The Crime Warp

Today on The Crime Warp I'm welcoming Chris Ewan, whose novel Dark Tides follows on from his previous successes with his thriller Safe House and follow up Dead Line.  Chris is sharing with us how he does his research as well as some great videos of the locations he found during his research for his bestselling thrillers.    Location has been important in all my books. I started out writing crime novels set in major world cities in my GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO … mystery series, in part because I wanted to try and combine an element of travel writing within my books. The steps I took researching the GOOD THIEF novels quickly became habit forming, but over the years, my habits have developed and adapted to new technology. It used to be that I’d carry a pad and pen pretty much everywhere I went. I’d spend my time on location visits scribbling down every detail I could find, not knowing which information might become relevant when it came time for me to write a particular scene....

Welcome to October’s look Out For These. The three novels this month have a different theme and all have a unique something that adds a frisson of excitement to the story.  Here’s my take on the three picks for October.   Dead Connection by Alafair Burke . This is Burke’s first novel featuring Ellie Hatcher, rookie NYPD detective. The novel is centred on the world of internet dating where the reader sees an unnerving lack of certainty about people’s age (always older than they claim), their appearance (is that photo actually real?) but most of all their motives (companionship, relationship or one night stand?). If all people were interested in was a one night stand, well that wouldn’t be great, but it would be infinitely preferable to the protagonist in this novel whose interest is murder. Hatcher becomes part of this unreal world where nobody seems to be who they say they are to catch the killer by playing the victim. Dead Connection is a dark story using a contempor...

Falling is a welcome alternative to the usual Police Procedural, with the writer using a quirky style to tell the story- for me, Falling by Emma Kavanagh delved deeper into the human aspects of murder.  By telling the story from different viewpoints I felt more in tune with the characters and I really enjoyed the slightly surreal element to parts of the book.  The symbolism of the plane falling from the sky was beautifully linked to the main character Cecelia's personal sense of 'falling'.  I liked the fact that although a central storyteller, Cecelia herself wasn't actually integral to the story- I think this added a different dimension which raised this novel above most police procedurals.

R: The Crime Warp’s latest interview is with Peter James, most famous for his Roy Grace books, but he’s also been a script writer, film producer and writer of the world’s first “electronic novel”.   Welcome Peter, it’s a privilege to have you here. PJ: Thank you, it’s an absolute pleasure. R:   Peter, going back to your childhood, I understand that your mother was came to England as a refugee in 1938.   How did that background influence your childhood and home life?   Did it have any effect on the career path you chose? PJ:   My mother was a refugee from Vienna, but had kept hidden from my sister and I that she was a Jew.   I went to school at Charterhouse not knowing what a Jew was!   I was bullied because I looked Jewish – many people in the school, like in much of England in the early 1960s, were aggressively anti-Semitic.   One day, ten boys sat on a wall were chanting “Jew, Jew, Jew” at me.   I dived over the wal...