorkshire Ripper began in Leeds on 30 October 1975 with the murder of Wilma McCann. His first four victims were described by the police and press as "good-time girls" - prostitutes. But then, in June 1977, the Ripper killed a 16-year-old shop assistant. This murder caused public outrage, bringing intense pressure on West Yorkshire Police, pressure that was to increase with each murder and assault. In April 1979, the Ripper killed another "innocent girl" in Halifax. It was in the aftermath of this tenth death that the police decided to release excerpts from a cassette tape and letters that they believed had been sent to them by the Ripper.

No one who heard the tape will ever forget the Geordie voice that taunted the police and threatened to kill again. Nor will anyone ever forget the siege of fear it laid to the entire north of England. The tape convinced senior Yorkshire detectives that the Ripper was from Wearside. They believed that the tape and letters contained information that only he, the killer, could have known. They also believed the Ripper had left behind clues that would eventually help catch him, and so launched a million-pound publicity campaign to "flush out the Ripper". One clue was the reference in the first two letters to the murder of a woman called Joan Harrison in Preston, Lancashire, in 1975. This murder was now regarded by West Yorkshire Police as the work of the Ripper.

Three murders later, two uniformed policemen approached a parked car in Sheffield's red-light district on 2 January 1981. Inside it were a prostitute and her punter. The punter was Peter William Sutcliffe, a 34-year-old, married lorry driver from Bradford. He was not a Geordie. But, two days later, he confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper.

Twenty-two years after the arrest of Sutcliffe for 13 murders and seven assaults, there is no end in sight for the communities he terrorised. Uncertainty remains as to how Sutcliffe could have done what he says he did and why, and how the police could have let him and why. Sutcliffe's trial at the Old Bailey and the subsequent review of the police investigation by Sir Lawrence Byford, the chief inspector of constabulary for England and Wales, should have answered the public's questions. Neither did.

Look out for Red Riding on ITV this Thursday [in the UK] and I am pretty sure DVD releases will follow shortly.

Enter The Barbarians

This economic gloom is really hitting the worlds of publishing and books hard, and it makes me very sad.

Though there are some surreal sides to the effect the economic downturn is having on books, as reported in a piece at January Magazine.

We all need to enthuse as many people we know about the importance of reading.

Larsson's Screen Test

Bloomberg reports that Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy finally makes it to the big screen with huge anticipation thanks in part to the success of the BBC Wallander TV adaptation of the novels of Henning Mankell –

The so-called Millennium trilogy, completed before Larsson succumbed to a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide since 2005. The rights to the books, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest,” have been sold to 40 countries and are bestsellers in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.

Mankell still holds the crown as Sweden’s most read crime writer, with his 10 books about the disheveled police officer selling more than 30 million copies globally. They have also sparked a tourism boom in Ystad, which has a population of 17,000. Wallander fans flock to the town to take in the settings of the books.

The local tourism office has a special “Wallander Package,” offering lodging at one of the hotels featured in the books as well as coffee and dinners at the cafes and restaurants favored by Wallander. Wallander movies shot in the region helped push up tourism revenue by a third in recent years, while the number of daily visitors soared 29 percent to 1.45 million, according to municipality figures.

Interest in the town peaked after the British Broadcasting Corp. filmed three English-language versions of Mankell’s books there last year, with about 18 million viewers tuning in to watch Branagh as Wallander.

“The marketing we get is invaluable,” said Marie Holmstroem, spokeswoman for the Ystad Tourism Office. “The industry is booming, companies have been established here because of the filming of the books, and more companies are also coming here to shoot their films.”

The Larsson movie, featuring Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist in the lead role of reporter Mikael Blomkvist, has almost sold out at the box office. The distribution rights to the film and the two planned television series have been bought by France, Italy and Denmark. The total cost of producing the Larsson movie and 6 television episodes is about 110 million kronor ($11.3 million), according to production company Nordisk Film.

In the first of Larsson’s books, Blomkvist is hired by industry magnate Henrik Vanger to spend a year at the Vanger island and investigate the unsolved disappearance of a girl 40 years ago. In the process, he meets Lisbeth Salander, a data hacker with a troubled history and a dark mind. The Millennium trilogy follows the pair as they face Salander’s past in the coming two books.

Read the full piece from Bloomberg Here

Mark Billingham on Highsmith's Tom Ripley

A big date for your diaries is next Saturday, as BBC Radio 4 have a special program on Patricia Highsmith’s existential and amoral 'hero' Tom Ripley, which introduces over the next 5 weeks a new serialised adaptation of all Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels commencing with the hunt for Dickie Greenleaf in 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'

The Complete Ripley – Looking for Ripley
Saturday 28 February
10.30-11.00am [GMT] BBC RADIO 4

As BBC Radio 4 begins a series of new adaptations of the Ripley novels, the crime writer Mark Billingham is on the trail of Patricia Highsmith's hero-psychopath, Tom Ripley.

In the course of his investigation, Mark delves into the shadows as he tracks down those with a real insight into Ripley's ambiguities. Contributors to the programme include: Jonathan Kent; Professor Dinesh Bhugra; and Highsmith's biographer, Andrew Wilson. Extracts from the Ripley novels are read by Ian Hart, who plays Tom Ripley in the drama series which begins this afternoon. Presenter/Mark Billingham, Producer/Erin Riley

The Complete Ripley – The Talented Mr Ripley Ep 1/5
Saturday 28 February
2.30-3.30pm [GMT] BBC RADIO 4

[Liverpudlian actor Ian Hart as] Tom Ripley detests murder, unless it's absolutely necessary. He prefers someone else to do the dirty work. But, if he's called upon to act, there is no one cooler, cleverer or more calculating. BBC Radio 4 brings all five of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels together in a new series for Saturday afternoons.

In the first programme, The Talented Mr Ripley, Tom makes a bid for another man's inheritance. He succeeds but the story ends with him looking over his shoulder. Ian Hart stars as Tom Ripley. Other cast starring in this series include: Nicholas Hoult, William Hope, Barbara Barnes, Stephen Hogan, Philip Fox and Tom Brooke. Producers/Claire Grove and Steven Canny

Read More and remember if you miss the show[s] or live outside the UK the show[s] will be archived for at the BBC Radio 4 I-Player site and can be listened to online

BBC Radio 4 at 1430 Hrs GMT each Saturday will be airing all 5 of their adapatations of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels - Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful - a real treat

The Return of Dick

As a long standing Reader of the works of Philip K. Dick I was excited to read that his last [un-finished] novel will see the light of day, as reported by Alison Flood at the Guardian

Philip K Dick's last wife has reworked the novel the legendary science fiction author was working on when he died in 1982.

Tessa Dick, who described her self-publication of The Owl in Daylight as a tribute to her former husband, was Dick's fifth and final wife, marrying him in 1973.
She told online magazine the Self-Publishing Review that her version of the novel was an attempt to express "the spirit" of Dick's proposed book. Little is known about the novel, which Dick mentioned in a letter to his editor and agent. According to Tessa, the letter revealed plans to "have a great scientist design and build a computer system and then get trapped in its virtual reality. The computer would be so advanced that it developed human-like intelligence and rebelled against its frivolous purpose of managing a theme park". The letter also mentioned Dante's Inferno and the Faust legend, she said.

Read More

Brighton Shocks!

The momentum for 2010 World Horror Convention is building. Back in the UK, Steve Jones advises.

Right [Steve Jones with Peter Crowther supporting Ali Karim who was a little worse for wear...]

Those confirmed Attending Members of World Horror Convention 2010 who are interested in doing a Reading event can now register at the official website (under "Programming"). Having first introduced the popular Reading Café at the 2007 convention in Toronto, Canada, we are delighted to announce that we will be reviving the format in Brighton, once again hosted by Martel Sardina. Designed to complement our regular Programming Schedule, the Reading Café will promote individual readings, multi-author presentations, and small-press book debuts. There will also be time in the schedule set aside exclusively for poets to present their work. Our goal is to capitalise upon the incredible breadth and scope of talentthat regularly attends World Horror Convention. If you wish to read from your work, and you have already joined the convention, then simply go to the website http://www.whc2010.org/ - and click ont he link at the bottom of the appropriate page. Remember to include your name, credits, contact information and any other details that you think maybe pertinent. In the next couple of weeks we will start announcing our exciting line-up of Guests of Honour.

Celebrating its 20th Anniversary, The World Horror Convention will be heldover March 25-28, 2010, in the historic Victorian seaside city of Brighton , on the picturesque south coast of England. This is the first time that the event will have been held off the North American continent.

The theme is "Brighton Shock! - A Celebration of the European Horror Tradition from Victorian Times to the Present Day", and the convention will host numerous panels, talks, presentations, readings, workshops and displays devoted to horror, macabre, mystery and thriller fiction and art in all its varied and fearsome forms.The venue will be the historic Royal Albion Hotel, which dates back more than 180 years and is situated directly opposite Brighton's iconic Palace Pier and a stone's throw from the beach. There are plenty of alternative hotels and Bed & Breakfasts in the immediate surroundings, catering for allbudgets, and Brighton is filled with restaurants, wine bars and clubs. Antiquarian shopping precinct The Lanes, the Sea Life Centre and theworld-famous Royal Pavilion are also within easy walking distance.

Brighton has direct transport links from Gatwick International Airport and the centre of London, and is easily accessible for overseas visitors, especially those from mainland Europe. And if you want to extend your stay, then Britain's annual National Science Fiction Convention, Odyssey 2010, isbeing organised near to Heathrow airport the following weekend. Come for World Horror and stay for Eastercon! The World Horror Convention's prestigious Grand Master Award will also be presented at a sit-down Banquet during the weekend. Past recipients have included Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Anne Rice, Ray Bradbury, CliveB arker, Peter Straub, Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell.

All information about the convention, hotel and location is available onour website - http://www.whc2010.org/, including an easy to use PayPal Registration Form (which will automatically convert your payment at the current exchange rate).

Or you can print off the form and send it with a cheque (sterlingonly) to: World Horror Convention, PO Box 64317, London NW6 9LL, England.With numerous writers, artists, editors, publishers and booksellers expected to attend from all over the world, this is the one event that the dedicated horror fan, professional, collector or dealer cannot afford tomiss!

Wish you were here? . . . Well, now you can be.WORLD HORROR CONVENTION. MARCH 25-28, 2010. BRIGHTON, ENGLAND.http://www.whc2010.org/

I will be registering shortly - so see your there!

A Timely Visit to Baltimore

Hector DeJean - Minotaur Books Publicity Manager sent me this interesting press release for a timely release -

Minotaur Books has acquired an original work of historic crime non-fiction by Daniel Stashower, a two-time Edgar® Award winning writer. The new book examines a little-known yet dramatic and momentous 1861 plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore, during Lincoln’s inaugural trip to Washington. According to Stashower, the foiled plot had a powerful impact on both Lincoln’s presidency and issues of security and public opinion for decades afterward, even up to the present day.

Minotaur Books publisher Andrew Martin and St. Martin’s executive editor Charles Spicer acquired rights to Stashower’s book from agent Larry Kirschbaum, founder of LJK Literary Management. The acquisition represents a departure from the norm for Minotaur, which until now has successfully published many widely-hailed crime fiction novels, yet has not previously ventured into non-fiction.

“For some time we have been on the lookout for the kind of non-fiction that can compliment our fiction list,” said Mr. Martin. “In the tradition of Devil in the White City and Manhunt, Minotaur is seeking extremely well-written historical narrative crime non-fiction. Mr. Stashower has delivered the perfect kind of book we’re looking for, and – as an Edgar® Award winning author – he is the perfect fit for Minotaur.”

Minotaur Books’s Down River by John Hart won the Edgar® for Best Novel in 2008, and Blue Heaven by C.J. Box is short-listed for Best Novel this year. Both novels were New York Times bestsellers.

Mr. Stashower’s book is tentatively scheduled to be published in late 2010, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Lincoln’s inauguration.

Acclaimed author Stashower won Edgar® Awards for his books Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Stashower is also the author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, a highly-praised book focusing on the real-life murder that inspired Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Mystery of Marie Roget.

About Minotaur Books:
Minotaur Books is an imprint of the St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Launched in 1999, Minotaur publishes about 130 hardcover crime fiction titles annually. Minotaur Books grew out of a fifty-year tradition of publishing quality crime fiction at St. Martin’s Press, and has published many award-winning and best-selling titles.

St. Martin’s Press is part of Macmillan, the U. S. publishing group owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GMBH of Stuttgart, Germany.

"TAKEN" with a touch of Parker

I hadn’t seen any recent movies worth raving about for a while, in fact I still haven’t – but the Luc Besson produced “Taken” came damned close tonight.

I heard about ‘Taken’ several months ago and thought it might be worth a view on DVD as I like Liam Neeson who headlines the movie, plus the plot looked interesting. Also the backdrop for the movie intrigued me. I love [what I term] the amoral “International action thriller set in mainland Europe” sub-genre, with my favourites being as diverse as The Italian Job, Kelly’s Heroes, The Bourne Ultimatum, Ronin, The French Connection II, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ripley’s Game and of course in my opinion two masterworks from Luc Besson - Nikita and Leon US re-title ‘The Professional’.

‘Taken’ fits this sub-genre well. ‘Taken’ is a French production directed by Pierre Morel and premiered in Paris twelve months ago. The English versions appeared on the big screen in September 2008 in the UK, while the film premiered at the end of last month in the US.

Its plot is very simple, but engaging – Bryan Mills [the Liam Neeson character], is a retired, divorced ex-CIA agent living in California. He has one [17 year old] daughter who he’s trying to make up to [after years of being away from home due to various overseas operations]. His daughter goes to Paris [France] with a girlfriend and ends up kidnapped by white slavers / woman smugglers. Neeson states via telephone very simply to the kidnappers that –

“If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it. But if you don’t, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.”

And that is the film in microcosm, so I viewed the trailer for which that line and telephone call set the stage. A couple of other things in my life were circulating that made me grab this film on DVD. Firstly I’ve been re-reading a great deal of Donald Westlake’s Richard Stark series. I noticed that a few people had considered the Liam Neeson character to have some traits of master thief ‘Parker’. The other issue is that my eldest daughter is also seventeen, and [in my opinion] unware of the risks that this world poses at its darkest edges. She’s not as streetwise as her old man so I thought it might be a good idea if she watch it almost as a precautionary tale. We’ve told her that airports, train terminals and anywhere designed for mass-transit are dangerous places where strange people often lurk – looking for victims, be they for mugging, or be they for something far worse. So DVD in hand, popcorn ready we despatched my younger two children upstairs to watch something more in line with their age group - Get Smart.

Popcorn bowls out and a cold beer in hand, my wife and I settled down with our eldest daughter to watch Liam Neeson extract revenge on some Euro-Trash baddies.

Firstly, the movie is wonderfully cathartic to watch the villains getting their butts kicked good and proper. The film is wickedly amoral as there’s even a torture scene, and a few innocents get hurt along the way; but in the context of the wider worry for Neeson’s daughter – you accept the actions that this ex-CIA agent has to deploy.

As for the question of Neeson’s character being like Richard Stark’s master thief Parker? Well not really. The only similarity is the dispassionate way in which both Parker and Neeson are workman-like in their methods of despatching their opponents. Though saying that, if you like the Parker books [and films], you will enjoy seeing Neeson deploying Parker’s tactics to restore order with not a single flinch of remorse or empathy to those who block his path.

In fact the whole film was highly enjoyable and made the heart pound as Neeson, like Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne fights his way from one set piece to another, never wavering or showing worry. He’s like a machine that has no off-switch, which I guess is a trait of Parker.

The one downside I felt was the manner in which East Europeans and Arabs again are painted as the bad guys. Neeson at one point resorts to torture [by electrocution] to extract information about his daughter’s whereabouts. In the broader context of the narrative, the torture is made morally acceptable which is worrying - ‘Extra-ordinary rendition’, ‘Ghost-Flights’ anyone? The surreal aspect is that ‘Taken’ is a French film and far more right-wing and reactionary than the US/UK production of ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ which actually shows how dangerous it is for a society to allow its covert agencies to deploy torture as a tool; no matter how desperate the situation.

The liberal part of my brain wondered if films, like many other parts of the mainstream media are working as instruments of propaganda in gently [and subliminally] influencing public opinion toward a targeted agenda. But then again I could be just getting more paranoid as I get older. The more I see around me – the more I read into what I see; and the view from my window is not pleasant.

Though The Times review ignores the political dimension but points out the issues of violence that pepper this film –

Neeson calculates that he has 96 hours tops to save his daughter before she is pumped full of heroin and rented out to construction-site navvies for the rest of her life. The neck-snapping urgency with which he chops through Albanian criminals is an astonishing spectacle. The graphic violence is filmed in quadraphonic stereo and unflinching close-up.

“You know we used to outsource this kind of thing to the Third World,” muses Neeson as he neatly wires up an Albanian thug to the national grid in a dingy basement. “I don’t know why. The power source is far more reliable over here.” It’s these tabloid one-liners that keep the pitch-black comedy alive. The body count is fabulously unhealthy. And the inevitable betrayal is a public scandal.

“Please apologise to your wife for me,” Neeson deadpans seconds after putting a bullet into the Chief of Police’s hapless partner to illustrate his disappointment over dinner. If Neeson wasn’t in such a dreadful hurry we might even enjoy the mindless cruelty.

The Guardian found a different message embedded in Taken’s narrative –

But there's more to this film than just action. At the start, something about it – something good, that is – seemed rather familiar. Neeson plays a former secret service warrior who has retired to be near his daughter. The daughter lives with Neeson's horrible, snobby ex, played by Famke Janssen, an ex-Bond girl who seems to be thriving as she approaches middle age (check her out as Ben Kingsley's constantly smoking wife in The Wackness.)

Anyway, Janssen has married a rich ponce, and Neeson is being squeezed out of his daughter's life, and it's heartbreaking. The way he stoops, his walk, and the way he uses his eyes is just superb. He's given up being a hero, and now he's being humiliated; the early scenes, which set this all up, are a bit manipulative. But it just about works. And then – bang! The daughter is kidnapped. Neeson takes control. Suddenly, he's a mad driver, a killing machine, and a detective. His ex-wife's rich ponce of a husband is nowhere. Ha!

The film is really made special by the extraordinary performance by Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills. Neeson in my opinion is perfectly cast for the role, and he stated -

"I'm always motivated by script. That's my sole criterion and it's either something that gets under my skin or it doesn't, to be honest. And with this script I just loved the action of it. I loved the fact that I was being asked to do it. I was 54 years of age then and I thought in a few years' time I'm never going to be asked to do this sort of stuff again. But then, even though it's never been a fantasy of mine to play an action hero, one gets a real kick out of shooting real movie baddies and driving like a racing car driver."

The film also worked in highlighting to my daughter that talking to strangers in strange cities [or imparting personal information] no matter how charming the stranger maybe, can lead to danger. Normally my wife and kids think that as I read so many crime novels, I live in a state of paranoid delusion about human kind. But I also read a great deal of non-fiction and have seen first hand the signs that there is terrible darkness within the human condition. Despite some of the later sections of ‘Taken’ getting more outlandish, both my daughter and wife realised the plausibility of the danger that Neeson’s daughter put herself into.

In fact I found a website that views ‘Taken’ as a real-life warning about the risks I explained to my daughter -

The movie touched also a warm matter : human trafficking : it’s kidnapping girls and forced them to be sex-slave and prostitute. Actually, it’s the third illegal trade which paid most after drugs and weapons ($10billion per year). As one of the trafficker says in the movie: “It’s not personal, it’s just trade”, those people don’t have any scruple to use other people as an object, a stock to sell. They are well organized (corruption, money laundry, mafia) it takes years to crack their system down. And even if one of those traffic is dismantled, ten groups, worst than those before is raised. Over 2 million people are trafficked per year. Their victims are young girls and children. Internet is one of their means to attract them. And there are some who kidnap children too. The 96 hours mentioned in the movie is also true : once you’re out of the country you were kidnapped, it’s almost impossible to find you. Their network extend all over the world : Europe, US, Mexico, Asia, Africa, everywhere. Unfortunately, if you travel alone, your missing may be not declare only after the 96 hours.

So after the film finished, we all agreed that with a few reservations [the ones that ruffled my liberal sensibilities]; ‘Taken’ was on the whole an excellent film.

As we watched the credits unspool, my daughter asked what I would do if she were kidnapped in a similar situation. I told her that firstly she wouldn’t be as naive as Neeson’s daughter; and that if I had to mobilise my own resources and contacts; I would have taken off my gloves unlike Neeson. In fact I would be far less restrained than Neeson. My daughter laughed and said ‘Dad, you’re the best’. My wife laughed also, but a little more nervously. She knows some of the people I know, and she also knows exactly what I am capable of, should the cards ever fall in the wrong order.

If you need a jerk of cathartic and amoral action ‘Taken’ is the movie to watch this month; but remember that we can all be pushed to the edge; but some of us push back, and in some cases that push can be vicious.

Finding Paranoia

On occasion my kids laugh when I put down a book and start clapping. They smirk and say “Don’t tell us Dad. Best book you ever read!” In the case of Joe Finder’s Paranoia, they are close indeed.

Anyway, on today’s Patti Abbott forgotten book Friday – I nominate ‘Paranoia’ by Joe Finder; not exactly a forgotten book, but a novel that I consider to be one of the best times I've had reading a novel. When I finished, I didn’t just clap, I gave Finder and his hero Adam Cassidy a standing ovation.

I have been fortunate to have bumped into Finder many times over my surreal travels through reality and fiction. I was worried when I first met Finder, in case he turned out to be weird; but when we met [at the inaugural Thrillerfest in Phoenix, Arizona in 2006], my fears were totally false. We had breakfast and I found Finder a delight [Photograph (c) 2006 A Karim]. What I discovered over scrambled eggs and coffee is that Joe Finder is highly intelligent, modest, well read and a mine of information about writing, politics, the human condition and thriller fiction.

A little background - Joe Finder tends to write what I term ‘High Concept’ – which his breakout novel Paranoia [2004] was. In fact Paranoia I rate as one of my all time best techno-thrillers – period. Joe’s subsequent works such as 2005’s Company Man [UK Title ‘No Hiding Place’], the ITW award winning Killer Instinct [2006] and Powerplay [2007] are equally remarkable work. In fact Joe’s early work such as Zero Hour [1996], and High Crimes [1998] which was filmed with Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman, Extraordinary Powers [1994] and his recently re-issued 1991 thriller Moscow Club are all well worth re-discovering. Last time Joe was in London, he talked about these novels over lunch and he even had an amusing anecdote about meeting Oscar winner Morgan Freeman on the film set.

Since then he moved from Orion to Headline in the UK with his last novel ‘Power Play’ and I was worried why we hadn’t seen any new work from him but I was relieved when I was assured that a book is on the way as reported at Rap Sheet.

So here’s my review which may explain my enthusiasm and why I clapped when I put the book down -

When I read the first chapter and came to the last line ‘My life as I knew it was over’ – I knew as a book reviewer that this was going to be a thrilling book, but why? Because of the hip, perceptive and slippery style of the prose and a plot to die for. When I got to the end, I put the book down and clapped my hands and shouted ‘Bravo!’ and would implore you to seek out ‘Paranoia’ as it is such a fun read.

The story revolves around white-collar, junior manager and corporate slacker Adam Cassidy who throws a party for one of his blue-collar colleagues using funds from his employer Wyatt Telecom. The budget for the party reaches $68,000 and lands him in deep trouble. A Faustian pact is offered by the man at the top of the tree, Nicolas Wyatt, who Cassidy describes as ‘one scary dude’. The deal is outlined explicitly as either going to jail (for the theft of the $68,000) and facing anal rape night after night (as Cassidy is a pretty boy), or to go undercover and infiltrate Wyatt’s main competitor Trion systems on an enhanced salary. Nursing his critically-ill father and paying for his medical costs, Cassidy realizes his back is well and truly to the wall so he agrees to become an industrial espionage agent. Researched heavily, the high-tech environment is vividly realized, as Cassidy gets trained into becoming a top-flight executive. The book is very perceptive and underlying the hip humor is a layer of cynicism. I loved the line ‘Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely’, and the book is peppered with such corporate snipes.

After grueling training and coaching, Cassidy enters Trion Systems, and becomes pressurized by Wyatt to extract information on a new product (a product so secret that it is hidden from Trion’s main business). He also has to cut his ties to his slacker buddies as he transforms himself into the high-powered executive. The stakes get higher as does Cassidy’s paranoia, because he soon finds himself heavily embroiled within the politics of Trion, but also realizes that things are not as they once seemed. His woes are heightened when his father needs constant nursing, as his emphysema brought on by his cigarette habit requires constant nursing. The problem is that none of his stream of nurses can cope with his acidic tongue.

As Cassidy infiltrates Trion, he soon finds a friendship with Alana Jennings an employee working on the secret project, and starts questioning his allegiances. The pressure from Wyatt is ratcheted up and Cassidy finds himself a pawn in a bigger game.

I defy anyone not to read this in one sitting; such is the easygoing and hip prose style of Finder. However it is the unbearable tension that starts bending back the plot like a catapult that really makes this one hell of a book.

Exciting, fast-paced and laced with intelligent humour – this is a fun read and one of the best techno-thrillers for sheer thrills – Ali Karim

If you’ve not read Joe Finder’s “Paranoia”, you have a serious gap in your thriller bookshelf which you need to fill; but don’t just take my word – here’s more, and more and here’s Joe talking about it below

Colonel Mustard did it in the Library

I really enjoy attending the Annual CWA Dagger Awards in London each year, and one of the Awards is open to the public for voting. This allows anyone who votes to have the chance [via a prize draw] to attend the CWA Dagger Banquet, as well as receive a bundle of books for their reading group. The Award I’m referring to is of course The CWA Dagger in the Library.

[Left] 2008 Dagger Winners Martin Edwards [Short Story Dagger] with Craig Russell - [CWA Dagger in the Library Winner] Photography (c) 2008 Ali Karim

Booktrade and The CWA issued the following background with details on how to vote -

Unlike most other literary prizes, the Dagger in the Library is awarded not for an individual book but for the author's body of work. Previous winners have included Stuart McBride, Craig Russell and Alexander McCall Smith whilst Joolz Denby, Lesley Horton and C J Sansom have been Highly Recommended. Nominated authors must be alive, preferably working in Britain and cannot have won the award before. If you'd like to nominate your favourite crime writer, nomination forms can be downloaded from the CWA website or picked up from your local library and all entries must be submitted through a library. Each branch library or reading group can nominate up to three authors so any arguments can be left to the judging panel!

Short supporting statements are welcome as they'll help the judges come to their conclusion.
2008 saw 54 authors nominated and there is an added incentive this year. As before, all groups whose nominated authors are shortlisted are entered into a draw for 2 tickets to the prestigious Dagger Awards ceremony in London but, for the first time, those groups who nominate the winning author will enter a draw for £300 to be spent on books for their group. The closing date for entries is 11th April 2009 so let the arguments begin – just try to keep the murders to the printed page! – Read More

So head off to your library to vote or download a voting from the CWA website