The Crime Warp

There’s nothing quite like the tale of an ordinary man who finds himself caught up in life-unravelling events to get the pulse racing… especially when he makes decisions which have us howling, ‘No, don’t do it, man’, to the Kindle. I say Kindle (other e-readers are available…) because Inside Straight , Ray Bank’s tale of an everyman caught between a rock and a hard place (or hard man, in this instance) is published by Blasted Heath, an innovative e-publishing house specialising in noir crime e-books. Inside Straight takes a character out of a previous Banks novel ( Dead Money ) and makes him the protagonist of his own story. You don’t need to have read Dead Money to enjoy Inside Straight as from the opening line we’re in Graham Ellis’s head and looking through his eyes at the insalubrious surroundings of his new workplace on the Salford Riverside. Graham is a casino pit boss who’s found himself demoted and it’s his wounded pride and thwarted sense of status which tempt him int...

  The Crime Warp celebrates International Women’s Day 2013                 International women’s day celebrates the various ongoing achievements of women.  In the crime fiction arena, with the likes of Agatha Christie leading the way we have a strong base for women writer's to come to the fore.  In fact there are so many female crime fiction writer's nowadays that we, at the crime warp,  are reluctant to attempt to enumerate them and their achievements.   Instead, we've opted to delve into the realms of the women characters  created by a some of these extremely talented women writer's.   This list is by no means conclusive and we’d welcome any additions you readers can add to our list. Christie at work Miss Marple by Agatha Christie    No list of women detectives would be complete without representation from Agatha Christie...

Earlier, back home in his neat little flat, Daz had rolled on stockings, clipped them onto the suspenders of his padded corset. They’re hard work, stockings, but they look the part and details are important. It’s how he hooks victims. How he gets away with it. Now he sits on the bus, gloved hands flexing. Marky’s itching, jigging all over the place. He needs to score but he’s skint. Barely scraped the bus fare from the scabby pocket of his too big jeans. He hunches down in his seat near the door, his hood pulled up and his eyes darting round, hunting.                 Daz’s bag stands upright on his knees. It’s a roomy beige mock-croc. The cosh and knife inside are heavy, but he can deal with that. He’s stronger than he looks. His other bags, plastic carriers, rest against his feet. He gives a subtle tug to his wig.  Wonders if anyone will take the bait tonight.  He wants one who’ll deserve it. ...

He knows when she’s washed her hair. It curls differently, tighter, doesn’t reach as far down her back. He prefers it when she hasn’t washed it. If she turns her head he can sometimes catch the scent of her. Musky. Bed hair. Dirty girl hair. She gets on his bus every day at the station. She’s a student. History. He’s seen the books she reads. He hangs back until she boards and then he follows and settles as near as he can. She gets off near the woods by the park. He followed one day. He knows where she lives.                 Most days, he gets the seat directly behind so that he can watch that teasing hair as it tumbles past her shoulders. If he leans forward, pretends he’s dozing, he can get right up to it, stroke it.                 It was a while before he dared to use the scissors. He’d put them in his lunch bag along with some...

Radio’s a great medium for crime fiction.  All those settings crime fiction readers love so much – exotic, historical, gritty, pastoral – come to life in an instant as the writer’s words meld with the listener’s imagination. There’s no shock when the hero doesn’t look as you’ve imagined, there are no flaky sets or miscast characters. It’s all there, just right. So, where do you find it? Radio crime fiction has a great champion in Mark Lawson who presents Front Row on Radio4 – there’s often a crime fiction slot on his show and this autumn he is presenting A History of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives  (see Romancrimeblogger’s article on this plus relevant links). Aside from the marvellous Mark, Radio4 will often feature a full length crime drama in one of its weekend slots. Radio4extra, the digital partner of Radio4, devotes an entire hour every morning to serialised crime fiction, sometimes a straight reading of a novel, sometimes a dramatization. There’s invariably...