The Crime Warp

To celebrate The Crime Warp’s first birthday we ran a competition asking Crime Warp readers to identify a pair of legs spotted at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.  Just as a reminder, here is a photo of the legs.  The prize was a box of books by popular crime and thriller authors featured during 2013 on The Crime Warp.   The competition’s winner, Andy Boat from Leicester, correctly identified the legs’ owner as bestselling author Simon Kernick – congratulations to Andy.  When I contacted Andy to tell him he’d won, he was more than pleasantly surprised, saying “ Wow what a shock to actually win !”   I posted the books shortly after and Royal Mail did me proud getting the books to Leicester within 48 hours.  Andy said “ I was amazed to receive the books. Thanks so much to the Crime Warp team. This is an excellent set of books and to receive them as a prize is a real bonus. ”   I asked Andy to let me know...

Simon Beckett is an established author, having written four books featuring Dr David Hunter, a forensic anthropologist.   I’ve not read any of the Hunter books, so this was my first experience of Beckett’s writing. Sean is in trouble and on the run – he must have done something bad as he’s abandoned a blood spattered car and is trying to hide.   Walking in French woodland, his foot caught in steel jaws of a vicious mantrap.   He can’t prise the mantrap open and he can’t loosen the spike that holds the trap in place.   He’s well and truly trapped and in the summer heat, falls unconscious.  Sean wakes up in a musty barn, realising he has a badly injured foot.   Drifting in and out of consciousness, he finds himself being looked after by two daughters of a curmudgeonly old farmer.   The farmer’s an unpleasant man, who demands obedience from his daughters through constant angry bullying.   The way the farmer points his rifle at Se...

I’ve seen so many excellent authors’ books scheduled for publication in the new year that I’ve decided to use this post to concentrate on what’s hot in January 2014.  I’ll review some of these in depth during January, so I've kept the detail light, but hopefully enough to get you excited about what’s coming up. Romancrimeblogger   Stay alive by Simon Kernick    I’ve been waiting for the new Kernick book and I’m sure lots of The Crime Warp readers have been too.  In typical Kernick style, the book centres on a complete innocent swept away by events beyond their control to face danger, mayhem and death.  A family outing takes a bizarre turn when they hear a shot fired and see a woman chased by three gunmen.   As soon as the gunmen appear, you know this family’s life will never be the same again.  Put some quality time aside for this novel as I know it’ll be hard to put down.   In the morning I’ll be gone b...

R:   Today’s interview is with James Henry, author of three Detective Frost novels, First Frost, Fatal Frost and the recently published Morning Frost.   Welcome James. JH:   Thank you, Roman. A pleasure. R: The first thing I wanted to ask you is about your career, which has been more about publishing than writing - I understand you’ve worked at Constable and Robinson, setting up their imprint Corsair.   Tell us more about your career. JH:   Yes, I have worked in publishing for over twenty years. I was at Random House originally where I worked as an accountant for many years, but with the acquisition of Harvill I moved into Editorial and worked on translations, many of them Scandinavian crime, as well as publishing authors such as Gene Kerrigan. R:   So, how did you end up writing rather than just publishing? JH:   I’d written stuff in my 20s but hadn’t really thought about it for 20 years, as I had no reason to do i...