Tag: Guest Post

Murder in Malmö Blog Tour: Guest post by Torquil MacLeod

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Author at market in Möllevången

Today author Torquil MacLeod is taking over the reins of the CTG blog as part of his Murder in Malmö Blog Tour.

Over to Torquil …

It was on a storm-tossed ferry from Newcastle in the middle of December that we made our visit to Sweden. On arrival in Gothenburg, we took a very slow train down the coast and ended up at a desolate Malmö Central Station at midnight. We were virtually the only people left on the train when we were met by our elder son, who had recently moved to Skåne. We drove through deserted streets and the only bright spots were the electric Christmas lights in nearly every window. It wasn’t the most promising of starts, yet it turned out to be the start of a great adventure.

During that first wintry visit, I was captivated by the landscape of Skåne, the southernmost region of Sweden. Part of the time we stayed in Ystad with a police detective based in the town. She has become a firm friend (and police adviser), as has her ex-partner, who still serves as a detective in Ystad. At that time, I was interested in writing film scripts and worked on a number of projects with a producer friend. Among the scripts I came up with, two were crime-based ideas. Both were set in southern Sweden, and one specifically in Malmö.

It was then that I discovered Henning Mankell, quite by chance, in a bookshop in Newcastle – he only had a couple of translated novels out over here at that time. I was amazed to discover that they were centred in Ystad and the surrounding countryside that we were becoming so familiar with. Soon the trickle of Scandinavian crime novels became a steady stream. With my “screenwriting” career going nowhere fast – particularly once I realised how virtually impossible it is to get scripts as far as filming – I decided to dust off an old script idea and turn it into a novel. That was Meet me in Malmö.

Though the central figure, Anita Sundström, was to be a Swedish police inspector, I wanted to give British readers an outsider’s view of the country – my view. The novel was a basic introduction to Sweden, as home-grown Swedish writing – just as crime writing from any other country – assumes a certain degree of local knowledge and cultural understanding in its readers. In all four of my Malmö Mysteries, I have attempted to fill in some of the gaps.

I also wanted Anita to be different from many other fictional detectives. Unlike Kurt Wallander, Harry Hole, Morse, Rebus and even Jane Tennyson, she’s only one of a team. She’s not running the investigations. She’s only a cog in the machine and has to work within those restrictions. She can’t be the maverick figure. It’s her role within the team that leads to tensions.

The other main character in the story is Malmö itself. My son called it home for several years. It’s a pleasant city – particularly in the summer with all its beautiful parks. It’s also a cultural melting pot with a large immigrant population. Thanks to the opening of the Öresund Bridge in 2000 linking it to Copenhagen, it has transformed itself from backwater town into cosmopolitan city. This is Anita Sundström’s beat.

The journey of Meet me in Malmö was a tortuous one. After I’d written it I did the usual rounds of literary agents. Not one was remotely interested and the only feedback I got was a suggestion I change my name to a Scandinavian one (Torquil is actually Norwegian in origin), as nobody would buy a Swedish crime novel written by a Brit. The other gem was to avoid using the name Malmö in any subsequent novels in the series. I ignored both pieces of advice and I’ve been quite happy with the results.

Eventually, I found a hardback publisher. But after its short run sold out, they showed no desire to republish. They did put it out as an ebook and it probably sold about ten copies in a year. So, when I got my rights back, I decided to repackage it with a new cover. As it has spent nearly two and a half years in Amazon UK’s top 2000 ebooks, the decision has been justified. And then last year, I was approached by small independent publisher, McNidder & Grace. They are bringing out all four books this year. Murder in Malmö, the second in the series, is coming out now, with Missing in Malmö in September and Midnight in Malmö in October/November.

Though a fifth book is planned for later next year, I am currently writing an Anita Sundström novella set round a murder at Christmas. And as I write this, we are about to set off on yet another trip to Skåne to visit our Swedish grandson, whose parents have just moved to Ystad. My Swedish journey has come round full circle.

You can find out more about Torquil MacLeod over at his website http://www.torquilmacleodbooks.com

To check out Murder in Malmö over on Amazon, click the book cover below:

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And be sure to look out the other stops on the Murder in Malmö blog tour …

MinM blog tour pic-2

Guest Post: Talking about Locations – author Neely Tucker on the places featured in MURDER, D.C. and THE WAYS OF THE DEAD

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WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 27: Author Nelly Tucker on March, 27, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Author Neely Tucker (Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)

Today crime writer Neely Tucker is taking the reins of the CTG blog to talk about the real life places, and events, that have inspired his two recent books THE WAYS OF THE DEAD and MURDER, D.C. 

So, over to Neely …

“The Ways of the Dead” and “Murder, D.C.” are based on very real Washington neighborhoods with very real histories, and both novels are based on very real events.

“Ways” takes as its inspiration a real-life serial killer named Darryl Turner, who police say killed as many as nine women, most of whom were in the low-end drug trade. He killed all of them on or near a two-block long street called Princeton Place. It’s about two miles north of the U.S. Capitol. In the late 1990s, when the novel is set, this was a predominantly black neighborhood, in which older residents were middle class and took very good care of their homes, but were surrounded by drug dealers and crack houses (abandoned buildings where addicts get high).

The recent film, “The Butler,” about the long-time butler to several U.S. presidents, is about a man who lived in this neighborhood.

In 2000, as the court reporter for The Washington Post, I covered the initial proceedings against Turner. The contrasts of the neighborhood struck me, and that was the beginning of “Ways.”

“Murder” moves about four miles south, to a little-visited part of D.C. known as “Southwest.” Here’s your handy travel tip: D.C. is divided into four quadrants, with the U.S. Capitol acting as the dividing point. “Northwest D.C.” is the land north and west of the Capitol, and so on.

Southwest DC is a tiny quadrant, just south of the Capitol and quickly cut off by the Washington Channel or the Potomac River. Before the Civil War, there were at least two “slave pens,” or jails where enslaved African Americans were kept and sold, in the area.

If you go along the National Mall today, by the Air and Space Museum, you are less than two hundred meters from an antebellum slave pen. There was also a very large slave auction house just across the river, in Virginia. Again, if you saw the film “12 Years a Slave,” that’s where the man was actually first held.

So I created a fictional knob of land,  Frenchman’s Bend, imbued it with the combined histories of these nearby slave pens, and set it along the waterfront. It’s a cursed, gothic sort of place that no one wanted to touch after the Civil War, due to horrors that had gone on there. Think of it as an open-air haunted house.  By the late 20th Century, it’s a very unpleasant drug park, the most violent place in the most violent city in America — which D.C. really was at the time.

Murder, D.C. cover image

Murder, D.C. cover image

Welcome to the real estate upon which turns “Murder, D.C.,” and the fate of Sully Carter.

Huge thanks to Neely Tucker for stopping by to talk Locations.

MURDER, D.C. will be published in hardback on Thursday 30th July. Here’s the blurb: “When Billy Ellison, the son of Washington, D.C.’s most influential African-American family, is found dead in the Potomac near a violent drug haven, veteran metro reporter Sully Carter knows it’s time to start asking some serious questions – no matter what the consequences.

With the police unable to find a lead and pressure mounting for Sully to abandon the investigation, he has a hunch that there is more to the case than a drug deal gone bad or a tale of family misfortune. Digging deeper, Sully finds that the real story stretches far beyond Billy and into D.C.’s most prominent social circles.

An alcoholic still haunted from his years as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Sully now must strike a dangerous balance between D.C.’s two extremes – the city’s violent, desperate back streets and its highest corridors of power – while threatened by those who will stop at nothing to keep him from discovering the shocking truth.”

The Ways of the Dead cover image

The Ways of the Dead cover image

THE WAYS OF THE DEAD will be published in paperback on Thursday 30th July. Here’s the blurb: “The body of the teenage daughter of a powerful Federal judge is discovered in a dumpster in a bad neighbourhood of Washington, D.C. It is murder, and the local police immediately arrest the three nearest black kids, bad boys from a notorious gang.

Sully Carter, a veteran war correspondent with emotional scars far worse than the ones on his body, suspects that there’s more to the case than the police would have the public know. With the nation clamouring for a conviction, and the bereaved judge due for a court nomination, Sully pursues his own line of enquiry, in spite of some very dangerous people telling him to shut it down.”

To find out more about Neely Tucker and his books hop on over to his website at www.neelytucker.com and follow him on Twitter @NeelyTucker

#InheritTheWind #BlogTour Guest Post: My Life with Varg Veum by Gunnar Staalesen

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We Shall Inherit the Wind cover image

We Shall Inherit the Wind cover image

Today on the CTG blog I’m delighted to be hosting a guest post by best selling crime writer Gunnar Staalesen as part of the #InheritTheWind blog tour.

And so, over to Gunnar …

I first met Varg Veum when he was 34 and I was 19 – almost 40 years ago. He had just opened his Private Investigator’s office on the Strand quay in Bergen, and I was working as a press secretary at the local theatre, Den Nationale Scene (The National Stage). Since then I have met him many, many times – at least every other year, in the beginning a little more often – and the result is 17 crime novels and about 15 short stories featuring my hero and good friend. I know him better with every year that passes, and I have no problem foreseeing what he is going to say – or what he will do in certain situations. Today we are both elderly people, I am 67 and he is – well, 72. However, because my books are set in the past, Varg Veum was only 59 in the last novel that was published here in Norway (None Is So Safe in Danger) with the action taking place in 2002, before his birthday. In We Shall Inherit the Wind, he is still a young man – only 56 years old …

Varg Veum is the modern kind of protagonist. He grows older, of course, but age is never a problem for a detective – even hardest-boiled ones. Hercule Poirot was around 70 when he started his career, and I guess Lew Archer must have been in his late sixties when we last met him. In August I will start writing my eighteenth novel about Varg Veum, and I have no plans to finish him off for many years yet. This is dependent upon my own health, of course, but my mother died when she was 94, my grandfather on that side when he was 93, so …

Throughout the years I have grown close to Varg Veum. When I first met him, he was newly divorced and had a five-year-old son. Today his son is a grown-up, and Varg Veum has just become a grandfather. Following his marriage, there have been several women in his life – natural for a freewheeling Private Eye like him – but for the last ten years he has been in a steady relationship with Karin Bjørge, who works at the Public Registration office. They were friends long before they became lovers, and she has become a very important part of this life. This goes some way to explaining the shock he is feeling in the opening chapters of We Shall Inherit the Wind, when something very dramatic has happened to Karin … I will say no more. You have to read the book.

Gunnar with the Varg Veum statue

Gunnar with the Varg Veum statue

I am often asked how much there is of me in Varg Veum, and the truth is that there isn’t much. I am not divorced, I do not drink as much aqua vita as he does, and I am not half as tough and witty as he is. But we are both kids from the same region in Bergen, a bit street-wise and definitely sharing the same view of the world around us, from more or less the same office. And when I drink my glass of aqua vita at the bar in Bergen where you can find Varg Veum’s corner, I always salute him, my closest friend for the last 40 years.

Skål! we say in Norwegian when we lift our glass. Skål, Varg! I say. Happy to have known you, and looking forward to the years to come. Perhaps, Varg, it is you and I who are going to inherit the wind.

A huge thank you to Gunnar Staalesen for making the CTG blog one of the stops on his #InheritTheWind blog tour.

 

We Shall Inherit the Wind is out now in ebook and on the 15th June in print.

Here’s the blurb: “1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he’s made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career, riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries and dubious business ethics. Then, in one of the most heart-stopping scenes in crime fiction, the first body appears…”

To find out more about Gunnar Staalesen and his books hop on over to www.orendabooks.co.uk and follow them on Twitter @OrendaBooks

And be sure to visit the other fabulous tour stops on the #InheritThe Wind tour …

 We Shall Inherit the Wind Blog Tour

 

#TheAbruptPhysicsofDying Blog Tour: Simplifying my Life by Paul E. Hardisty

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cover image

cover image

Yesterday, I reviewed the fabulous debut thriller THE ABRUPT PHYSICS OF DYING by Paul E. Hardisty, a novel that’s been described by best selling author Peter James as “a stormer of a thriller”. Today, I’m thrilled to be the latest stop on wonderful new publisher Orenda Books’ blog tour for this brilliant book.

So, just to recap, here’s the blurb for THE ABRUPT PHYSICS OF DYING: “Claymore Straker is trying to forget a violent past. Working as an oil company engineer in the wilds of Yemen, he is hijacked at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists. Clay has a choice: help uncover the cause of a mysterious sickness afflicting the village of Al Urush, close to the company’s processing facility, or watch Abdulkader, his driver and close friend, die. As the country descends into civil war and village children start dying, Clay finds himself caught up in a ruthless struggle between opposing armies, controllers of the country’s oil wealth, Yemen’s shadowy secret service, and rival terrorist factions. As Clay scrambles to keep his friend alive, he meets Rania, a troubled journalist. Together, they try to uncover the truth about Al Urush. But nothing in this ancient, unforgiving place is what it seems. Accused of a murder he did not commit, put on the CIA’s most-wanted list, Clay must come to terms with his past and confront the powerful forces that want him dead.”

And here, to tell us about how he’s planning to simplify his life (if his book collection will allow it!) is debut author Paul E. Hardisty …

Pretty Soon I am Going to Simplify my Life.

I’ve realised that I don’t need much to be happy.   Don’t need three-quarters, more, of the stuff that fills up the place I live. Hell, I don’t even need the place I live – now that the kids are older and starting their own lives. A roof to keep out the ever less-frequent rain and something to keep me warm on those ever rarer cold nights, sure. But rooms filled with furniture and exercise equipment and shipping containers of appliances and toys and obsolete printers and all of the clutter that suffocates most citizens of G20 nations? I’ve decided no.

So one day soon, we’re going to go South, into the bush, and live in a shack. All I need, I’ve decided, is my mountain bike, writing stuff, and my favourite books. But the place won’t be big. And we’ll probably build most of it ourselves.   So I’ll have to choose carefully. The first twenty or so are easy, like your all-time best ever football (or in my case, ice hockey) side. After that it gets tougher.  I guess I could always just go with the kindle, pack a lifetime of reading in one place, but I can’t be stuffed with all the chargers and cables, and quite frankly, the lack of smell.   That musty old-book smell that makes you want to stick you face into the pages and breathe in all of the words you love. I must be part dog (my wife thinks so).

Paul E. Hardisty

Paul E. Hardisty

Ok. Top Twenty. Criteria: none – just go with it, without planning. And be honest. As fast as you can. A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) – my dad’s old paperback copy; The Way of a Transgressor (Negley Farson) – a first edition, falling apart. He was the original real traveller. My hero. War and Peace (Tolstoy) – read it while rough-necking in Texas, oil smudged pages, the contrast; A Moveable Feast (Hemingway) – when I realised I wanted to be a writer of fiction (which I’ve since found is truer than non-fiction); The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), in French, timeless storytelling; Chaos (James Gleick) – everyone should read this, the mysteries of the universe exposed; Goodbye to All That (Robert Graves) – to survive that war, the way he did, and to think of what could have been lost if he had been killed, how much was lost in that nightmare; and so, I Claudius and Claudius, the God (Robert Graves) – his masterpiece (counts for two). What’s that? Nine.

Eleven more. Okay. Les Particules Elementaires (Houellebecq) – in French, hard, challenging, utterly contemporary; Antarctica (Kim Stanley Robinson) – science fiction about the present, beautifully written; Adventures in the Skin Trade (Dylan Thomas) – another one of my dad’s old volumes; Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy) – pretty close to top five, the last line has propelled me ever since I read it; Pure (Andrew Miller) – something about this book grabs me, it’ll take me a few more years to figure out exactly what; Le Pere Goriot (Zola) – in French, genius; Martin Eden (Jack London) – another book that cried out to me not to give up; A Night Over Water (Ken Follett) – a subtle thriller, loved it; Three Cheers for Me (Donald Jack) – the funniest book I’ve ever read; Macbeth (you know who) – just re-read it a few months ago, more there every time I pick it up; and twenty (but probably first) Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T.E. Lawrence).

Out of space. Too many missing. Especially some fantastic newer stuff. Guess I’ll have to take my kindle along. Screw it, we’ll build the interior walls of the shack out of books.

***

You can find out more about Paul here: http://paulehardisty.wix.com/paulehardisty

Follow him on Twitter @Hardisty_Paul 

Plus, check out his fabulous publisher ORENDA BOOKS here: http://orendabooks.co.uk and on Twitter @OrendaBooks

And don’t forget to hop over to the other stops on this fantastic blog tour …

Abrupt Physics Blog Tour Banner

Guest Post: Laura McHugh author of The Weight of Blood

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The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh, published in hardback by Hutchinson at £14.99

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh, published in hardback by Hutchinson at £14.99

Laura McHugh’s debut psychological crime novel came out earlier this month and is gathering rave reviews. Today I’m pleased to welcome Laura to the CTG blog to tell us a bit about the true crime small town justice that inspired her to write the book …

In The Weight of Blood, the people of Henbane are more likely to cover up crimes than report them to the law, and that’s a common occurrence in some of the small, tight-knit, rural Ozark communities where everyone knows—or is related to—everyone else.

One well-known example took place in the nearby town of Skidmore, Missouri. Ken McElroy was the town bully, and he’d gotten away with a number of serious crimes, including assault, arson, burglary, and shooting the elderly town grocer. The townspeople had had enough, and they decided to take action. They gathered on the main street with their guns, and McElroy was murdered in broad daylight in the middle of town, in front of dozens of witnesses.

No one called an ambulance. Not a single person ever spoke up to say who had killed him. Every witness claimed that they did not see anything, and no one has ever been charged in connection with McElroy’s death.

A huge thank you to Laura for dropping by the blog to talk about the shocking real-life event that influenced her to write The Weight of Blood and create the fictional small town of Henbane where the story is set.

The Weight of Blood is out now. It’s gripping, packed with suspense and set in an isolated community where family lies and dark secrets hide.

Here’s the blurb: “People still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother who vanished years ago from the town of Henbane, deep in the Ozark mountains. When one of Lucy’s friends is found murdered, Lucy feel haunted by the two lost women: by the mother she never knew, and the friend she couldn’t protect. But her search for answers, in a place where secrets are easily concealed, leads her to a chilling discovery. And with this revelation, she must grapple with the meaning of family, the secrets we keep, and the lengths we will go to protect the ones we love.”

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh is published in hardback by Hutchinson, priced £14.99.

To find out more about Laura, pop on over to her website at http://www.weightofblood.com

The Killing Club Blog Tour: Guest Post by Paul Finch

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KC blog tour poster

KC blog tour poster

I’m delighted to welcome Paul Finch to the CTG blog. His latest novel, The Killing Club, is published this week, and today Paul is taking over the reins (or rather the keyboard) to guest blog about the books he has read that have been most influential on his career.

Over to Paul …

It would be very easy, I suppose, to respond to the question which books have you read that were most influential on your career, and, given that my own most successful novels are intense murder investigations, simply reel off all the great thriller writers.

It would of course be untrue to say that I haven’t been influenced by other thriller novelists. Stuart MacBride, Mark Billingham, Peter James, Kathy Reichs and Katia Lief are all staggeringly high in my estimation. But I don’t just read within my own genre, and I think it would be an interesting exercise to perhaps consider those other types of books that have blown me away, set me on my current career path, whatever you want to call it.

It’s no secret that, before I began writing my DS Heckenburg thrillers, I dabbled widely in the fields of horror and fantasy. And this wasn’t just during my formative years as a writer, my kindergarten if you like; I wrote lots of this kind of stuff, and still do. I also read in this field enormously. But it’s fascinating now, on reflection, how much these apparently unrelated interests have influenced my DS Heckenburg novels.

For example, THE WOLFEN by Whitley Strieber (pub. 1978) presents us with two tired New York detectives, a man and a woman, investigating the murder and apparent cannibalisation of hobos in the city’s underbelly, and soon reaching the conclusion the perpetrators are not humans, but a highly intelligent werewolf pack.

Now, I suppose there are obvious links here with ‘Heck’: a gang of vicious and relentless killers, a lovelorn boy and girl cop team, and so on. But I think it’s the seamy side of the average detective’s working day that most caught my eye about this striking novel. Strieber really takes us to the backside of New York, the subways and ghettos and derelict lots, and peoples them with hookers, winos and druggies. My own experience as a real life cop taught me these are the places you need to go if you want to catch some bad guys, but here we go way beyond the everyday grim, delving into the world of the true urban gothic: it’s a nightmare landscape, beautifully and poetically described, and yet at the same time filled with such palpable menace that even hardboiled detectives are unnerved.

I make a point of never taking my own crime thrillers into such realms of overt fantasy, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to invoke similar feelings of dread and weirdness in the dark heart of the city.

Another relevant horror novel is surely LEGION by William Peter Blatty (pub. 1983). This is a totally different kind of police story. Again, it follows a time-served detective investigating a series of sadistic murders, though in this case he’s dealing with Satanic ritual. It’s a much subtler tale, ripe with a sense of ancient mystery and slow-burning evil (and that would be real evil, of the distinctly inhuman variety). Yet for all this, the point where LEGION really kicks in is the deep assessment the hero, Lt. Kinderman, constantly makes of himself, examining his own beliefs or unbeliefs, puzzling as to why he exposes himself to this depravity time and again, bleeding inside for the victims. Not exactly Heck, who’s never been much of a philosopher, but the longer you work as a homicide cop, the more you’re going to confront yourself with these issues. There is some really deep character work here by Blatty, which you can’t help but admire.

Moving from horror into science fiction and fantasy, there are two other titles I’d like to mention. The first of these contains the most obvious link to those matters I’ve mentioned previously. It is Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi masterwork, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP (pub. 1968). Most folk will know this as the movie, BLADE RUNNER, but though there are some similarities, the book goes way beyond the limited scope of a Hollywood adaptation. In Rick Deckard, another dogged man-hunter and, thanks to his wife’s depression, a sad loner, working his way through a world gone mad and yet adding to it with his own role, which conflicts him deeply, there is genuine pathos. The movie, of course, had a strong noirish feel – it was almost Chandleresque – which is not prevalent in the book, but the strong central character is still a great blueprint for the fictional lone-wolf detective. For me, heroes always need to be vulnerable: stricken by self-doubt, and with enemies on all sides, some of whom they thought were friends. I’ve never had much time for men of steel, undefeatable icons of hunky machismo, like Superman or Batman. If I took anything from DO ANDROIDS DREAM … it had to be that deep introspection, that guilt, that conscience. It makes our heroes so much more interesting.

On that same subject, the fantasy novel I’d like to nominate is GRENDEL by John Gardner (pub. 1971). I guess we’re all familiar with the tale of Beowulf, the Viking warrior, and his defence of the hall of Heorot against the ravages of the faceless devil, Grendel, who for no reason other than twisted pleasure, came nightly to slaughter the innocent.

As I say, I’m not big on superhero stories. I loved BEOWULF as a kid – it was probably the first spooky tale my late father told me – but as I grew up, I found the monster more interesting. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves, Grendel is the prototype serial killer. So in many ways, GRENDEL the novel takes us to the other end of the crime thriller spectrum, Gardner depicting his antihero first as an abused and lonely child, later showing him suffer rejection by those he sought to befriend, and finally having him retaliate with homicidal fury, which at last introduces him to a lifestyle of his liking – if he can’t have everyone’s love, he’ll have their terror. There isn’t as much Norse myth woven into this novel as you might expect. Instead Gardner gives us philosophy, social commentary and, a decade before the FBI commenced offender profiling, the psychology of the reviled. Talk about streets ahead of the game. Of course, we all know what happens at the end of BEOWULF, and it’s the same in GRENDEL, so don’t expect any surprises – apart from the dark joy this narrative will elicit as it works its way through the tormented mind and hideous satisfactions of a creature driven solely to hate.

It’s a strange thing that we think we know ourselves so well, our thoughts, interests and aspirations. And yet clearly there are many subliminal strata to our thinking. Even as I wrote this blog, it became more apparent to me how relevant to my current writing so many of these themes explored by earlier authors actually are. I won’t go over them again, because I think they speak for themselves – they certainly will, I hope, if you get the chance to read any of my DS Heckenburg thrillers, STALKERS, SACRIFICE or, most recently, THE KILLING CLUB. On which note, I suspect it’s a good time to end this monologue. Whichever way you go, please enjoy your reading and writing. There are no finer pleasures.

Paul Finch

A huge thank you to Paul for spending time here at the CTG blog today and telling us about the books that have most influenced his career.

To find out more about Paul and his books, including his latest book – The Killing Club – hop on over to his website at http://paulfinch-writer.blogspot.co.uk/

And don’t forget to follow him on Twitter @paulfinchauthor