The Silence of the Book Reviewer

It’s been unbearable.

Anyone that knows me, understands my talkative nature but there is a book I am not able to publish a review until Thursday 16^th of May, due an embargo reinforced by punitive legal restrictions.

The book is Cari Mora by my favourite novelist, the former journalist with the Associated Press, Mr Thomas Harris.

It’s been unbearable not being able to discuss this book, but tomorrow the restriction is lifted, and so I will be publishing my review, and seeing the opinions of others.

Last week, while walking in the rain in Covent Garden, my mind would not give me peace, as my cognition constantly revolved around the exposure to that manuscript, Cari Mora, the 6^th novel by Thomas Harris. I got a fright when I walked, lost in thought - which I wrote about HERE

Last weekend’s Crimefest was hard for me, as I was only able to relay the information made public by Wm Heinemann HERE and the extract made public via Charlotte Bush of PenguinRandomHouse, which can be read HERE while all the while I wanted to discuss the book with others, but was unable to do so, due to the ‘Non-Disclosure-Agreement’ in place – the silence of the reviewers.

During the weekend in Bristol, I enjoyed the company many but of particular joy was chatting to the awarding writer, biographer and journalist Ruth Dudley-Edwards and the wonderful, and equally well-read Kathryn Kennison. I am fortunate to have known these two important figures in the Crime Fiction Genre for many years. We even shared a table during the Crimefest Awards Gala Dinner. It was amusing that when I got talking about my love of the work of Thomas Harris, Kathryn thought I was referring to Robert Harris. Which made both of us laugh. It was somewhat surreal that the three of us found we were all wearing Green, on the close of Crimefest on Sunday. Coordinated by fluke.

Anyway, I digress, as ever.

While making my way to Goldsboro Books, in Covent Garden for the world launch of Thomas Harris’ Cari Mora – I was again lost in thought, contemplating the book that lay heavy on my mind when again - I found my name being shouted on the street, which again startled me. This time I noticed that it was from a group of women who called me over from a pavement cafe. Surreally it was from Ruth and Kathryn who had spotted me. They were seated outside a café, sipping coffee on a very sunny London evening, with friends when they noticed me walking by.

I stopped to talk to the group, though Thomas Harris was heavy on my mind. I reminded Kathryn about us confusing Robert and Thomas Harris at Crimefest, and said mischievously that all it would take now, is for Ruth to think we were talking about Irishman Richard Harris, at which point we all laughed and sang the chorus to this song.

I had to say my farewells quicker than I would have liked, for I needed to make my way to the launch of Cari Mora, and I didn’t wish to be late.

As I walked, I thought of my love of this former journalist’s work, and how the writers with the darkest imaginations make the nicest of people.

Age and Reflection

I’m coming up to 56, and revelling in a very rare moment. The release of a novel by a writer who marks my life.

Thomas Harris is a writer who combines a very dark imagination with such an amazing ability in terms of story-telling. Thomas Harris uses words so carefully selected, configured in such a manner weaving a narrative that deploys such economy, sheer elegance. I spoke with his British Publisher Jason Arthur and his Publicity Director Charlotte Bush, telling them that as he’s aged, he cuts back the words. Cari Mora is his Sixth novel, but what a book.

Each of his novels, in my opinion have got better, sharper and more disturbing. Or perhaps a better word would be distressing.

But, more on Thursday.

“Reading his prose is like running a slow hand down cold silk.”

Stephen King in 2019

"The best popular novel published since The Godfather"

Stephen King in 1981

I have pre-ordered the abridged reading as my May download from Audible. Jason Arthur of William Heinemann (PenguinRandomHouse UK) told me an amusing anecdote about Mr Harris getting his voice into character for Cari Mora.

Of all my audiobooks, the abridged readings by the author rank as my favourites, he’s a great narrator that acts as he reads. He uses accents just a tad above his native American South, Mississippi twang.

I know in vivid detail, these moments in my life, the release of a book by Thomas Harris decorates my memory, making everything vivid, and marked into retrievable memory; moments to return too, to think back at who I was at that time.

The clueless 17-year-old kid in 1981 buying Red Dragon in Hardcover purely on Stephen King’s recommendation, of all places SPCK, Chester. Surreally a Christian Book Store.

I was aged 25, a marine chemicals surveyor in 1988, and nearly screaming at London Heathrow, spotting an ‘early / advance’ copy of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in the airport bookstore. It was my second trip to the Arabian Gulf (for a six-week tour of duty), it made the flight memorable as well as that Six Weeks. I read the novel four times, back to back. I remember that time like it was yesterday.

I was 36 and a senior executive in a German Chemical Engineering company. I queued at Maxim Jakubowski’s MurderOne in Charing Cross, London on 7-8th June 1999, with a hotel Room Booked, and a bottle of Amarone waiting for HANNIBAL, and the first in the queue, for this book.

In 2006, I was 43 and under a huge burden setting up a complex business that was in its infancy, those difficult years. Thankfully after 15 years, it all came good. And my reading of HANNIBAL RISING helped me cope with the adverse camber of setting up a business, and watching it so very closely, because a business is like a flower, it can be crushed or wilt without close, close management especially in those early days.

I’m now 55, and CARI MORA arrives tomorrow, which I cannot publish a review until then, Thursday 16th May, 2019, so I will be keen to see what others make of this writer’s 6^th novel.

My review is written, and I have photos from last night, as well as video – which I will upload tomorrow when the embargo and legal restrictions are lifted – and my silence [and that of others] will be broken, because Thomas Harris’ narratives have decorated my mind, and the minds of others.

And thanks to Wm Heineman’s Charlotte Bush, there is an extraordinary competition, for which details are available from The Bookseller HERE  to coincide with this books launch, and Goldsboro Books have special slip-cased signed first editions on sale now. 

Speak tomorrow, the 'Avid Fan'

Ali Karim 15 / 5 / 2019

Ripley's Game

The close of Crime and Thriller conventions can be a tad melancholic, as for a few days we escape the strait-jackets that are our lives, interacting with our friends, spending late nights in the bar, laughing at the surreal nature of reality – so when the show unspools, one can be left feeling somewhat hollow.

The Crimefest Team addressed this matter, by closing the event with Mike Ripley’s surreal game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Cluedo.

To have a look at last year’s finale, click HERE

This year, Mike Ripley was again joined by his assistant, the writer, raconteur, broadcaster and literary commentator Peter Guttridge. Two teams of Crime and Thriller writers were assembled with political journalist and crime writer Ruth Dudley-Edwards captaining the Girls, with Alison Bruce and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir; while Lee Child captained the Boys with Andrew Taylor and Jeffery Deaver.

Crimefest as well as Mike Ripley allowed Shots Magazine to record the closing event, which we present here, in ten minute sections.

It was shot ‘gonzo style’ and will provide amusement, for laughter in the hands of the Talented Mr Ripley is indeed the best medicine, as far too many people take themselves too seriously.

Part One > https://youtu.be/cAqI8xw2O0g

Part Two > https://youtu.be/O90cSHgBXOo

Part Three > https://youtu.be/o1lEQOs6b0Q

Part Four > https://youtu.be/RjivEyaizgM

Part Five > https://youtu.be/3px-kySsm00

Part Six > https://youtu.be/7fByv9Cdc2U

Part Seven > https://youtu.be/cGDNzq11wNQ

Part Eight > https://youtu.be/VsnICQddz50

And remember Mike Ripley’s KISS KISS BANG BANG was presented with the 2018 HRF Keating Award; and click HERE for more information on the Golden Age of British Thriller Fiction.

Christmas Crime in Cambridge by Mike Ripley

(L to R - L C Tyler, Ayo Onatade & Richard Reynolds)

Last night’s “Christmas Chrime” party at Heffers majestic bookshop in Cambridge – a festive celebration of crime fiction complete with mince pies and mulled wine – had added value this year as it also saw the official launch of the new anthology called, very appropriately, Bodies in the Bookshop, from Ostara Publishing.

Devised by Heffers’ crime fiction supremo Richard Reynolds and edited jointly by the Detection Club’s Len Tyler and Shots’ very own Ayo Onatade, the Bodies anthology celebrates the famous ‘Bodies in the Bookshop’ parties held at Heffers for twenty years with twenty stories of murder, mayhem and a surprising number of rather lethal bookshops!

Among the distinguished – positively star-studded – cast of contributors are: Andrew Taylor, Peter Lovesey, Simon Brett, Stella Duffy, Christopher Fowler and Ann Cleeves and at the launch itself a goodly number of contributing authors were on hand to sign copies, including Cambridge’s own Alison Bruce and Michele Spring, Suzette A. Hill and Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Nicola Upson, Mandy Morton & Richard Reynolds

All those assembled used the launch party to join in a toast in honour of the late P. D. James, following a heartfelt tribute from crime-writer Nicola Upson who described Phyllis James as ‘a friend of crime writing and a friend of Heffers’ to whom everyone in the room – readers and writers – owed a significant debt'.

Pix show:

L C Tyler, Ayo and Richard Reynolds

Nicola Upson, who paid tribute to the late P D James, and RR.

Ruth Dudley Edwards Book Launch for KILLING THE EMPERORS

When Ruth Dudley Edwards has a book launch, she certainly does it in style. For the launch of Killing the Emperors, she chose the Cartoon Museum in London's Bloomsbury area. Despite London being in the grip of a winter freeze the place was filled with friends and celebs alike.

Ruth Dudley Edwards

I spotted Celia Imrie and Henry Kelly amongst the crowd. The crime world was well represented by Shelia Mitchell (Mrs HRF Keating); Denise Danks, Mike Ripley, Simon Brett, Ann Granger, Deryn Lake, NJ Cooper and Len Tyler to name but a few.

In her speech (she says she is always petrified when giving one but it doesn't come through), she told her audience how much the public was paying for some artwork which are literally pieces of shit. I kid you not, and her words. I think that is the most politest version I can give.

And here, I hand over to Mike Ripley - well a cut and paste job from his Getting Away With Murder column - because he does it better.

Susie Dunlop and Chiara of Allison & Busby flank Ruth

I Don’t Know If It’s Art, But…

For many years my old chum Ruth Dudley Edwards has used her comic ensemble cast (headed by Baroness Ida ‘Jack’ Troutbeck, Robert Amiss and the cat Plutarch) in a series of crime novels which put the satirical boot into, among other things: the House of Lords, the Northern Ireland peace talks, academic life (and death) in a Cambridge college and, of course, Americans.

Now, in Killing The Emperors, published by Allison & Busby, Ruth takes a chain saw to the world of ‘conceptual art’ allowing the wonderfully politically incorrect Baroness Troutbeck (a truly great comic character in danger of becoming a National Treasure) to spew bile and opprobrium on the heads and bank balances of just about every contemporary artist with the exception of David Hockney, who passes muster because ‘he does landscapes’ now.

Coming in for particular stick are conceptual artists who have displayed sharks in tanks, pickled lambs, unmade beds, neon signs and millions of sunflower seeds (no name; no libel suits), plus the gallery owners and rich patrons who encourage and finance the entire circus.

Baroness Troutbeck could be a gold medalist if putting both feet in the mouth whilst speaking was an Olympic sport and in Killing the Emperors she has to call on every ounce of natural invective energy in order to save herself and nine other movers-and-shakers of the modern art world kidnapped by a bankrupt Russian oligarch gone totally bonkers who is out for revenge on those who have sold him ‘art’.

The plot moves seamlessly from the sublime to the ridiculously sublime when it becomes clear that the kidnap victims are being held in a Big Brother style house and are forced to produce increasingly ridiculous pieces of modern ‘art’. Any hostage who fails to make the grade is quietly ‘evicted’, murdered and their bodies discovered in a suitably ‘artistic’ setting.

There are some great jokes in this book and even if the targets are not that difficult to hit for a satirist of Ruth’ s standing, one is left in no doubt that this is a subject close to her heart and one she has been seething about for several years.

So what next for the formidable Baroness Troutbeck? (Spoiler Alert: she survives – of course she does). How about the use of Sock Puppets, dodgy reviews and slagging-off fellow crime-writers on the internet and Twitter (whatever that is) and all the palaver of making public apologies afterwards? Surely that incestuous world must be a suitable target for Ruth’s barbed wit.

In fact I will suggest it to her the next time she takes me for a sumptuous luncheon at one of the many fine London clubs where she is a member. In fact, if memory serves, which it rarely does these days, it is coming up to twenty years since I first met Ruth Dudley Edwards in, I think, the Reform Club, where the late Sarah Caudwell introduced us and a jolly luncheon ensued.

Thankfully, there was no CCTV in those days; and surely the staff will have forgotten by now….

Where'es Ripley?

 

 

Crimefest 2010 - Day 1

Crimefest 2010 has once again come around and like last year I shall be blogging intermittently about the festival and what is happening. For those of you that read my blog last year you will know what to expect.

So far not much has happened. My trip down from London Paddington whilst uneventful was rather enjoyable. I had company this year. My friend Kirstie Long is also along for the ride. Even before we left London I had managed to bump in to the delightful Ruth Dudley Edwards whose non-fiction book on the Omagh bombing is one of the best non-fiction books this year along with her agent Jane Conway-Gordon. I also saw Barry Forshaw who biography on Stieg Larsson The Man who Left Too Soon has recently been published. The video trailer for the book can be found ">here

Arriving at the hotel was plain sailing (we took a taxi!) but so far the only fly in the ointment has been the fact that our room was not ready. This of course meant that I missed the first two panels. The first panel Sheena is a Punk Rocker: Good Girls, Bad Girls & Everything in Between - Writing Female Protagonist. The panel members were Cassandra Clark, Katherine Hall Page, Mary Andrea Clarke and Alison Joseph. The moderator was Cath Staincliffe who is the author of the television series Blue Murder. The second panel being Punishment Fits the Crime: Crime Fiction as Social Commentary - Writing about Society, Morality & Justice. The panel members were Lesley Horton, Adrian Magson, Edward Marston, Claire Seeber and was moderated by Steve Mosby. I am really upset about this as I really wanted to get to the second panel. I am now just keeping my fingers crossed that I will get to the third panel but it is not looking likely though our room is ready my luggage has gone awol! The only saving grace so far has been seeing Donna Moore.

I'll let you know what happens!