Crime Time FM

JOSEPH KANON chats to Paul Burke about his new spy thriller SHANGHAI,

SHANGHAI Daniel Lohr, sensing that the Nazis are closing in on the Jews, leaves his dying father in Berlin and boards a ship to Shanghai. His passage is dependent upon him delivering a package to his shady uncle, his father’s brother, upon arrival. Daniel has no idea what the package contains. On board is Leah, also fleeing the Nazis. She and Daniel conduct a passionate but brief shipboard affair, but are separated as soon as the ship docks in Shanghai. Will he ever see her again?
Daniel is immediately plunged into his uncle’s seductive and corrupt world, and becomes involved in the launch of a new nightclub, the biggest, best and most glitzy in town. When violence breaks out and lives are at risk, he finds himself drawn irrevocably into the terrifying underworld that is wartime Shanghai.

JOSEPH KANON is the Edgar Award-winning author of The Berlin Exchange, The Accomplice, Defectors, Leaving Berlin, Istanbul Passage, Stardust, Alibi, The Prodigal Spy, Los Alamos and The Good German, which was made into a major film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Other awards include the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers and the Human Writes Award of the Anne Frank Foundation. He lives in New York City. Visit him online at Joseph.Kanon.com

Recommendations: John le Carré, Graham Greene, JG Ballard, Dan Fesperman
Mentions: Joseph Kanon Stardust, Los Alamos, Istanbul, Shanghai

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

CHRIS HARDING THORNTON chats to Paul Burke about her new novel LITTLE UNDERWORLD, being a seventh generation Nebraskan, noir, PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS and music.   

LITTLE UNDERWORLD: Omaha, 1930. When ex-cop-turned-PI Jim Beely murders the man who assaulted his fourteen-year-old daughter, the last person he wants to see is local crooked cop Frank Tvrdik. Luckily, Frank isn’t interested in the lifeless body in Jim’s car. Frank has a proposition: he’ll make the dead man disappear if Jim helps take down Elmer Kobb, who is vying for city commissioner and willing to backstab anyone who gets in his way.
Soon, Jim and Frank are sucked into a seedy world of crime and corruption, where no one is safe and nothing is what it seems. Then Jim is violently attacked and one of his operatives turns up dead within the span of twelve hours, and his search for the truth yields a web of lies and a mounting death toll. As he and Frank are pulled deeper into the city’s dark underbelly and its absurd political machinations, Jim begins to question everything he knows about Omaha and his place in it.
In her moody, ferocious, and darkly funny follow-up to Pickard County Atlas, a novel Tana French called a "slow-burning beauty of a book," the native Nebraskan Chris Harding Thornton mines Omaha's sordid past, melding fact and fiction into an unforgettable tale of danger and deceit. Little Underworld asks: What does it mean to be good, and what is left for those of us who aren’t?

Chris Harding Thornton, a seventh-generation Nebraskan, holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska, where she has taught literature and writing courses. Her other professions have included quality assurance overseer at a condom factory, jar-lid screwer at a plastics plant, closer at Burger King, record store clerk, all-ages club manager, and PR writer. Pickard County Atlas is her first novel.

Recommendation:Steve Weddle The County Line
Mentions - James Welch, Sherwood Anderson, Sarah Orne Jewett & Willa Cather

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

On The Sofa With Victoria - Season 6 Episode 4: ROBERT RUTHERFORD (SEVEN DAYS) & ROBERT GOLD (TWELVE).
Few Crime genres grab our attention quite so much as the thriller. Victoria is joined by authors Robert Gold and Robert Rutherford to unpick what makes some thrillers more thrilling than others.

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

The Firm John Grisham
Nemesis Agatha Christie

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

DAVID HEWSON chats to Paul Burke about BAPTISTE: THE AXE MUST FALL, The Killing, Nic Costa, Pieter Vos, Venice, Shakespeare, Audible, writing the official prequel to the hit television show and Kopfkino.

BAPTISTE: THE AXE MUST FALL. France, 1976. Baptiste is an intelligent but somewhat naive detective, sent to work in Clermiers, a town filled with corruption. A girl goes missing, presumed dead after bloody clothes are found close to an illicit party near an abandoned chateau. Baptiste believes he's nailed the culprit, the eccentric Gilles Mailloux. When he appears in court, the public call for the guillotine - and that's the sentence Mailloux gets. But as Mailloux awaits an appeal for clemency, he asks to see Baptiste, who's still haunted by the fact the girl's body remains missing. As the clock ticks towards execution hour, Baptiste begins to realise he may have made a terrible mistake...

DAVID HEWSON is a former journalist with The Times, the Sunday Times and the Independent. He is the author of more than twenty-five novels including his Rome-based Nic Costa series, which has been published in fifteen languages. He has also written three acclaimed adaptations of the Danish TV series The Killing.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Recommendations:
 Shõgun

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

The latest selection of crime fiction reviews for April, all 100 words a piece, and with a couple of authors pitches on their new books.

Harlen Coben - Think Twice (Century)
Don Winslow - City in Ruins (Hemlock)
Lesley Kara - The Other Tenant (Bantam)
Caz Frear - Five Bad Seeds (Simon & Schuster)
Alis Hawkins The Skeleton Army (Canelo)
Paul Carlucci - The Voyageur (Swift Press)
Rachel McLean - The Dorset Crime Series (Hera)
Seícho Matsumoto - Inspector Imanishi Investigates, trans Beth Cary (Penguin odern Classics)
Nick Louth - The Two Deaths of Ruth Lyle (Canelo)
Akimitsu Takagi - The Noh Mask Murder trans Jesse Kirkwood (Pushkin Vertigo)
Apologies for awful Japanese pronunciation.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

JULIE ANDERSON chats to Paul Burke about her latest thriller THE MIDNIGHT MAN, first in a new historical crime series, Whitehall machinations, the birth of the NHS, finding the post war history of Clapham community, the Clapham Literary Festival, The South London Women & Children's Hospital, the locked room mystery and old British movies.

THE MIDNIGHT MAN: Winter 1946 - One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.
Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man.
BEWARE THE DARKNESS BENEATH

Julie Anderson is the CWA Dagger listed author of three Whitehall thrillers and a short series of historical adventure stories for young adults. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, she was a senior civil servant, working across a variety of departments and agencies, including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Unlike her protagonists, however, she doesn’t know where (all) the bodies are buried.
She lives in south London where her latest crime fiction series is set, returning to her first love of writing historical fiction with The Midnight Man, to be published by Hobeck. She writes crime fiction reviews for Time and Leisure Magazine and is a co-founder and Trustee of the Clapham Book Festival. 

Recommendations
Film - Green for Danger ​dir. Sydney Gilliat
Novels - Vine Street Dominic Nolan, Death Flight Sarah Sultoon, Back from the Dead Heide Amsinck and Bonjour Sophie Elizabeth Buchan.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

On The Sofa With Victoria - Season 6 Episode 3: ELLERY LLOYD (THE CLUB) + NICCI FRENCH (HAS ANYONE SEEN CHARLOTTE SALTER)
Victoria is joined by husband and wife teams, Nicci French (Sean French & Nicci Gerrard) and Ellery Lloyd (Paul Vlitos & Collette Lyons) to discuss the challenges of writing collaboratively.

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

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

STIG ABELL chats to Paul Burke about his new crime novel DEATH IN A LONELY PLACE, rural idyll as vest of Vipers, identity, writing a series, love of genre fiction and how crime fiction is a tonic for the soul.

DEATH IN A LONELY PLACE In a quiet village, darkness is closing in…
A rural paradise…
Detective Jake Jackson moved to the countryside for a quieter life. And he finally seems to have his wish – spending his days immersed in nature, and his evenings lazing by the fire.
A terrifying secret…
But the return of an old case shatters the calm, and pulls him into the shadowy world of a secretive group serving the extravagant whims of the elite.
An enemy closes in…
As the web around Jake tightens, he must determine who he can really trust in his small community. Or else he will learn just how far the elite will go to protect their secrets.

STIG ABELL believes that discovering a crime fiction series to enjoy is one of the great pleasures in life. His first novel, Death Under A Little Sky, introduced Jake Jackson and his attempt to get away from his former life in the beautiful area around Little Sky. This book is the second in the series, and Stig is absolutely delighted that there are more on the way. Away from books, he co-presents the breakfast show on Times Radio, a station he helped to launch in 2020. Before that he was a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Front Row and was the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in London with his wife, three children and two independent-minded cats called Boo and Ninja (his children named them, obviously).

Recommendations
Dorothy L Sayers, NGAIO MARSH, Carl Hiaasen, John D Mac Donald, Abigail Dean, Jane Casey,
Noted: PD James, Ellis Peters, Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy, Colin Dexter.

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

MORGAN GREENE chats to Paul Burke about his new crime thriller SAVAGE RIDGE, the why-dunnit not the who-dunnit, rural locations, indie and trad publishing.

SAVAGE RIDGE Ten years ago, in the pine-shaded town of Savage Ridge, Nick, Emmy, and Pete murder their high school classmate, Sammy Saint John.
His body is never found, and no arrests are made. The three friends make a pact to leave Savage Ridge and never return…
Now, each is drawn home, seemingly by chance or fate. But it’s neither: Private Investigator Sloane Yo has brought them back to finally answer for their crime.
The noose begins to tighten. But with each stone turned over in pursuit of justice, the long-buried secrets of Savage Ridge, and Sloane’s employers – the ruthless Saint John family – start to come to light.
What aren’t they telling Sloane? Is Sammy Saint John the only victim? And when the truth is finally revealed, whose side will she choose?

Morgan Greene grew up in Wales and studied Creative Writing and English Literature at Swansea University where he focused narrative structure and theory. He has worked as an author across multiple genres, including science fiction and dystopia, and in 2020, wrote and published the first Jamie Johansson novel. The Detective Jamie Johansson crime series takes major cues from Scandinavian Noir and brings Morgan's signature white-knuckled over-the-shoulder style into the mix for a unique and thrilling experience that keeps readers churning pages well into the night. Morgan is also working on several other projects, and currently lives with his partner and their neurotic collie, who inspired a certain canine character in his books ...

Recommendations
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale KILLING ME SOFTLY - MIKE ZITO featuring Kid Anderson. GUY HALE 

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Crime Time

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,  

PHILIP GWYNNE JONES chats to Paul Burke about The Venetian Candidate (paperback now) and The Venetian Sanctuary (Hardback July), Venice, honorary consuls and Italy.

The Venetian Candidate - To tell the truth is a revolutionary act.
Battered by floods and crushed by overtourism, the city of Venice faces an uncertain future. The election of a new Mayor, therefore, has never felt more important.
As the candidates jostle for position and alliances are made and promises broken, Andrea Mazzon, a controversial writer and historian, emerges as a strong candidate.
Nathan Sutherland, meanwhile, has more important things on his mind as he investigates the case of an elderly British academic who has disappeared while researching the fate of his grandfather during the Great War. The trail leads to a remote Common-wealth war cemetery where, under the ice and snow, Nathan makes a discovery that links the terrible events of a century ago with the electoral campaign in La Serenissima. A campaign that might ultimately set the victor on the road to the Senate - and on the road to murder. . .

The Venetian Sanctuary Venice, June 2020. The city has returned to the Venetians during a merciful pause in the Covid pandemic, and few overseas visitors are to be seen. Yet Dominic Vicari, a British private investigator haunted by loss, has travelled across Europe to the tiny island of San Francesco del Deserto. The ancient monastery there, it is said, was founded by St Francis himself in the 13th century. Its population now consists of five Franciscan brothers and three pilgrims on retreat. Or, rather, two pilgrims and a dead man. Nathan Sutherland is called in when Vicari's broken body is found at the base of the campanile, his death seemingly nothing more than a terrible accident. But Nathan isn't so sure and sets out on an investigation that will reunite him with an old friend and an old adversary, and the discovery of a terrible secret hidden at the heart of the lagoon.

Philip Gwynne Jones was born in South Wales, lived and worked throughout Europe before settling in Scotland in the 1990s. He first came to Italy in 1994 working for the European Space Agency in Frascati, a job that proved to be less exciting than he had imagined. He spent twenty years in the IT industry before realising he was congenitally unsuited to it. Something, clearly, had to change. Philip and wife Caroline left their jobs, sold their flat and moved to Venice in search of a better future. They now live in Venice. He enjoys cooking, art, classical music and opera; and can occasionally be seen and heard singing bass with Cantori Veneziani and the Ensemble Vocale di Venezia.

Recommendations
The novels of Gianrico Carofiglio

Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2024

Paul Burke writes for Monocle Magazine, Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2023. An Encyclopedia of  Spy Fiction will be out in 2025.

Music courtesy of  Guy Hale

Produced by Junkyard Dog

Crime Time

Crime Time FM is the official podcast of
Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025
CrimeFest 2023
CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month
& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 2024
2024 Slaughterfest,