Recording Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

If you've read The Life of Crime, you'll know that the lives of crime writers are full of ups and downs, but it's fair to say that, in my experience, the ups far outweigh the downs. You simply never know what is around the corner. For instance, I had a brand new experience just last Tuesday. I recorded part of my own audiobook...

Some time ago, my editor Bethan suggested that I might like to record some parts of Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife for the audiobook version. Given that we'd already agreed on two excellent actors, Mark Elstob and Candida Gubbins, to do the recording, this took me aback. But Bethan thought that it would be fun - and this is a book that's definitely meant to be fun - if I were to read certain parts of it, including the 'Rules of the Game' at the beginning, and the Cluefinder.

Given her confidence in me, I thought I should give it a go and so I travelled down to London to the Chatterbox studio in Camden Town, where Chris Ahjem, who has produced over 200 audiobooks, was in the studio. It's never possible to judge one's own work, especially in an unfamiliar context, but I did enjoy the whole experience, and it was nice to meet Zoe, from Head of Zeus publicity, who came along to take photos and videos as part of the publicity push surrounding the book.

Publication is drawing nearer. The book finally sees the light of day on September 11 and there will be a launch at Serenity Books in Romiley, near Stockport. If you're interested in coming along, please get in touch for detais.

Forgotten Book - Shadow Run

Desmond Lowden is a writer who interests me more as I find out more about the man and his work. He was far from prolific, publishing just eight novels between 1969 and 1990, as well as several screenplays. He achieved considerable success, and today's Forgotten Book, published in 1989, won the CWA Silver Dagger (an award that no longer exists). In other words, it was judged to be the second best crime novel of the year. When you consider that the winner was Colin Dexter (with The Wench is Dead) that is quite something. Yet after publishing just one more book, in the following year, he never published another novel. I do find that hard to understand.

The Shadow Run is a thriller which counterpoints two sets of relationships. One concerns a 'fat boy', a young lad at a private school called Joffrey, and his school friends. Joffrey has a troubled family background and he tells a lot of fibs. So when he spots blood coming from a van, nobody believes him. But this time he is telling the truth.

The other relationships involve a hardened criminal called Haskell. He's a man who uses people for his own ends and is determined to make a lot of money from an ambitious robbery. The details (which explain the title) are complex, but since they are related to the technology of the late 1980s, they are also now out of date. This lessens the impact of the later stages of the story for a modern reader, I think, as the worlds of Joffrey and Haskell converge.

The first part of the book is excellent, as Lowden establishes his characters in short, snappy chapters, with crisp dialogue and intriguing incidents. Lowden also makes good use of his great interest in music (Joffrey and some of his pals are members of a choir that sings in a cathedral). I can see why the book attracted such favourable attention at the time, but like so many books which rely on cutting-edge technical detail, it has lost a bit of its allure. Nevertheless, I was glad to read it, and I'm definitely curious as to why Lowden gave up on writing novels so soon after this one earned the Silver Dagger.