Why are so many crime authors writing historical novels today? It’s a great question with about a hundred answers. Some are writing about specific people or events in the past, both public or personal, that have piqued their curiosity. Others are writing about an era in which civilization and people were so different from today…
It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. So opens Frederick Forsyth‘s The Day of the Jackal, on the entirely non-fictional 1963 execution of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, a key cog of the Organisation Armée Secrète…
When reading a book, there’s nothing quite like a pulsating pursuit to get you turning the pages. I’ve always loved the use of the cat-and-mouse chase as a plot device; the moment the tension boils over that sparks the frantic escape, the intense hunt, the heart-stopping near misses, the showdown between the hunter and the…
The Mystery Writers of America have announced the Edgar Award nominees and special winners. The Edgars banquet—an annual black-tie gala celebrating crime fiction, non-fiction, and television writing—will be held on Thursday, April 28th, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. As always, it's a fantastic list of great work that deserves to…
Hiding in plain sight! Espionage author Frederick Forsyth reveals his 20 years of spying for MI6 in his upcoming autobiography. Read more in the Telegraph: “It is 55, 60 years later. There have been memoirs written, highly secret minutes have been published. There's no East Germany, no Stasi, no KGB, no Soviet Union, so where's…
For novelists, the Second World War is a canvas with the primary colors already filled in — a conflict of cataclysmic proportion that changed not only the map of the world, but reached deep inside the souls of nations. Moreover, it's the last major conflict in which writers feel comfortable embracing one side without reservation,…
