Blog profile: The House of Crime and Mystery @housecrimystery #KillerFest15

Your name:  Jacques Filippi

Your blog’s name: The House of Crime and Mystery

Blog’s URL: http://houseofcrimeandmystery.blogspot.com

Which types of books do you review: crime fiction, mystery, thrillers, also biographies and other non-fiction titles

What do you like about crime fiction: The best crime fiction will pull me into a world that is real and where my brain will be kept alive by a good plot in a well-written story involving characters I will believe; the good guys as well as the bad guys.

For anyone starting out, can you recommend 5 essential crime books to read: Only five? I could recommend so many! My classics are by contemporary writers so here are my choices:

Pretty much everything else by these five authors. And Laura Lippman, Michael Robotham, Mark Billingham, Mo Hayder, Ian Rankin, Adrian McKinty, etc.

Do you have 1 or 2 personal favourites: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, and Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith because they started me on the path of crime fiction when I was a teenager.

New crime fiction authors you are most excited by: Chris F. Holm and David Swinson (they have forthcoming titles in fall 2015 and spring 2016). I also really enjoyed Kelly Braffet’s Save Yourself, in 2013, and can’t wait to see what she’ll publish next.

Greatest fictional criminal: I won’t think too long about this one because it would be too hard to pick only one; I’ll go with a very recent one, named Joseph “Joe” Coughlin, from Dennis Lehane’s imagination. I choose Joe Coughlin because he’s the good guy that we follow around and cheer for in the books “Live by Night” and “World Gone By” (also has a small part in The Given Day) but he is also a gangster who killed many men (and is also responsible for the death of a few women and kids). The fact that Lehane can make us like a character like that proves his writing skills are out of this world.

Greatest fictional detective: Hieronymous Bosch.

Are you on social media? Twitter  Facebook.com  and on Goodreads under my name. I’m also co-founder of the QuébeCrime Writers Festival

How can authors and publishers encourage you to review their books: just politely ask and send books (my address is on my website).

How do you like people to contact you? by email at housecrimyst@gmail.com

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