Crime Fiction Week: What we love about Crime Fiction...

When I decided to run this crime fiction feature week I honestly did not expect the response that I received, from publishers and authors offering books for review and arranging interviews, and of course you the readers who have visited my blog and read the posts.  

This week some of the posts have had the most visitors of any post that I have written since the blog was set up a year ago so I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed this week to make it such a success.

So for this final feature I put a shout out on Twitter and my blog FB page for contributions from other readers as to what they loved about crime fiction as I didn't want this just to be me blabbing on.  It could be what was the first book they read, their favourite crime book or series, favourite author, basically anything that was to do with crime fiction..  So here's what we all had to say...  

Crime Fiction Week Review: Marcia Clark - Killer Ambition

Would you kill to protect your career?

Deputy DA Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller are catapulted into the most high-profile investigation of their careers when the teenage daughter of superstar director Russell Antonovich, one of Hollywood's most powerful men, is kidnapped.

Things go wrong fast. The young girl's body is found abandoned in the trunk of a car. And Rachel's hunt for the killer puts her on a collision course with some of the most celebrated players in the film industry - and into conflict with her own boss, who is desperate to stay on their good side.

It seems the glittering surface of Hollywood covers a darkness to match the most depraved criminals. But Rachel will bring the truth to light... no matter who wants it to stay hidden.

Crime Fiction Week Sneak Peeks: Michael Robotham - Say You're Sorry & Watching You

I've loved all the suggestions I received from publicists for books to feature and/or read during this crime fiction feature week but the only problem was there were so many to choose from and not enough time to feature them all.

One of the authors that was recommended to me was Michael Robotham who I have to confess I had never heard of before... I know, I know, have I been living under a stone?!  He has two books being published in the next couple of months, Say You're Sorry in paperback on 18th July and Watching You in Hardback and eBook on 1st August. Both sound really good and have been added to my Amazon wishlist along with the other books in the series.  

My name is Piper Hadley and I went missing on the last Saturday of the summer holidays three years ago.

When Piper and her friend Tash disappeared, there was a huge police search, but they were never found. Now Tash, reaching breaking point at the abuse their captor has inflicted on them, has escaped, promising to come back for Piper. 

Clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and his stalwart companion, ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, force the police to re-open the case after Joe is called in to assess the possible killer of a couple in their own home and finds a connection to the missing girls. But they are racing against time to save Piper from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind.

Crime Fiction Week Interview: Jacqui Rose

Today I'm delighted to be able to bring you my interview with Jacqui Rose, as well as bring you news of an exciting new innovative version of Trapped that has just been published.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer? 
I didn’t set out to be a crime writer nor particularly an author, though I had always written bits and pieces over the years but it was more about escapism than anything else really. I trained as an actress during which time I didn’t write at all but then I moved into stand-up comedy which I must say I was hopeless at but it reignited by love of writing and from there I wrote a radio play which was shortlisted for the BBC Alfred Bursary award, after that I decided to give writing a serious go, so I sat down and wrote a book and sent it to an agent, Judith Murdoch, who is wonderful.  She took me on and then within months sold my ms to Avon which is an imprint of HarperCollins.  They gave me a two book deal initially then I got a further four book deal which is just amazing.    

Tell us something about yourself that your readers probably don’t already know?
Mmmmm  ???  Let’s see what can I share which readers don’t know? Well, even though I’m a crime writer and my books are filled with a lot of violence I’m actually the biggest romantic going.  I don’t read in the genre I write I just fill my head with sweeping romantic classics and poetry. I often feel I was born in the wrong century. Oh and I’m a pretty mean tap dancer as well.

Crime Fiction Week Review: The Perfect Murder

Spine-chilling short stories for long summer nights…

Featuring short stories from e-book bestsellers Paul Finch, Jacqui Rose and Mark Sennen and highly anticipated stories from Luca Veste and Michael Russell, this FREE short story collection will have you up all night.

Each short story is followed up by exclusive extracts of each of the authors’ upcoming titles.

Crime Fiction Week Interview: Paul Finch

The latest interviewee for my crime fiction week is Paul Finch, a former script writer turned author.  His latest book, Sacrifice, is due to be published on 18th July.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer?
I was a police officer in Manchester, but for various reasons was looking to leave the force in the late 1980s. I’d always been able to write, and though in career terms I made a sideways move into journalism, I began making unsolicited submissions – unofficial trial scripts, if you like – to the offices of THE BILL, which were then at Wood Lane in West London. There was no initial response, so I penned an entirely original police drama called KNOCK-OFF JOB, which concerned a murder inside a police station. This seemed to hit the spot. THE BILL asked me to go and see them, and wondered if I’d like to write for the show. I obviously did, but I didn’t know much about television at that stage. However, I was fortunate in that I’d be coached over the next few years by what, at the time, was one of the best script departments in British TV. For a while I thus had two parallel careers, as newspaper reporter (which included a lot of crime coverage), and writing TV scripts. When I was made redundant from my day-job at Christmas 1998, I felt I was in a strong enough position to go freelance. I’ve been a full-time author ever since, concentrating primarily – though perhaps not surprisingly – on the darker side of the human experience.

Crime Fiction Week Sneak Peeks: Peter Robinson - Children of the Revolution

I love watching the ITV drama series DCI Banks, which is based on the novels by bestselling author Peter Robinson, but I'm ashamed to admit that I have not read any of the books!  The latest book in the series, the twenty-first, Children of the Revolution is due to be published by Hodder & Stoughton on 15th August.

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot.

The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early '70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks receives a warning to step away from the case, he realises there is much more to the mystery than meets the eye - for there are plenty more skeletons to come out of the closet...

Crime Fiction Week Guest Review: Denise Mina - The Red Road

Reviewed by Victoria Stone 

31st August 1997
Rose Wilson is fourteen, but looks sixteen. Pimped out by her 'boyfriend' and let down by a person she thought she loved, she has seen more of the darkness in life than someone twice her age. On the night of Princess Diana's death - a night everyone will remember - Rose snaps and commits two terrible crimes. Her life seems effectively over. But then a defence lawyer takes pity and sets out to do what he can to save her, regardless of the consequences.

Now
DI Alex Morrow is a witness in the case of Michael Brown - a vicious, nasty arms dealer, more brutal and damaged than most of the criminals she meets. During the trial, while he is held in custody, Brown's fingerprints are found at the scene of a murder in the Red Road flats. It was impossible that he could have been there and it's a mystery that Morrow just can't let go.

Meanwhile, a privileged Scottish lawyer sits in a castle on Mull, waiting for an assassin to kill him. He has sold out his own father, something that will bring the wrath of the powerful down upon him.

Crime Fiction Week Interview & Giveaway: Anne Zouroudi

One of the things I've loved about this crime fiction feature week is being introduced to new authors that I'd never heard of before including Anne Zouroudi, author of The Greek Detective series.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer?
I’ve always written, since my teenage years. I cut my teeth on short stories, then moved onto novels – I have four of my unpublished ones under the bed. My adage is not, Write what you know, it’s Write what you’d like to read. I love reading crime and I love Greece but I searched in vain for crime novels set in Greece, so I decided to write my own.

Tell us something about yourself that your readers probably don’t already know?
I used  to fly aeroplanes, having qualified as a pilot in the late 80’s. My licence is long-lapsed now, but I still love flying.

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book?
The Greek Detective series is based on the Seven Deadly Sins, and The Feast of Artemis is based on the sin of gluttony. There’s food everywhere in the book, all sorts of Greek delights. Readers are suggesting I should follow it up with a book of recipes.

Where do you get your ideas from for your stories?
My ideas come from peace and quiet. I rarely have the radio or TV on at home, and I spend a lot of time walking my dog. Quiet and solitude make fertile ground for the imagination.

Crime Fiction Week Guest Review: Stephen Booth - Already Dead

Reviewed by Danielle Pullen

A summer of endless rain in the Peak District leaves the officers of Derbyshire's CID with a problem. They have discovered a man's body lying in shallow water, but torrential rain has swollen the rivers and flooded the roads, making travel difficult and forensic examination impossible. 

And that's not all. The absence of DS Ben Cooper, on extended leave after an arson attack, has left a serious gap. DS Diane Fry is a reluctant temporary replacement, but now their makeshift team is about to be tested to the limit. The fatal events of one damp August night are likely to remain shrouded in mystery if they can't track down a car glimpsed only as a dark outline in the rain by a passer-by.

As the rain turns into a deluge, loyalties among the officers will be put under intolerable strain as they try to solve their toughest case yet. And that's before it emerges that Ben Cooper is not at home, but has vanished into thin air...

Crime Fiction Week Guest Post: Rosie Fiore talks about attending a masterclass with Ruth Rendell

Rosie Fiore, author of Wonder Women and Babies in Waiting attended a Masterclass with Ruth Rendell at the Royal Society of Literature. She gives us some insight into the work of this masterful writer.

One Saturday in the mid-1980s, I was in the Parkview library in Johannesburg, aged probably twelve or thirteen, a precocious bookworm who had exhausted the children’s section. My mother, who was a voracious reader herself, and who was tired of my nagging for something new to read, handed me a book by Ruth Rendell. “You might like this,” she said. It was The Tree of Hands. Memories from when you are young are always so vivid, so my recollection of that day is suffused with the smell of the books, the sunlight through the narrow windows, shining on the parquet floor, and the squeaky, squashy, sweat-inducing blue plastic of the chair I sat in to begin reading.

Ruth Rendell took me by the hand, plucked me out of 1980s Johannesburg, and drew me into London, her London. She did it with her spare, beautiful writing, her ability to create characters who are mentally ill, and wrong-headed, yet whose thought processes we can follow, and with whom we still empathise. Her plotting is impeccable and careful, and she places every clue and hint we need to fully appreciate her brilliant climax and denouement. She opened my eyes to what books could do. “One day,” I remember thinking, “I want to be able to write like that.”

Crime Fiction Week Sneak Peeks: Jane Casey - The Stranger You Know

Next week sees the publication of the fifth book in the Maeve Kerrigan series from Jane Casey, The Stranger You Know, which is one of the books I received for this Crime Fiction feature week.  Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to fit in the review this week but it will follow shortly. 

He meets women.

He gains their trust.

He kills them.

That's all Maeve Kerrigan knows about the man she is hunting. Three women have been strangled in their homes by the same sadistic killer. With no sign of a break-in, every indication shows that they let him in.

But the evidence is pointing at a shocking suspect: DI Josh Derwent, Maeve's colleague.

Crime Fiction Week Interview: Mel Sherratt

Today I'm pleased to welcome Mel Sherratt to my blog to talk about crime fiction.  Over the last couple of years Mel has self-published four novels to date, all of which have made the Amazon bestsellers list, but she's recently announced that she has just signed a book deal with a publisher.  Congratulations Mel x

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer?
I’ve written seven books now - just about to start drafting my eighth. I wrote a crime thriller when I couldn’t get a traditional deal for my gritty women’s fiction novels. It was a police procedural, TAUNTING THE DEAD and I selfpublished it after that was rejected too. 

Tell us something about yourself that your readers probably don’t already know?
I have a fear of heights since falling head first down 16 concrete steps - I literally rolled over in mid air!  

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book?
The last book I self-published was FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL, book three of The Estate series - surviving life on the worst street on the estate. It has girl-gangs, self-harm, bullying, debt and repossession, neighbours fighting, murder and mayhem galore. 

My new book, out at the end of the year is called WATCHING OVER YOU. It’s a hint of Single White Female with a dash of Panic Room and a liberal sprinkling of Fatal Attraction. Basically it’s about one woman falling in love with a man as another woman falls apart because of it.

Crime Fiction Week Review: Samantha Hayes - Until You're Mine

Claudia seems to have the perfect life.

She's heavily pregnant with a much wanted baby, she has a loving husband, and a beautiful home.

And then Zoe steps into her life. Zoe has come to help Claudia when her baby arrives.

But there's something about Zoe that Claudia doesn't like. Or trust.

And when she finds Zoe in her bedroom, Claudia's anxiety turns to real fear ...

Crime Fiction Week Interview: John Connolly

The latest interviewee for my crime fiction week is bestselling author John Connolly whose latest Charlie Parker thriller, The Wrath of Angels, was published earlier this month.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer?
I was a journalist for about five years but I think my heart was always with fiction, and journalism was simply a way to be paid to write.  It was good practice, though: it taught me discipline, and the importance of research, and knocked most of the preciousness out of me – most, not all.  And, like most writers, I wrote what I read, and the two genres I loved most were mystery and the supernatural, so my natural instinct was to blend the two.  The mix didn’t always meet with the approval of the more conservative elements in the mystery genre, but I think they’ve mellowed a bit since then.

Tell us something about yourself that your readers probably don’t already know?
I think my readers already know more than they need to know about me, and what they don’t already know is best left undiscovered! 

Crime Fiction Week Guest Review: Tom Harper - The Orpheus Descent

Reviewed by Lisa Redmond

I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever... The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy -- an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history.

Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself.

And then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life -- or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back.

But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.

Crime Fiction Week Debut Spotlight: Nele Neuhaus

Nele Neuhaus is one of the most widely read German mystery writers and now we get to discover her talent for ourselves as next week sees the publication of Snow White Must Die, her first book to be published here in the UK. 

In a small town in Germany a boy is accused of murdering his beautiful girlfriend. But this is no fairy story . . .

On a September evening eleven years ago, two 17-year-old girls vanished without a trace from the tiny village of Altenhain, just outside Frankfurt. In a trial based on circumstantial evidence 20-year-old Tobias Sartorius was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of his childhood friend Laura and his beautiful girlfriend Stefanie – otherwise known as Snow White. After serving his sentence, Tobias returns home. His presence in the little German village stirs up the events of the past. Events that the locals would prefer to remain hidden.

Crime Fiction Week Review: Linda Castillo - Her Last Breath

A rainy night, an Amish father returning home with his three children, a speeding car hurtling towards them out of nowhere.  What at first seems like a tragic, but routine, car accident suddenly takes on a more sinister cast as evidence emerges that nothing about the crash is accidental.

But who would want to kill an Amish deacon and his children?  He leaves behind a grieving widow and a young boy who clings to life in the intensive-care wing of a hospital, unable to communicate.  He may be the only one who knows what happened that night.

Desperate to find out who killed her best friend's husband and why, Kate Burkholder begins to suspect she is not looking for a reckless drunk, but instead is on the trail of a coldblooded killer.  It is a search that takes her on a chilling journey into the darkest reaches of the human psyche and strikes at the heart of everything she has ever believed about the Amish culture into which she was born. 

Crime Fiction Week Interview: Samantha Hayes

When I was planning this crime fiction feature week I was anticipating maybe a couple of interviews during the week, I certainly did not expect the fantastic response that I got which means that there will be at least one interview a day, sometimes two.  My interview guest today is Samantha Hayes who writes psychological thrillers that include Until You're Mine which has just been published.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a crime writer?
I was born in Coventry and have lived in Warwickshire most of my life, apart from a few years in Australia and the USA. I’ve always written stories, right from when I was eight or nine. As a kid, it was kind of an escape. My parents were divorced and sometimes life at home was difficult. Writing took me away from all that. I always wrote about the darker side of life, which has translated into writing crime fiction now. Having left school aged sixteen and trying my hand at a raft of other jobs, I never really wanted to anything else but write. In 2003 I won a short story competition, hich gave me the confidence to try longer fiction.

Tell us something about yourself that your readers probably don’t already know?
I could fly a plane before I could drive a car. I had to sit on a cushion to see out of the cockpit window. I was fifteen when I first spun a two-seater Cessna aircraft from 5000 feet. I’m now very scared of heights. And flying.

Crime Fiction Week Guest Review: Kate Rhodes - A Killing of Angels

Reviewed by Danielle Pullen

The first death looked like a suicide. But someone had tucked a picture of an angel and a handful of white feathers into the banker's pocket - before pushing him in front of a Tube. A killer is stalking the Square Mile, an avenging angel intent on punishment. But why these victims? What were their sins?

Psychologist Alice Quentin swore she'd never get involved with police work again. Her duty is to the living, not the dead. But she owes detective Don Burns a favour, and when he comes begging for help, how can she refuse? 

In order to find the murderer, Alice and Don must dig deep into the toxic heart of the City. A place where money means more than life, and no one can be counted innocent.