The Dagger in the Library

Thursday evening proved to be one of the most enjoyable of my whole writing career. It was the occasion of the CWA Daggers Awards, a glitzy black tie event at the Grange City Hotel in London, and I'll remember it forever because I was fortunate enough to be awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library.

The Dagger in the Library is awarded for a writer's body of work that has brought pleasure to library users, and nominations are submitted by librarians up and down the country. I was delighted to feature on first the longlist, announced in May, and then the shortlist, announced in July. The other authors nominated included such prominent and popular bestsellers as Sophie Hannah, Nicci French, and Peter May. Formidable competition, to put it mildly.

The judging panel is composed exclusively of librarians, and so it was a very special moment when the chair of the panel, Sue Wilkinson, opened the envelope and read out my name. During the past three years, I've been nominated for three other Daggers, and to win on this occasion was a real joy. Exactly ten years have passed since the wonderful night when I won my first Dagger, for best short story, and this was if anything an even more cherishable moment.

There were many other happy moments during the evening, not least the chance to present the Diamond Dagger to Michael Connelly, and Red Herring awards to Ali Karim, Ayo Onatade, David Stuart Davies, and Mike Stotter. It was also grand to spend time with my editors at Head of Zeus and Harper Collins, and with my agent, as well as friends such as Mick Herron and Matthew Booth, and to chat over dinner with the guest speaker, tv scriptwriter Jude Tindall. It was all truly memorable. I've still not quite come down to earth, and I'm certainly feeling very, very fortunate.

The Interrogator

What do the following crime writers have in common? Lee Chld, Michael Connelly, Joyce Carol Oates, Laura Lippman, David Morrell, Jeffrey Deaver, Mickey Spillane, and Martin Edwards? One thing's for sure, it's not the fact that they are all best-sellers, since I'm certainly not in that league. But I'm pleased to say that, along with those other, much bigger names, I have a story in a new anthology, The Interrogator, published by Cemetery Dance in the US. Quite an honour.

The book is edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, and a sad note is that Marty Greenberg, the doyen of anthologists, died not long after this book was first put together. I never met or talked to him, but I have had stories in a few of the colossal number of books of stories that he either edited or co-edited. Ed has dedicated this collection to Marty, and it's a fitting tribute, given the calibre of the other contributors.

The story of mine that is included is "Clutter", which previously appeared in Original Sins, the CWA anthology of 2010. I'm absolutely delighted to say that, although there was no CWA anthology last year, there should be a new collection later in 2013, to celebrate the CWA's Diamond Jubilee. Suffice to say the stories I've received are of a very high calibre, and there are some major names among the contributors..

The same is true of those in The Interrogator, and I'd also like to mention the extremely informative introduction by Jon L. Breen. As with Ed Gorman, he's someone I've never met, but have admired for a long time. Undoubtedly, he's one of the leading crime fiction critics of the past 30 years, and everything he writes is well worth reading. He's also produced a handful of enjoyable novels of his own. They are worth a look and so too, regardless of my own contribution, is The Interrogator.

The Lincoln Lawyer

I've read a number of Michael Connelly's thrillers, and enjoyed all of them. He's a writer who does what he does with a real professionalism, and when he wrote a book with a lawyer as a central character, I resolved to get round to it as soon as I could. But of course such resolutions tend not to work out, and in fact I've seen the film - which came out on general release last year - before reading the book.

Connelly is said to have been happy with the adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer, and I can see why. This is a well-made film, with a sound plot, capable acting and good production values. It's not a ground-breaking movie, and I don't really see Connelly as a ground-breaking writer. But that isn't a criticism as far as I'm concerned. The film, like the Connelly books, offers genuinely enjoyable entertainment.

The story-line is clearly set out, and any tricksiness is in the twists of the plot rather than in the way the film unfolds its mysteries. Matthew McConaughey plays Mickey Haller, a criminal defence attorney who makes a good living acting for guilty people and, often, getting them off. He's split up with his wife, a prosecutor, pretty much for that reason. But they still fancy each other, and are good parents to their child. Overall, Haller is a likeable guy.

He is hired by a rich young man called Roulet to defend him on a charge of murdering a woman who may have been a prostitute. Roulet protests his innocence, but Haller begins to have doubts. The plot thickens when Haller's chum, an investigator, is murdered. But in the end, Haller makes sure that justice is done. Orthodox stuff, perhaps, but very well done and extremely watchable. Incidentally, I met Connelly once, more than a decade ago, in Manchester, and found him very affable. He also proved to be a witty public speaker.

Blood Work

Blood Work is a 2002 movie starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. I’ve just watched it and really enjoyed it – definitely a cut above the typical serial killer thriller. This is partly because Eastwood is a class act, and partly because the story comes from a novel by the excellent Michael Connelly.

Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, an FBI profiler who is taunted by a serial killer. Chasing the culprit, he suffers a heart attack, and needs a transplant. He retires to live on a boat, but then the sister of the woman who donated her heart to him comes looking for help. The donor was murdered – but by whom?

The crime seems to be linked to another killing, and Eastwood finds out what really connects the murders, ultimately discovering that the trail leads back – to himself. Along the way, he and the sister (the glamorous Wanda de Jesus) start a relationship. The finale is exciting and very well done.

I thought this film was very entertaining, and didn’t need to resort to too much gore to be gripping. There’s a rather nice cipher clue, and the photography is at times evocative, especially during Eastwood’s confrontation with the killer. Recommended.

Saturday Selection - Gilbert Adair and Margie Orford

I first encountered Gilbert Adair’s fiction when I read A Closed Book some years ago – it was an intelligent and ingenious spin on the crime genre. More recently, Adair has mined the fertile ground of the classic Golden Age whodunit for two amusing and neatly constructed pastiches, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd and A Mysterious Affair of Style. Both featured an agreeable amateur sleuth, Evadene Mount.

Now Evadne has returned in And Then There was No One, sub-titled The Last of Evadne Mount. It involves the murder of a Booker Prize winning novelist during a Sherlock Holmes festival in Switzerland. The Faber blurb is rather witty and pretty much irresistible:

‘It’s a novel like no other, a hall of mirrors, a hole-in-one, a tour de force of stylistic brio and narrative ingenuity, a conjuring act which ends with the conjuror, or author, actually sawing himself in half’.

Blimey!

A little more conventional is the tag-line ‘A killer who won’t stop. An investigator who won’t give up’ which adorns Margie Orford’s first novel Like Clockwork (Atlantic). The author lives in Cape Town, and that is where the story is set. A profiler, Dr Clare Hart, does the detective work and, needless to say, ‘is drawn into the web of a brutal serial killer’. The material may be samey, but Michael Connelly has given the book a very positive blurb, which makes it seem rather tempting.