Her debut thriller was a phenomenon, but here an embarrassment of narrators and the clunky withholding of information is death to suspense
More accidents happen in the home than anywhere else, a fact to lend some much-needed plausibility to the overworked genre of domestic suspense, or grip-lit as it’s sometimes known. About 60 debut novels cross my desk every year (I chair the New Blood panel at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival), and for the last three or four years, the proportion of this subgenre has been rising.
The author has to hold back information, hinting at its existence, obliquely suggesting where there might be secrets
Not a problem in itself: if the books were original, well written or thought-provoking, nobody would be happier than I. But sadly that’s not generally been the case. There have been notable exceptions, of course: clever, suspenseful reads such as Renée Knight’s Disclaimer or Ben McPherson’s A Line of Blood. Then there are the mega-sellers such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, SJ Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train, which all gave us interesting twists on the idea of the unreliable narrator.
These books need to deliver at least one shocking moment when the reader realises that they have been looking at the picture the wrong way up. There must be a sudden twist in the direction of travel, taking us to an entirely unexpected destination. We readers journey hopefully, willing that moment to arrive.
Fiona Cummins, Jane Harper, Joseph Knox and Kristen Lepionka have been revealed as the four debut authors picked by crime writer Val McDermid for her influential “New Blood” panel at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.
McDermid has hosted the annual panel since 2004 and has included S J Watson, Stuart MacBride, Clare Mackintosh, Belinda Bauer and Dreda Say Mitchell among her past New Blood picks.
Fiona Cummins’ Rattle (Macmillan) is a serial killer tale set in London’s Blackheath; Jane Harper’s The Dry (Little, Brown) tells of a triple killing in a small Australian town; Joseph Knox’s Sirens (Doubleday) is the story of a teenage runaway; and Kristen Lepionka’s The Last Place You Look (Faber) has PI Roxane Weary seeking to prove the innocence of a man on death row.
The New Blood panel will take place on Saturday 22nd July at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate, during the 2017 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Special guests for the festival, the 15th, will include Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Dennis Lehane, Brenda Blethyn, Peter May and Arne Dahl.
Enabling LGBT people to grow old together is not about creating a ghetto but about helping them to live later life openly, healthily and without fear…
When I used to live on the Northumberland coast, there was a game I played with visiting lesbian friends. On our walks and drives around the countryside, we’d identify houses we thought would make perfect lesbian retirement homes.
“No, that’s too exposed to the weather,” one would argue. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, you’d never get the staff,” said another. “The driveway’s too steep, we’d all break our hips in the winter,” a third objected.
But there was one thing we all agreed on. We really liked the idea of a community of lesbians growing old together more or less disgracefully. It may be a hangover from the ideas of communal living that gained a degree of traction in the 60s and 70s, often triggered by the political commitments of feminism and gay rights. But it’s one that retains a lot of appeal as we age.
Heaven knows, age comes with its indignities; this shouldn’t be one of them
Although attitudes towards sexuality have shifted radically in recent years, there are still significant levels of homophobia and transphobia around. Manchester city council, which is planning the country’s first local authority retirement community with a majority of LGBT residents, reports that elderly gay people fear hostility and discrimination from those charged with taking care of them. So they often hide their sexuality.
It seems profoundly wrong to me that after a lifetime of struggling to be accepted and to be open about who we are that we face being pushed back into the closet. Heaven knows, age comes with its indignities; this shouldn’t be one of them.
LGBT retirement homes are not about building a ghetto but rather being able to live life openly and without fear. To be surrounded by people with whom you have something in common. Often people move into such communities after a partner dies. How much healthier it must be to be able to express one’s grief freely, rather than hold back for fear of being judged.
Published March 17, 2017 by Benedicte Page