THOMAS TRANG chats to Paul Burke about Dark Neon Dirt, LA heists, Caravaggio, Hollywood money, Elmore Leonard and Andor.

DARK NEON DIRT Shaun Nguyen is a Vietnamese war orphan who made it to America. But danger was never far behind – from the Chinatown gangs he ran with in New York, to his years in Iraq dodging bullets and defusing bombs. Nguyen learnt how to survive. By all means necessary.

Now he’s a high-end thief in Los Angeles. One of the best, but smart enough to know he’s living on borrowed time. Then a job goes sideways, leaving bodies on the Hollywood Freeway, stolen diamonds in his pocket, and a target on his back.

Which gets the attention of Thomas Monroe, an LAPD lieutenant who’s been hunting Nguyen for years. Captain Ahab with a gun and badge, plus his own dirty secrets closing in on him fast. The two of them are set on a collision course – a thief who won’t be caught and the cop who doesn’t miss.

Not exactly the quiet life Nguyen is after, especially now he’s met a mysterious woman who’s landed in town. They fall for each other hard. A gallerist living in France who used to be with the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Able to spot forgeries a mile off, but she hasn’t figured him out yet.

So once he wraps up this business with the diamonds, Nguyen is done with the game. The problem is she’s not quite done with the FBI.

Welcome to the City of Angels – where everyone has an angle.

Thomas Trang is a French/Vietnamese writer currently living in the UK after stints in Australia, New York, and Singapore. His stories have previously appeared in FutureQuake, Full House Literary and the Revolutions 2 anthology. He is currently working on a SF trilogy which mixes cyberpunk with the gritty realpolitik of The Wire and Cold War spy fiction.

Mentions: Army of Shadows (Fr. Film), Dennis Lehane, Michael Clayton (Am. Film), Sarah Paretsky, Don De Lillo, Hunter (Fr. TV)  Miami Vice (TV show), Ilyn Welch.

Recommendations 

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

SEASON 8: CLARE LESLIE HALL BROKEN COUNTRY & GUY MORPUSS A TRIAL  IN THREE ACTS #OnTheSofaWithVictoria 

Mentioned: The Go Between LP Hartley, Atonement Ian McEwan, Graham Bartlett.

Recommendations: I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith, An Instance of the Finger Post Iain Pairs

VICTORIA SELMAN
SundayTimes bestselling author of ALL THE LITTLE LIARS
Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeS
Website for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.com
Twitter: @VictoriaSelman

We love to hear from our listeners! Find me on Twitter @VictoriaSelman and join in the chat using #OnTheSofaWithVictoria

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Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival - Episode 3 recorded at the Ceredigion Museum and Aberystwyth Library featuring interviews with authors and excerpts of live panels. 

Featuring: Interviews - Sarah Bax Horton, Mari Hannah & Sarah Todd Taylor and a brief panel excerpt featruing Jacky Collins with Mari Hannah & Clare Mackintosh. Interview Mari Hannah 

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival Wales' only international crime writing festival, Aberystwyth 25th-27th April, 2025. Guests include Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths, Mari Hannah, Chris Lloyd, Clare Mackintosh, Zoe Sharp, Graham Bartlett, Vaseem Khan, Abir Mukherjee, Alis Hawkins, Nicola Williams, Louise Mumford, Phil Rowlands. Ayo Onatade, Dr. Noir, Matt Johnson, Gwen Parrott and many more.

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival Sponsors: Arts Council of Wales, Ceridigeon Museum, Love Ceridigeon, Aberystwyth govt., Literature Wales, Waterstones, Welsh Govt., Lottery, Hugh James and National Library of Wales.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2024. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in late 2025.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

Reviews of the new releases in crime fiction May, 2025.

Featuring:

A Beautiful Way to Die Eleni Kyriacou 

The Doorman Chris Pavone 

Going Home in the Dark Dean Koontz

Two Adam Lapid Mysteries Jonathan Dunsky 

Kill Pill David Barbaree 

A Death in the Afternoon Julie Anderson

The Lady in the Park David Reynolds 

Death by Intent Jacqueline Harrett  

The Golden Age of Murder Martin Edwards

Motives Unknown An Anthology of Writing From the North Ed. Nathan Connolly & Harriet Hirshman

Rum Punch Elmore Leonard 

Noted new release - not reviewed - Whistle Linwood Barclay

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival Special Episode 2 recorded at the Ceredigion Museum and Aberystwyth Library featuring interviews with authors and excerpts of live panels. 

Featuring: LJ Shepherd, Jacqueline Harrett, Diamond Crime panel, Heidi Amsinck, Foreign Fields panel, Gwenllian Williams, Vaseem Khan (sneak appearance by Abir Mukherjee), Arresting Fun panel, Philip Gwynne Jones.

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival Wales' only international crime writing festival, Aberystwyth 25th-27th April, 2025. Guests include Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths, Mari Hannah, Chris Lloyd, Clare Mackintosh, Zoe Sharp, Graham Bartlett, Vaseem Khan, Abir Mukherjee, Alis Hawkins, Nicola Williams, Louise Mumford, Phil Rowlands. Ayo Onatade, Dr. Noir, Matt Johnson, Gwen Parrott and many more.

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival Sponsors: Arts Council of Wales, Ceridigeon Museum, Love Ceridigeon, Aberystwyth govt., Literature Wales, Waterstones, Welsh Govt., Lottery, Hugh James and National Library of Wales.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2024. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in late 2025.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

MICHAEL AMOS CODY chats to Paul Burke about his STREETS OF NASHVILLE, new country music, North Carolina, MTV, tragic inspiration for the novel, why done it not whodunnit and Runion.

In Streets of Nashville, Ezra MacRae has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of songs and their writers, and he has moved from the North Carolina mountains to Nashville's Music Row with the dream of becoming part of that songwriting world. Yet just as he is out on the town to celebrate his first good fortune after several years of trying-a staff songwriting contract with an independent music publisher-he witnesses the man who signed on the dotted lines with him gunned down with three others outside his Music Row office. The masked gunman spares Ezra. But why?

Michael Amos Cody was born in the South Carolina Lowcountry and raised in the North Carolina highlands. He spent his twenties writing songs in Nashville and his thirties in school. He's the author of the novel Gabriel's Songbook (Pisgah Press) and short fiction that has appeared in Yemassee, Tampa Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. His short story collection, A Twilight Reel (Pisgah Press) won the Short Story / Anthology category of the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2022. Cody lives with his wife Leesa in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and teaches in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University.

Author blog on Runion: https://michaelamoscody.com/2019/05/24/runion-north-carolina/

Mentions: David Joy, Cormac McCarthy, Bruce Springsteen, Bob McDill, Thomas Wolfe, James Lee Burke, Heather Levy, CW Blackwell, Monster City Michael Arntfield, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Charles Brockton Brown, Peter McDade, Don DeLillo - Great Jones Street.

Recommendations: anything by Tony Hillerman and the adaptation of two of his novels for streaming Dark Wind.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

JEREMY VINE chats to Paul Burke about his new murder mystery Murder on Line One, regional radio, celebrity, Agatha Christie and washing our clothes.

MURDER ON LINE ONE There's a killer on the airwaves … and they're calling for you. Darkness looms over sunny Sidmouth, when an unsolved murder comes to the attention of late-night radio talk show host Edward Temmis. Recently sacked from his beloved job after a devastating tragedy, Edward is cast adrift – until he meets Stevie, whose grandmother, a devoted listener, died in a suspicious fire last year. Well, nobody hurts his listeners and helping Stevie might just give him the purpose he needs. Joined by his old fling, Kim, they discover Stevie's grandmother wasn't the only one of his listeners targeted – this is just the tip of the iceberg. But who is pursuing his ageing audience and why? And can Edward, Stevie and Kim get to the bottom of this mystery before it’s too late?

JEREMY VINE is a well-known British broadcaster who presents a daily show on BBC Radio 2 called The Jeremy Vine Show — and also a self-titled daily news and chat programme on Channel 5. This is why he likes strong coffee. He has been Sony Speech Broadcaster of the Year, and won Interview of the Year for the seminal moment when Gordon Brown put his head in his hands during the 2010 election campaign. Jeremy also does the BBC election graphics and rides a penny farthing, although not at the same time. 'The Diver and The Lover' is his first serious novel. It came out of a chance encounter with a painting. Born in 1965, he of course loves the music of Joy Division, The Cure and Elvis Costello. He is married to Rachel and they have two teenage daughters.

Recommendations Dean Koontz The Watcher, Terry Hayes I Am Pilgrim. Jane Casey, CL Taylor, Lucy Foley. Jodi Picault, Suk Pannu, Vaseem Khan.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

GEORGINA CLARKE chats to Paul Burke about her new historical mystery VIPER IN THE NEST, Lizzie Hardwicke, Georgian England, 

VIPER IN THE NEST: London, June 1759. When a charmless civil servant takes his own life, few are interested in his death. But Lizzie Hardwicke, who plies her trade in the brothels of London whilst also working as an undercover sleuth for the magistrate, can see no reason why a man who had everything to look forward to would wish to end his life.

Lizzie's search for answers takes her from the smoke-filled rooms of fashionable gambling houses, where politicians mix ambition with pleasure, to the violent streets of Soho, ready to erupt with riots in the sultry summer heat. All the while, she is navigating her complicated feelings for the magistrate's trusted assistant, Will Davenport, and a disturbing situation at home.

Then a gambling house owner is brutally murdered, and Lizzie finds herself tangled in a chaos that she cannot control. The darkest of secrets threatens to turn Davenport against her forever; its exposure will send her to the gallows.

Recommendations: Natalie Marlow, CJ Sansom

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

RAYMOND BENSON chats to Paul Burke about writing James Bond (6 novels, 3 novelizations and 3 short stories), The James Bond Companion, fantasy spy fiction, Films & Novels, Tom Clancy, The Union, favourite Fleming and Legacy.

News: Coming later this year The Hook and the Eye as part of the ever expanding Bond franchise Raymond Benson is writing a novel about American spy Felix Leiter due out in October.

JAMES BOND: THE RAYMOND BENSON YEARS For the first time ever, all six of Raymond Benson's original James Bond novels are available together in one omnibus edition.
James Bond: The Raymond Benson Years collects Zero Minus Ten, The Facts of Death, High Time to Kill, DoubleShot, Never Dream of Dying, The Man with the Red Tattoo. These classic tales show Benson at his finest and 007 at his most heroic.

Raymond Benson is the author of over forty published titles. He is the third--and first American--to write continuation James Bond novels (six original titles and three film novelizations, between 1996-2002), and for the best-selling and acclaimed five-book serial, THE BLACK STILETTO (2011-2014). THE MAD, MAD MURDERS OF MARIGOLD WAY appeared in 2022. His most recent works include the suspense novels, THE SECRETS ON CHICORY LANE, IN THE HUSH OF THE NIGHT, BLUES IN THE DARK, and HOTEL DESTINY--A GHOST NOIR. His backlist of original thrillers (EVIL HOURS, TORMENT--A LOVE STORY, ARTIFACT OF EVIL, A HARD DAY'S DEATH, DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE, and others) as well as his classic reference book from 1984, THE JAMES BOND BEDSIDE COMPANION, are available as Kindle e-books. Raymond is also a prolific tie-in writer: the first two best-selling TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL novels (for the latter he used the pseudonym of "David Michaels"), and with John Milius he wrote HOMEFRONT: THE VOICE OF FREEDOM. He also produced novelizations of other popular videogames--METAL GEAR SOLID and METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY, HITMAN (HITMAN: DAMNATION, and DYING LIGHT (DYING LIGHT--NIGHTMARE ROW). The full story is at his website... www.raymondbenson.com!

Recommendations: 

Film: The Seventh Seal Dir. Ingmar Bergman, Duck Soup The Marx Brothers.

Books: Ruth Rendell 

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2025. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out early 2026.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,

New Crime Fiction for April 2025 reviewed by Paul Burke 

The Secret Room by Jane Casey ✓

Out of the Dark by Heidi Amsinck✓

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronika Dapunt✓

10 Marchfield Square by Nicola Whyte✓

Lovers of Franz K by Burnham Sönmez, trans. from the Kurdish by Sami Hêzil. ✓

Sting of the Nettle by Colin Bostock-Smith✓

The Children of Eve John Connolly✓

Marble Hall Murders Anthony Horowitz ✓

Galway Confidential Ken Bruen✓

Ken Bruen An Appreciation RIP

Human Remains Jo Callaghan✓

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network, Punk Noir Magazine (fiction contribution). He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2024. His first book An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in late 2025.

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023 & 2024 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,