Crime Time FM

HENRY PORTER talks to Paul Burke about his new spy novel THE OLD ENEMY, Putin's Russia, Trump and the threat of white supremacists in the US, the Paul Samson spy series, inspiration versus hard work and his grandfather's hunting rifle.

Henry Porter has spent most of his career as a journalist, during which time he has covered the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bosnian Civil War, and, more recently, the migrant crisis in Europe. All have inspired novels – the Berlin Wall prompted Brandenburg, Bosnia produced A Spy’s Life and the trek into Europe of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war in Syria is the genesis for Firefly, the first Paul Samson novel. The latest in the Paul Samson series is THE OLD ENEMY.

His books are about the times we live in, and they all seek to show the impact of enormous historical and current events
on the individuals caught up in them. As important to Henry, is the truth of the setting, which is why he spends so much time on the ground researching the locations he is writing about and the way people live their lives and overcome challenges that most of us never have to face.

THE OLD ENEMY Ex-MI6 officer Paul Samson has been tasked with secretly guarding a gifted young woman, Zoe Freemantle. He is just beginning to tire of the job when he is attacked in the street by a freakish looking knifeman. It's clear the target is on his back not hers. What he doesn't know is who put it there.
At that moment, his mentor, the MI6 legend Robert Harland lies dead on a remote stretch of the Baltic coastline. Who needed to end the old spy's life when he was, in any case, dying from a terminal illness? And what or who is Berlin Blue, the name scratched in the sketchbook beside his body?
A few hours later, Samson watches footage from the US Congress where billionaire philanthropist Denis Hisami is poisoned with a nerve agent while testifying - an attack that is as spectacular as it is lethal, but spares Anastasia Hisami, the love of Samson's life.
Two things become clear. One, it was a big mistake to lose the mysterious Zoe Freemantle. And two, Robert Harland is making a final play from beyond the grave.

Produced by Jem & Son, Paul Burke

Music: Southgate and Leigh Don't Wait

Photo credit Emma Hardy

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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,  

New Zealand crime writer VANDA SYMON Chats to Paul Burke about her new Sam Shephard novel, BOUND, fourth in the Dunedin set series. Also 'Yeah-Noir', writing as a young mother, misogyny, science & the modern detective and Ngaio Marsh.

Bound: The New Zealand city of Dunedin is rocked when a wealthy and apparently respectable businessman is murdered in his luxurious home while his wife is bound and gagged, and forced to watch. But when Detective Sam Shephard and her team start investigating the case, they discover that the victim had links with some dubious characters. The case seems cut and dried, but Sam has other ideas. Weighed down by her dad's terminal cancer diagnosis, and by complications in her relationship with Paul, she needs a distraction, and launches her own investigation. And when another murder throws the official case into chaos, it's up to Sam to prove that the killer is someone no one could ever suspect.

Vanda Symon is a crime writer, TV presenter and radio host from Dunedin, New Zealand, and the chair of the Otago Southland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors. The Sam Shephard series has climbed to number one on the New Zealand bestseller list, and also been shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel. She currently lives in Dunedin, with her husband and two sons.

Produced by: Jem & Son, Paul Burke.
Music credits: Don't Wait by Southgate and Leigh
Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka
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To buy this book: BOUND

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Crime Time

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

TIM GLISTER talks to Paul Burke about his new novel RED CORONA and the 8 books that set him on the path to becoming a spy writer.
Red Corona:
It’s 1961 and the white heat of the Space Race is making the Cold War even colder. Richard Knox is a secret agent in big trouble. He’s been hung out to dry by a traitor in MI5, and the only way to clear his name could destroy him. Meanwhile in a secret Russian city, brilliant scientist Irina Valera makes a discovery that will change the world, and hand the KGB unimaginable power. Desperate for a way back into MI5, Knox finds an unlikely ally in Abey Bennett, a CIA recruit who’s determined to prove herself whatever the cost… As the age of global surveillance dawns, three powers will battle for dominance, and three people will fight to survive…
Published by Point Blank

Crime Time FM also get the exclusive reveal of the title of the next novel in the Richard Knox series...

Books discussed:
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold John le Carré
From Russia with Love Ian Fleming
Our Man in Havana and The Quiet American   Graham Greene
The Ipcress File Len Deighton
Ascent Jed Mercurio
To the Lions Holly Watt
The Spy and the Traitor Ben McIntyre

Red Corona https://uk.bookshop.org/a/137/9781786077790

Produced by Jem&Son
Music: Don't Wait - Southgate and Leigh

Crime Time https://www.crimetime.co.uk/

Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka

Photo credit Mark Rusher

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,  

 Mystery Writers of America Edgar award winner  ROSALIE KNECHT talks to Paul Burke about her two novels WHO IS VERA KELLY and  2021 Sue Grafton Memorial Award  winner - VERA KELLY IS NOT A MYSTERY, about her wonderful creation Vera Kelly, New York in the 60s, CIA and US foreign policy, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Noir fiction, black
humour in the novel, sexism, misogyny, satire and social work.

WHO IS VERA KELLY: New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.

Click on these links Vera Kelly is Not a Mystery  and Who is Vera Kelly  to buy via bookshop.org who help support UK indie booksellers.                           

And once again, Congratulations to Rosalie from all at Crime Time, Verve Books and No Exit Press on winning the EDGAR

Thanks to Jem & son for producing this episode and Southgate & Leigh for allowing us to sample their song Don't Wait for this podcast.

Click here for more information about CrimeTime 

Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka

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’s Blu-rays Listen to the first episode in a new regular feature for CrimeTimeFM.
BARRY FORSHAW on the best of crime film and TV on DVD and Blu-ray.
Barry gives us his insights into the world of crime drama based on the commentaries and sleeve notes he writes for new releases and reissues. The first episode features Maigret and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, as well as the ground-breaking Danish drama of the same name, The Killing, The Adam Dalgliesh Chronicles, Swedish gem The Bridge , The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and much more...

 Barry Forshaw is the crime fiction critic for the Financial Times and provides extras for Blu-rays. Books include Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, the Keating Award-winning Brit Noir, British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia (also a Keating winner), British Gothic Cinema, Italian Cinema: Arthouse to Exploitation, Sex and Film and BFI Classics: War of the Worlds. He edits Crime Time.

Check out Barry in conversation with Ace Atkins about his new Spenser novel SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME CTFM#9. Available now.

PAUL BURKE also runs through the CRIME WRITERS ASSOCIATION DAGGER AWARDS LONG LISTS. Highlighting some of the nominated authors, books and publishers:
The full list of awards and nominees is available at:
https://www.crimetime.co.uk/cwa-dagger-awards-longlists-announced/

Buy Barry's latest book Crime Fiction: A Reader's Guide

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Crime Time

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

ACE ATKINS talks to BARRY FORSHAW about his new Spenser novel
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.

49th in Robert B Parker's Spenser series featuring the hardboiled Boston PI, his wingman Hawk and new feisty protege, Mattie. Published by No Exit Press and available now direct or from bookshop.org and good book outlets, as are all the Ace Atkins titles in the Spenser series.  bookshop.org
The trio battle a depraved billionaire and his vicious female procurer, (remind you of anyone?)
Ace tells Barry about:
His initial reservations about becoming the new voice of the Spenser franchise and taking on the Robert B Parker mantle.
Channelling Chandler, Hammett and the moral compass of hardboiled/noir fiction.
Living up to the legacy of the greats.
Writing Boston from the deep South.
Quinn Colson
Making movies and writing scripts.
A writer's life in Oxford, Mississippi.
Life as a newspaperman before 'fake news' and Trump.
Domestic terrorism, the Washington invasion, right wing groups and the next novel in the Spenser series.
and
Not giving a damn about offending racists who read his books.
It's fascinating and entertaining.

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-three books, including eight Quinn Colson novels, the first two of which, The Ranger and The Lost Ones, were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel (he has a third Edgar nomination for his short story Last Fair Deal Gone Down). He is the author of seven New York Times-bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. Before turning to fiction, he was a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune, and he played defensive end for Auburn University football.

Barry Forshaw is the crime critic for the Financial Times and provides extras for Blu-rays. Books include Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, the Keating Award-winning Brit Noir, British Crime Film & British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia (also a Keating winner). He edits Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

Look out for Barry's Blu-rays the first in a new regular feature on crime films and TV releases on CrimeTimeFM.

Buy Crime Fiction: A Reader's Guide at:
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/137/9780857303356

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,  

Anthologist, novelist, historian NICK RENNISON talks to Paul Burke about the latest anthology of short stories in the rivals to Sherlock Holmes series - AMERICAN SHERLOCKS.

15 Mysteries from the Golden Age of American Crime Fiction, originally published during the same period as Conan Doyle was writing about Sherlock Holmes (late 19th/early twentieth century). Opening with proto-detective Uncle Abner in The Doomsdorf Mystery and taking in the ubiquitous Nick Carter, and finishing with the thinking machine, Augustus SFX Van Dusan, via Madelyn Mack, Philo Gubb, Violet Strange, Jigger Masters et al.

Locked room mysteries, bumbling police officers, brilliant consulting detectives, endearing sidekicks, fist fights, fowl murder and much more. Nick's enthusiasm for his subject is catching.

Nick tells us about his favourite Sherlock, the maestro on stage, screen and novel pastiche/homage, the successful spinoffs and the ones he's not so keen on,  Edgar Allen Poe's C. August Dupin and what the theme of the next rivals anthology might be...

Buy this book

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Crime Time

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

Cathi Unsworth chats to Paul Burke about her classic London novel BAD PENNY BLUES, (2009), just reissued by Strange Attractor Press. This new edition has a introduction on the importance of the novel by Greil Marcus  and an illuminating afterword by Cathi.

Cathi tells Paul about her fictional account of the Hammersmith nude murders; 8 women were brutally killed between 1959 and 1965. Corruption, incompetence, and lack of care meant the women the were stigmatised as prostitutes - these crimes were never solved. This is a victim centred novel that really speaks to the tragedy and trauma of these terrible events and then victims experience. In telling their story Cathi explores the lives, last moments and humanity of the women.

Bad Penny Blues is also a portrayal of London in the early 1960s, the thriving and vibrant life of the city, from the art scene to the music scene - from jazz to pop and the dawning of the swinging sixties. Several of the fictional characters draw on real personalities for their inspiration - Pauline Boty, Rachman, Profumo, Joe Meek, Colin McInnes and celebrated spiritualist and charity worker Mrs Moyes.

Cathi discusses her own struggles writing such a traumatic tale. We also hear about the factual accounts of the crime that she drew on, victim blaming and misogyny of the time and what it's like living in Ladbroke Grove, a great community, but discovering this troubled past. Cathi talks about her friendship with Cookie, (otherwise known as author Derek Raymond), a genuine one off.

As an added treat there's a wonderfully atmospheric dramatic reading from the novel by Cathi taken from the Transmissions series which is available on her own website, it's a
collaboration with electronic composer Pete Woodhead, (co-composer on Shaun of the Dead). https://www.cathiunsworth.co.uk/

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Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka

Author photo credit: Julian Ibbotson
Buy this book at:
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/137/9781907222191

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,  

Edward Wilson talks to Paul Burke about his new spy novel THE PORTRAIT OF THE SPY AS A YOUNG MAN.

This novel goes back to the beginning for William Catesby, the Cold War spy, here on his first mission during WWII. The story follows the undergraduate who gives up his place at university to join the army as he is dropped into France to join the resistance. Knowing who the enemy is is not a simple matter of the colour of the uniform. The experience of war is formative for the future SIS man now looking back on his past from his retirement.

Edward discusses his homage to the brave operatives of SOE section F, William Catesby's encounters with the communist fighters, traitors an the terrible war crime at Oradour-sur-Glane, where a French village was wiped out by retreating German soldiers.

Edward explains how his time is the US army as an intelligence officer in Vietnam informed Catesby's story. He also talks about the Cold War, Meeting PD James and living in Germany and Britain after giving up his US citizenship.

Edward Wilson is without doubt one of the finest spy writers writing today.

Portrait  of the Spy as a Young Man:   https://uk.bookshop.org/a/137/9781911350811

https://www.crimetime.co.uk/

Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka

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,  

American spy author PAUL VIDICH talks to Paul Burke about his fascination with the Cold War and  about his new Moscow set thriller THE MERCENARY.  The fourth in the George Mueller series, published by NO EXIT PRESS, all are available now.

THE MERCENARY:
A CIA mole in the KGB, codename Gambit, is willing to trade top secret weapons intelligence for ex-filtration to the West. When Station Chief George Mueller is compromised the CIA send Alex Garin to rescue Gambit. But they are soon second guessing that decision, is Garin trustworthy, after all his father was Russian? Garin and lover Natalya are caught up in a deadly game being played out between the CIA and warring factions inside the KGB. Is the spy with a Russian heart and an American head hero or traitor?

Paul discusses his motivation for writing spy fiction, there's a huge nod to John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and honourable mentions for Charles McCarry and Freddie Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal.

Paul's own family history is bound up with the Rockefeller Commission into MKUltra, the illegal CIA psychological warfare programme. His government scientist uncle Frank Olson was murdered, committed suicide or fell to his death from a New York hotel room in the 1950s depending on which account you believe.

Paul also explains why all corporations are like the CIA.
 
https://www.crimetime.co.uk/

Buy The Mercenary


Paul Burke twitter @paulodaburka

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,