SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL |
- CrimeFest Bursary for Crime Fiction Author of Colour
- My Favourite Non Fiction Reads of 2021
- My favourite reads of 2021
- Books to Look Forward to From Simon & Schuster
| CrimeFest Bursary for Crime Fiction Author of Colour Posted: 20 Dec 2021 12:00 AM PST
 CRIMEFEST, one of Europe's leading crime writing conventions, is offering a bursary for a crime fiction writer of colour to attend its festival next May. The bursary will cover the cost of a full Weekend Pass to the convention and a night's accommodation at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, and a guaranteed panel appearance. Eligible authors must have published at least one English language book in traditional print by a British commercial publisher. Donna Moore, Co-host of CRIMEFEST, said: "At CrimeFest, we pride ourselves as being one of the most democratic events in our genre. As a convention, published authors don't have to be invited to take part – there are no gatekeepers or committees dictating who is in and who isn't. As such, CrimeFest is a really exciting event for the genre and a natural hotbed for diverse talent. We're aware however that more needs to be done to ensure festivals and conventions actively support writers of colour."   A 2020 study, Rethinking Diversity in Publishing by the University of London found writers of colour still don't receive the same industry access, creative freedoms or economic value as their white counterparts. It also found each stage of the publishing process generally amplified the voices of white and middle-class people..The winning entry for the bursary will be chosen in collaboration with author Vaseem Khan, the author of two award-winning crime series set in India - the Baby Ganesh Agency series set in modern Mumbai, and the Malabar House crime novels set in 1950s Bombay; Ayo Onatade, who works with Justices at the Supreme Court, and is a well-known blogger and CWA Red Herring award-winning freelance crime fiction critic; as well as the CrimeFest organisers. Hosted in Bristol, CRIMEFEST is one of the biggest crime fiction events in Europe, and one of the most popular dates in the international crime fiction calendar, with circa 60 panel events and 150 authors over four days. Dates for next year's Bristol CRIMEFEST are 12-15 May, 2022 CRIMEFEST was created following the hugely successful one-off visit to Bristol in 2006 of the American Left Coast Crime convention. It was established in 2008. It follows the egalitarian format of most US conventions, making it open to all commercially published authors and readers alike The deadline to apply is 30 January 2022. Go to www.crimefest.com/bursary for more details on how to apply. |
| My Favourite Non Fiction Reads of 2021 Posted: 19 Dec 2021 01:15 PM PST  For the second year running I also read a number of great non-fiction books that I really enjoyed. Once again they are in alphabetical order. These were - Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction: A History in Stories by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton) The story of genre fiction - horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more - is also the story of Irish fiction. Irish writers have given the world Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, and the world of Narnia. They have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories and ground-breaking women's popular fiction. Now, for the first time, John Connolly's one volume presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself. Deeply researched, and passionately argued, Shadow Voices takes the lives of more than sixty writers - by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary - and sets them alongside the stories they have written, to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses. Here are the Shadow Voices.  We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City by Justin Fenton (Faber & Faber) Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old black man who died in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were once again surging. For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - were the city's lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they had been skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force? Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.  My Life as a Villainess: Essays by Laura Lippman (Faber & Faber) - I knew something new about venality - my own. I realized I had become the bad guy in someone else's story. And I deserved it. Laura Lippman's first job in journalism was a rookie reporter in Waco, Texas. Two decades later she left her first husband, quit the newspaper business, and became a full time novelist. I had been creating villains on the page for about seven years when I finally became one. Her fiction has always centered on complicated women, paying unique attention to the intricacies of their flaws, their vulnerability, and their empowerment. Now, finally, Lippman has turned her gimlet eye on a new subject: herself. My daughter was ten days old the first time I was asked if I were her grandmother. In this, her first collection of essays, Lippman gives us a brilliant, candid portrait of an unapologetically flawed life. Childhood, friendships, influences, becoming a mother in later life - Lippman's inspiring life stories are at once specific and universal.  The Reacher Guy by Heather Martin (Little Brown) The Reacher Guy is a compelling and authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, refracted through the life of his fictional avatar, Jack Reacher. Through parallels drawn between Child and his literary creation, it tells the story of how a boy from Birmingham with a ferocious appetite for reading grew up to become a high-flying TV executive, before coming full circle and establishing himself as the strongest brand in publishing. Heather Martin explores Child's lifelong fascination with America, and shows how the Reacher novels fed and fuelled this obsession, shedding light on the opaque process of publishing a novel along the way. Drawing on her conversations and correspondence with Child over a number of years, as well as interviews with his friends, teachers and colleagues, she forensically pieces together his life, traversing back through the generations to Northern Ireland and County Durham, and following the trajectory of his extraordinary career via New York and Hollywood until the climactic moment when, in 2020, having written a continuous series of twenty-four books, he finally breaks free of his fictional creation.  Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan (Harper Collins) is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder.The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There's Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crew mates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defence of necessity to murder. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defence of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people - victims, killers, lawyers and judges, who unwittingly shaped the history of that most grisly and storied of laws. Join lawyer and writer Kate Morgan on a dark and macabre journey as she explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law. The big corporate killers; the vengeful spouses; the sloppy doctors; the abused partners; the shoddy employers; each story a crime and each crime a precedent that has contributed to the law's dark, murky and, at times, shocking standing. |
| Posted: 19 Dec 2021 12:59 PM PST At last I have finally managed to write up my favourite reads this year. If you have listened to any of the book events that I have taken part in this year or even vaguely paid attention to any of my tweets then you will of course not be surprised by the books on my list. I have put them in alphabetical order but feel bound to say that for me the one book that I will quite easily say was my very favourite was of course S A Cosby's Razorblade Tears. I have been talking about it constantly throughout the year.  Sunset Swing by Ray Celestin (Pan Macmillan). Los Angeles. Christmas, 1967. A city on fire as a killer strikes . . . A young nurse, Kerry Gaudet, travels to the City of Angels desperate to find her missing brother, fearing that something terrible has happened to him: a serial killer is terrorising the city, picking victims at random, and Kerry has precious few leads. Ida Young, recently retired Private Investigator, is dragged into helping the police when a young woman is discovered murdered in her motel room. Ida has never met the victim but her name has been found at the crime scene and the LAPD wants to know why . . . Meanwhile mob fixer Dante Sanfelippo has put his life savings into purchasing a winery in Napa Valley but first he must do one final favour for the Mob before leaving town: find a bail jumper before the bond money falls due, and time is fast running out. Ida's friend, Louis Armstrong, flies into the city just as her investigations uncover mysterious clues to the killer's identity. And Dante must tread a dangerous path to pay his dues, a path which will throw him headlong into a terrifying conspiracy and a secret that the conspirators will do anything to protect . . . Completing his American crime quartet, Ray Celestin's Sunset Swing is a stunning novel of conspiracy, murder and madness, an unforgettable portrait of a city on the edge.  Razorblade Tears by S A Cosby (Headline Publishing) A black father. A white father. Two Murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. Ike Randolph left jail fifteen years ago, with not so much as a speeding ticket since. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. Ike is devastated to learn his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Though he never fully accepted his son, Ike is broken by his death. Derek's father Buddy Lee was as ashamed of Derek being gay as Derek was of his father's criminal past. But Buddy Lee - with seedy contacts deep in the underworld - needs to know who killed his only child. Desperate to do better by them in death than they did in life, two hardened ex-cons must confront their own prejudices about their sons - and each other - as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys. A provocative revenge thriller and an achingly tender story of redemption, this novel is a ferocious portrait of grief; for those loved and lost, and for mistakes than can never truly be undone.  The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton) He is her husband. She is his captive. Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name. She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen. Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn't like what he sees, she is punished. For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting ...  Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka (trans. Sam Malissa) (Vintage Press). Five killers are on a bullet train from Tokyo competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a Japanese bestseller. Satoshi looks like an innocent schoolboy but he is really a viciously cunning psychopath. Kimura's young son is in a coma thanks to him, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Nanao, the self-proclaimed 'unluckiest assassin in the world', and the deadly partnership of Tangerine and Lemon are also travelling to Morioka. A suitcase full of money leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will get off alive at the last station?  True Crime Story by Joseph Knox (Transworld Publishers) What happens to those girls who go missing? What happens to the Zoe Nolans of the world? In the early hours of Saturday 17 December 2011, Zoe Nolan, a nineteen-year-old Manchester University student, walked out of a party taking place in the shared accommodation where she had been living for three months. She was never seen again. Seven years after her disappearance, struggling writer Evelyn Mitchell finds herself drawn into the mystery. Through interviews with Zoe's closest friends and family, she begins piecing together what really happened in 2011. But where some versions of events overlap, aligning perfectly with one another, others stand in stark contrast, giving rise to troubling inconsistencies. Shaken by revelations of Zoe's secret life, and stalked by a figure from the shadows, Evelyn turns to crime writer Joseph Knox to help make sense of a case where everyone has something to hide. Zoe Nolan may be missing presumed dead, but her story is only just beginning.  Dream Girl by Laura Lippman (Faber & Faber) How can a woman who never existed come back to haunt you? Gerry Anderson has been having trouble sleeping. He's unwell - bed-bound - and has only his night nurse and his personal assistant for company. But what's really troubling him are the phone calls. Phone calls from a woman claiming to be the 'real' Aubrey. But that can't be. Aubrey's just a character Gerry made up in a book, years ago. Can Gerry see past the ever-blurring lines of fact and fiction and figure out who is threatening him, or has his long-overdue moment of reckoning finally arrived?  Edge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison (Pan Macmillian) is a dark historical crime novel set in Glasgow, 1932. A city still recovering from the Great War; split by religious division and swarming with razor gangs. When Charles Geddes, son-in-law of one of the city's wealthiest shipbuilders, is found floating in the River Clyde with his throat cut, his beautiful widow Isla Lockhart asks for Inspector James Dreghorn to lead the murder case. Dreghorn has a troubled history with the powerful Lockhart family that stretches back to before the First World War and is reluctant to become involved. But facing pressure from his superiors, he has no choice in the matter. The investigation takes him and his partner 'Bonnie' Archie McDaid from the flying fists and flashing blades of the Glasgow underworld to the backstabbing upper echelons of government and big business in order to find out who wanted Charles Geddes dead and why. As the case deepens, the pair will put their lives on the line in the pursuit of a sadistic killer who is ready to strike again . . .  Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass (Profile Books) This is the confession of Laurence Jago. Clerk. Gentleman. Reluctant spy. July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain's favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge. Laurence Jago - clerk to the Foreign Office - is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press, which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly a suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence, and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself?  Turf Wars by Olivier Norek (Trans. Nick Caistor) (Quercus Publishing) The summary execution of three dealers - one murdered in full view of a police surveillance team - is the signal for hell to be unleashed in France's most notorious suburb. Now there's a new kingpin in charge, using his ruthless teenage enforcer to assert an iron grip on his territory. And the local mayor, no stranger to the criminal underworld, is willing to make a pact with the devil if it will secure her a third term. Enter Capitaine Coste and his team, ready to break the rules to prevent the drugs squad from throwing an elderly stash-minder to the lions as bait. But when the blue touchpaper is lit on the estates, it will be all they can do to save their own skins from the inferno.  Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbil Weiden (Simon & Schuster) If you have a problem, if no one else can help, there's one person you can turn to. Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Native American Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way onto the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop. They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realises that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost. The incredibly worthy mentions that I also throughly enjoyed this year include The Nameless One by John Connolly, Daughters of the Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Oxford Brotherhood by Guillermo Martinez, The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen, The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor, Dolphin Junction by Mick Herron, Rizzio by Denise Mina and Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. I also read some really good non-fictions books and I shall post them separately. |
| Books to Look Forward to From Simon & Schuster Posted: 19 Dec 2021 08:16 AM PST January 2022 Monster? Murderer? Child? Victim? Michelle Cameron's name is associated with the most abhorrent of crimes. A child who lured a younger child away from her parents and to her death, she is known as the black girl who murdered a little white girl; evil incarnate according to the media. As the book opens, she has done her time, and has been released as a young woman with a new identity to start her life again. When another shocking death occurs, Michelle is the first in the frame. Brought into the police station to answer questions around a suspicious death, it is only a matter of time until the press find out who she is now and where she lives and set about destroying her all over again. Natalie Tyler is the officer brought in to investigate the murder. A black detective constable, she has been ostracised from her family and often feels she is in the wrong job. But when she meets Michelle, she feels a complicated need to protect her, whatever she might have done. The Gosling Girl is by Jacqueline Roy.  February 2022 Tell Me Your Lies is by Kate Ruby. Lily Appleby will do anything to protect the people she loves. She's made ruthless choices to make sure their secrets stay buried, and she's not going to stop now. When her party-animal daughter, Rachel, spins out of control, Lily hires a renowned therapist and healer to help her. Amber is the skilled and intuitive confidante that Rachel desperately needs. But as Rachel falls increasingly under Amber's spell, she begins to turn against her parents, and Lily grows suspicious. Does Amber really have Rachel's best interests at heart or is there something darker going on? Only one thing is clear: Rachel is being lied to. Never quite knowing who to believe, her search for the truth will reveal her picture-perfect family as anything but flawless.  Berlin. 1963. The height of the Cold War. An early morning spy swap, not at Glienecke Bridge, the familiar setting for such exchanges, or at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs, next to the Charite hospital complex. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and a lower level CIA operative. Not the stuff of headlines and, as planned, no journalists are here to write them. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, an American physicist who once indeed made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller's most critical possession: his American passport. Keller's most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son. The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps - equal paces to the concrete barrier, etc. - with each side sizing up the relative value of the other. Three for one? Small fry for a nuclear spy? But Martin has other questions: who asked for him? who negotiated the deal? Just the KGB bringing home one of its agents? Or, as he hopes, a more personal intervention? He has worked for the service long enough to know that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics - his expertise is years out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot. The Berlin Exchange is by Joseph Kanon.  March 2022. Reputation is by Sarah Vaughan. Reputation: it takes a lifetime to build and just one moment to destroy. Emma Webster is a respectable MP. Emma Webster is a devoted mother. Emma Webster is innocent of the murder of a tabloid journalist. Emma Webster is a liar. #Reputation: The story you tell about yourself. And the lies others choose to believe...  Lost something? Gabriela Rose knows how to get it back. As a recovery agent, she's hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, or missing assets of any kind. She's reliable, cool under pressure, and well trained in weapons of all types. But Gabriela's latest job isn't for some bamboozled billionaire, it's for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can't come up with a lot of money fast. Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Cortez. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it - Gabriela's ex-husband, Rafer. It's Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he's not about to let Gabriela find it without him. Rafer is as relaxed as Gabriela is driven, and he has a lifetime's experience getting under his ex-wife's skin. But when they aren't bickering about old times the two make a formidable team, and it's going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who has also been searching for the fabled ring. A drug lord who doesn't mind leaving a large body count behind him to get it. The Recovery Agent is by Janet Evanovich.  April 2022 County Ghost is by Chris Petit. When a government minister is shot there are many suspects but few leads. Days before the attempted assassination, Charlotte Waites, a Home Office analyst, dismissed a crucial intel flag and now has to account for her actions. Dragged into a web of intrigue that will draw in everybody from the prime minister to her ailing father, she must try to get the bottom of the mystery while confronting dark secrets from her family's past. May 2022 A body is discovered in a frozen lake, its wrists bound. When it is linked to a case from 2002, Tyler, DC Rabbani and the CCRU team are called in. But fresh blood is soon discovered at the scene and the disturbing events from all those years ago are dragged sharply into the present . . . Cold Reckoning is by Russ Thomas.  Do No Harm is by Jack Jordan. My child has been taken. And I've been given a choice... Kill a patient on the operating table. Or never see my son again. The man lies on the table in front of me. As a surgeon, it's my job to save him. As a mother, I know I must kill him. You might think that I'm a monster. But there really is only one choice. I must get away with murder. Or I will never see my son again. I've saved many lives. Would you trust me with yours? Storm Rising is by Chris Hauty. Ex-White House intern Hayley Chill is in training as an MMA fighter, trying to leave her past behind her. But hard as she may try to escape it, the past finds her. Under the floorboards of her father's house, she uncovers a ciphered document titled 'The Storm'. More Clues lead her into the Deeper State. What begins as incidental evidence of a subculture of white supremacy within the US military emerges as a much more extensive and dire threat. Hayley's lonely and often violent investigative pursuit travels up a mysterious cabal's chain of command, leading to the revelation of a fully-realized conspiracy to break off several southern states from the US, forming a new country and one founded on white nationalist ideals. It is up to Hayley Chill alone to stop a second civil war before it starts, while at the same time revealing the ultimate truth about her own father's role in this harrowing chapter of American history. A woman boards a plan in Burkina Faso having just completed a targeted assassination for the state of Israel. Two minutes after takeoff her plane is blown out of the sky. 6000 miles to the east, James Reece watches the names and pictures of the victims cross cable news. One face triggers a distant memory of a Mossad operative attached to the CIA years earlier in Iraq, a woman with ties to the intelligence services of two nations, a woman Reece thought he would never see again... In a global pursuit spanning four continents, James Reece will enlist the help of friends new and old to track down her killer and walk right into a trap set by a master sniper, a sniper who has enlisted help of his own... In The Blood is by Jack Carr. June 2022 The Terminal List is by Jack Carr. On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece's entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government. Now, with no family and free from the military's command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he's learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law. |
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