Original Sinners and John Banville

I’ve included on my website a couple of new articles. One is the paper I wrote for the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Conference, on the subject of Sinful Victims. Because of time limitations, I had to cut the paper short for actual delivery at the conference. So here is the full, unexpurgated version! It was fun to put together, and although at first I found the theme of ‘the wages of sin’ daunting, it proved to be a theme that generated a great deal of interesting discussion.

The other article is an interview with John Banville. I was commissioned to write the piece by Kate Stine, editor of that terrific crime magazine ‘Mystery Scene’. I didn’t meet Banville in person, but talked to him at length on the phone. Reserved at first, he gradually opened up, and I found him genuinely pleasant to deal with. Certainly not (despite recent publicity) someone who struck me as condescending to the crime genre – on the contrary, he waxed lyrical about certain writers, such as Simenon. He sent me a very gracious email about my writing which, if I had more nerve, I would cannibalise for a book cover quote. But I’m not that cheeky.