Crime Time FM

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES & ENDS: An On The Sofa With Victoria Special.
PART 2: MIDDLES
Victoria Selman chats to Dominic Nolan about the middle of the novel. Why are middles challenging for authors? What do readers want? What are the tools that help make a good middle? 

DOMINIC NOLAN is the British the author of 3 crime fictions. His latest VINE STREET is a superb London set historical mystery, it is available now in paperback.

VICTORIA SELMAN
SundayTimes bestselling author of Truly Darkly Deeply
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
Music courtesy of Southgate & Leigh
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,  

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES & ENDS: An On The Sofa With Victoria Special.
PART 1: BEGINNINGS
Victoria Selman chats to Dominic Nolan about novel openings, what makes a great opening, how to hook your readers and getting a character in.

DOMINIC NOLAN is the British the author of 3 crime fictions. His latest VINE STREET is a superb London set historical mystery, it is available now in paperback.

VICTORIA SELMAN
SundayTimes bestselling author of Truly Darkly Deeply
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
Music courtesy of Southgate & Leigh
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,  

SHERRYL CLARK chats to Paul Burke about her new Judi Westerholme novel MAD, BAD AND DEAD. Melbourne, poetry, structure and pace, the innocents caught up in crime, keeping it grounded and Finland.

MAD, BAD AND DEAD: A dead employee. A missing child. Anonymous phone calls in the dead of night. Judi Westerholme's troubles aren't over yet... Already struggling to juggle co-running Candlebark's pub/bistro along with her new childcare responsibilities, Judi does not need her life to become any more complicated. Yet, as usual, complications arrive in spades: she starts receiving threatening, late-night phone calls before discovering one of her employees, Kate, shot dead in her bed. Judi finds herself caught up in a murder investigation, as well as the hunt for the Kate's fourteen year old daughter, who has been missing since the murder. Add in the uncertainty of her relationship with Melbourne-based D.S. Heath and the fact that her estranged mother's nursing home keeps urging her to visit, and Judi might finally be at breaking point.

Sherryl Clark has had 40 children's and YA books published in Australia, and several in the US and UK, plus collections of poetry and four verse novels. She has taught writing at Holmesglen TAFE and Victoria University. She completed a Master of Fine Arts program at Hamline University, Minnesota, and has just finished a PhD in creative writing. Her three adult crime novels are TRUST ME I'M DEAD, DEAD AND GONE & MAD, BAD AND DEAD.

Recommendations
Garry Disher - the Paul Hirsch mysteries
Emma Viskic - Those Who Perish
Vikki Petraitis - The Unbelieved
Catherine Lee - Dark Justice

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .

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,  

MARK ELLIS chats to Paul Burke about the latest Frank Merlin mystery DEAD IN THE WATER, wartime London, the American army in the UK, what makes good historical writing and the richest man in the world at the time Calouste Gulbenkian.

DEAD IN THE WATER: Summer, 1942. The Second World War rages on but Britain now faces the Nazi threat with America at its side.
In a bombed-out London swarming with gangsters and spies, DCI Frank Merlin continues his battle against rampant wartime crime. A mangled body is found in the Thames just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two?
Merlin and his team follow a twisting trail of secrets and lies as they investigate a baffling and deadly puzzle .

MARK ELLIS is a thriller writer from Swansea and a former barrister and entrepreneur. Mark grew up under the shadow of his parents' experience of the Second World War. His father served in the wartime navy and died a young man. His mother told him stories of watching the heavy bombardment of Swansea from the safe vantage point of a hill in Llanelli, and of attending tea dances in wartime London under the bombs and doodlebugs.
In consequence, Mark has always been fascinated by World War II and, in particular, the Home Front and the fact that while the nation was engaged in a heroic endeavour, crime flourished. Murder, robbery, theft and rape were rife. Mark is author of the DCI Frank Merlin series, Mark is also a member of the Crime Writer's Association and Crime Cymru.

Recommendations:
Nigh and the City - Gerald Kersh. Film by Jules Dassin
A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
The Accursed Kings - Maurice Druon
My Friend Maigret - Georges Simenon

(mentioned
Citizens - Simon Schama
Hereward the Wake - Charles Kingsley)

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .

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,  

TOM VAUGHAN MACAULAY chats to Paul Burke about his new novel COUNTDOWN TO A KILLING, meta-fiction, writing with a full time career as a lawyer, the modern epistolary novel and quirky characters.

COUNTDOWN TO A KILLING: Wen Li, an anxious young woman who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, is tormented by an incessant fear that she might have homicidal impulses. Wen falls for her self-absorbed colleague, Lomax Clipper, who is writing a whodunnit in his spare time. Lomax is pining for Italy and a Sicilian woman he met while on secondment, despite his recurring nightmare about someone being killed on a picturesque street in Palermo. Wen and Lomax both loathe their boss, Julian Ponsonby, who, unbeknown to them, is struggling… as is Fifi de Angelis, a vulnerable man who has been ostracised by his family.Packed with humour, heartache and suspense, this contemporary take on the epistolary novel interweaves the different perspectives of characters whose lives become increasingly entangled.
Told through interwoven correspondence, emails and WhatsApp messages, with the suspense around an impending murder steadily building, Countdown to a Killing is a deep exploration of multiple perspectives and points of view of individuals who are inextricably bound. The key themes of love, sexuality, ethnicity, mental health and acceptance are sensitively explored in a unique linear yet multi-layered and metafictional narrative. Packed with humour, heartache and a cast of expertly-crafted characters, this contemporary take on the epistolary novel will have you laughing and crying in equal measure.

TOM VAUGHAN MACAULAY is a solicitor. His first novel, Being Simon Haines, was published in 2017 to high critical acclaim. The novel was selected as a Best Book for Summer by Alex Wade, writing in The Times, Law, while Justin Warshaw, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, described it as a ‘grand narrative of a young man on the cusp of the realization of a dream’. Edward Fennell, writing in The Times, the Brief premium, asked whether it would become ‘the defining novel for [Tom's] generation about what it means to be a driven corporate lawyer’. Countdown to a Killing is his second novel. www.tomvaughanmacaulay.com

Recommendations:
The Five Hallie Rubenhold

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .

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,  

TOXIC FRIENDSHIPS: In the season 2  finale POLLY PHILLIPS (THE REUNION), HARRIET TYCE (IT ENDS AT MIDNIGHT),  TM LOGAN (THE CURFEW), discuss bringing out the worst in each other, long held resentments, trigger events, gaslighting, crabs in a bucket and the white sock incident (wince).

VICTORIA SELMAN
SundayTimes bestselling author of Truly Darkly Deeply
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
Music courtesy of Southgate & Leigh
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,  

BEVERLEY JONES, aka B.E. Jones, chats to Paul Burke about her novels The Beach House and The Wilderness and the Firebird Pictures/Amazon Prime adaptation of The Wilderness starring Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson Cohen . Shout outs for Ferndale and Storyville Books in Pontypridd.

THE BEACH HOUSE: When Grace Jensen returns to her home one day, she finds a body in a pool of blood and a menacing gift left for her.
The community of Lookout Beach is shocked by such a brutal intrusion in their close-knit neighbourhood - particularly to a family as successful and well-liked as the Jensens - and a police investigation to find the trespasser begins.
But Grace knows who's after her. She might have changed her name and moved across the world, deciding to hide on the Oregon coast, but she's been waiting seventeen years for what happened in the small Welsh town where she grew up to catch-up with her.
Grace might seem like the model neighbour and mother, but nobody in Lookout Beach - not even her devoted husband Elias - knows the real her. Or how much blood is on her hands.

THE WILDERNESS: LOVE CAN HURT. BETRAYAL CAN KILL.
Shattered by the discovery of her husband's affair, Liv knows they need to leave the chaos of New York to save their marriage. Maybe the road trip they'd always planned, exploring America's national parks - just the two of them - would help heal the wounds.
But what Liv hasn't told her husband is that she has set him three challenges on their trip - three opportunities to prove he's really sorry.
If he fails? Well, it's dangerous out there in the wilderness; accidents happen all the time.
And if it's easy to die, then it's also easy to kill.

BEVERLEY 'B.E.' JONES is a former journalist and police press officer, now a novelist and book obsessive. She was born in a small village in the South Wales valleys, north of Cardiff and started her journalism career with Trinity Mirror newspapers before becoming a broadcast journalist with BBC Wales Today.
She has worked on all aspects of crime reporting (as well as community news and features) producing stories and content for newspapers and live TV. Most recently she worked as a press officer for South Wales Police, dealing with the media and participating in criminal investigations, security operations and emergency planning. Perhaps unsurprisingly she channels these experiences of 'true crime,' and her insight into the murkier side of human nature, into her dark, psychological thrillers set in and around South Wales and now further afield.

Recommendations
SAMANTHA DOWNING - For Your Own Good & My Lovely Wife

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .

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,  

HEADS TOGETHER - the WE ARE NO LONGER REAL PEOPLE Episode - with a special feature on St. Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend. Paul Burke chats to Sarah Hilary about this unique event 12th-14th August in Oxford.

BOOKING for ST. HILDA'S
For general details and full programme here
To attend in person here
To join in online here

SARAH HILARY is a best selling author and winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year Award. Her stand alone psychological novel FRAGILE was published in 2021.

PAUL BURKE writes about crime fiction for Crime Fiction Lover, Crime Time and the European Literature Network. He is a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022.

VICTORIA SELMAN is the bestselling author of the Ziba MacKenzie serial killer thrillers. Her new literary crime novel Truly, Darkly, Deeply has just been published by Quercus.

BARRY FORSHAW is the editor of Crime Time, author of several books on film and crime fiction and the FT Crime Fiction Critic. His latest book SIMENON: the Man, the Books, the Films has just been released by Oldcastle Books.

The Watchlist:
Laura Wilson The Partisan - Patrick Worrall
Barry Forshaw The Lost Man of Bombay - Vaseem Khan
Maxim Jakubowski Winter Work - Dan Fesperman
Jake Kerridge A Season in Exile - Oliver Harris 
Ayo Onatade All I Said was True - Imran Mahmood
Victoria Selman Lying Beside You - Michael Robotham
Craig Sisterson No Country For Girls - Emma Styles
Sonja van der Westhuizen More Than You'll Ever Know - Katie Gutierrez
Erin Britton Bryant and May's Peculiar London - Christopher Fowler
Paul Burke TheAccomplice - Steve Cavanagh

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate & Leigh
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,  

SCOTT BLACKBURN chats to Paul Burke about his Southern Rural Noir IT DIES WITH YOU character, influences, the amazing Mountainview  MFA (JOHN VERCHER, TED FLANAGAN), picking an agent, getting out there and selling your book.

IT DIES WITH YOU For nearly a decade, twenty-nine-year-old Hudson Miller has made his living in the boxing ring, but a post-fight brawl threatens to derail his career. Desperate for money, Hudson takes a gig as a bouncer at a dive bar. That's when life delivers him another hook to the jaw: his estranged father, Leland, has been murdered in what appears to be a robbery-gone-bad at his salvage yard, Miller's Pull-a-Part. Soon after his father's funeral, Hudson learns he's inherited the salvage yard, and he returns to his Bible-belt hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina, to run the business. But the business is far more than junk cars and scrap metal. It was the site of an illegal gun-running ring. And the secrets don't end there; a grisly discovery is made at the yard that thrusts Hudson into the fight of his life. Reeling for answers, Hudson joins forces with his father's former employee, 71-year-old, beer-guzzling Vietnam vet Charlie Shoaf, and a feisty teenage girl, Lucy Reyes, who's fiercely seeking justice for her own family tragedy. With a murderer on the loose and no answers from the local cops, the trio of outcasts launch an investigation. The shocking truth they uncover will shake Flint Creek to its very core.

Scott Blackburn is an English instructor and a 2017 graduate of the Mountainview MFA program. He lives in High Point, North Carolina with his wife and two children. When he is not writing and teaching, Scott enjoys training in combat sports such as boxing, Muay Thai, and Ju-jitsu, in which he holds a black belt.

Recommendations:
Wiley Cash
Michael Farris Smith
Chris Offutt
Daniel Woodrell
Tom Franklin
Mark Westmoreland A Violent Gospel
Ted Flanagan Every Hidden Thing
John Vercher After the Lights Go Out
Peter Farris The Devil Himself
Eli Cranor Don't Know Tough
Tiffany Quay Tyson The Past is Never

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .

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,  

BARRY FORSHAW chats to Paul Burke about SIMENON: THE MAN, THE BOOKS, THE FILMS. A 21st Century re-examination of SIMENON, Maigret and the Romans Durs novels, a wide ranging discussion of everything from Simenon's place in French literature to Robert Newton and Spartacus.

SIMENON: THE MAN, THE BOOKS, THE FILMS The legendary Georges Simenon was the most successful and influential writer of crime fiction in a language other than English; Andre Gide called him 'the greatest French novelist of our times'. Celebrated crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw's informed and lively study draws together Simenon's extraordinary life and his work on both page and screen. By the time of Simenon's death in 1989, his French detective Maigret had become an institution, rivalled only by Sherlock Holmes. The pipe-smoking Inspector of Police is a quietly spoken observer of human nature who uses the techniques of psychology on those he encounters (both the guilty and the innocent) - with no rush to moral condemnation. Simenon's non-Maigret standalone books are among the most commanding in the genre, and, as a trenchant picture of French society, his concise novels collectively offer up a fascinating analysis. And his influence on an army of later crime writers is incalculable. Alongside his own considerable insights, Barry Forshaw has interviewed people who worked either with Simenon or on his books: publishers, editors, translators, and other specialist writers. He has created a literary prism through which to appreciate one of the most distinctive achievements in the whole of crime fiction.

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, is the Financial Time crime fiction critic,  contributes Blu-ray extras, broadcasts, chairs events and edits Crime Time. crimetime.co.uk

Book Recommendations

Maigret:
The Saint-Fiacre Affair (L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre)
Maigret's Doubts (Les Scrupules de Maigret)
Pietr the Latvian (Pietr-le-Letton)
Maigret Defends Himself (Maigret Se Défend)
My Friend Maigret (Mon Ami Maigret)
Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (The Cellars of the Majestic, Fr. Les Caves du Majestic)

Romans Durs discussed:
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (L'Homme qui Regardait Passer les Trains)
The Strangers in the House (Les Inconnus dans la Maison)
The Mahé Circle (Le Cercle des Mahé)
Pedigree (Pedigree)
The Snow was Dirty (La Neige Était Sale)

Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time

Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER  Judge 2022.

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,