Kirkus and reviews

From the United States comes the news that another source of crime fiction reviews is to cease publication. This time it is Kirkus, which that I’ve never actually seen in the flesh, so to speak, but only via extracts either photocopied or online. For those unfamiliar with it, Kirkus was well-known for including quite a number of rather harsh reviews, and at least one good crime writing friend of mine becomes quite animated (not in a happy way) if ever Kirkus is mentioned. But we are all prejudiced by our own experiences, and when Kirkus reviewed my books, it always seemed positive. So I’m sorry to see Kirkus disappear from a personal perspective – but more important, this development means that mid-list writers will tend to get even less attention from now on, and that’s a shame.

On a much happier note, I am in the debt of that witty blogger (and notable crime writer) Bill Crider, who kindly supplied me with a scan of a marvellous review of Dancing for the Hangman in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Jon L. Breen is one of the most respected crime reviewers in the US, and so I’m especially gratified that he said that the book is ‘one of the finest fictionalizations of a classical criminal case I’ve ever read.’

Suffice to say that this is a quote I’ll long cherish. Jon Breen also mentions ‘excellent and sometimes amusing writing’, and he picks up on the fact that the book contains one or two crime fiction in-jokes – not many readers have noticed this. For instance, as he points out, my ‘Notes for the Curious’ at the end of the book are so called in tribute to the great John Dickson Carr,

Publishers’ Weekly adds that the book ‘ranks among Edwards’s best work’, and I’ve been lucky enough to have The Serpent Pool noticed by the same publication at almost the same time. And kindly noticed, too: ‘The musty, sedate world of old books provides the backdrop for a series of gruesome murders in Edwards's absorbing fourth Lake District mystery.’

Good reviews are no guarantee of huge sales, that’s for sure. But they do help, and in any event they are great for morale. One can only hope that online reviews of quality fill the gap that Kirkus will leave.

The First Verdict

Whenever one produces a new book, inevitably one awaits the verdict of readers and reviewers with a mixture of hope and trepidation. It's important, I think, for an author to retain belief in his or her book even if it is not widely appreciated to begin with - but of course, it's much more pleasurable if the early reaction is positive.

I have high hopes of The Serpent Pool, because although I struggled over it at first, later on it felt as though the plot strands had come together in just the way I'd hoped when I started out on chapter one. And the response of my agent and various publishers has been extremely encouraging. Even so, that is no guarantee of good reviews (or any reviews, these days.)

So I'm glad to say that Booklist has given the novel the thumbs-up in advance of publication, and I'm so pleased and relieved that I can't resist recording David Pitt's assessment in full:

'Book lovers, especially fans of nineteenth-century writer and opium addict Thomas de Quincey, will enjoy the latest Lake District mystery. DCI Hannah Scarlett reopens another cold case, this one involving the drowning death, seven years ago, of a young woman. But Hannah is distracted by her personal life, especially by her rocky relationship with book dealer Marc Amos, who is himself rather upset over the death of one his best customers (whose murder-by-fire opens the novel). Meanwhile, Hannah’s friend and sometime sidekick, historian Daniel Kind, is deep into a new book on de Quincey (who was among the first writers to consider murder as the basis of a literary art form), but he, too, soon becomes distracted: his sister thinks she has accidentally killed her lover, who also happens to be a book collector. In his usual leisurely but always compelling way, Edwards pulls together these various plot threads, rewarding the patient reader with a story that is complex and intellectually stimulating. Certainly the most labyrinthine of the Lake District novels, but perhaps also the best.'