SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL |
- Time For a Change by Luca Veste
- Toppled: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall By Paul Vidich
- Reading Adventure Stories by T I Mogford
- Twins in Thrillers by L V Matthews
| Time For a Change by Luca Veste Posted: 17 Feb 2022 01:18 PM PST  When I was teenager, my bookshelves (well, the stack of books I kept propped against my bedroom wall – we didn't have anything as fancy as a shelf) were all horror novels. I couldn't read any other genre at that point. It was all horror. Then, I didn't read for ten years. I was around twenty-four years old when my grandmother handed me a Mark Billingham book. Sleepyhead. She said, "you'll like this. It's dark.". A great recommendation. A few days later, I was given a huge box of all those Stephen King novels I'd once taken from the library a decade earlier and devoured. My aunty Jo was making room and remembered I'd liked him as a kid and thought I'd give them a good home. I did. They're sitting on a shelf behind me as I write this. Thirty odd books, to join the two or three I'd somehow managed to keep hold of since being a teenager and moving around a lot when I left home six years earlier. Now, on that aforementioned shelving behind me, I have well over a 1,000. I'm not sure what happened in that week. I remember a lot of sleepless nights, as my first child was teething. Maybe that's what made me pick up a book for the first time in ten years. Maybe it was the nostalgic element of seeing all those Stephen King books – a nice reminder when the darkness was about the possibility of something moving in the shadows, rather than a baby crying out. Whatever it was, I found myself reading Mark Billingham's book at three in the morning. That book made me fall in love with reading again. It wasn't long until I was buying multiple books a day. I discovered Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, John Connolly, Mo Hayder, and so many more amazing British crime writers, all in the space of a month or two. I went through and read their entire backlists. It made sense when I started writing novels that I would try and emulate those procedural style stories I had fallen in love with. However, I had also discovered the likes of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay. Along with the love of horror, I was being pulled in a few different directions when it came to deciding on what I wanted to write. You Never Said Goodbye is a departure for me, genre-wise, but it is something I've wanted to write for years now. When I was writing my procedural novels with Murphy and Rossi, or my crime-horror crossover with The Bone Keeper, this idea has been at the back of my mind, niggling away at me. I knew what I wanted to do with it. I knew it didn't fit in with what I was writing. Yet, I couldn't shift this idea. I knew it wouldn't be like anything I'd written before – a very personal story, that has its roots in my own past experiences – and I knew I had to do it. I feel like I've been building to this shift for years and it was nerve-wracking waiting for those early reviews. More so than the previous seven books! Thankfully, they've been incredibly positive and I have many more stories like this one to tell. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations. High-stakes, different continents, and massively emotional elements. I've never felt more excited about what's to come next. You Never Said Goodbye is the culmination of me finding my way, but it is also a beginning.  You Never Said Goodbye is by Luca Veste (Published by Hodder & Stoughton) Out Now. More information about Luca Veste and his books can be found on his blog or you can find him on Twitter @LucaVeste. Luca Veste is one half of the podcast "Two Crime Writers and a Microphone" You can follow them on Twitter @TwoCrimeWriters. He is also the bass player for The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. @FunLovinWriters |
| Toppled: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall By Paul Vidich Posted: 17 Feb 2022 12:00 AM PST  On the evening of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, an enduring symbol of the Cold War, came down. It was a momentous night. No shots were fired and no lives were lost, but it was the beginning of the end of the forty-year long Cold War. The repressive East German government fell and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later. The fall of the Berlin Wall is central to my new novel. I chose Berlin because I was fascinated by the Stasi at the end of the Cold War. When East Germany fell in 1990, the Stasi ran a comprehensive surveillance organization that employed 91,000 people and managed a network of one million informers. One in seven East Germans spied on friends, family, or neighbors. Across the Berlin Wall, West Berlin was a cosmopolitan home for artists, writers, bohemians, punk rockers who enjoyed their freedoms, and moved back and forth through border checkpoints. Few people know the unusual circumstances surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how two men, a mid-level East German government bureaucrat who made what he thought was a clarifying change in a press release, and a loyal Stasi border control officer who disobeyed orders, helped shape the peaceful outcome that night. Construction of the Wall began on August 13, 1961 in an East German effort to stem the flight of its population. More than a sixth of East Germany's population had fled West for a mix of political, economic, and personal reasons. The Wall effectively cut Berlin in half. In the 28 years the Wall was in place, more than 140 people died trying to cross it. By the summer of 1989, voices of discontent were being raised across East Germany, but particularly in East Berlin. Huge music festivals became peaceful political demonstrations, and as is the case everywhere, a generation of rebellious youth rose up and demanded more freedom to travel to the West. Two cities, side-by-side, one prosperous and free, the other grim, gray, and poor. East Berliners got West German television and they had only to open their eyes to see the magnitude of their deprivation. On November 4, half-a-million people attended a massive demonstration in the heart of East Berlin demanding eased travel rules. The East German Politburo sought to defuse the tension by re-writing the travel restrictions and allowing people to emigrate, but the catch was, if you left you couldn't return, and an exit visa was still required. These so-called "new" rules were intended to appeared relaxed, but the onerous visa requirement meant there was no real change. There is always an incident, isn't there? The unexpected event that in hindsight begins the unraveling. The press release announcing the change was written by Gerhard Lauter, a loyal, mid-level bureaucrat, who feared one-way emigration would destabilize the government. He inserted into the text an unauthorized reference to temporary travel. Gunter Schabowski, the dour, older politburo member who read the release at a crowded press conference, had not reviewed the script in advance he faithfully read the release with its reference to temporary travel. One reporter shouted the crucial question, "When does this take effect?" Schabowski scanned the unfamiliar text in his hands and picked out the words he saw printed: "Right away." Incredulous journalists left the room and reported that the Berlin Wall was now open. Thousands of East Berliners, hearing those reports, walked to the fortified and heavily guarded border crossing at Bornholm Bridge, the major checkpoint between East and West Berlin. Harald Jäger, the loyal officer in charge, had watched the press conference in disbelief. No one had alerted him to the possible change in travel rules. Jäger immediately called his supervisor at Stasi headquarters who said that everything remained the same, without change, and the gate was to remain closed. Jäger and his men were stunned by the swelling crowd and Jäger kept calling Stasi headquarters, trying to get instructions, but his boss replied every time that it was business as usual. Jäger placed over 30 calls over the course of the night, all in a fruitless attempt to get instructions on how to handle the crowd's demand that the gate be opened. At one point, he was quietly added to a Stasi headquarters conference call and he overheard one Stasi superior, not knowing Jäger was on the line, say, "Is this Jäger capable of assessing the situation realistically, or is he simply a coward?" Jäger felt a wave of anger. He had been on duty for twelve hours, he was exhausted, and the crowd at the checkpoint had grown to tens of thousands, filling all the approach streets. Loud chants of, "Open the gates," erupted regularly. Jäger looked at his dozen frightened, heavily-armed officers and said words to the effect of, "Should we shoot all these people, or open up?" Jäger called his commanding officer and said, "I am ending all controls and letting the people out." The Berlin Wall opened at about 11:30 pm. NBC camera crews were on the West Berlin side. NBC producers had decided to air Tom Brokaw's Nightly News from Berlin weeks before. Brokaw interrupted himself a few minutes into the broadcast, glancing over his shoulder, to see the first East Germans summit the Wall, arms raised and waving, faces bright with joy. The historic moment was broadcast live and seen around the world. The Matchmaker: The Spy in Berlin by Paul Vidich (No Exit Press) Out Now.  Berlin, 1989. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. Anne had been targeted by the Matchmaker - a high level East German counterintelligence officer - who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his 'Romeos' who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead. The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA's best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice? More information about the author can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @paulvidich and find him on Facebook. |
| Reading Adventure Stories by T I Mogford Posted: 16 Feb 2022 10:00 PM PST
 'I hadn't realised how much I had missed the genuine adventure story until I read The Rose of Tibet…' So wrote Graham Greene of Lionel Davidson's 1962 novel. I myself didn't read The Rose of Tibet until it was reissued by Faber & Faber in 2016, but having come to it late, I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the great 'Grisjambon Vert' (as Evelyn Waugh famously dubbed Greene). The novel boasts exotic locations (India, Tibet), perilous predicaments (snowstorms, altitude sickness) and priceless treasure (sackfuls of emeralds). It transported me back to the books I'd loved reading as a boy. The first series I became truly addicted to was by Willard Price, who wrote about two young brothers, Hal and Roger Hunt, who travelled the world capturing endangered animals for their father's zoological collection in America. The books may make for somewhat uncomfortable reading today, but the brothers' thrilling adventures in far-flung places, and remarkable ability to get themselves in and out of trouble, were mesmerising to my 9-year-old self. At the same time as I was devouring Willard Price, Panini issued a collection of World Wildlife Fund stickers, which were the hottest property in the school playground once the 1986 World Cup sticker-rush was over. Just as I'd memorised the name of every animal in Price's books, so I did with every creature in my WWF album – from the serval to the liontail macaque, I can still picture them all today if I close my eyes. My next stop was the school library. Deeming Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines a little too dense for my 10-year-old tastes, I was drawn to animal-related adventures with tantalising titles – The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, even David Attenborough's Zoo Quest series. None quite hit the heights of Willard Price, but they kept me going until I departed a few years later for secondary school, where such books were considered beyond the pale. Since becoming a novelist myself, I suppose there's always been a part of my subconscious on the lookout for material for an adventure story. Maybe it was reading Greene's comment that rekindled it, as it was not long after finishing The Rose of Tibet that the ideal subject matter fell into my lap. A friend who volunteered at a retirement home near our children's school in Chelsea asked me to give a talk about the series of crime novels I had written set in Gibraltar. I was happy to oblige, and ended up staying behind to hand out tea and biscuits to the residents. It was there that I heard about the subject of a future talk by a local historian: how Chelsea had evolved through the ages. Intrigued by the subject matter, I duly turned up two weeks later, and was hooked. Forget miniskirts and Mary Quant: in Victorian times, the King's Road had been famous for plant nurseries, their most dazzling and exotic stock provided by professional plant hunters. The term 'plant hunter' caught my imagination. I'd always associated hunting with chasing things that didn't want to be caught. How could you hunt something that was literally rooted to the ground? Back home, I began to read up on the history of plant hunters, and was amazed to learn of their hair-raising expeditions to distant lands. They were every bit as intrepid and reckless as my old friends Hal and Roger Hunt – or Indiana Jones, for that matter – but in search of a quarry that was much more unusual. That summer, at a street fair near where we live in Battersea, I came across an old man with a stall selling Victorian Ordnance Survey maps. I bought one of Chelsea in 1865, and sure enough, marked at various points along the King's Road were plant nurseries, some of them stretching all the way down to the Thames. I had a sudden vision of a smoky tavern on the King's Road, where sunburned plant hunters would gather to swap stories, courted by wealthy nurserymen in the market for the most sought-after blooms, and fawned over by adoring members of the public who saw them as the Premier League stars of their day. Money, danger, excitement, exotic travel… Time to stop looking for the genuine adventure story to read, I decided, and start writing one instead.  The Plant Hunter by T I Mogford (Welbeck Publishing Group) Out Now 1867. King's Road, Chelsea, is a sea of plant nurseries, catering to the Victorian obsession with rare and exotic flora. But each of the glossy emporiums is fuelled by the dangerous world of the plant hunters - daring adventurers sent into uncharted lands in search of untold wonders to grace England's finest gardens. Harry Compton is as far from a plant hunter as one could imagine - a salesman plucked from the obscurity of the nursery growing fields to become 'the face that sold a thousand plants'. But one small act of kindness sees him inherit a precious gift - a specimen of a fabled tree last heard of in The Travels of Marco Polo, and a map. Seizing his chance for fame and fortune, Harry sets out to make his mark. But where there is wealth there is corruption, and soon Harry is fleeing England, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing up the Yangtze alongside a young widow - both in pursuit of the plant that could transform both their lives forever. |
| Twins in Thrillers by L V Matthews Posted: 15 Feb 2022 10:00 PM PST  Writers and filmmakers have been capitalising on twins and their infinite possibilites for decades but it's in the crime/thriller genres where I think twins can particularly shine. Google 'twins in books' and there is a plethora of titles and most of them are thrillers. In fact, I know of seven twin books coming out in the first quarter of this year alone! We are intrigued by the premise that twins can feel one anothers pain, that they can communicate telepathically, that they are almost supernatural, and this intrigue leads writers down some fantastic creative routes. I could write for pages on crime/thriller books featuring twins but I'm going to pick five to - excuse the crime pun – dissect. The key – for me – in writing twins well is not defining the characters by their twin-ness, but having the characters deal by being defined by it. An excellent example of this is True Crime Story by Joseph Knox (Paperback, March 2022) The truth about a missing university student, Zoe, is brought to light in this unique novel written in the style of a true-crime documentary. This book is completely ripped up the rule book for me – it's so smart, dark, and mischievous. And the best thing about it was the twin element. There are definitely twin tropes and sometimes that's exactly why we enjoy reading them, but taking a fresh twist on an existing stereotype will surprise people. Take The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne which explores the twin-swapping trope to perfection. A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, the Moorcraft family move to a Scottish island hoping to put the past behind them. But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity - that she is Lydia – everything is turned upside down. What I love about this novel is that the swap is not the cliche reveal at the end, but that it creates friction and complexity throughout. Thinking about how to use twins differently in a thriller is done in one of the most famous to date – Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl which has key character Nick Dunne and his twin Margo. Though their twinship plays a small part in the narrative, Margo is crucial to the story. In a story of bent truths where a reader is constantly second guessing the main two characters, Margo gives real reactions and clues to point the reader in the right direction throughout the plot. She's the moral compass of the piece. She also brings light relief to the book with her wit which I, personally, love in a thriller. Body Double by Tess Gerritsen is one of my favourite twin thrillers because of the premise it sets out right from the beginning - Dr. Maura Isles is a pathologist and has seen more than her share of corpses but never before has her blood run cold when the face of the lifeless body on the medical examiner's table been the mirror image of her own. It immediately raises the question of her own identity, of dark family secrets, of trying to solve the murder of the twin sister she never knew. Cue a pacy plot, and excellent writing that Tess is so well known for. One of my favourite duos in a thriller (I'm flexing the genre slightly for this one) are Samneric (Sam and Eric) from the most excellent The Lord of the Flies. Identical twins Sam and Eric have always been a group and they know no other way of life than submitting to the collective identity which is the clear analogy for the whole book – keeping to a tight group is what will save them all. Except then it goes badly wrong. Samneric are again the perfect characters to see the fall out through – they are initially devoted to rescue but are easily overwhelmed by the vehemence of tribe: they take part in the horror of Simon's death, they betray Ralph. They are only ever marked out from one another towards the end of the novel when they receive injuries that change their faces and then begin their own individual journeys.  The Twins by LV Matthews (Welbeck, £8.99) Published 17 February 2022 Two sisters. An intense bond. A bitter rivalry. Margo is a solitary live-in nanny for an upper-class Kensingon family. Cora is a promiscuous dancer on the cusp of a big break, living hand-to-mouth in a run-down London flat. Different though they are, an unspeakable incident from childhood haunts them both. When the terrible secret comes to light, their fragile existences shatter, pitting them against each other in a race for survival. But can there be a winner when a secret is so dark? Yo can follow her on Twitter @LV_Matthews |
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