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Daniel Blake certainly thought so! Read his article on why he chose to use a natural disaster as the setting for his latest novel, City of Sins. The moment I first saw footage of Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans, I knew I wanted to use the tragedy as the setting for a thriller. If that sounds like exploitation or some literary version of disaster tourism, it's not supposed to. It's simply that crime fiction, by its nature, deals with tragedy more often than it does with triumph - and tragedies don't get much more resonant than the destruction of a great city. In the case of New Orleans, that resonance was particularly poignant. Even those who've never been there feel they have an emotional connection to the place. Think of New Orleans, and you think of many things. You think of partying - Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, the Big Easy. You think of the music - jazz, blues, Zydeco. You think of the writers - Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Anne Rice. You think of food and drink - gumbo, beignets, daiquiris. If you're a strict Christian, you might think of the city as a repository of sin - the Southern Decadence gay festival, the sex shows of Bourbon Street, the shadowy mysteries of voodoo. And whatever your faith, you'd have to admit New Orleans has a darker side, and in spades. One of the highest murder rates in America, a Third World public infrastructure, and levels of official corruption and political intrigue which would have made the Borgias green with envy. In short, New Orleans is humanity writ large: our excesses, our triumphs, our follies. Which, of course, makes it a great place to set a thriller. Read More

Genevieve is currently working with the Crime and Thriller department for two weeks in order to gain work experience. Look out for another article from her on her experience in our department.     "Crime novels are about life, death, love, loss and broken minds" Alex Barclay   I read a fascinating article in the Irish Examiner about female crime fiction writers and it got me thinking…why are women so attracted to this particular genre?   The presumption is that men, seen as naturally more aggressive, are more inclined to read novels of crime, violence, blood, guts and gore. But it seems as if the opposite is true.   The article, Murder, She Wrote by author and journalist Declan Burke, explores the opinions of four of the leading lights of the current wave of Irish crime writing - Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O’Connor and Ava McCarthy. All women who prove that the female author is very often deadlier than the male.   One of the explanations given for this gravitation towards the more sinister side of fiction is due to what Barclay sees as “a compulsion to understand” a broken mind; a need to know how the darker side of humanity works. Perhaps the reason for this attraction is that crime fiction gives women an opportunity to explore the psychological motivations of a killer in the safe confines of the pages of a book. Read More

This time our reviewers were given the chance to review City of Sins by Daniel Blake. A serial killer thriller set against a backdrop of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, this certainly isn't your average murder mystery... Jackie Farrant writes: Detective Frank Patrese is back in this cracking follow-up to ‘Soul Murder' which sees him uprooted from his beloved Pittsburgh to join a FBI unit in sultry New Orleans. I can honestly say that this is one of the most multi-faceted serial killer thrillers I have read including (takes a deep breath)....the Asian tsunami, body dismorphia, voodoo, ethnic cleansing, Mayan legends, Hurricane Katrina...oh...and a goodly amount of gory murders. I must admit that I felt the flimsy tsunami opener surplus to requirements and added nothing to the plot. One environmental disaster was plenty and the story would have been none the worse for its exclusion. Blake's depiction of the seedy underbelly and voodoo heritage of New Orleans was exceptionally well-drawn and equally, the tense build-up to Hurricane Katrina and its horrific aftermath showed a deftness of touch. I will also say that I have not read any crime novel that used the largely un-addressed issue of body dismorphia as a plot device and this was fascinating and worked well within the overall plot-line. On the subject of character this novel more than establishes Frank Patrese as a credible character with just the right degree of toughness, morality and vulnerability and this bodes well for future outings. Overall, although the central plot-line was a little far-fetched, I found this a good read with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep me hooked and I shall certainly pick up the next one... Read More

Each month we’ll ask one of our Killer Reviewers to give us an insight into their reading habits and who they are! This month, we spoke to Jackie Farrant… Name: Jackie Farrant Ocupation: Bookseller Best detective/good guy: Charlie Parker/ Phillip Marlowe Favourite place to read: Reads anywhere and it… Read More

Obviously we were SERIOUSLY chuffed when this landed on our desks, so for all Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro fans, we thought we'd share this with you! But as you are incredibly busy people, we thought we'd also pull out the best quote for you here: 'This is one devilishly good read full of satisfying scares.'  We have one word for you. WOW. If that doesn't make you want to read it, we don't know what will. The Strain trilogy opened with an authentic wow moment: a Boeing 777 arrives at JFK airport with all but four of the passengers dead in their seats. The flashlight beams of the first responders "registered dully in the dead jewels of their open eyes." Not much later these corpses begin to rise from their morgue slabs, and a plague of blood-hungry predators overwhelms New York. The first hundred pages of The Strain is a sustained exercise in terror that held this reader in spellbound delight, because del Toro and Hogan write with crisp authenticity about both the fantastical (vampires) and the completely real (New York City, with all its odd nooks and crannies). Read More

Click here to read an extract and watch the trailer for Michael Crichton’s terrifying new novel. https://killerreads.com/micro/… Read More

A sociopath has murdered a family by locking them in their home and setting it ablaze. Thankfully, the law is looming and justice is at hand. Should the villain ...    A. Be shot dead by a police sniper?    B. Blunder into a pit of agitated cobras with no escape?    C. Be imprisoned for life with zero hope of parole?     Read More

Jack the Ripper. The name means Victorian England. It means foggy streets and the glint of a silver knife. There's something almost romantic about Jack.   This, when you think about it, is one of the most disturbing things possible. It would be exactly like saying there's something romantic about Fred West or Ian Brady. The fifth murder of the Ripper series, the murder of Mary Kelly, is still considered one of the worst crime scenes in English history. When I started work on The Name of the Star, I was trying to think of the person you would least want to return from the grave and roam London, unseen. Jack fit the bill. I was always fascinated with Jack the Ripper. I grew up in Philadelphia loving English mystery novels. I read two Agatha Christies a day. The first book I remember reading in its entirety was The Hound of the Baskervilles. Jack the Ripper was more of that-but real! Read More

John Curran and Hercule Poirot take a look at "the original evidence" - including one of Agatha Christie's own writing notebooks - at Paignton Library during Agatha Christie Festival. Congratulations to our very own Agatha Christie expert! John Curran triumphed in the awards at Bouchercon a few nights ago by winning not one but two presitigious crime-writing awards for his writing debut, Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks. To celebrate we've decided not only to give you an exclusive look at David Suchet's foreword for the paperback of John's new book, Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making, but also to give you an extract from the book which looks at some of the ideas that Agatha Christie never used in her novels.    KILLER READS EXCLUSIVE: David Suchet's Foreword When John Curran's book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks was published in 2009, the reading public was given something very rare: perhaps the most complete document for any author of the notes and sketches of their novels. Reading the book was like studying the preliminary sketches of any great artist, and in doing so we automatically found ourselves searching for clues. It gave us an insight into the workings of Agatha Christie's mind - plus the gift of two new unpublished Poirot stories! Read More

Amazon.co.uk Widgets… Read More

This time our review panelists were asked to review Roseanna, the first book in the series that is said to have inspired many of the future greats, including Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. If you've read the same book and want to comment then please do!   Antony Jones writes: Originally written in the 1960's by the Swedish author Maj Sjowall and her partner Per Wahlöö, Roseanna is a defining point in the genre of crime fiction, not only founding the award winning ten book series that feature Martin Beck - all of which have been made into films - but influencing many authors including Stieg Larsson (author of the Girl with the Dragon tattoo), Henning Mankell (author of the Kurt Wallander series) and Jo Nesbo (author of the Harry Hole series). It all starts with a body, dredged up from the sludge of a lock near Sweden's Lake Vattern. Naked and unknown, there are no clues to her identity or reasons why she had been killed. Martin Beck is called from Stockholm to assist the authorities in trying to find who she was and the identity or her murderer. One of the defining characteristics of the novel is the dogged realism - the fact that month's pass before things actually happen on the case and it's a process of time-consuming legwork that actually moves things along. During these early chapters time is set aside to learn about the character and personality of Martin Beck - an unhappily married father of one who struggles with health issues and seems to suffer from a certain amount of desensitisation, floating through his life without too many strong feelings about anything. This everyday character - a realistic someone who you could quite easily meet in the street really grounds the novel and creates an incredibly realistic voice. Ironically it's this sense of normality which really helps to set the novel apart, bringing to life the hunt for the killer - not with lots of high speed car chases and manly chest pounding but with actual police work by normal, yet gifted people. The pace picks up once they get their first real break and the focus moves back to the story at hand and from then on stays fairly well routed to the task of bringing the killer to ground. Read More

A little treat to brighten up your Wednesday afternoon!… Read More