Tag: Penguin Random House

CTG REVIEWS: NIGHT SCHOOL by LEE CHILD

Leave a comment

unknown

What the blurb says: “In the morning, they gave Reacher a medal. And in the afternoon, they sent him back to school. It’s just a voice plucked from the air: ‘The American wants a hundred million dollars’. For what? Who from? It’s 1996, and the Soviets are long gone. But now there’s a new enemy. In an apartment in Hamburg, a group of smartly-dressed young Saudis are planning something big. Jack Reacher is fresh off a secret mission and a big win. The Army pats him on the back and gives him a medal. And then they send him back to school. It’s a school with only three students: Reacher, an FBI agent, and a CIA analyst. Their assignment? To find that American. And what he’s selling. And to whom. There is serious shit going on, signs of a world gone mad. Night School takes Reacher back to his army days, but this time he’s not in uniform. With trusted sergeant Frances Neagley at his side, he must carry the fate of the world on his shoulders, in a wired, fiendishly clever new adventure that will make the cold sweat trickle down your spine.”

Lee Child’s latest addition to the Jack Reacher series is Reacher #21 – NIGHT SCHOOL and I was super excited to get my hands on an early proof copy – black covers, very minimal (rather like the great Reacher himself). Or at least it was very minimal, till I travelled to Scotland with it in my overnight bag, and the glitter originally stuck onto the wrapping paper of a gift I was taking relocated itself onto the book cover. I guess I’m probably the only person with a glittery copy of NIGHT SCHOOL!

Anyway, back to the book …

Well, as always, Reacher #21 delivers the Reacher-style goods. It also forces fans to delay gratification on the present day Reacher/Chang what-happens-next question from the end of the previous book – MAKE ME – and instead takes us back in time to when Reacher was still in the military. Not an easy delay for an impatient Reacher addict like me to take, but as Lee Child pairs Reacher back up with Neagley I’m willing to concede it’s a fair trade.

And in NIGHT SCHOOL it’s fascinating to see Reacher back in the structured environment of the military – reacting to the confines of protocol and hierarchy, yet still very much ‘being Reacher’; hard-wired to do whatever is needed to get justice, pushing blocks out the way (or ignoring them), and challenging the status quo. There’s a strong investigatory feel to the story, with lots of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing, and the pace whips along at breath-taking speed.

The relationship between Reacher and Neagley is complex and interesting – the mutual respect, the banter, the attraction yet inability to connect physically due to Neagley’s phobia of being touched. It was a joy to spend time with them in NIGHT SCHOOL and I’m hoping that we might get to see more of their relationship in future books.

NIGHT SCHOOL is everything you want from an action thriller – fast, hard and gripping. Read it now, then go back and read all the rest!

And, for the next book in the series – Reacher #22 (I’m guessing black cover, no glitter) what I REALLY want to know what happens between Reacher and Chang!

You can buy NIGHT SCHOOL from Amazon here

Find out more about Lee Child and the Reacher series at www.leechild.com 

 

CTG Interviews: best-selling crime writer Kathy Reichs #SpeakingInBones

1 Comment

image001

Today I’m delighted to welcome crime writer Kathy Reichs to the CTG blog. Kathy is the best selling and award winning author of the Dr Temperance Brennan series and the Tory Brennan series, and is a producer of the chilling hit TV series Bones. She is also a Professor of Forensic Anthropology and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists.

So, to the interview …

Your latest novel – Speaking in Bones – is out this month. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Tempe doesn’t solve every case.   And it bothers her that a few nameless dead languish unidentified in her lab. Information on some of these UIP’s, unidentified persons, is available online, and “websleuths” work to match them with MP’s, reported missing persons. At the outset of the story, Tempe is visited by one such amateur detective who believes she’s successfully connected skeletal remains in Tempe’s storage facility to a young woman missing for three years.  What seems at first to be an isolated tragedy takes on a more sinister cast as Tempe uncovers two more sets of bones. Still reeling from her mother’s diagnosis and the shock of Andrew Ryan’s potentially life-changing proposal, Tempe tries to solve the murders before the body count climbs further.

In the story, your main character, Dr Tempe Brennan, is approached by an amateur detective who thinks they’ve identified some remains – what was it that sparked the idea for this story?  


As usual, the story emerged from the coalescence of different idea particles floating around in my brain.  Thousands engage in websleuthing worldwide.  I was intrigued by the concept and thought my readers might also find the pursuit interesting. Brown Mountain, located in my home state of North Carolina, is famous for an unexplained phenomenon of floating lights whose origin no one can explain.  The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to many unusual and little-known religious groups, some of whom handle poisonous snakes and speak in tongues as part of their worship.  I took these disparate bits of knowledge, threw in some old cases, and Speaking in Bones was the result.

Your books always have a great balance of technical fact and fast paced fiction – what’s the secret to achieving this?  

I think what gives my books authenticity is that I actually do what it is I’m writing about.  I think the fact that I am in the autopsy room, I go to the crimes scene and I work in a full-spectrum forensic lab gives my books a flavor they otherwise wouldn’t have.  I think my readers want to learn something.  They want to read about the science behind DNA, ballistics, blood splatter pattern analysis.  I write for the reader who wants to learn something new and enjoy a good old -fashioned murder mystery at the same time. The key to the science? Keep it short, entertaining, and jargon free.

image003

Could you tell us a bit about your writing process – do you plot the story out in advance or jump right in and see where it takes you?  

My writing days begin in the morning and end in the evening.  If I am not inspired, I write anyway.  I start with a chapter by chapter outline of the story, then write in a linear fashion moving from beginning to end.  I have the plot twists and ending in mind.  But if I stumble upon a great idea midstream, in it goes.

What advice would you give a writer aspiring to publication?  

Write every day.  Or every week.  Perhaps every dawn.  Whatever time block you have available.  Don’t accept writer’s block.  If what you are writing is disappointing, at the end of the day you can delete it.  Write every chance you get, no matter what.

And finally, what does the rest of 2015 have in store for you?  

I’m actually working on an off-series novel.  Brand new, not Temperance Brennan.  New characters, setting, and premise.  No more spoilers!

A huge thank you to Kathy Reichs for stopping by the CTG blog today and answering our questions.

Kathy’s latest book – SPEAKING IN BONES – is out this week. Here’s the blurb: “When forensic anthropologist Dr Tempe Brennan is approached by amateur detective Hazel ‘Lucky’ Strike, at first she is inclined to dismiss the woman’s claims that she’s matched a previously unidentified set of remains with a name. 
But as the words of a terrified young woman echo round her office from an audio recorder found near where the bones were discovered, something about the story won’t let Tempe go. 

As Tempe investigates further she finds herself involved in a case more complicated and horrifying than she could ever have imagined.”

To find out more, hop on over to her website at www.kathyreichs.com and be sure to follow her on Twitter @KathyReichs

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

Leave a comment

 

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