He just couldn't reach ...

Sorry for the umpteenth pun on Jack Reacher, but it seems all the bad pre-publicity caught up with Tom Cruise's take on One Shot. Too bad. Here's an analysis on a nice site that looks at writing and film:

Word and Film

The Next Big Thing ... at last

I've been a bad boy, twice over.

I agreed to participate in a blog post round-robin, where as a poster you answer a number of questions about your writing and then 'tag' five other writers, who would also answer the questions and tag 5 more posters each ...

Well, first up I couldn't find 5 other crime writers to tag - mainly because the ones I asked were already linked up to someone else in the same project, or were too busy promoting their own books, rightly.

Secondly, I've just come to France from the UK and spent a few days reacclimatising - for which, read 'working in the house' - and forgot to post the blog on the 5th December.

So here it is, late and tag-less:

1. What is your latest work on sale?

My latest book available is called The Private Lie, and is available from Amazon Createspace as a paperback or in Kindle format.

2. What is it about?

My private eye, Sam Dyke, tries to find a missing girl and gets caught up in the machinations of two thuggish Liverpudlian gangsters.

3. What are you working on now?

The third book in the Sam Dyke Investigations series is finished except for a couple of minor changes. It's called The Hard Swim.

4. What is it about?

Sam Dyke helps a girl who is being pursued by rogue government thugs. They're trying to get hold of a diary in her possession which the main bad guy believes holds information about the sinking of a ship transporting nearly 700 Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1942. The story begins in Edinburgh Zoo and finishes in a small French village.

5. Fans of which authors should like your books as well?

I started in the Private Eye/Hard-Boiled genre, so I would think readers of Chandler, Hammett, Robert Crais and Robert Parker might find something to like. In this book, though, I move more into the thriller/suspense genre as well, so readers of Lee Child and Harlan Coben might be amused too.

6. What's the best thing about being a writer?

Being able to make stuff up and then make it seem real. Exercising a creative muscle is about the best exercise you can get.

7. What's the worst?

It takes a long time to get to an ending - for me, it takes a lot of preparation and thinking and planning; then the writing itself is often quite long-winded, taking several months. Perhaps I'll get quicker.

8. Which authors should we be reading we might not have heard of?

My new favourite is an Australian writer called Peter Temple. I haven't even read any of his 'Jack Irish' police novels yet, but his standalone thrillers like The Broken Shore and In the Evil Day are terrific - subtle, pacy, psychologically compelling and exciting. Also, if you haven't come across him there's a writer from the 60s who was operating up until relatively recently called Lionel Davidson, who wrote great thrillers set in a variety of locations.

Lee Child - still reaching

In an alternative universe, I could have been Lee Child. We're almost exactly the same age and were brought up in Coventry. I suspect, however, that he's brighter than me. He got himself a job in TV production and when he was 'let go' he moved to America to write thrillers, which he's done to staggering success.

When you come across your first Jack Reacher book it's a hell of a ride. Reacher is logical to the nth degree and can think his way out of almost any situation. And when he can't, then he's 6'5" tall and has hands the size of plates - so he can batter his way out.

And that's it ... that's the plot of his last seventeen books. Reacher travels the country with a toothbrush and a credit card, buying clothes when he needs them, falling into dangerous situations every couple of months or so. He finds some bad guys and some good guys and makes everything OK. Crucially, these situations are usually somewhere out in the American sticks, where Child can create the world in which Reacher can move and have his being.

Live by Night - a retro delight

Dennis Lehane, author of the Kenzie and Gennaro detective series, has started to broaden his remit. First came Mystic River and Shutter Island, both made into commercially successful films, then came The Given Day, a historical novel set during the time of the Boston Police riots after the first World War. Live by Night continues the story of the Coughlin family begun in The Given Day, this time focusing on younger brother Joe Coughlin and his rise through the criminal ranks of the emerging Mafia.

Another interview

Some while ago I was interviewed for the blog site No Wasted Ink. Here's the interview. The questions were particularly interesting, I thought.

http://nowastedink.com/

Jefferson Parker - getting better and better

Jefferson Parker's Renegades is the second in a series of (so far) five books about US lawman Charlie Hood.

Operating on the border between Southern California and Mexico, Hood is currently working for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department as a patrolman. After an incident that I can't disclose, he's asked to work for Internal Affairs to investigate the incident. This involves him questioning his colleagues and also pursuing an investigation into drug-running between Mexico and the United States.

Online interview

I've recently been interviewed by a couple of online blogs. The first is by the very interesting crime fiction site, Sons of Spade (as my character is called Sam, this is a title that goes down well with me!)

The site reviews new books and also carries interviews, obviously. You can find my interview here:

http://sonsofspade.blogspot.fr/2012/09/q-with-keith-dixon.html

Is James Lee Burke the greatest crime writer alive?

Well I guess I've nailed my colours to the mast with that heading ... I am definitely a fanboy when it comes to James Lee Burke.

His latest book is Creole Belle, and continues the story of his bruised and battered cop hero, Dave Robicheaux and his friend Clete Purcel. In this instalment of their ongoing history, Dave is trying to find a girl who came to him while he was recovering from the wounds received at the end of the previous novel, The Glass Rainbow. He doesn't know at first whether the appearance of the girl was a medically-induced vision or whether she was in fact real. She leaves him an iPod with music already installed, but when others try to play the particular tracks on which she sings, they can't find them. This captures one of Burke's strengths - the ability to create an atmosphere in which reality and sur-reality intermingle. Robicheaux's consciousness is one in which the present and the historic past constantly mingle, so that his actions are always tinged with a recognition of their provenance in the past.

What makes great dialogue?

A couple of weeks ago I published something on Amazon's 'So you'd like to ... ' function. This is an opportunity for anyone to make out they're an expert on anything under the sun and then tell others what to do. Never one to pass up that kind of chance, I thought I'd put something together on dialogue, which is a feature of writing and reading that I spend a lot of time thinking about. Here's the piece - it's a bit long for a blog post, so settle down and get a cup of tea or coffee first ...

A chip off the old Burke?

Alafair Burke is the creator of two series of books featuring strong women - the Ellie Hatcher series and the Samantha Kincaid series. Never Tell belongs to the former, where Ellie Hatcher is a police detective in New York investigating the suicide - or was it murder? - of a young girl.

Like Peter Leonard in my post about his book, Burke labours under the weight of a famous writing father - in this case, James Lee Burke, one of the most celebrated authors - never mind crime authors - in the US. Where Leonard went into the past to escape comparison with his father's current work, Burke has traveled into the big city, thus separating herself from her father's association with rural Louisiana and Montana.

Why I read/Why I write

Why I Read

As a young boy I was insular and liked a quiet space. I had friends and played sports, especially in the summer months, but the worlds of the imagination seemed so much richer and colourful than the real world I lived in. We had a small house with two downstairs rooms, with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.  As one of the downstairs rooms was the ‘front room’, it was rarely used except when we had visitors.  So usually, there was no getting away from people – that is, the other people in my family: mum, dad, younger brother.  We’d be squeezed into the back room with the kitchen sink, the pantry, the kitchen table and the television. 

And the armchair I sat in to read.

From the age of about four, I read everything I could lay my hands on – well, everything I could understand. I have vague memories of Janet and John books being read to me by my mother.  And after that I remember the Arabian Nights (read under the bedclothes while it was still light outside) and being given a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel for Christmas. 

Then came the comics: Hotspur, the Hornet, the Beano. And American ones too, with glossy covers – Superman and Batman, naturally, and the characters with different super-powers: Green Hornet, Flash, Atom,The Justice League of America. Marvel comics were dark even then – Daredevil, Iron Man, the Hulk ... and often they left you disappointed because you had to buy the next issue to find out what happened next.

And this led to a teenage fascination with science-fiction. Finding Dune in my school library at the age of sixteen was probably the greatest single reading highlight of my teenage years. Suddenly reading wasn’t just about action and adventure (thanks, Biggles) but was about depth – introspection, subtlety, relationships. Next stop, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Catch-22.

What strikes me is that I read for almost exactly the same reasons now as I did then. I want a hero who is strong but understands how other people think; I want a story I can believe in but is full of surprises; I want to smile or laugh at regular intervals; I want an ending that wraps everything up but is poignant; I want to enter a world I know little about but am fascinated by. It’s not about escapism – it’s about seeing reality from another angle so that it makes more sense. Imaginary worlds are not completely separate from the one we live in – they offer hope and can act as aspirations. I read now to recapture that hopefulness of youth, still believing that everything will turn out fine once the hero has overcome his or her struggle. 

Why I write

Writers often say that they write because they have to – there’s a kind of internal pressure that they can’t resist to get words on paper. 

I understand that pressure. I went almost twenty years without writing anything for myself. I wrote every day for the various jobs that I had, but nothing ‘made up’ for my own enjoyment. And then I couldn’t resist the pressure any longer and started writing my Sam Dyke series of books.

If you’ve ever tried to write fiction and given up, you’ll know it’s not something that always comes easy. But if you’ve got the bug, you’ll also know that there’s immense pleasure from writing a scene that’s full of suspense, humour, drama and conflict. For a short while, you have a grasp on how people think, how they talk, what’s important to them and what they want. And – however briefly – you’ve got the technical ability to put into words all the subtlety and nuance that are in your head.

That’s why I write – to prove to myself that I can do something that most of the time I don’t believe I can. 

Like a good fictional character, I’m succeeding against the odds and creating the world afresh.

Special offer!

That makes my books sound like a cheap import from Hong Kong ... but no! My two books, Altered Life and The Private Lie are now on Special Offer on the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents (or 75p in the UK). Hurry along now - the offer only lasts for ... as long as I want it to. Probably a week.