Monthly Archives: April 2011

My view of the World in 2011 by author Ken McClure

Posted on April 25, 2011
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Ken McClure’s View of the World in 2011

There probably never was a time when humanity did not face some kind of a threat to its existence, be it from the forces of nature in terms of earthquake or hurricane, volcanic eruption or tsunami or through challenge from the microbial world in the form of epidemics which have periodically swept the globe since the dawn of time; smallpox in ancient Egypt, bubonic plague in fourteenth century Europe, worldwide pandemic flu in the early twentieth century. But through it all we survived. We prevailed because we had the power of reason and the opposition didn’t. We triumphed because we developed the science which enabled us to plan, predict and avoid conflict with the overwhelming power of natural phenomena and to develop and design drugs to combat disease or immunise ourselves against threats for which we had no drugs through vaccination.

Despite this enduring scientific success story, the public have little regard for science and little understanding of it, a strange, almost bizarre situation which demands consideration. Put simply, the public are much more comfortable with the arts than they are with science and place more importance on them in everyday life. It is perfectly acceptable to remain completely ignorant of all things scientific in a way that would not be tolerated for anything to do with the arts. No one thinks any the worse of the person who throws up their hands and pleads, ‘Don’t blind me with science,’ at the mere mention of DNA whereas anyone daring to come out with, ‘Who exactly is Beethoven?’ would be subject to a very different social judgement.

It used to be said that the devil got all the best tunes but, in the battle between arts and science, the arts not only get …

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Before I go to Sleep by SJ Watson – Book Review

Posted on April 24, 2011
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Today – Day 5 1800

A wave of emotion cannot be broken. It has an unshakable hold over me – I have finished SJ Watson’s “Before I Go to Sleep” and can’t quite comprehend what I’ve read – part of me will never be the same again – was any of it real or is my imagination out of control? My memory is slowly returning but I have no option but to cast my eyes over my journal….

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP is the story of Christine, a forty-seven-year-old writer who, following a catastrophic accident in her mid-twenties, is incapable of forming and maintaining new memories for more than a day. Trapped in an existence in which she wakes every day believing herself to be single and with a whole lifetime of choice ahead of her she discovers instead that she lives with her husband, Ben, with most decisions already made.

The novel charts her attempts to make sense of her world. When Chrissie learns that she has been meeting with a doctor who is helping her to recover her memory – and that following his suggestion she has been keeping a journal in order to record her fragmentary recollections and piece together her past – she is hopeful that she may be cured. But the story that emerges is to set in motion a terrifying voyage of discovery that will ultimately have startling consequences for her and all who love her, leading her to question whether the truth is sometimes better left forgotten.

Day 1 0730 am

It’s early morning; a dull light appears through the window. I hear a small thud, then a clanking of something metallic. I am fully awake but I don’t know where I am. The bedroom is alien to me. Walking …

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Face of the Devil by NJ Cooper – Book Review

Posted on April 23, 2011
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The first thing that struck me about NJ Cooper’s “Face of the Devil” was the cover. A simple and understated jacket with the solitary image of a bloodied knife, but there was something inviting about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it but one thing’s for sure, it has a rather hypnotic effect on the senses and begs you to pick it up and read. Book jackets are playing a more significant role in book selling in today’s competitive market and without doubt, an attractive book design plays a crucial part in the battle to command sales.

It is a ferociously stormy night on the Island when fifteen year old Suzie, as she hurries to board her uncle’s boat after a secret meeting with her boyfriend, is brutally stabbed to death. She is discovered by locals, held in the blood-smeared arms of Olly Matken, a schizophrenic teenager who grew up holidaying on the Island with Suzie’s family. ‘I didn’t hurt her!’ he says. ‘All I did was protect her from the devil.’ When psychologist Karen Taylor sees DCI Charlie Trench’s name flash up on her mobile phone, she knows that she ought to ignore the call, but curiosity and, although she won’t admit it, a dangerous attraction to the brooding detective, send her headlong into a deeply troubling case. Karen must decide; is Olly capable of murder? His psychologist doesn’t think so, but the boy’s own father seems to want to see his son charged. The only way to prove his innocence is to find out the identity of Olly’s devil …so long as Karen can keep the demons from her own past at bay too.

“Face of the Devil” is an intriguing book; the main character is a “regular” forensic psychologist who begins …

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Blood Rush by Helen Black – Book Review

Posted on April 19, 2011
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Blood Rush is one of those books you’ll either love or hate and although I wasn’t immediately drawn to the book, partly due to the cover design and partly due to the gang culture that was the overwhelming key element of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Very well written, Blood Rush is a pacey crime thriller that centres on drug and gang related issues. The tone is set in the opening prologue when a young girl (Malaya), out on a gang initiation (or jump in), is brutally beaten up and left in a coma. Lying in the hospital with life threatening injuries, with her small and dysfunctional family for support, an investigation is launched when the chief superintendent proclaims he has had just about enough of the gang warfare in Luton.

The UK is gripped by the threat of gang violence – the media is building on that hysteria, convincing us that knife crime is rife and the streets are flooded with guns and drugs. So when a member of a notorious girl gang is charged with a brutal murder, sympathy is in short supply. Enter Lilly Valentine, a tough talking lawyer who is never prepared to take things at face value and is determined to uncover the truth, whatever the cost.

A gripping crime novel that will force every reader to reassess what they think they know about society and gang culture.

Although I’ve touched on it briefly the book jacket made me laugh a little. Every time I looked at the blonde woman in the background I couldn’t, for some unknown reason, get Ulrika Johnson out of my head – a much younger version granted! It’s not the most attractive of book covers but I think I know why – the subject matter isn’t fantasy, this isn’t …

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Detective Jackson’s Detour by L.J. Sellers

Posted on April 18, 2011
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Detective Jackson’s Detour by L.J. Sellers

The fifth book in the Detective Jackson series, Dying for Justice, is a little different from the others, and I wanted to share the background for how this story developed. I outlined the plot in February of last year. At that time, I planned to give up the series because the second book had a failed launch and I worried that I was facing yet another one with the same publisher. I had two more Jackson books written, with one under contract. I thought if I could launch a different series with a new character and new publisher, I might be able to save my career. So I mapped out a plot in which Detective Evans, one of Jackson’s sidekicks, was the lead character with Jackson as a strong secondary character—hoping my old readers would come along with the new series.

Then everything changed. My husband and I were laid off our jobs, e-books started to take off, and I re-envisioned my novelist career. (If you’re interested in that story, here’s a link) I set the new police procedural aside to rewrite two standalone thrillers and put them up on Kindle. Next I regained the rights to my series and self-published the first four Jackson books. That took most of the year.

In October, my series became a bestseller on Kindle and readers were asking for more Jackson novels. At that point, I was finally ready to start writing again. After reading through my outline for the Evans-based story, I decided I really liked the plot and would go ahead and write it, giving the two detectives equal POV roles.

So my latest Jackson story features Detective Evans as a major POV character. She and Jackson each work their own homicide cases …

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Treblinka: A survivor’s Memory by Chil Rajchman – Book Review

Posted on April 17, 2011
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It’s hard to imagine that a simple decision to lie about one’s vocation and skills could ever save your life – but this is exactly what happened to Chil Rajchman when, recovering from a severe whipping, he was faced with a life or death decision on his first day at Treblinka – although at the time he didn’t realise its gravitas, he held his hand up and declared himself a skilled barber – that one decision, and four others like him, enabled him to survive that first gruelling day.

One cannot stress the importance a document such as “Treblinka: A survivor’s Memory” holds in our history; our very being. Without it, and others of its ilk, we would remain to this day uneducated as to the severity of what transpired in camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibór, Bełżec and Treblinka – to name but a few. The mass genocide, the rapes, the brutality, the starvation, the sheer ignominy of the SS and the Ukrainian “murderers” as Chil Rachjman put it – helped shape our lives ensuring no such depravity occurs ever again – we live in hope.

Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the handful of men who managed to escape. In 1945, he set down this account, a plain, unembellished and exact record of the raw horror he endured every day. …

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The Inspector and Silence by Håkan Nesser – Book Review

Posted on April 16, 2011
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My first introduction to Håkan Nesser, “The Inspector and Silence” affords the reader a thoroughly enjoyable sojourn to Sorbinowo, a forested Swedish lake side town. Looks can be deceptive however and the forest, along with the town, hides a dark secret that local police cannot fathom – enter chief inspector Van Veeteren.

When I began reading “The Inspector and Silence” which is incidentally the fifth in a series of ten books to be released in the UK, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect having never heard of either Håkan or indeed Van Veeteren! It became clear to me within a couple of chapters that the narrative, considering it hails from Swedish descent, was engaging and fluid. Having now read the book to its conclusion, much to my surprise, I can now confirm that this fluidity remained throughout allowing a rapid and entertaining read. I can’t remember reading another translated novel that read so effortlessly – plaudits to Nesser and of course the translation services of Laurie Thompson.

“In the heart of summer, the country swelters in a fug of heat. In the beautiful forested lake-town of Sorbinowo, Sergeant Merwin Kluuge’s tranquil existence is shattered when he receives a phone-call from an anonymous woman. She tells him that a girl has gone missing from the summer camp of the mysterious The Pure Life, a religious sect buried deep in the woods. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is recruited to help solve the mystery.

But Van Veeteren’s investigations at The Pure Life go nowhere fast. The strange priest-like figure who leads the sect -Oscar Yellineck- refuses even to admit anyone is missing. Things soon take a sinister turn, however, when a young girl’s body is discovered in the woods, raped and strangled; and Yellineck himself disappears. Yet …

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Three ‘Rs’ for the aspiring writer by Lynn Shepherd

Posted on April 16, 2011
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Resolve, regularity, and room

I don’t know about other authors, but I just love doing festivals and signings. It doesn’t matter how many you do, someone always comes up with a question you hadn’t expected, or some new insight into how your book is read. There are some topics that come up more than others, of course (in my case ‘what would Jane Austen think about what you’ve done with her book?’ and ‘which is your favourite Austen screen adaptation?’), but the ones that come up more often than any of these are about the actual process of writing. People want to know whether I have set targets for each day’s writing, whether I have a special place in the house where I always write, and more important than either of these, how do I find the time?

The first thing I always admit is that I know I’m lucky. I write freelance for my ‘day job’, which means that I do have the ability (at least some of the time) to make space for my own writing. Anyone who’s ever been self-employed will know that you don’t have a lot of control about your workload, and I rarely know what I’ll be doing more than six weeks ahead, which is fun, but can be a bit hair-raising too. It’s also feast and famine more often than not, and that means you have to make the most of the times when the deadlines are less pressing, and not get too irritated when the pesky clients send you something over to be done yesterday when you’re right in the middle of a really good creative run.

So much for my own experience, but would the same things apply to someone with a normal full-time job? Funnily enough I think they probably …

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Hanging Hill by Mo Hayder – Book Review

Posted on April 14, 2011
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It’s fairly obvious to me that Mo Hayder is an author who takes a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment at watching her readers suffer as they gorge over her opulent and polished narrative. Hanging Hill, Hayder’s eighth novel is as disturbing and dark as they get – but boy is it a compelling read – put it down at your peril!

As I worked my way through the book I found myself comparing the experience to that of a good old fashioned horror movie – you just know something bad is going to happen and as the music changes and the fog appears on screen, you can’t take your eyes off it for one second. You kid yourself that by closing one eye and squinting through the other that everything will be ok – but it never is – Hanging Hill is just like that!

What if you found yourself divorced and penniless? With no skills and a teenage daughter to support? What if the only way to survive was to do things you never thought possible, to go places you never knew existed …

These are questions Sally has never really thought about before. Married to a successful business man, she’s always been a bit of a dreamer. Until now.

Her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central, she loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.

Two sisters intent on survival. Until one does something so terrifying that there’s no way back …

Zoe and Sally, the two main protagonists, couldn’t be further apart. Following a deliberate accident when they were younger the two sisters were separated …

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Interview with author Steve Berry

Posted on April 12, 2011
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Steve thanks for joining me today on milorambles.com – even before I began reading “The Emperor’s Tomb” I had a strange feeling I would have a ball reading and I was right. There was something about the storyline and the Terra-Cotta army that just fires up the imagination

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer and how much of a struggle did you initially face to bring Cotton Malone to the masses?

My road to publishing was a long one.  Twelve years passed from the day I wrote my first word, to the day I sold my first word.  Along the way I wrote 8 manuscripts, 5 of which were rejected by publishers a total of 85 times.  Finally, The Amber Room was bought, then The Romanov Prophecy, then The Third Secret. Those three were stand alone novels.  Cotton Malone came along in Book 4, The Templar Legacy, which was actually my 9th manuscript.  I wrote two other Cotton books (part of those previous eight) that never made it to print, which turned out to be a good thing since, in The Templar Legacy, he was a much different character than in those earlier incarnations.

Given that “The Emperor’s Tomb” is Cotton Malone’s sixth adventure – how has Cotton’s character changed since you first introduced him in “The Templar Legacy” and have you enjoyed the journey?

That’s the thing about a series, the characters have to evolve.  Otherwise, it gets dull real fast.  Cotton has changed quite a bit over 6 novels, as had his relationships with the other characters.  He and Cassiopeia Vitt started out as enemies but they have been exploring their relationship for several books now.  Finally, in The Emperor’s Tomb, there will be a shift.  I can’t say if that’s good or …

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Interview with author James McCreet

Posted on April 12, 2011
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Joining me today is James McCreet, author of “The Incendiary’s Trail”, “The Vice Society” and his third novel “The Thieves’ Labyrinth” due for publication next month.

James, what drew you to the crime genre?

From the very beginning, in Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the detective story has offered writers a kind of narrative laboratory – a compelling structure on which to build. The momentum of clues and deductions drives a relentless plot, leaving the writer free to play with any number of themes or ideas. It becomes a puzzle whose rules are accepted by writer and reader. Think of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, GK Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, or the literary games of Jorge Luis Borges – they all play with the genre. I was attracted to this idea of the game between writer and reader.

So how did you choose Victorian London as your setting for the Newsome/Williamson books?

You know, the possibilities of the genre are endless. It’s remained popular for almost 200 years and throws up new forms all the time. But it struck me that modernity can detract from the elemental pleasures of detection. DNA, GPS, mobile phones, PCs and databases – the modern investigator has so many aids. I wanted to get right back to the beginning and look at the first detectives whose only advantage was their brain. What makes it even more interesting is that we can’t help but read these stories through a modern sensibility. A blood pool is found on a street, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s animal or human . . .

Would you say you’re doing something different in the genre?

Any writer would like to think so, although there are many other …

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Art Reflects Life by Marcia Clark

Posted on April 11, 2011
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Marcia Clark is a former LA, California deputy district attorney, who was the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder case. Admitted to the State Bar of California in 1979 she wrote a best-selling non-fiction book about the trial, “Without a Doubt”, and is a frequent media commentator and columnist on legal issues. She lives in Los Angeles.

Her debut crime thriller, Guilt by Association, is the first title to be released by Mulholland Books in the UK on May 12th. Marcia launches the new “Off the Record” section with an article looking at her career as a prosecutor and now as a novelist ….

Art Reflects Life by Marcia Clark

It always does, doesn’t it? Art is a means of commenting on the human condition. And when it comes to fiction – oddly – if it doesn’t feel “real,” you won’t invest in it, you’ll walk away. So if an author wants anyone to actually read her book, art had better reflect life or that book will wind up in a dust bin. That doesn’t mean the story has to feel real in a literal sense – if that were true, the genre of science fiction would never have taken hold. And that’s why good science fiction always tells a human story. The leading characters may be blue with green breath, but they deal with personal issues and problems that we’ve all experienced. And so, through the device of aliens and derring-do in deep space, science fiction tells us about ourselves.

But we’re also picky about what kind of life we want to read about. We’re more intrigued when art reflects an interesting life. One is more likely to pick up a novel written by an astronaut about space travel than a novel written by the …

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Sanctus by Simon Toyne – Book Review

Posted on April 10, 2011
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Move over “Brown” there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Toyne – Simon Toyne! One of my Top 10 books of 2011

A figure dressed in a hooded green cloth stands resolute, a thousand feet above the fictional city of Ruin, Turkey. Precariously poised on the edge of savage precipice he opens his arms in the shape of a cross and waits, and waits and waits – the wind picks up and a decision is made. Then, with the eyes of the world’s press and gathering crowd of curious onlookers below, he jumps. And so begins a tale of action, conspiracy, religious curiosity and a story of trust and finality – “Sanctus” has it all. Now available on Kindle.

“REVELATION OR DEVASTATION?

The certainties of the modern world are about to be blown apart by a three thousand year-old conspiracy nurtured by blood and lies …

A man throws himself to his death from the oldest inhabited place on the face of the earth, a mountainous citadel in the historic Turkish city of Ruin. This is no ordinary suicide but a symbolic act. And thanks to the media, it is witnessed by the entire world.

But few understand it. For charity worker Kathryn Mann and a handful of others in the know, it is what they have been waiting for. The cowled and secretive fanatics that live in the Citadel suspect it could mean the end of everything they have built – and they will kill, torture and break every law to stop that. For Liv Adamsen, New York crime reporter, it begins the next stage of a journey into the heart of her own identity.

And at that journey’s end lies a discovery that will change EVERYTHING …”

Reading the accompanying press blurb …

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The Burning Wire by Jeffery Deaver – Book Review

Posted on April 7, 2011
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A couple of months ago I was introduced to Jeffery Deaver’s writing via the wonderful standalone “Edge”, a bold and imaginative thriller, and haven’t looked back since. With Deaver’s “Carte Blanche” hitting the bookstores next month what better way to prepare for Bond’s latest adventure than read the latest instalment in the Lincoln Rhyme series – “The Burning Wire”!

I’m not quite sure what planet I’ve been living on but given that I’ve never encountered Lincoln Rhyme before, not in the book form anyway, it came as a complete shock to me that the hero of “The Burning Wire” is a quadriplegic. I vaguely remember watching Denzel Washington star alongside Angelina Jolie as the bed ridden and intelligent criminologist in the movie “The Bone Collector”, but for some strange reason when I began reading this novel I didn’t connect the two immediately.

Despite a typically efficient portrayal by Denzel, reading “The Burning Wire” had more of an effect on me – but isn’t that what books do best? Challenge the mind and allow the imagination to run riot? You choose the set, the colours, styles and the visualisations – although written by someone else, books allow you to live a story through your own eyes, you own mind – if the book is that good. The Burning Wire is all that and more, Deaver does not disappoint.

“New York is being held to ransom. Manhattan’s electricity grid has been the victim of a horrific attack . . . and more are planned.

While the FBI and Homeland Security try to determine who’s behind the carnage, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs race to decode the forensics in order to prevent the next assault.

But all is not what it seems. Electricity …

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