I'm interviewed at Crime Fiction Lover

CRIME FICTION LOVER is a great site for, well, crime fiction lovers.


And they recently interviewed me about Snapshots, Brit Grit, Guns Of Brixton and more.

Pop over and have a read, if you fancy.

ABIDE WITH ME BY IAN AYRIS

In American fiction, the lines of genre are regularly blurred so that characters in the writings of 'dirty realists' like Nelson Algren, Harry Crews, John Fante and Charles Bukowski can comfortably inhabit the same world as those of crime fiction writers such as James M Cain, Elmore Leonard and Charles Wilford. 


This, of course, is a very good thing.


With British fiction, perhaps because of the yoke of the class system, that doesn't happened so much. But with the new sub genre of Brit Grit, things are changing. A lot of these new hard-hitting writers have as much in common with Irvine Welsh and Allan Sillitoe as they do with Ted Lewis.


This, of course, is a very good thing.


Which brings me to  Ian Ayris' brilliant debut Abide With Me.


Abide With Me is a remarkable novel. A novel with balls and brains and heart.


Johnny Sissons is a young boy from the East End of London. 


Johnny's family are normal,very likeable and very close. And they are getting by as best they can in sometimes difficult times. 


Johnny, like his father, also has an exhilarating love of West Ham football club, a passion that runs through the novel like a heartbeat.


Johnny's neighbour ,Kenny, however, doesn't have such luck - his home-life his heartbreaking grim.


Abide With Me is about their friendship. About loyalty, family, poverty.


It's about doing the right thing. 


And about making mistakes and facing up to them.


Abide With Me  is an incredibly involving book.As we watch Johnny and Kenny grow up and head toward a life of crime, like dishwater down a plughole, we are with them all the way. 


Ayris' gripping, gritty, beautiful novel is full of warmth, wit, excitement, comedy and tragedy. An uncompromised chunk of social realism that is bound to be in lots of people's 'top tens' at the end of the year.


And, you lucky people, the kindle version Abide With Me is free for the next few days from Amazon and Amazon UK.


So, what are you waiting for?

Guest Blog: Richard Godwin - Mr Glamour

Designer goods, beautiful women, wealthy men, a lifestyle preyed on by a serial killer.

A killer who is watching everyone, including the police.

Latest headlines?

No, an outline of my second novel, Mr. Glamour.

My debut novel Apostle Rising was published in paperback by Black Jackal Books last year. It was about a serial killer crucifying politicians, and sold extremely well, received excellent reviews, and sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary.

Now Black Jackal Books have published Mr. Glamour, and I’d like to tell you a bit about it. The settings are exotic, and the pages drip with wealth. The story’s told in my usual style, and my readers will know what that means. I have been told I write with a blend of lyricism and graphic description. I like to explore what motivates people and I certainly do so with the leading characters in Mr. Glamour.

The two central cops, DCI Jackson Flare and Inspector Steele, are unusual and strong in their own ways, as reviewers are already picking up. At the beginning of the novel Steele hates working with Flare for personal reasons. She doesn’t by the end, and the investigation takes them both on a journey which changes them and their opinions of one another.

Let me give you the setting if you are tempted to read Mr. Glamour.

Something dark is preying on the glitz of the glamour set. There is a lot about designer goods and lifestyles in Mr. Glamour. The killer knows all about design, he knows what brands mean to his victims. He is branding their skins. And he has the police stumped.

As Flare and Steele investigate the killings they enter an exclusive world with its own rules and quickly realise the man they are looking for is playing a game with them, a game they cannot interpret. The killer is targeting an exclusive group of people he seems to know a lot about.

The police investigation isn’t helped by the fact that Flare and Steele have troubled lives. Harlan White, a pimp who got on the wrong side of Flare, is planning to have him killed. And Steele has secrets. She leads a double life. She is an interesting woman who pushes her sexual boundaries in private. She travels a journey into her own past and rescues herself. And in a strange way she is helped by the killer she is looking for. And Flare has some revelations in store.

As they try to catch a predator who has climbed inside their heads, they find themselves up against a wall of secrecy. The investigation drives Flare and Steele to acts of darkness. And the killer is watching everyone.

Then there is the sub plot.

Contrasting this lifestyle is the suburban existence of Gertrude Miller, who acts out strange rituals, trapped in a sterile marriage to husband Ben. She cleans compulsively and seems to be hiding something from him, obsessed that she is being followed. As she slips into a psychosis, characters from the glamorous set stray into Gertrude’s world, so the two plots dovetail neatly with one another.

And when Flare and Steele make an arrest they discover there is far more to this glamorous world than they realised. There is a series of shocks at the end of the novel as a set of fireworks go off. Watch out for the highly dramatic ending.

It is already picking up some great reviews.

Advance praise for Mr. Glamour:

“Richard Godwin knows how his characters dress, what they drink and what they drive. He knows how they live--- and how they die. Here's hoping no one recognized themselves in Godwin's cold canvas. Combines the fun of a good story with the joy of witty, vivid writing.”
Heywood Gould, author of The Serial Killer's Daughter.

“Smart, scary, suspenseful enough for me to keep the light on until 3AM on a Sunday night, Richard Godwin once more proves to fans of crime fiction the world over with Mr. Glamour, that he is not only one of the best contemporary writers of the procedural cop thriller around today, he is a master storyteller.”  

Vincent Zandri, author of Scream Catcher.

“Richard Godwin’s top-of-the-line psychological police procedural driven by its heady pace, steely dialogue, and unsparing vision transfixes the reader from page one.”

Ed Lynskey, author of Skin In The Game.

“Mr. Glamour is a striking effort from one of the most daring crime writers in the business. It is the noirest of noir...and hellishly addictive.”

Mike Stafford, BookGeeks Magazine.

“This first rate detective thriller will have you gripped from the start. Richard Godwin is an author not to be missed.”

Sheila Quigley, Author of Thorn In My Side.

“Mr Glamour is, in every sense of the word, the real McCoy: genuine hard boiled detective fiction.  Lean, gritty, and tough, it’s a journey into the heart of darkness ... you won’t soon forget. Connoisseurs of Nouveau Noir will have to add Richard Godwin to the list of writers to watch!”

C E Lawrence, author of Silent Kills.

“Involving and compellingly sinister, Richard Godwin’s Mr. Glamour portrays cops and criminals, the mad and the driven in a novel of psychological noir. Read it while snuggling with your stuffed teddy bear for comfort.”

                            -- Gary Phillips, author of Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers

“This is one outstanding novel written by one amazing author.”

Fran Lewis Review.

I think Mr. Glamour will appeal to mystery and crime aficionados, to readers interested in psychological profiling and designer lifestyles, to thriller and noir fans, and to anyone who enjoys a fast paced narrative with strong characters.

Mr. Glamour can be bought now at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk at all good retailers online and in stores in April. If you Google it you should see a range of options come up.

And you can find out more about me at my website

and my stories here

SNAPSHOTS BY PAUL D. BRAZILL - OUT NOW !!!

Published by PULP METAL FICTION, SNAPSHOTS is twenty-one short, sharp snapshots of the dark side of life, as seen through Paul D. Brazill’s booze and blood splattered, chiaroscuro lens.

Seeing Blue

Thicker Than Blood

Warsaw by Night

Warsaw Ghosts

Late Night Film

Everybody Loves Somebody, Sometime

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The Endless Sleep

White Ink

In The (Reservoir) Dog House

Donkey

The Four Horsemen

Things To Do In Deptford When You’re Dead

Life On Mars?

Snapshots

The Sharpest Tools In The Box

A Can Short Of A Six Pack

And May All Your Christmases Be White

Guns Of Brixton

The Night Watchman

The Lady and The Gimp

And you can get it from Smashwords, Amazon or Amazon uk.

SHORT, SHARP INTERVIEW: MCDROLL

PDB: Can you pitch your latest publication/ project in 25 words or less? 

In THE WRONG DELIVERY  everything goes up in flames and down to the depths for Morna and Gordon in more than one sense.

PDB: Which books, films or television shows have floated your boat recently? 

Book - got to be The Unburied Dead from the delicious Douglas Lindsay. 
Comic crime and delicious noirness at its best in his new detective 
series.

Film - Ginger Snaps - from back in 2000 but I hadn't seen it 
before, teenage werewolf movie with the most dysfunctional teenagers 
you've ever met.

TV - Empire with that lovely Jeremy Paxman. Worth 
watching just to see his astonishment when an Egyptian gentleman was 
adamant that there was nothing good to be said about the English.


PDB: Is it possible for a writer to be an objective reader? 


You can't write without reading, it's vital. Everybody can learn no matter 
whether you are an experienced writer or just starting out. There is 
never anything better than getting totally lost in a good book and if 
the writing is any good then it is impossible to not get drawn in by 
the plot and characters.


PDB: Do you have any interest in writing for films, theatre or television? 


I'd love to write a comedy crime/noir sitcom set in Largs, Ayrshire. a dead body found behind the ice cream counter in Nardinis....

PDB: How much research goes into each book? 

I write what I know and what I don't know, I make up....
isn't that what a writer is supposed to do?


PDB: How useful or important are social mediafor you as a writer? 

Without social media I'd be sitting here in Argyll talking to the sheep. They are not goodlisteners and not terribly keen on crime writing, they prefer romances.

PDB: What’s on the cards in 2012?  

Throughout 2012 I'll be serializing THE WRONG DELIVERY, my crime/ humour / noir book as well as keeping my review blog going and writing some new short stories. The novel is planned out so I might even start chapter 2. Who knows?