Barry Forshaw is acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction from European countries, but his principal area of expertise is in the British crime arena. After the success of earlier entries in the series, Nordic Noir and Euro Noir, he returns to the UK to produce the perfect reader's guide to modern British crime fiction. Every major living British writer is considered, often through a concentration on one or two key books, and exciting new talents are highlighted for the reader. Forshaw's personal acquaintance with writers, editors and publishers is unparalleled, so Brit Noir features interviews with (and quotations from) the writers, editors and publishers themselves.
Barry Forshaw is acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction from European countries, but his principal area of expertise is in the British crime arena. After the success of earlier entries in the series, Nordic Noir and Euro Noir, he returns to the UK to produce the perfect reader's guide to modern British crime fiction. Every major living British writer is considered, often through a concentration on one or two key books, and exciting new talents are highlighted for the reader. Forshaw's personal acquaintance with writers, editors and publishers is unparalleled, so Brit Noir features interviews with (and quotations from) the writers, editors and publishers themselves.
Brit Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to British Crime Fiction, Film & TV
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Overview
Barry Forshaw is acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction from European countries, but his principal area of expertise is in the British crime arena. After the success of earlier entries in the series, Nordic Noir and Euro Noir, he returns to the UK to produce the perfect reader's guide to modern British crime fiction. Every major living British writer is considered, often through a concentration on one or two key books, and exciting new talents are highlighted for the reader. Forshaw's personal acquaintance with writers, editors and publishers is unparalleled, so Brit Noir features interviews with (and quotations from) the writers, editors and publishers themselves.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781843446415 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oldcastle Books |
| Publication date: | 03/25/2016 |
| Series: | Pocket Essential Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 585 KB |
About the Author
Barry Forshaw is one of the UK's leading experts on crime fiction and film. Books include Crime Fiction: A Reader's Guide, Nordic Noir, Italian Cinema, American Noir and British Crime Film. Other work: Sex and Film, British Gothic Cinema, Euro Noir, Historical Noir, BFI War of the Worlds and the Keating Award-winners British Crime Writing Encyclopedia and Brit Noir. He writes for various newspapers, contributes Blu-ray extras, broadcasts, chairs events and edits Crime Time. crimetime.co.uk
Read an Excerpt
Brit Noir
The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of the British Isles
By Barry Forshaw
Oldcastle Books
Copyright © 2016 Barry ForshawAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84344-641-5
CHAPTER 1
Section One: The novels and the writers
England and Wales
London
Success was something of a double-edged sword for MO HAYDER with her début novel Birdman: the book enjoyed astonishing sales, but called down a fearsome wrath on the author for unflinchingly entering the blood-boltered territory of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter books. Part of the fuss was clearly to do with the fact that a woman writer had handled scenes of horror and violence so authoritatively, and there was little surprise when the subsequent The Treatment provoked a similar furore. Actually, it's a remarkably vivid and meticulously detailed shocker: less grimly compelling than its predecessor, perhaps, but still a world away from the cosy reassurance of much current crime fiction. In a shady south London residential street, a husband and wife are found tied up, the man near death. Both have been beaten and are suffering from acute dehydration. DI Jack Caffery of the Met's murder squad AMIP is told to investigate the disappearance of the couple's son, and, as he uncovers a series of dark parallels with his own life, he finds it more and more difficult to make the tough decisions necessary to crack a scarifying case. As in Birdman, Caffery is characterised with particular skill, and Hayder is able (for the most part) to make us forget the very familiar cloth he's cut from. The personal involvement of a cop in a grim case is an over-familiar theme, but it's rarely been dispatched with the panache and vividness on display here.
Is there anyone else in the crime genre currently writing anything as quirky and idiosyncratic as CHRISTOPHER FOWLER's Bryant and May series? (And let's disabuse readers of the mistaken notion that this is a historical series, as many seem to think — it wouldn't be in this book if it were.) Fowler eschews all recognisable genres, though the cases for his detective duo have resonances of the darker corners of British Golden Age fiction. In Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is handed a typically outlandish case in which two teenagers have seen a corpse apparently stepping out of its grave — with one of them subsequently dying in a hit-and-run accident. Arthur Bryant is stimulated by the bizarreness of the case but is tasked with finding out who has made away with the ravens from the Tower of London. (Not an insignificant crime, as it is well known that when the ravens leave the Tower, Britain itself will fall.) The usual smorgasbord of grotesque incident and stygian humour is on offer, and if you aren't already an aficionado, I suggest you find out what the fuss is about before the forthcoming television series clinically removes Fowler's individual tone of voice.
It is both a virtue and a curse when one doesn't require a great deal of sleep. Sometimes — when I'm wide awake in the wee small hours with only the sound of urban foxes outside my window suggesting something else is alive — I feel that I'd prefer to be like ordinary people who need eight hours' shuteye. But here's the virtue of this unusual state: it gives one ample time to catch up with all the writers one wants to read; sometimes they are old favourites, sometimes new discoveries. And — a real pleasure — sometimes in these nocturnal explorations I encounter the work of a writer who (while moving in familiar waters) demonstrates an innovative and quirky imagination, transforming narratives with whose accoutrements we're familiar. Debut writer SARAH HILARY was most decidedly in that category, and even though her character DI Marnie Rome may initially appear to owe something to other female coppers (Lynda La Plante's Tennison, for example), Marnie turns out to be very much her own woman — as is Hilary herself, with her crisp and direct style.
In Someone Else's Skin, DI Rome is dispatched to a woman's shelter with her partner DS Noah Jake. Lying stabbed on the floor is the husband of one of the women from the shelter. Rome finds herself opening the proverbial can of worms, and a slew of dark secrets will be exposed before a final violent confrontation in a kitchen. As well as functioning as a well-honed police procedural, this is very much a novel of character — DI Rome in particular is strikingly well realised, and even such issues as domestic abuse are responsibly incorporated into the fabric of the novel. Someone Else's Skin is a book that hits the ground running, and readers will be keen to see more of the tenacious Marnie Rome.
With SJ WATSON's Before I Go To Sleep, British publishing saw something of a phenomenon. Watson may have borrowed the book's central premise from Christopher Nolan's film Memento (memory-deprived protagonist struggling to make sense of their life), but the assurance with which he finessed his narrative belied his inexperience and rivalled that of such old hands as Robert Harris. Watson's follow-up novel in 2015 was Second Life.
The refreshingly forthright STELLA DUFFY has made a success of several careers: in the theatre, in broadcasting and as the creator of a variety of books in different genres (including the historical field). As with the earlier work of Val McDermid, Duffy's protagonist is a lesbian, the private investigator Saz Martin, who has been put through her paces in such tautly written, quirky novels as Fresh Flesh. There is a social agenda behind the books, but never at the expense of the exigencies of strong, persuasive storytelling.
For some time now, MARK BILLINGHAM's lean and gritty urban thrillers featuring DI Tom Thorne have been massive commercial successes. And such books as In the Dark, a standalone novel in which Thorne makes only a cameo appearance, demonstrate that Billingham can make trenchant comments about British society while never neglecting his ironclad narrative skills. Billingham, who has a background in stand-up comedy, has quoted some interesting statistical findings in his talks to book groups: many women would rather spend time reading a thriller than having sex. Billingham appears to be bemused by this statistic, but (if the truth were told) the author himself is part of the problem: his crime novels are undoubtedly a source of pure enjoyment (without the bother of having to take off one's clothes), although thrillers such as Lifeless are journeys into the most disturbing aspects of the human psyche. It's interesting that Billingham's books have a reputation for extreme violence, because they deal more in atmosphere — a real sense of dread is quietly conveyed to the reader.
In Buried, ex-DCI Mullen, a retired police officer, is distressed when his son disappears. Is he the victim of a kidnapping? Tom Thorne begins his inquiry by seeking everyone who might have a score to settle with the boy's father. And he discovers something intriguing: Mullen has not mentioned the person who would appear to be the prime suspect — a man who had once made threats against Mullen and his family and who, moreover, is under suspicion for another killing. Billingham always does considerable research for his books to ensure the authenticity of his police detail, but he was obliged to make up some of the procedural aspects here as the Met is particularly secretive on the issue of kidnapping. Billingham avoids the obvious set pieces that can instantly pique the reader's attention, and ensures that Thorne's encounter with evil is handled in a dispassionate fashion, even though Thorne himself is less strongly characterised than usual in this, his sixth outing. The recent Time of Death (the thirteenth Thorne) is Billingham on top form.
LAURA WILSON's work bristles with some of the best crime writing in the UK — she is one of the country's most searching psychological novelists working in the genre. There are also ghosts of one of Wilson's favourite novelists, Patrick Hamilton, in the luminous and richly detailed conjuring of the London of various eras in her books. Wilson has never been happy staying within the parameters of the conventional crime novel, and in My Best Friend she deploys a device whereby the novel is narrated by three strongly delineated protagonists. Her most recent work features her sympathetic copper Ted Stratton, while one of her most accomplished books is 2015's contemporary (non-Stratton) The Wrong Girl.
Many well-heeled TV presenters face a variety of pitfalls that could sabotage their comfortable lives: a messy divorce, inconvenient revelations about their private life. But Gaby Mortimer, heroine of SABINE DURRANT's Under Your Skin, finds something more sinister to threaten her equilibrium. When running on the common near her London house, she discovers the body of a woman lying in the brambles, the victim of a savage strangling. But what Gaby is not expecting is the fact that she is to become the principal suspect for the crime. (The murder victim was wearing Gaby's T-shirt, and ever more damning evidence begins to point in her direction.) The police appear to be convinced of Gaby's guilt, but despite this, she tries to keep her life on track. But as many a TV personality (and politician) has found, it's virtually impossible to carry on with the day job when you are under scrutiny by reporters, and all around people regard you with suspicion. Things can only get worse — and they do, to the extent that Gaby begins to doubt her own sanity. But then an attractive journalist called Jack appears, apparently believing in Gaby's innocence and ready to help. Gaby's troubles, however, are only just beginning. Durrant has written for teenage girls, but there is absolutely nothing adolescent about this strikingly constructed and economically written thriller, a book that steadily draws the reader into the plight of its besieged heroine and springs a variety of surprises — surprises we are unable to second-guess. And both male and female readers find it easy to identify with Gaby, with the underpinnings of her life relentlessly pulled away. In fact, she is the kind of woman in extreme situations that Nicci French used to write about before turning to a series character, and Under Your Skin has all the authority of the best novels by French. Durrant's treatment of the characters' psychology is, admittedly, straightforward rather than nuanced, but that strategy ensures that the inexorable grip never slackens. Let's hope that she continues to spend her time writing for adults: we need thriller writers who can reinvigorate the genre — and it looks like Durrant may be able to do just that.
The amazing — and immediate — success of MARTINA COLE's crime novels must be a source of despair to those writers who have struggled for years. Right from the start, she has enjoyed reader approval for her distinctive, gritty fiction. Even the workaday TV adaptations of Dangerous Lady and The Jump merely brought more kudos her way (she's been less lucky than Colin Dexter in her transfer to the screen — but with her sales, she should worry). In Broken, a child is abandoned in a deserted stretch of woodland and another on the top of a derelict building. DI Kate Burrows makes the inevitable connections, and when one child dies, she finds herself up against a killer utterly without scruples. Her lover Patrick offers support in this troubling case, but he is under pressure himself. A body is found in his Soho club, and Patrick is on the line as a suspect. And Kate begins to doubt him ... In prose that is always trenchant, Cole delivers the goods throughout this lengthy and ambitious narrative. Kate is an exuberantly characterised heroine, and the sardonic Patrick enjoys equally persuasive handling from the author. The Good Life — which Cole has certainly earned the right to enjoy — continued her run of bestsellers (as did, most recently, Get Even).
Speaking to MICK HERRON, I learned about his adept use of London locations. 'I rarely choose locations: research averse, I've found that my novels tend to be set in the areas I frequently inhabit. Silicon Roundabout is a whirling dervish of a road junction that comes into its own on winter afternoons, when dark arrives early, and the advertising hoardings scream out their video messages above the red and white kaleidoscope made by furious traffic. Few things are as irresistibly noir as neon. It's like glitter laid on grime; a cheap makeover that only looks good as long as the light is bad. So it's round here that I have Tom Bettany wander in Nobody Walks: unkempt and haggard, carrying his dead son's ashes in a bag, he circles the streets looking for drug dealers among those who haunt the bars and bop the night away. What he finds isn't quite what he thought he was looking for, but that too is an aspect of noir — that you can't avoid the fate that awaits you, whichever streets you choose to wander down.' Herron's 2016 novel Real Tigers has received enthusiastic early notices.
Perhaps because of a reaction against what detractors called the laddish fiction of TONY PARSONS (although he clearly had complex strategies in play in his examination of sex and relationships), the writer has recently taken a new direction, reinventing himself in The Murder Bag as a pugnacious crime writer — although even in this new venture he has encountered resistance. If you are shell-shocked from the army of novels featuring tough maverick cops — and are convinced that nothing new can invigorate the genre — perhaps you should pick up The Murder Bag. Yes, we've met detectives at loggerheads with their daughters (as here) before, from Wallander to Rebus. But there are two things that instantly lift this one out of the rut: parenting is a speciality of the author's work and it's treated with a nuance largely absent elsewhere in crime fiction. And Parsons, a quintessential London writer, evokes his city with pungency. Bolshie DC Max Wolfe is investigating a homicide in which a banker's throat has been cut; a second victim is a homeless heroin addict. The connection: an upscale private school. This first crime novel was followed by The Slaughter Man.
LYNDA LA PLANTE — the creator of Prime Suspect — is a woman of conviction. Many things clearly make her blood boil — not least the way in which she perceives this country's justice system as being heavily weighted on the side of the criminal rather than the victim, and the ease with which violent sexual offenders can work the system and be back on the streets in a derisorily short time. Authors frequently remind us that the views of their characters are not necessarily their own, but after reading a typical La Plante novel there can be little doubt that it's the author's persuasive (and often incendiary) views that leap off the page — not least because they are espoused in the book not just by the unsympathetic misogynist coppers, but also by the driven DCI James Langton and even La Plante's vulnerable but tough heroine DI Anna Travis.
In Clean Cut, Langton is in pursuit of a truly nasty group of illegal immigrants who have murdered a young prostitute. Then Langton himself is viciously slashed in the chest and leg with a machete and hospitalised — with the prospect of his police career coming to an end. Langton is conducting a clandestine affair with another detective, DI Anna Travis, who has a similarly daunting load on her shoulders: a fierce commitment to the job, battles with boneheaded colleagues, and a readiness to place herself in highly dangerous situations. But her biggest problem is her fractious relationship with the withholding Langton — difficult enough in his selfishness and lack of commitment before he is brutally wounded, but almost insufferable as he concentrates his frustration on Anna whenever she visits his nursing home. She is working on another, related case in which the body of a woman has been found sexually assaulted and mutilated — and soon Travis and Langton are up against something far more sinister than squalid people trafficking (involving voodoo, torture and a truly monstrous villain).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Brit Noir by Barry Forshaw. Copyright © 2016 Barry Forshaw. Excerpted by permission of Oldcastle Books.
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